Meet the Artist: Jeff Lew

#212

I hope I’m not to late to post here.

Hey Jeff!
Good to see you have lots of fans. I saw you first bean movie back when I was going to school trying to learn Softimage. What a waste of time and money. The only thing that saved me was they hired a young guy that had graduated from Vancouver film school for a couple of months. He went on to work on some big name video games. He still is critqing my so, so animating.
It seems to be a big question about going to school or not.

I was working with Maya for about 3 years and then we went on our own. We got Animation Master and really like it.
The downfall is that we want to start working on productions but have no AM users here.
I am trying to put together a production style course that is staight to the point with no fluff.

I guess the question I would like to ask you is, since you have been a AM user and now a Maya guy. Do you think it is worth the time and effort to train people and put together a prodution with AM?
I personally like AM, its very easy to use and powerful and we are not planning to be a big production house with high end effects. Just like to hear some input from someone thats been there and done that.

I got the third part of your dvd off of divx and its straight to the point. I will buy the dvd because the divx is so restricted.

You may have answered this one already but have you considered puting a dvd together on how to set up a animation set, scene, when to composite, render time tricks, final output and such?
a mini movie kind of thing.

Keep up the awesome work Jeff!!

#213

Hi Jeff
Your work is fantastic as well as you know because it definitely shows the years of work and
effort.

You mention that you use Maya now and not AM.

On your DVD, you tend to enjoy making poses ont he fly due to AM toolset.

  1. How do you supplement missing AM tools in Maya.

  2. What are your favorite tools in animating outside of the obvious dopesheet.
    Like do you Maya’s FK/IK blender or Jason Schleifer 's or someone elses.

  3. Do you use any thirdparty tools, scripts to manage/help in animating in Maya?

Basically I would like to know what you do to get Maya streamlined for animating and not
in its usual, somewhat cluttered default mode.

What do you think of the new product: http://www.pom.tv/
Principles of Motion reference DVDs

#214

Hi Jeff,

I saw your trailer called “Concussion”. I thought it was cool. With the title and the action, It looked like it was gonna be a rough movie. At least people have pain when the floor hit their face :twisted:

Are you planning on making a short out of it? It would be great especially with your current skills, that would be an awesome action packed short.

#215

hi jeff

i wonder how you made your works realistic and by using which programs you have achieved these nice works.
one more thing do you anything about maya? if yes then please tell me how can i make my picture more realistic and more interesting

#216

Hi Jeff Lew!
First of all i want to say that your answers to all questions here are very inspiring.
I am 17 years old, and i began to learn the basics on “making game” tools 8 months ago. Right now in school i’m studuying to work within the paper industry (walk around machines to see if they are doing well). The job is extremly boring and i can’t hold myself to not fall asleep on those boring paper classes. So my question for a proffesional 3D artist, should I quit school and work with 3D instead?

#217

Wow, I remember seeing killer bean 2 during my final years of high school, 2001/02 – at that point I immediately started looking into 3D. I would have to say, your short animated film was a major impact in getting me started with animation. I love the idea of being able to create at the speed of thought. Thanks for being such a great inspiration so early on :applause:

#218

my message is down

#219

hi jeff
what problems have you met in the making of KB3?? Have you resoluted these problems?? in what year or season or month(if do you won’t have any new problems) do you think the movie will be ready for the released?? i have read from sombody that KB3 will be a remake of the first…do you confirm? Thanks for the attemption and the time spent to read my post (and thank you from the world for have made KILLER BEAN…)
a fan…John

#220

I’ve always wanted to take part in making a game since I was a little kid, but I much rather prefer to play games than make them now. And all the scary stories coming out about people working 100 hrs/week, doesn’t sound like a fun thing. Although I bet video game employees get to play a lot of games at work. That sounds pretty fun.

Jeff

Could you please make Killer Bean videogame with Nintendo for the Revolution?

Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t be 100hrs/week for you, you’ll just be the boss together with Miyamoto designing original gameplay for your stylised Killer Bean character and its cool golden gun shooting world…

I think KB franchise would be perfect for a Nintendo exclusivity?

Has Nintendo ever approached you to discuss making a Killer Bean game for their console? Or for that matter have you considered with someone from the game industry to make a game out of it?

I am definately hoping KB3 will make it even more possible that a KB game be made someday.

Have you thought about the coincidence that the Tarantino movie Kill Bill has the same initials as your Killer Bean? Tarantino says he hates 3D graphics put into movies, cause it makes them look like videogames. Do you agree that 3D graphics should stay for videogames and animations and that films with real actors should stick with real scenes and real acting?Search google for this quote:

If i’d wanted all that computer game bullshit, I’d have gone home and stuck my d**k in my Nintendo

That is what Tarantino has said about CG in movies. Do you like Kill Bill?

