I've completed Animation Mentor!

I'm free! I finally finished AM so now I have the time to get back to real life, catch up on a few good books, pursue my love of hiking and photography, and muse about animation here for the 1 or 2 people who possibly read my blog. ;)

I know most people talk about how sad they are to be finishing AM but, honestly, that's not how I'm feeling. I'm absolutely thrilled to have my life back and to have a much greater understanding of animation (and greater reel) to show for myself. I'll also still have access to all my AM friends on the alumni site, facebook, and linked in, so really not much is changing besides the workload.

I'll still be working hard to finish up my reel and my short, but on a much more relaxed schedule. With that, I'll leave you with my progress reel and a promise to see (those of you who are going) you guys at graduation and Siggraph!

Note: This is not a demo reel. Just a summary of my best AM shots in order, followed by my unfinished short film. There's a much bigger quality one in my Facebook videos.

I Heart History

Bear with me for a moment as I prattle on about history; not animation or story, just history. Because for some reason, I've always loved history, all the myriad of facts and the fascinating stories. Ah, and there's my answer, which I just today stumbled upon.

The past is just chock full of fascinating stories. And the best part, is that only the best and most fascinating stories survived the test of time, and they're all true! Well, of course that can be debated, but for this purpose lets steer clear of the religious and mythological and possibly biased slants.

I get quite a chill to read about these people and their lives, and to know that it's real! Our fictional stories certainly feel real, but there's a magic to think about how truly genuine the historical ones are. Lewis and Clark climbed the great divide in the American West, expecting to see the Pacific ocean on the other side, ending more than a year of travel. But they were met only with a horizon of mountains and a further vast expanse of continent to cross. What a crushing defeat for these explorers. What a cliffhanger for a storyteller. This happens so often in story, that it could possibly be considered cliche. But those were real people there in that time and place, they experienced it. It's bigger than a story.

Later on, they emerge, starving and exhausted from weeks in the mountains, and stumble upon an Indian camp. The Indians are resolving to kill them, when someone suddenly realizes that Sacajawea is a distant relation, and the explorers are offered food instead of death. Certainly a coincidence fit for a novel.

One of the most important founders of radio absolutely loved to climb things and be high up in the air. He built his own radio tower in his yard and loved to climb it. Years later, in New York City, he would climb atop the NBC building, performing ridiculous balancing acts. Even climbing to the top of the tower on the building, high above the city. Nobody wrote this character. He created himself. Imagine what he would think of the modern world, and all the wonderful things to climb.

I got both of these stories from Ken Burns documentaries, and I can't wait to find out what other fantastical stories I could learn from history, perhaps to pop up in my own work or characters.

Ok, you can go back to animation now. :)

Dialogue Shot #2 - Cinderelly

Just finished up my second dialogue piece as well. I'm not quite as happy with it but perhaps that's just because it got off to a rocky start, as I'm not getting much criticism from fellow animators. Amusingly, non animators seem to like this one a lot more than the other one. Boggles my mind. If you have some critique, please please do chime in!

Update & New Animation

So what have I been up to, eh? Well I quit my animation job of FIVE years about 2 months ago. That's actually probably a long time to stay at one studio, now that I think of it. I also took a term off AM. That's right, directly from over a year of absolutely no free time and into nothing BUT. I still don't think I've managed to utilize that time as well as I'd like, but isn't that always the way? Not to mention, I live in the freezer of the country and my favorite free time pasttime...? ...going outside! Alas. I guess I should've thought this thing through a little more. ;)

Anyway, I've been working on fixing up some assignments from AM, planning and gathering reference for my short, and getting in some much needed R&R. Though I am very much looking forward to going back to my last term at AM next month!!!

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is my first dialogue piece from AM, completely finished:

Animation Quotes

Well hello there Mr Blog. Yes, my blog is a mister because that's how I roll.

I would promise to post more often, but I'm gonna guess that is the absolute most cliché blog promise in the world.

For now, I would just like to plug this wonderful book I just read.

John Canemaker wrote a book over a decade ago, on the Nine Old Men that is just a wonderful must read for aspiring animators. even if you aren't a crazy aspiring animation historian like I am, you can get a lot out of it. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"[Ward] Kimball studied all the performing arts, including ballet. Once he proved to his doubting daughter Kelly (then a preteen studying dance) that he knew all the classical ballet foot positions. "He did everything perfect," she discovered with amazement. "He had his body right, he had his arms right. I realized this is a man who watched ballet and he really is what he says you have to be as an animator. You just have to know everything!"

