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Kenny Roy starts work on The Little Painter
Mar 15th
How do you get your short animated film off to a flying start?
Well, if you’re Kenny Roy, you kick off with a 24 hour animation marathon broadcast live on the internet.
Kenny Roy is not only an animator, but also a teacher at Animation Mentor and the director of Arconyx Animation Studios based in Los Angeles.
I caught up with Kenny shortly after he completed his 24-hour non-stop animation session.
Animation Ideas: So tell us a little bit about your short film?
Kenny Roy: It’s my first personal short in over six years, so it’s about time! We did some shorts for clients as a company but nothing with the amount of development going into The Little Painter.
I’m very proud of my film, even in it’s early stages. The story is charming, I worked very hard on the writing, I’m taking my time developing the characters, it feels like everything is going very smoothly.
In a lot of ways, running a studio for these past 5 years has made me crave a project like The Little Painter even more and I’m excited to be underway!
AI: You mentioned the idea came to you in a dream. Did it come as a fully-formed idea, or just the kernel of the story?
KR: It was literally like being in a theater and watching it on screen. The entire story, beginning to end, was there. I am ALWAYS in my own skin in my dreams, looking out of my eyes. I’m never third person or a disembodied observer, so it was kind of intense.
When I woke up I couldn’t believe it and I wrote it down as fast as I could. Good thing too, like all dreams it faded fast but I had my notes to jog my memory.
AI: What was it like animating for 24 hours straight?
KR: Another intense experience! I’ve pulled all-nighters before, but there’s something different about doing a shot start-to-finish in that time frame. I think it was much harder because I wanted to do a great job firstly because it’s a shot in my film and secondly there were on average 406 people watching the whole 24 hours! I wanted to make people see how passionate I am about my film.
The worst stint was 3-6am. You get very slap-happy, and you get cold. That’s when I put on my hat and gloves.
AI: What was the strangest thing that happened during the live animation marathon?
KR: When I saw that the total had shot up to $7,000 on my kickstarter page, I spit my chicken soup all over my wacom! Everyone on the Livestream saw. Sonya had to bring me some windex, lol.
AI: How did you feel about raising half your short film budget in a single day?
KR: That exceeded my expectations by more than ten-fold. I told my wife that she should maybe turn on the home laptop and the home desktop and idle on the kennyroy.com homepage, so that there will always be at least “2 viewers” showing on the livestream panel.
I’m dead serious.
I thought in the middle of the night, I would be totally alone and be performing for nobody. I also thought $500-$1000 MAX. To see that we made half in one day, in some ways I feel that people must have made a mistake. Like, there’s no way you all believe in me THAT much. It’s incredibly humbling, and very inspiring at the same time.
AI: How did you arrive at the $29,500 figure, and if you raise more than that – did you have plans on where to channel any extra funds?
KR: The budget for the film is what it would cost Arconyx to make this film, down to the penny, if a client brought The Little Painter in off the street. I write bids and make budgets all the time so it was quick and easy to determine what it would cost to make this.
I have BIG plans for extra funds, should there be any.
A live orchestral score, the ability to hire more and more experienced animators, a more robust production website with more behind the scenes content, increase the number of crowds in the short, render farm rental, shorter production schedule, creation of a feature treatment based on the short, and the ability to approach well-known actors for the voices.
There’s even more but suffice it to say, there are many places I would look to spend extra funding. So don’t stop pledging!
AI: I noticed at the start of the marathon you dedicated it to people very special in your life. How important has family been in getting this film progressed to where it is today?
KR: Well honestly my wife is the most special person I’ve ever met. I have an amazing family, who’ve always been so smart and supportive my whole life. And some great friends and coworkers that have pushed me along the way. But Tamaryn is by far my constant inspiration.
She is always in constant defense of me and my abilities, even (and especially) from even myself. You could safely say that without her I’d probably be in a desk at big studio somewhere, thinking wistfully about the day when I make a short film that never comes.
AI: What stage is the film at? What’s next? Do you have a release date planned?
KR: The film is in pre-production, I’m still finalling all the models of the main characters, and Pierre is finished. I’ve boarded most of the film roughly and they need to be refined. Pierre’s rig was a test bed for some new ideas and I’m pretty happy how he performed during the Marathon.