If you were to do some acting, would you prefer to do comedy, action or dramatic romance?

#221

i am just like anybody else who likes ur Ultimate KB2.

So, how’s life over der? Do u like to sleep alot than working in front of PC? I really liek to sleep man. I spent more time in sleeping than strive to learning anything in Art.

The max i can hold on is 5hours per day. Tell us bout ur daily life…hee.

Any deepest or unforgetable impacts in ur career so far?

Can’t wait for the KB3!! Hope it can be a SHORT-MOVIE like under 1 hour!..
GAMBATEH!

(>o<)/

#222
  1. I once read you used Maya for work, but prefered Animation Master for personal projects, is this still true today or has another program grabbed your atention?

Hi Leo,

For work, I’ve always used Maya. For personal stuff, I’ll use whatever is good and flexible. Currently I use Maya for my main 3D app now, but I’m looking to expand with more specialized 3D apps too for texturing, rendering, etc.

  1. If there was one reference material you would pick as being most influencial in your life, what would it be?

One reference material? I don’t really know. I would have to say just movies in general. You can learn a lot from good movies and a lot from bad movies. You can learn about motion, sound, cinematography, editing, acting. There’s just so much there.

  1. Do you feel like you are able to balance your life with your work/hobbies or does 3D suck up all your time? :slight_smile:

Right now it’s not balanced at all. 3D is everything right now. That’s the bad side of CG. It takes so much of your time.

Jeff

#223
  1. When you look at a potential employees’ demo reel, are there particular kinds of animation that you would expect to see in a good reel? (ie: on Aardman’s website they specify that you should put in a few different walk cycles showing difference in character).
 Hi Daniel,

It really depends on the studio you’re applying to. A place like Aardman will definitely want stuff that shows character. Most of the places I worked are VFX studios, so I would have to say that showing believability in weight and timing is very important. Showing that you are skilled technically can help also. For example, if you know some character rigging, show some examples of that. It shows that your are proficient in the software you use.

  1. You’ve mentioned the merit of learning through animating a bouncing ball, an exercise I am working on and enjoying : ) . Is this the kind of thing that if done well should go into a reel? There is some internet legend that Cameron Miyasaki got a job at Pixar based on such a simple but well made bouncing ball animation.
 That is very interesting. I never heard of that, but to tell you the truth, if I saw a bouncing ball on a demo reel, I wouldn't really consider it, because I would think you haven't passed that level of animation yet. I would think that you are still in the learning phase. But like I said, it really depends on the studio you are applying to. Places I've worked at are not looking for people to develop their skills. They're mainly looking for people to get the job done.
  1. I read in an earlier post that you don’t use a great deal of squash and stretch in your work. Which of the animation principles (such as those that are taught in Illusion of Life) are the most useful in every day professional work?
 Weight, timing, posing, and follow through are all very important aspects I use everday.
  1. If done to a reasonable degree of technical and artistic competence, will a short animated film (in addition to a demo reel) increase my value as an employee in the flim/animation industry? ie: increase my chances of getting a job?
 It's quite risky to put a short on a demo reel, because it takes so much time to make a short. And if a person doesn't like a short, it might leave a bad impression about your reel. It would be better to pick the best seqments from your short and put them in your reel. I think shorts are best left for the web and film festivals and not on your reel.

P.S. Will KB3 be a short short, or a 15-20 min short?

 Hmmm.  It will be longer than 20 min.
 
 Jeff
#224

Could you please share your experience about frame rates? To what frame rate have you been animating? In Illusion of Life I got the impression that Disney used in generally12 frames per second that then they double exposed up to 24 frames (in there traditionally made movies). Would you recommend animators to do it like this in 3d animation? Or do you think it is better to down sample 30 frames of animation to 24?

Hi Jimstein,

In the beginning of my career, I animated to 30 fps, but now I animate only to 24 fps, because all the projects I work on are at 24. There is a slight difference to animating at 30 and 24. When I first made the change going from 30 to 24, I found that all my animation looked slower, so I had to speed things up. It makes sense if you think about it.

Be careful about changing framerates mid way through your animation. If you start at 30 and switch to 24, I find that Maya will scale your keyframes accordingly, but it won’t set your keyframes to whole integers. Keyframes will be in the decimal like 10.48 or 55.87. It’s best to start at the framerate you will render in.

Also, I keyframe usually every 3-5 frames for all my keys. I don’t usually go less or greater than that.

          1. anti-aliasing at rendertime
   2. anti-aliasing after postproduction
   3. render at double resolution (no anti-aliasing) and then down sample to half resolution

Anti-alias at rendertime. That is the easiest.

Jeff

#225

I was wondering, when you do slow motion in a KB scene. Do you actually animate the slowmo by hand, or do you let the render do it for ya, I mean do you animate the scene in realtime, and just let the render stretch out those few frames that need slowmo? … I mean, it’s hard to animate slowmo by hand, especially if there’s particles in the scene.