"If you're going to spend two days on the scene, you ought to spend the first day with your arms folded staring at a blank piece of paper. Because until you can visualize the thing and know exactly what you're going to do with it, you can't draw it."
-- Ham Luske

Every drawing in your scene has to be acting. For example, Laurence Olivier, wouldn't just have acting on poses -- he moves between them. His thought processes are working between poses, and his acting is continued through every frame of film. That's the way you have to do it. So many guys will just use the extreme poses to show their acting and that isn't correct.
-- Fred Moore

The whole thing with creativity is that there's something new to do out there. Why not give it a try?
-- Marc Davis

Next time I'll give a much delayed update on my life.

That's all. Enjoy!

Demo Reel 2008!

Oh! I completely forgot to share my new demo reel!

http://www.cristinmckee.net/cristinMcKee_2008.mov

Expect me to cut half of the body mechanics and replace it with two more dialog shots in the next few months.

I used this reel to apply for a temp position at Blue Sky. But I think I may have applied too late. Oh well, I'll try again in a few months with a MUCH better reel. :)

Cristin

Burning Out

One thing I've been wondering about lately is how one can work in a creative field and constantly be pouring creative energy in their work day after day, and not get drained out?

Now, I'm not saying this due to any sort of recent personal experience. Sure, I've been burned out in the past a couple of times for short periods of time (and once for a very long time) but I'm doing just dandy now.

I sort of feel like you must pour out that energy and then you recoup it by enjoying what you created. Permit yourself to brag a bit (in your head, of course) and soak in the aura of the great work you created. Cause you are really trying and it's better than the last thing you animated, right? ;)

*ahem* Well, we all slack every once in a while but you can still find something to be proud of.

If you're working on something fulfilling, either high quality or great storytelling, then that's AWESOME and probably keeps those inspiring juices flowing. If you're not, than you probably need some outside inspiration, like fun exercise (if you're like me and like to go galavanting up big mountains), or watching great films/animation, or creating your own art, for you and you alone, or whatever inspires you.

If you keep your free time mind happy, it flows right on into work. If you don't... well that makes everything a bit of a bummer. And I bet many of my fellow employees by day and fulltime students by night know that feeling! Don't forget to have fun, eh? How can you animate people if you never see them? :)

Have fun!

Cristin

Animating Sincerity

I'm having some trouble getting started on my new dialogue shot so I'll just take this opportunity to ruminate on the last one. ;)



For my first dialogue shot, I chose to try something really emotional and subtle, something challenging. The odd thing is, this is what I always find easiest to animate. While most people seem scared to animate "sincere" shots, I'm terrified of big broad acting and comedic stuff.

The reason emotional shots don't seem as difficult to me is because I can analyze it and break it down more easily. For this past shot, the dialogue is as follows:

"I play mother to everybody. Take everybody's troubles on my shoulders. Helps salve my conscience. Hmph.... (long pause and breath) Don't ever hurt a person, Matt."

I wrote all of this dialogue down and started analyzing it. Not for the lip sync, no, but for the meaning, for what's REALLY going on in this shot.

I don't usually write an internal monologue, that doesn't help me very much. Though here and there, I may insert a strong thought as a sentence. I start by writing what I think the character is feeling and break it down roughly by phrases or more likely by sentence. So in this shot, for instance, I decided that she starts "kind of annoyed and accepting, becomes more thoughtful and a bit wistful, gets a bit amused and mocking of herself, and then she feels very vulnerable and a bit sad." Very easily broken up into those four sentences.

My next step was to break down these phrases/emotions more visibly. Whether they feel open, closed, aggressive, retreating, big, small. And where I feel there might be a big change. For instance, I described her final change as "melting" into a more vulnerable person. Since I had decided this was a closed pose, I thought a nice way to represent that would be to have her comforting herself by touching her hands together in a barrier in front of her to shut out the world.

And you can see earlier in the shot that in the first line she's a little open, then she closes off a little, bringing her hands in to fidget as the gets a bit thoughtful, and then she snaps herself out of it with that big open declaration before giving in to how she really feels.

So, you see, with analysis like that, I find it less difficult to act out the shot (don't get me wrong, it's still hard!) and get something really genuine, if not a bit calculated.

But on a more fun shot, I get a little lost. I find it harder to pick any one approach. Oh well, I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out. ;)

Hope you enjoyed my rant. Til next time!

Cristin

Blank Canvas

Hi! I still exist! Just having trouble balancing work and school lately. Everything got a little thrown off because I moved recently and then started working extra hours to meet new expenses so life has been a bit hectic.

Anyway, I'm posting this message to "un-blank" this here canvas and hopefully inspire myself to post again with a real post quite soon. ;)

Optimism

I'm really inspired by this post on Bobby's blog today.
http://bobbyboom.blogspot.com/

I used to consider myself a very optimistic person, seizing opportunities for fun and adventure and trying to look on the bright side of things. I sort of got in a slump for some reason. Maybe it was years working on blah projects and getting bitter about it instead of DOING something. AM is helping a lot, but as Bobby says, it's a mindset you have to really try to be in, and I'm gonna find my way back there darnit. :)