Next is refine the boards, cut the animatic, and layout the scenes. I’m aiming to have it in next year’s Siggraph Animation Festival so I think the deadline is in early April, so March 2013 is the goal.
AI: Anyone else you wanted to thank or give a shout out too?
KR: Sonya Ballas, my coordinator, rocked during the marathon. I told her to go home, and she disappeared, but came back with a bag of clothes and a pillow. I think she really showed her passion.
I also of course want to start the very long process of thanking and expressing my gratitude to the fans and supporters who watched the Marathon and pledged money to the project. This is going to take a while, to express my love for you guys, but I gotta start somewhere, so thank you!
At the time of writing, The Little Painter Kickstarter campaign has raised just over $23,000 of the $29,500 budget. You have until April 11th, 2012 to donate.
Visit The Little Painter kickstarter site for the most current information about the project.
Once it’s funded, Kenny will announce the official production website at KennyRoy.com and you can follow Pierre’s tracks all the way into his true love’s arms!
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Phil Willis talks to The Process Diary
Mar 9th
The other day I sat down and did an interview with Paul Caggegi for his podcast The Process Diary.
I first met Paul Caggegi at a Sydney drinks back when we were both trying to crack into the animation industry.
Paul is a freelance video editor, illustrator, graphic novelist, educator, blogger and podcaster.
We spoke about lots of things, including why I chose Animation Mentor, how I transitioned from software engineering into animation, what it was like working on Happy Feet 2 and how to stay creative and productive when you have a newborn baby in the house.
Hot tip: Work in short bursts when the baby is asleep.
Just talking about some of those topics made me want to write and share more about topics of animation education, creativity and balancing life, art and work. So stay tuned for future blog posts on each of those topics.
In the meantime, check out the the full 35-minute interview: Process Diary interview with Phil Willis.
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Is Animation an art or a craft?
Aug 28th
Confession time: I don’t like being called an artist.
At Dr D Studios, the producers refer to all of the animators as artists. They might say: “I’ll assign this shot to one of the artists” or “Let’s gather the artists around to have a meeting about the schedule”.
Even now, it’s not a term I’m 100% comfortable with.
Honestly – I’d rather be known as a craftsman.
And there is a big difference between artists and craftsmen (of course I’m including craftswomen here as well).
Art with a capital “A” is what happens when someone hangs your painting in a gallery, or selects your film for a festival.
Craft is what you do when you’re by yourself making stuff.
Think about what it means to be a craftsman:
Craftsmen care.
They concern themselves with quality of their materials and their technique.
A master pastry chef, or a furniture maker, or a fashion designer all put their talents towards making their work as good as it can be.
An artist might worry about getting “discovered”. But a craftsman worries about the details.
The good news is: you can get better at your craft.
Learn something new. Read a book. Watch a tutorial. Get a critique from a trusted mentor. Experiment with techniques. Practise.
Every single one of these activities makes you better at what you do, and is completely within your own scope to control.
The bad news is: you can’t control whether your work is deemed “art”.
Producing quailty work certainly helps. So does maintaining good relationships with people, protecting your reputation, meeting your deadlines and building networks.
But ultimately – that decision is in the hands of someone else.
I’ve always been an enthusiastic supporter of people who want to show their animated film in front of a live audience, but don’t let the fear of not getting selected put you off doing the hard effort involved in making a film.
Gatekeepers may well decide what the public see as art, but it is the diligence of craftsmen and creators that impresses me more.
I say: Let the critics curate, and let the craftsmen create.
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The perfect animation education
May 31st
What does the perfect animation education look like?
In a previous post, I stressed the importance of focussing on one specific skill as the fastest way into the animation industry.
Which is not to say there isn’t value in good general education.
In a perfect world, someone going into a character animation role would have extensive study and experience in live theatre, writing, literature, film studies, photography, cinematography, world travel, drawing skills, mime, dance, stand-up comedy and be able speak at least one foreign language.
All of those skills would help make an extremely well-rounded and highly-sought-after animator.
But it would take twenty years.
Best to study one thing first, find work and then continue your education once you’re at a studio.
To me an ideal, industry-focussed education looks something like this:
- no more than 12 months of general study, followed by
- however long it takes to become a professional at one skill.
Start general to find out what you like
In the beginning, you may not know exactly what skill you want to focus on. At this stage, try as many different aspects to animation as you can: lighting, texturing, simulation, modelling and rigging.
