Film Review of How to Train your Dragon in Q&A

At the end of this weeks second Q&A, Said went on to do a film review of 'How to Train your Dragon' but not like a normal review, this was a frame-by-frame look at parts of the movie to show arcs and not using symmetry, anticipation and staging.

Some of the comments Said made: -

• Hiccup would move his eyes and then his head would follow to look at Toothless.


• 'Keep it simple, keep it stupid'. What he means by this is to keep backgrounds unbusy so the characters are the main focus.
  


• Characters move in nice arcs. Whether its their arms, tail or head. A good example of this was near the beginning where Gobber is having a drink and he slams it down and turns. Or how Toothless moves and swishes his tail.
  


• Don't keep things symmetrical unless your looking for seriousness. Like when Toothless is staring at Hiccup in a serious manner to make him eat the fish but when he bites into it, Toothless relaxes and sits back and his pose is not symmetrical at all. Like one ear was higher than the other and even his eyes were different sizes!


• Said also explained how Hiccups father, Stoick is all powerful, big and manly so when he was sat in the dark in his house in front of the fire and Hiccup tries to sneak in he was filling most of the screen (the animator had also nicely posed him in an arc but still not symmetrical). Hiccup is small and weak so when he comes in he is small in the background to represent him. It's easier to explain when you see it, sorry I should of taken more screen shots.

I love How to Train your Dragon and it is one of my favourite movies! If you love it too or even just love dragons or concept art then I recommend this book. The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (How to Train Your Dragon Film)

Principles of Traditional Animation applied to 3D Computer Animation by John Lasseter

I came across this paper by John Lasseter, which describes the basic principles of traditional 2D hand drawn animation and their application to 3D computer animation. After describing how these principles evolved, the individual principles are detailed addressing their meanings in 2D hand drawn animation and their application to 3D computer animation. This should demonstrate the importance of these principles to quality 3D computer animation.

www.stevepaul.com/John%20Lasseter%20Animation%20Principles.html

How to Train your Dragon

Anyone who knows me will know that I love the film 'How to Train your Dragon' and I love Toothless. He is so well animated and I love the little cat like mannerisms he has so when I came across the video below by Animation Mentor of them meeting some DreamWorks Animators to talk about it I got a little excited and couldn't believe I haven't seen it before! The is also a behind the scenes video below.

I love how they filmed themselves underwater to see how a dragon might move. Things like that is why I want to specalise in creatures as I can experiment and research how I think the creature would move or be challenged to make an animal believable so studying them intensly. It does sound hard but I'm not going to give up, it is my dream and if I work hard I will get there.

1981 Disney Animation Special! - The Illusion of Life

Another great find! I just stumbled across this on YouTube while looking at stuff about the Fox and the Hound and it has some awesome behind the scenes footage, interviews and footage with Disney voice actors, tips and stories from Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Eric Larson, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball and Wolfgang Reitherman. I love the quote "The only limit to animation, is your imagination". I personally found it really interesting and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

The Fox and the Hound

I watched The Fox and the Hound yesterday and it is one of my favourites. I watched it as a child and it is what made me love foxes! I even wanted a pet fox after watching it and used to look out my window at night hoping to see a fox that could be my very own Tod... I was young.
My favourite scenes have to be when Tod and Copper are playing hid and seak and the bear attack scene. They are both so wonderfully animated and emotional scenes.

Well, when it finished I was all excited about it again and decided to look up some stuff about it and find stuff from it so have a look below to see what I found, some really inspiring stuff :) Also look at the post above called '1981 Disney Animation Special! - The Illusion of Life' to see some behind the scenes of the making of the movie.

Facts about The Fox and the Hound

• It was made in 1981 and was re-released in 1988.
• It is based on the 1967 novel 'The Fox and the Hound' by Daniel P. Mannix.
• The 24th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series.
• It was the first animated film to use Dolby Sound.
• It was the last Disney film that Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston worked on.
• Production was delayed when Don Bluth started his own studio and hired away animators.
• The fight sequence with the bear was originally going to be animated in charcoal!
• The co-director was used as a model for Amos Slade, the hunter.
• Approximately 360,000 drawings, 110,000 painted cels and 1,100 painted backgrounds were used to make the finished film.
• A total of 180 people, including 24 animators, worked on the film.
• It was the last Disney animated film to end with a “The End” card.
• Tim Burton was one of the animators on this movie and the Black Cauldron. Although his work was never used.
• In the original screenplay, Chief was slated to die the same as in the novel, but Art Stevens (one of the Producers) did not want to have an on-screen death and modified the film so that he survived.

Click on an image to see a larger (original) version.

Pixar Intern talking about his experiences

An intern at Pixar, Austin Madison talks about his experiences as an intern there, being a CalArts student and animation. It's really interesting and worth a watch.

Lecture with Mark Andrews from Pixar at CalArts

Here are 2 videos from a lecture at CalArts with Mark Andrews from Pixar. I went to a course where he lecturered with Escape Studios once. He was really good and I learned so much about storyboarding. I will post some of the notes I got from that lecture at some point too.

Video's of advice from John Lasseter

Here are some videos on YouTube of John Lasseter giving advice to students and how to animate an inanimate object. After each video I have put notes from it. This is also the first Tip Jar post!



Don’t forget to study the basics, even for computer animation.

• Basic drawing
• Basic design
• Basic fundamentals of animation
• Film grammar (how do you stage things)
• Story/writing (3 story act)

An inanimate object was made to do something so it would want to do it so anything that prevents it from doing that job would make it sad and full of anxiety. What would it be feeling? Try and not put a face on it. Consider the movement the object does in real life. Make the audience believe it is that object.