Meet the Artist: Victor Navone

#41

Hey Victor!

Thanks so much for coming onto this board to do this Q&A session. It’s an honor to get a chance to shoot some questions your way and to be graced with your infinite wisdom!! ok ok I can’t help but kiss butt to you pixar guys!

So on to the questions.

  1. I was wondering what your opinion is on cheating in a shot. Being an animator for 5 years doing TV series, I’ve grown accustomed to cheating when ever possible. But is this something I want to avoid when I decide to make my jump into feature films?

  2. On the topic of feature films, I was wondering what animation methods you prefer. Like do you prefer “Straight Ahead” for action and “pose 2 pose” for acting? or vice versa?

  3. Do you have any tips for animating eye brows? When it comes to facial animation, I’m quite confident in every aspect but the brows. Finding the right time to do a brow shift from say sardonic to confused etc can be very tricky. Especially when you try to do this without a blink. At least that’s my experience.

  4. Just wondering if you’ve ever seen the 3D series [Dragon Booster](http://</a></font>) (Shameless Plug :P) and I wonder what your thoughts are on the series.

Thanks for your time man!!! and I think I speak for everyone when I say you’re an inspiration to us all.

Cheers!
Fredrick

#42

Thanks for doing this!

Could you go over the process Pixar/You use for facial shape animation? The shapes in the Incredibles were great, and I can’t figure out the process. The characters’ entire heads seemed to be squashing/stretching, along with their faces, etc. Is it just a simple layering of shape deformations? i.e., mouth shape over face shape over head shape…

Because it looked so good, it’s hard to figure out what’s actually going on… Good for storytelling, bad for me!

thanks,
Patrick Connole

#43

Hey Victor,

Firstly thanks for doing this Q&A - no doubt u’ll have a lot of replies :wink:

My question is about education & reels. Would you reccomend people educate themselves and/or get education somewhere to produce a kick-ass reel in the learning environment, or simply send out as many ‘OK’ reels as they can to as many places as possible in order to get their first gig?

Hope that made sense! :blush:

Thanks for all your great work, & inspiring us all to make our dreams come true.

#44

Hi Victor, I haven’t got any q?s that haven’t already been asked but I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for inspiring me so many moons ago with alien song, if not for that piece (as well as other timely stuff by Anzovin and Lew) in the late 90s, my career path would’ve led into engineering yawn… Which I’m so far from now thanks to you! So, quite simply, Thanks a mountain good sir:bowdown: for the invaluable inspiration!

May the force be with you

#45

First off, thanks so much for doing this.

I don’t really have any questions Mr. Navone, I just want to say that as a self-taught 17 year old animator, that you are the true animation success story in my eyes. I started animating stuff when I was 7, and it’s stories like yours that make me want to pursue it ‘in the real world’. It sounds all gushy and stuff, but what you have done is what I want to do, (including the ‘be a character animator at Pixar bit’ :D)…

SO.

Actually, I do have a question regarding schools, colleges, whatever… (Actually, it’s more my parents’ questions, as they are worried about me going to an art school versus a film school…)

-Do you feel that it is important to have a degree in film to at some point direct an animated short/feature film in an industry pipeline like at ohhh, I dunno, Pixar? :smiley: (I’ve been taught to shoot for the stars :)) In other words, does a degree in animation restrict you to just that in the eyes of people in hiring positions?
-On a similar line of thought, once you are a character animator in said industry pipeline, does that mean you will always be a character animator and/or in the animation department, or is there still room to be able to get into the story department or wherever in that same group?

Please excuse my 17 year old naivete, but the ‘choosing a college’ thing is scaaaary. :arteest:

Thanks again, Victor. Good luck with ‘Big Bang,’ (I WUUUUV your main character for that!) and who knows, I still got lotsa future ahead me, maybe I’ll run into you someday. :smiley:

-Eric Stirpe

#46

It’s sad about Animation Mentor by choosing Flash as technology.

Java would have been smarter, especially when this is multiplatform.

Infographists have to care about technology, especially for Online exchange, it should be a reflex, usual.

go back to manual “computer history”.

anaway, cheers Victor

#47

Hi Victor,thank u so much for doin this,its really great! was it the Alien Song that let u IN,for Pixar?
thx.

#48

u re the mannnn :buttrock:

nothing more to say…

#49

Hi victor . I have a question from U , and I`ll be happy if U answer .
I am an animator and have character animator skill s . How can I do any work to pixar meetting
with my works or in the next step work with Pixar animation team ?

in the end pleas excuse me cuz of my bad english .
Good luck …

#50

Hey Victor.

Thank you for comming on here and answering the questions we all have.

my biggest question isnt so much about how to get into pixar or too many tricks of the trade, but I am wondering what advice you would give to a student about to graduate in animation. Should a reel focus more on motion and simple acting or have a short story. Does fancy schmancy editing and music make a better impression than a nice, simply cut demo reel? What can a student expect while looking for his or her job, based on your experiance and stories you have heard.

Thank you very much for your time.

Love your work. :thumbsup:

-Rob Wilson

#51

First off congrats on all your hard work and completed projects.

This is a Q and A post so lets get started.

I noticed alot of studios using MAYA, I personally am a all out XSI user. Does it matter what program your rockin when you enter the field of 3d/CG. Maybe you can give me some feed back to prepair myself. Like I said im a XSI user, but know the basics in many other 3d programs.

When your a modeler or animator do you ever get the chance to create the charecter? Or do you mainly animate and model someone elses charecter[s]?

