SWOT- What do I want to focus on?

Strengths-

•  Stop-motion animation
• puppet making
• 3D animation

Things to improve on- 

• 2D animation
• Drawing
• Character designs
• Set designs

BAF: Watchdogs.

Next Generation Game.

Collin Graham. Ubisoft Montreal.

"Are we ready for next generation software/ consoles?"

PS2 allowed games to render more detail - more power.

What does it mean to be next gen? More memory.

Why memory matters. Games consoles dont have much memory, so the amount of data of games must be compressed to fit. 

Less memory = more compressions = reduced quality. (Characters can't interact with the scene... eg a character in prison can't touch the bars, just has to wander back and forth inside the cell.)

More memory = More space for variety of animation. Less compression - better animation quality.

This means more animation needed, but on the same budget.

10-20 animators more, not including scriptwriters etc.

Budgets will go up.. will need to spend $200 million on one game. If one company does it, everyone else will need to follow suit to stay competitive. 

WATCHDOGS.

4000+ animations on Aiden Pearce alone - Half for cover system.

4000+ animations on enemy AI.

5000+ on living city.

Ubisoft Montreal = 3000+ employees.

>>Assains Creed, Far Cry, Watchdogs etc. 

>>Motion capture studio in Montreal.

Watchdogs/ Project Nexus. Watchdogs is a new IP.

Initial core team comes from Far Cry 2 and Naruto.

Initial gameplay focused on driving, running and shooting... Breakthrough idea was to include hacking.

E3 2012 demo.

This helped finalise the look for Aiden Pearce.

>>Hacking gameplay.

>>Clothing.

>>Movement.

>>Weapons and tactics.

>>Living city of Chicago.

Sebastien Rouleau - Stunt man - Provided reference for Aiden.

>>Natural and Athletic.

>>Parkour/ Police man in real life.

>>Inexperienced at Motion Capture.

>>Member of 'Fast Motion'.

Two refence guys were used.. one who had the experience with working in motion capture and one who had the right look for the character.

Actor defined posing - must be natural for the actor to have a great performance. Consider how the actor moves in and out of poses. 

Iconic style for the main character. Hands in pockets - Hard to do, fingers cut off inside pockets so that they don't poke through the material.

T-Bone (secondary character)

Little cheats to stop things going through walls etc. Backpack moves over when in crouching position by the wall to stop the backpack going into or through the wall. 

Crowbar scaled down when it's on his back.

Living City

>> Gameplay, hacking and criminal scenarios.

>>Realistic characters in the background. They interact with the scene and behave realistically. - Drunk, throwing things away, sneezing etc.

Aiden Pearce can read texts and emails withing the city/ game to find out secrets and to help victims. - VIGILANTE.

Each individual crime has a backstory and the criminals have moments of realisation before running away. 

Each living city animation is treated like it's own story. 

How to fill extra memory and save team size.

>>Focus on time waste and inefficiency.

>>More powerful tools.

>>Better source data.

>>'Lean' approach to animation.

Many of the animators have a background in key frame animation but the animators at ubisoft are now more focused on a realistic style. 100% motion capture animation. 

Good quality motion capture data set to animators, not bad quality for animators to clean up. Costsmore but better quality animations. MOTION BUILDER SOFTWARE.

Optical Tracking.

>markers.                Actor Tool.

                                >represents actors      Characterisation.

                                  height and body         >Characters            Retargeting.

                                  shape                           skeleton.             >Fitting the skeleton

                                                                                                    to the characters shape.

Pivot points - very important. If they are off, characters will end up with chicken necks and short bones. 

Outsourcing things to India or China to get it exactly how the motion capture depicts.

Animators direct actors. 

>>Many of their animators/ motion editors are great key fram animators.

>>Collaborative approach to directions.

>>Gameplay animators are responsible for whole systems.

>>The direction comes together on the shoot floor.

>>Animators have ownership ownership and contribute actively to the directions for movement.

The industry is starting to produce Animation Assembly tools aimed at animator. This would mean more control and more decisions.

Animators design gameplay. Gameplay animators need to understand game design. 

