Opening Thoughts:
Three of the Top 10 grossing movies last year were animated films. Animation and CG animation is a rapidly growing industry not only in the US but globally.
Baby Pixar comes from the new ability to make animations with a smaller studio, less money and faster than before. More and more studios have conformed to this name: Baby Pixar.
Speakers Introduction:
Scott Carroll is a CG character animator at Blue Sky and has worked on Ice Age and Horton Hears a Who
Norman Badler is a professor at Penn and a big name in the industry.
Himar Sigursson: Is a co-founder of Caoz, an Icelandic CG firm.
Scott Caroll’s Portion:
Quick run through of Blue Sky:
Started as a small studio in1987 working mostly on commercials. In 1997 20th Century Fox bought Blue Sky and the studio got much bigger. They are comprised of 350 employees who are broken up into multiple departments:
- Art Department: Traditional style drawing who gets the basic idea and look for the characters sketched out
- Modeling and Rigging: They bring the 2D traditional art work into 3D sculpture
- Fur, Materials and Cloth: The department that deals with textures
- Story & Editorial: They bring everything together- story boarding and animatics
- Layout and Assembly: They put the cameras and cinematography into the movie
- Animation: Anything that moves as far as characters goes
- Effects: Designing the look of all the lighting, smoke, rain, etc.
- Lighting: Lighting the “set” just like an actual, physical set
- Paint Department: The final touch-ups
- Research and Development: Finds all the new, best technologies
- Systems: Keeps everything running
Blue Sky is the smallest big name studio.
Norman Badler’s Portion:
At the University of Pennsylvania they have the Broad Education Mission of the SIG Center for Computer graphics. It is an Engineering Degree in which the student walks in with a Computer Science degree and walks out with a Computer Graphics degree.
Badler’s Academic Observations:
Himar Sigursson’s Portion:
- Caoz is an established European Studio with a good track record through reward winning properties.
- They have a reputation for high quality production
- Already successfully released two award winning animations
- Well known amongst TV buyers and distribution companies
- Business model is flexible
- Talented and experienced staff.
- Developed a new sort of production line that gets their animations out into user testing faster than other studios.
- To create hype for their films on top of user testing they are creating iPhone games for animations to come- specifically Thor which comes out in February 2011
- By then end of this year there will be 35 full time employees
Q&A:
Q: Why are some animations very vibrant while others aren’t?
A: Animations take a lot of time and money and it all depends on the budget. The more time and money you have the better quality you can get. It also has to do with the technology used.
Q: You have a huge process line, how do you go backwards? I.E: What happens if something needs to be changed?
A: That’s why the pre-production and research part is so critical because once you get into production any change becomes very expensive. Generally most animation studios try to get everything figured out in pre-production. The director and producer will then duke it out if a change is thought to be needed due to the great cost of the smallest change.
Q: Is there a Continuing Education at the University of Penn?
A: Yes and no, there are some people who come back but they haven’t been out of school for very long. The longer you’ve been out of school the harder it is to get back because the conversion of the technology becomes too tough to transcend.
Q: How many woman are in the Digital Media program?
A: There are more woman than men in the program now.
Q: How does collaboration work?
A: The way Blue Sky and Caoz does it is one animator will work on one shot- they will animate every character into the scene instead of focusing on one, specific character.