What degree [schooling] would be the best choice for someone wanting to be a perfectionist in CG.

#52

Hey Victor,

It goes without saying that your work is outstanding. I have been a fan for some time. I have been trying hard to pump up my own animation portfolio and I would really appreciate any comments you may have. I know you’re a busy guy so I won’t take up too much of your time.

www.seespotmove.com

later,

#53

Wow, so many questions so fast! Thanks for the warm reception. I’ll try to answer as many of these as I can over the next week. I probably will NOT be doing any animation critique as my time is limited and it might conflict with my AnimationMentor.com work.

#54

Hi Neil, at Pixar I have nothing to do with rigging since we have Character TD’s to handle that for us. The animators do provide feedback to the TD’s during the modeling and rigging stage, but I’m not usually involved in this. As for my personal work, I use Animation: Master for my rigging and I tend to be pretty nit-picky about sculpting all my joint deformations. I use many different techniques that I wont bore you with here. As for building your own rigs, that’s fine as long as the models do what you need them to do. It’s great to be able to build rigs that suit your style of working.

#55

Hi AJ,

  1. Yes, Big Bang is really hard to get to these days. I have taken it off my site for various reasons right now, but it will definitely return sometime in the future. It’s too much in my head not to make, but I have very little time to devote to it these days.
  2. I think I’ve been pretty good about self-editing my internet response re: Pixar. I’m always aware that I’m an unofficial representative of Pixar whether I want to be or not, and I don’t want to risk my job or make them uncomfortable. They’re really cool about letting us participate in the CG community and I don’t want to abuse their trust.
  3. There’s a short film in development right now that I can’t talk about (not One Man Band) that I tried REALLY hard to be involved with it. Because of my commitment to Cars it just didn’t happen. It would have been nice to work on the original Toy Story as well, of course, but I shudder to think of the primitive CG animation tools they had to use back then.
  4. No, but there is a giant inflatable monkey that gets passed around, as well as the occasional tasteless drawing.
#56

Hi Justin, I learned a lot from books such as Maestri’s “Digital Character Animation” and of coures “The Illusion of Life”. I also talked a lot with an animator coworker (Mike Brown) and I frequented CG-Char. My background in art and acting helped a lot, I’m sure, as I was already accustomed to posing and performing. In addition to this I can also recommend AnimationMentor.com if you willing to pay for instruction. Most of our students have day jobs, and the quality of the training is top notch. Okay, so I’m a little biased…

#57

Hi Brian,

  1. Usually when I work on a film at Pixar the characters are pretty well developed by the time I get to them. Watching other animators’ work and the dialog recording session helps flesh things out for me. In a case where the character is not as developed, I will discuss him or her with the director to try to find out what they have in mind and possibly recommend some live-action actors to look as for reference. With Syndrome, for example, I looked at Jack Black, Jack Nicholson, and of course Jason Lee.
    From there it’s a lot of exploration, experimentation and back-and-forth with the director. As for getting into their heads, I have to think about the arc of the story, the arc of the scene, the arc of the shot, and how the character fits into these. What does he want? How is he feeling, and how much of that is he letting show on the outside?
  2. There are plenty of “warped” animators at Pixar, I just get more attention on the internet. Still, I have developed somewhat of a reputation for being able to do slimey characters. Hey, you animate what you know. After I did that gag shot of Syndrome licking Mirage I have been cast in a lot of shots where characters are being lecherous. I’m often called upon to do tongue-imation, and sometimes I’ll add some tongue into shots that don’t need it! Usually I get cast to do physical gag shots or shots that are technically complex because I’m pretty good with that stuff. I’ve been lucky enough to get some more serious acting stuff on Cars.
  3. Oskar and I aren’t on speaking terms right now.
#58

Hi Nards, my favorite Pixar film in all respects is The Incredibles. It was the most fun (and most difficult) to work on, and it’s my favorite of our films to watch.

#59

Its great to have you in Q&A Session Mr. Navone… You are a BIG BIG inspiration to make the Animations look better. Here’s a couple of my questions, will be greatful to c ur replies.

  1. As you get your story board for a particular scene and may be you come up with some nice gag or acting idea in it :
    Whats preffered ?? Ur idea or the Storyboard.
    In Short > How much an animator is free to put in his creativity to make the scene look better?

  2. Every animator has got his own preferences when it comes to Rigs and many Animators must be working on the same character. So the Animators make themselves comfortable with the Rig or Animators change or get the Rigs changed according to themselves ?

  3. What do you prefer when it comes to acting out your scene … Thumbnails ? Video Recordings ? Basic Blocking of the Poses ?

  4. And yaaa… who animated that little boy on the tricycle in The Incredibles with a bubble gum in his mouth and who watches Bob lifting his car high ? That was just cooooooooll !! :slight_smile:

Thnx for taking out your precious time…

#60

My demo reel consisted of Alien Song, my other two alien animations and some of my effects work that I did for games at Presto Studios. I also showed some of my life drawing and digital paintings, all of which you can see on my web site. I think they hired me because they saw my potential, not becuase any one thing I showed was particularly great. It also had a lot to do with timing. I doubt that I would be hired at Pixar today with the same demo reel. I was in the right place at the right time, and Alien Song got me in the door for an interview.

I don’t teach the courses at AM but I give individual critiques on the students’ assignments and I speak with them live in our Q&A sessions. I’ve compiled lots of advice and links on my web site for those interested in becoming animators:

http://www.navone.org/HTML/3dadvice.htm

We animators have a lot of fun at work, but we work hard, too.