>>All the speed and responsiveness of animation is determined by the animators, not game designers. 

>>Game designers can't change speed and responsiveness of animations.

New Gen.

>>Animation memory won't be such a limiting issue.

>>More efficient pipelines are necessary.

>>Animators will have new opportunities to be creative.

Where do you need to be in 5 years? Keep looking forward.

Reference/ Research books.

The art of innovation - Tom Kelley

Game Feel - Steve Swink. (12 principles of game)

Blink - Malcom Gladwell.

Impro - Keith Johnstone.

BAF: The Boxtrolls- Behind the Scenes.

Mark Shapiro- Laika Studios.

Boxtrolls is the 3rd feature film by American animation studio Laika; after Coraline in 2009 and Paranorman in 2012.

Boxtrolls is filmed at 24 fps and is all filmed on 1s to give a more realistic look for the stop motion animation.

CGI and VFX are also used, but mostly just to remove green rods and rigs and add in backgrounds like the sky which is hand painted but added in in post production. 
Each character has around 30 puppets for multiple filming, costume changes or in case the puppet breaks during filming. Each puppet has to be identical so that the movie is consistent.
Eggs had 15 puppets of baby/ child Eggs and 15 of his older child character.

Laika studios has about 2 acres of studio space in a huge warehouse made up of about 50 units, each with different sets in them. Most days would see 10 or 11 units going at once, filming different scenes of the movie.

The trolls all have lights in their eyes to make them glow and electricians are on set working the eyes.
Some of the background people and trolls in large crowd scenes are composited after filming. 

Everything in Cheesebridge is assymetrical, there are no straight lines and even the town of Cheesebridge curves to the side.

Boxtrolls was 10 years in the making, based on the book 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow. The planning and initial ideas and designs were started when Laika recieved the book in 2004. 
The film uses real lighting and everything you see in the film is made by hand, including every prop, even the smallest detail. 

Laika uses 3D printers to print each individual facial expression for each character. There are over 55,000 faces printed and each face takes around an hour to print. Some characters have mechanical faces if they don't have many facial expressions or don't talk very much or at all. 
There are three types of facial animation in stop motion: Replacement (as used for most characters that talk or have extreme facial expressions, and involves taking off the face of the character each frame that it needs to move and replacing it with the next face. Each face is magnetised for ease of changing), Mechanical (as used for characters with limited facial expresion, and moved by small screws and cogs inside the face) and claymation, which is not used by Laika.
Some of the hair of the characters is printed on, but others, like Winnie and Eggs, have hair that can be animated and are held in place by wire. Norman from Paranorman's hair is goat hair.

The lines on the faces from the changing faces, and the rigging that helps the characters stay balanced or jump, are removed in after effects. Dragonframe is the software actually used for the stop motion. It makes the animation process a lot easier as it can be controlled with just a click of a button. 300, 000 photos were taken for the movie at 24 fps.







The Mechadrill is 5ft tall and is worked by electricians. To create the fire inside the mechadrill, the team at Laika created an app that created fire that could be filmed frame by frame. This was then placed on an iPad mini that fit perfectly into the grate on the mechadrill.

The temperatures in the studios must be kept at a steady temperature so that the sets do not expand or contract in different temperatures, as this would have a huge effect on the filming.

The voices are recorded first and then the characters are animated to fit.

Previously, Laika puppets were made by McKinnon and Saunders, but for Boxtrolls, Laika started to make their own puppets, although they took a lot of knowledge from McKinnon and Saunders and even have some McKinnon and Saunders alums working for Laika now. 

Everyone at Laika studios is an artist of some form, even the runners who are there hoping to move up the ranks into a more permanent role. 


Q and A
How do they make the animators animate in a consistent style?
They work together a lot but they have different animators for each character so that characters move consistently.

How much did it cost to make Boxtrolls?
$8.5 million budget.

How are the puppets made? 
Breakdown of puppet building:
Armature.
Draw Character based on armature size.
Silicon/ Rubber mould casting.
Magnets.
Painting.
Hair.
Clothing.

Steel armatures- made with ball and socket joints.