Hi Ronnie,

When I animate slow mo, I usually animate in realtime and then scale out the animation to whatever speed I need. I think that is easier. If you try to animate in slow mo, it’s hard to make it look real.

I’m doing this d-day short (if you remember), and it’s a pretty big project… I wanna know about your story boarding, how detailed is it? I mostly use story board for camera placement only, or if there’s some special Ideérs I want to see (something like that). I dont storyboard how I need the soldiers to fly through the air. I’m kind of improvising when I’m working with my scenes. I place the explosion, and then I just go with the feeling of how he will fly and land… It works fine to me, it makes things feel alot more random I think… Something tells me that it’s a bad thing… Tell me, do you ever in your KB shorts let the scene, like animate itself, and just go with the flow?

For KB2, I made very simple thumbnail boards. It was mostly to get the story and camera ideas down. Now I don’t board at all and I go straight to previs. I find it much more useful in production, because you start to see things in motion and you can use the previs as a starting block for your scene files.

For KB2, there are a lot of scenes that I let it go with the flow, but I had no real planning stage for KB2. Now I don’t do that, because I want to get my projects done in a specific amount of time. KB2, I had no real deadline.

BTW, I saw your D-Day short a while ago (or parts of it). It is very cool!

Jeff

#226

I read alot of th comments made by others and I noticed that you have done some web development. I think that’s really cool because as I have been doing 3D for the last 2 years I have been supporting myself through Designing and developing websites. It’s cool to hear that someone else has a somewhat similar background. Of course I do hope to be done with web development aside from person projects in the near future. I’m soo sick of it.

Hi Corey,

Usually that’s the motivating factor to switch to different careers, when people get sick of what they’re doing. My accountant said his friend is a doctor and now he is trying to switch to 3D. Man, talk about a big career change. When I was in web design, I basically decided to quit in order to learn 3D fulltime. But my boss agreed to a part-time schedule. Now, I don’t recommend that everyone quits their job, but to learn 3D, you really do have to set aside large chunks of time for it. It’s all about hard work and perseverance, and you will get there.

Good luck!

Jeff
#227

Thanks for sharing yr thoughts, Jeff

my own short animation is now on the paper, and i can say yr DVD is a great guideline, both technically and artistically.

Hope to see more of that from u in the future

Thanks Richard,

Good luck on your short!

Jeff

#228

I guess the question I would like to ask you is, since you have been a AM user and now a Maya guy. Do you think it is worth the time and effort to train people and put together a prodution with AM?
I personally like AM, its very easy to use and powerful and we are not planning to be a big production house with high end effects. Just like to hear some input from someone thats been there and done that.

Hi John,

Well, that is a tough question. If you are set on using AM and you can’t find AM users, it might be best to look for people who know how to animate in other packages and then train them to use AM. They should be able to pick up AM just as easy as other packages. Most animation tools are the same in every software package. But I don’t think you should be training people who never worked in a 3d app before. It would take too much time. Try to find people who know how to animate first. Learning a 3D app is easier than learning how to animate.

Jeff

#229
  1. How do you supplement missing AM tools in Maya.

Hi Julian,

I find tools are about the same. I would expect that animation tools are the same in XSI too. The difference is how deep you want to go with your controls technically. But some people don’t want to get too technical.

  1. What are your favorite tools in animating outside of the obvious dopesheet.
    Like do you Maya’s FK/IK blender or Jason Schleifer 's or someone elses.

Actually, I haven’t used that many tools beyond the basic tools for animation. I should check out Jason Schleifer’s setup. His work on Gollum is amazing. I’m interested to seeing what full body IK brings to the table also.

  1. Do you use any thirdparty tools, scripts to manage/help in animating in Maya?

Not really. I use a lot of third party tools for other things like FX, rendering, etc, but not for animation.

Jeff

#230

I saw your trailer called “Concussion”. I thought it was cool. With the title and the action, It looked like it was gonna be a rough movie. At least people have pain when the floor hit their face :twisted:

Are you planning on making a short out of it? It would be great especially with your current skills, that would be an awesome action packed short.

Hi Olivier,

I was always into more human action packed animation, and I do plan to make a more “human” character piece after KB3 is done. But it won’t be based on Concussion. It will be something more futuristic.

Jeff

#231

i wonder how you made your works realistic and by using which programs you have achieved these nice works.
one more thing do you anything about maya? if yes then please tell me how can i make my picture more realistic and more interesting

Hi Yasin,

For those images you see, I have nothing to do with the rendering of those images. Rendering was all done by other people in the studio. To make an image more realistic, you would need to use renders like mental ray or maxwell, etc. I can’t really help you there.

Jeff