Jason Hendrich- Animator - DemoReel 2006

[adib]

Very nice animation! Bravo!:thumbsup:

[Ranimate]

JASONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!


My man, how are you? it's so amazing you are posting this reel today, I was chating with moooooo yesterday and I asked him about you after hearing you are at CORE. Wow man, it's been awhile since we actually spoke! How the hell are you?

Wow man, you animated alot on Ant Bully didnt you? Cool stuff J.
Only thing I would say, why didnt you edit the thing? its too long and no sound with amazing potential to be a f#$@ great thing to watch, save and keep watching, but on the other hand, who cares man? you are doing great as is, you have it ma man.

:applause:

Ranimate

[Silverwing]

That was amazing! Really great stuff.
Very professional. 5*!

[Ramteen]

it`s great to see such a professional piece of job in finished animation work section of cgtalk .awsome . I love it .wish you succes the best friend :)

[Winner]

Nicely crafted animation. I like all the subtle micro movements you add over the broad actions in all the ant bully stuff.. really adds icing to the cake ... my favourite look to animation.

I'm interested Jason... do you work blocked ? layered ? straight ahead ? how was your workflow influenced by what you needed to show for approval before shot completion ? ( on ant bully )

thanks
Cam

[mgard]

great stuffs..two tumbs up:)

[IceFlame]

Realy realy a master piece Great

[uncle_buck]

JASONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

Ranimate

Haha hi Ran. It's been alright at Core. Bugging Mo is sooo much fun you have no idea. He gets so nervous! How have you been?

As for editing I just wasn't sure what to do with music or other stuff since I took already took a lot out that I wasn't really happy with, namely a few of the crowd shots that they sneaked onto me. Gaa the nightmares of animating 8 + ants...


do you work blocked ? layered ? straight ahead ? how was your workflow influenced by what you needed to show for approval


I used to work stepped and then just went straight ahead often times going off of your original ideas. It was seen as a lazy way of animating since it depends on the playblast for corrections. I had bit of a rough time adjusted but after going the detailed blocking route with acting and camera reference, I tend to agree now. Although for chances or acting corrections sometimes I just went straight ahead. It think it's all subjective anyway.

Since the characters were somewhat heavy, we had to keep blasts to a minimum and just wrote notes on what needed to be done in only a few playblasts. We were pushed to have extremely strong blocking animation so we could communicate our ideas better to the director. It made for an easier time when cleaning things up and for fixes if they disagreed with our animation choices.

Our animation director David Tart pushed more for Linear style blocking. Namely it was still pose to pose but they didn't just pop to the actions. It was similar to Stepped and was needed especially for Running characters or characters flipping to prevent gimbal locking. It was easier on the eyes.

Some liked Lango's approach in that if you kept it 2d stepped. He liked the pops since it was closer to the medium of classical animation. He even had his own setup where he could cycle through poses very quickly. Really amazing.

So overall it depended on the shots or the mood. I tended to just go straight out Stepped since it made it easier to visualize the timing for me but many animators better than I did otherwise. Heck I think one animator actually did all her animations in Layers, literally.

Does that help? Sorry if I rambled!

[Winner]

thanks Jason.. super interesting, super helpful...

I've been asking that question a lot lately, to different people in various studios. It's interesting that you say they wanted to push for a detailed blocking approach... it seems many studios allow you to work the way you like, as long as you can communicate your ideas, but I suppose skillfull blocking is the best way to do that...

I work in games, and the methods of working seem way less stringent. So I always work in a layered way - and thats how I get good results. If I try to block out an animation with progressive levels of detail I just get overwhelmed with all the things I have to think about at once. I would like to say I animate one thing at a time, but logically in animation thats impossible - rather I make sure a certain body part is working, then I move onto the next part, coming back and making changes if I need to ( usually starting at the top of the heirarchy and working down )
I do a lot of my own personal work at home, which is a little more complex that what I do at work and requires me to be way more planned. I like to set "story" poses and work between them ( just so I have an idea of where things should be, and to make sure I can see the broad action ).. but I rarely set breakdowns, and going in any more detail usually confuses me.

Sorry to ramble... the reason I'm talking to you about this is because I noticed your animation style is what I see as being the hardest kind of movement to block out... you have nice broad actions, but you also have a lot of small ambient and subtle movement that really adds life to the characters. If you have 5 minutes, would you mind explaining in more detail how you block these subtleties ? or do you add them on the final pass, in an almost 'layered' approch to your underlying movements that are working already ? at what point do you start to think about these small movements, or do you just let them evolve as you animate ?

To be honest I worry about my technique. I love working the way I work, and my best stuff has been done this way - but I want to move into feature animation, and quite frankly I fear the process of blocking because for me its like animating upsidedown and back to front - I understand and agree its the best way to work, but I feel I have a very difficult time ahead of me learning to work in such a 2D way.

anyway... thanks again for the info... and congratulations on your demo.

[Scob]

So huge work !!!:arteest:
Amazing!!! :bowdown:

Cheers...

[uncle_buck]

To be honest I worry about my technique. I love working the way I work, and my best stuff has been done this way - but I want to move into feature animation, and quite frankly I fear the process of blocking because for me its like animating upside down and back to front - I understand and agree its the best way to work, but I feel I have a very difficult time ahead of me learning to work in such a 2D way.

Well it's all just a technique right? Heck a few of the old Disney guys didn't even do layout. The artist's name escapes me but his process was that he would pretty much sit there and stare at the paper. He'd then just go nuts and work it straight ahead since he just mentally plans it all out without a single blocking. Have you seen Glen Keane's drawings? His cleanup artists had their work cut out for them.

Strong blocking is just there as a guide line. Creating your breakdowns and animating through limp separation is fine.

There's no wrong way.

However, strong blocking does help pull you in and get the acting across quickly. It also allows you to see poor acting choices quickly before you fall in love with that wicked cool motion that really doesn't need to be there. As long as you know what your character is thinking and reacting to, it breathes that into him/her/it. All the beautiful arcs are just icing after that.

I know it's pretty mentally draining doing blocking since you're not seeing anything really kickass coming out of it. There isn't that emotional high of seeing a really fine arc or motion. It does give you a strong feeling watching it come to life. Deviate from the blocking or stick with it, it doesn’t matter as long as you understand your character and hopefully getting some neat acting choices you didn’t expect along the way.

Have fun!

[madeofpoly]

Awesome work, thanks for sharing how you approach animating a scene, i am always curious to know how other's work.

Luis

[Winner]

hey Jason,

Thanks again for your insight... actually really helpful and encouraging, I appreciate it.

[harmonic01]

Hey Jason,

Just wanted to say, sweet reel. :D Was a real pleasure watching. :thumbsup:

~Peter

[Cutiehoney]

I love it!

I wish you didn't have it on youtube though.

[HOP]

Some great work there. Congratulations for it!:thumbsup:

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