NEED TO MOVE TO LAIKA STUDIOS IN PORTLAND, OREGON. 
INTERNSHIPS. 

BAF: Strange Hill High - The Puppets.

Tim Jones - Lead Puppeteer.

The Puppets are created by McKinnon and Saunders.

At least two people operate each puppet at any time.. this means that when 3 puppets are walking down a corridor together, there will be 6 people walking underneath the set. 
TV screens under the set to show the puppeteers what they're doing. They do everything backwards so that they can see things the same way everyone else does.

Puppets bodies are made of wood usually. Clothes are machine sown and have lots of detail.
Tracking dots under the mouths so that when the characters need to talk they remove the mouth and animators later put the mouths on in software later and lipsync it to the words using the tracking dot information to keep them in the right place.

They shoot the scenes very carefully to the story board. 

Strange Hill High is classed as an animation even though it's not technically animated. 

BAF: Strange Hill High- Screenwriting.

Mark Oswin- Screenwriter. Mainly works on CBBC. Currently working on Danger Mouse.

Strange Hill High is a CBBC program made with puppets. Mysteries in a British High School in a city.

Screenwriting Development.
>>One Line Pitches - can be a paragraph but basic.
>>Writers Room - Democratic. No one gets laughed at.
>>1 Page Outline - Structure seperate acts.
>>SXS - Scene by scene - Writing what's going to happen in each scene.
>>1st Draft Script - Sometimes several drafts.
>>Redrafts.
>> Polish.

The idea was to create 20 minute movies, so each episode had a full plot and was concluded at the end of the 20 minutes.

3 Act Structure.

Act 1.
>Set Up.
>Inciting Incident.

Act 2 (Part 1).
>Playing with Fire.
>Midpoint.

Act 2 (Part 2).
>Down Hill.
>Lowest Point.

Act 3.
>Fight Back (and fail).
>Pull it out the bag.

Writing it.
>Write what makes you laugh. (even in kids writing)
>Plot/ Comedy/ Character balance - Make sure it fits without being overwhelming in 20 minutes.
>Big Visual Comedy. 
>No text based jokes.
>Big Movie Moments - Jokes and movie references.

BAF Peter Lord- Aardman animation

Aardman studios. 

Aardman- what does it mean? Not much! It was the name of their first superhero  character but no one but the two of them knew this. A mix of an aardvark and superman

They started out animating for fun and they got put in front of the BBC by daves dad and asked to pitch ideas for a deaf program. 

They started out working in the same ways that Disney and Hanna Barbera.. Cell animation. 

Started working in plasticine or modelling clay after seeing an animation on TV. They don't like the new plasticine so they make their own. 

They started building aardman when they were at uni studying geography and English but practicing their animation in the holidays. 

Created morph in 1976 and it's still going today. 

Knew someone who had recorded their kids playing and animated it, tried that but didn't get very interesting stories so started interviewing people and animated their lives: creature comforts. 

THE STUDIOS: 

Feature films

TV commercials

TV series 

Digital and online group- games, apps etc 

Lots going on all the time. 

Labour intensive films- cost a lot to get them done compared to cheaper, faster methods of animation. 

Peter lord "Pixar is famously wacky because their work is fundamentally dull" 

The studios at Aardman are a really fun environment 

BAF Films for children

Mr toti

Didn't like the mismatch of styles 

3. Cute story, creepy music 

Children of the holocaust.

Moving, dull colours, real insight into auschwitz 

Laika

'Back in May, Portland animation studio LAIKA announced it was spinning off its advertising division LAIKA/House to focus on feature films. The new independent entity, branded House Special and lead by president Lourri Hammack, CD Kirk Kelley and MD of strategic operations Al Cubillas, are off to a promising start completing the end credits of LAIKA’s Boxtrolls and this acerbic in-house CG short called “A Tale of Momentum & Inertia.” '

Laika is one of my absolute favourite stop motion studios. I love the way their puppets look and how smoothly they move, it's hard to tell they're even stop motion but the aesthetic of stop motion animation is still there. 
I am really interested in how they create these characters to move so smoothly and realistically and how they animate it.