Rango

It's a bit late to post this comment, but a couple of weeks ago I went to see Rango, and I really went to the cinema that day to see if it was as good as most of the people were saying, because I really wasn't convinced by the trailers.

But man, I was blown away by this movie. So beautiful in every aspect, and very different compared to every other animated feature that I've seen. It's cinematography gave me the impression that there was a real cameraman who was filming everything. Well done to everybody involved in this !

New demoreel

The last few weeks have been a bit hectic, trying to push my work a bit more. Here is my updated demo reel, with a selection of shots that I've made while studying at Animation mentor. Hope you enjoy.

Less is more

In the last few weeks I started to realise something that was quite new to me in animation. I noticed that in many cases doing the simplest thing usually works best than trying overcomplicated choices.

A good friend and animator recently told me that many young animators want to prove to themselves and everybody else what they're able to do, which most of the time results in overcomplicated acting choices. Sometimes having the animated character nearly still on screen with a strong pose is more powerful than having him do some crazy movements.

A few months back I learned the importance of a good performance to get a sincere animation. After that I also realised that the best acting in animation usually works with a strong but also simple performance.
There is no need to put crazy overlaps, follow through, arcs or anything else unless there is a purpose for it. An over animated character makes the look insincere, and this is where the planning stage becomes a very important step to me.
When in the beginning I know exactly what emotions I want to portray, I've found it extremely helpful to write everything down on a piece of paper and then come back to these notes later to see if the targeted emotions are still there. And again, when I see that I went a bit beside my intended goal , I receive comments from others that the action feels overdone. Hope this makes a bit of sense.

Animation Mentor is finished!!!!

Hey,
to who ever has been reading this blog in the past few months, I have to apologise for not putting any updates.
I was doing my last Animation Mentor class, and by far this has been the hardest.
It's all finished now, I'm really excited for the things to come but extremely sad as well because of the AM community that I'm already missing. It has become like a family.
I'm not here to talk about sad things anyway :), the last class has been awesome and my mentor, James Chiang, had a very unique way of teaching that really helped push myself RRRREEEally hard.

Class 5 Progress reel

Here is my most updated reel, with most of the work I've done so far at AM except the very first tests of the first class. Those are probably the shots I'll be polishing in the last term to have my final animation demo reel ready.
Thank you for whoever's watching this :)

AM progress reel class5 from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

2 Characters acting shot

Here is the 2 characters acting shot that I did in class 5. Soooo much things that I've learned with this challenging exercise, most of the things have been mentioned in my earlier post. Any comments are always very welcome.
Thanks for watching.

AM 2 Characters shot from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Facial study

Here are a few tests that were done in the previous term. The aim of those exercises wasn't just to copy some random images but to get the essence or emotion of those images and try to have a 3d rig express the same thing.

Class 5 summary + Tips on animation

I think that my 5th class at Animation Mentor was the hardest of the programme.
I kept learning from the first day of the class and I realised even more how being an animator can be difficult.
To keep it a bit short, here is a small list of the things that I think I really learned during that term:

* The hands : they're super important and can give a lot of character to a piece of work. I think that I made a good choice trying to animate a woman character because it helped me see more details in they're hands. For those of you who may be reading these notes, next time you watch people, pay close attention to their hands, you may be surprised at how much detail they can give.
One of the best advices about animating woman's hands was to avoid to keep them wide open. As soon as you do they tend to lose their feminity. They work a lot better with closed shapes.

* The face : during my time at AM I started to become comfortable with body mechanics, but something that was still a big challenge for me was the face. Altough I think that I've learned a lot from my 1 character shot , when I looked back at it I couldn't help noticing this character that really feels lifeless whatever it was trying to do. Then I realised what was actually missing. The face is really complex and requires a lot of craft to have it look like one single piece instead of different parts moving at different times. A lip sync that's slightly off, eyes that are not expressing the mood of the character, eyebrows that are moving independently of everything else and the illusion is gone.
A few things that I've learned here :
     - Try to get some clean arcs in the corner of the lips when the character is talking
     - You can get a lot of fluidity into the lip sync by moving the entire mouth up and down when necessary
     - When the mouth goes up, thing about moving the cheeks and maybe squashing the eyes a little bit too
     -  Don't forget to shape your eyes to your eyebrows. This one really adds a lot to the character
     -  Think about offsetting the eyebrows and eyelids movements. For most of the time the eyebrows start the movement then are followed by the eyelids one of two frames later.

That's it I think , there is a lot more but these points were really important to me as I wasn't considering them before. Thanks for reading :)