There are so many specialized roles within filmmaking. How would you know if you enjoy editing or not if you hadn’t tried it?
But after six months, if you’ve decided you want to be a character designer – just focus on the skills you need to make you employable as one.
Start general to learn the software
If you’re anything like me, the first time you opened Maya or switched on a digital SLR camera you were probably bamboozled by all the menu items, knobs and dials.
Spending time at the start of your schooling to learn what all the buttons do is incredibly helpful.
In my case – I started with nine months to get a general overview of Maya. Every Saturday I spent the day at a local design college learning as much as I could about the software.
And I made some terrible animation.
But I learned enough for me to no longer be terrified of the software, and plenty of time to get a sense of what was available in Maya and how to do most things.
Finish specific
By this stage, I knew I wanted to be a character animator, so I went specific and joined the Animation Mentor program. For these reasons:
- The instructors were all working as animators in the film industry – not just academics and theoreticians.
- The work of their graduating students was of a quality that made them employable.
- They only taught character animation.
- Online study meant I could study from my location.
That’s not to say everyone should study with Animation Mentor. If you wanted to be a modeller it would be a terrible choice – but it is an example of picking the best school for your skill of choice.
If I had wanted to be a TD, or a compositor, or a rigger, or a matte painter I would have selected a program that best suited those roles.
The result
Your mileage may vary, but two and a half years after I first opened Maya, I landed my first job on an animated feature film.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
In a future post, I’ll talk about my thoughts on whether you need a degree or not to be an animator and how to pick the best school for you.
What has been your experience? Care to share your thoughts on the state of animation education?
Post a comment. I’d be interested to hear your view.
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Animation education: general or specific?
May 24th
When students ask me “What is the fastest way into the animation industry?” I always say the same thing:
Pick one discipline and get your work to a professional standard.
You may disagree, but here’s why I say it.
Get good
No-one will hire you if you’re work isn’t worth paying for.
If you take an honest look at your work and compare it to people you will be competing with for jobs, then you will have a better idea what level of expertise you should be shooting for.
When I was at Animation Mentor, I spent way too long comparing my reel to the other students in the course.
Although it’s great to be ambitious and push yourself, the smarter thing for me would have been to assess my reel in comparison to people already working in the industry.
Some schools are better than others – and being the best in your class at a crummy school may not make you as employable as being a B+ student at a world-class school.
Why not start with IMDB and look through the credits of films you like, jot down the names of the people that worked on the film in the role you want and check out their showreels online.
Now you will have decent benchmark to see what you should be shooting for.
Get good fast
The slowest way to get anything done is by doing ten different things at once.
Let’s be honest.
If you want to get good at photography in a short amount of time, you need to drop the acting classes. If you want to be great at drawing quickly, forget about that short course on web design for the time being.
David B Levy in a recent post on his blog Animondays had this to say about schools that teach many different skills at once:
I think this is a big problem with the local animation educations. How does it make sense to take a senior who is still having problems doing basic animation and require them to take on those other roles at the same time? – David B Levy
I love that some schools want to foster a new breed of auteur all-rounders, but I worry that students run the risk of emerging with broad experience, but a sub-par demo reel.
Better to focus on one thing you like doing and become world-class. There will be time to build new skills and add new interests once you’re working.
I might save what I think the perfect animation education looks like for a later post, but I’ll give you a hint:
Start general and finish specific.
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Learn from your animation mistakes
May 17th
Everyone has heard: “You learn from your mistakes”, but flip that around and it turns out the reverse is also true:
If you’re not making mistakes, then you might be too conservative in your ambitions.
Learning requires you to push beyond the boundaries of what you’re comfortable with, and lead you into a place where failure is a real (and scary) option.
It would be easier if you could gain experience from other people’s disasters. But most people don’t.
As an example: I was doing a 2D animated test with some objects from the foreground moving away from camera to disappear way off into the distance.
After animating the characters I had a quick flip through Richard Williams’ book The Animator’s Survival Kit – only to stumble on the exact page that explained why I had the perspective completely wrong.
Here’s the frightening thing:
I’d read The Animator’s Survival Kit many times, but because this was the first time I was actually animating this particular scenario, the knowledge didn’t sink in until I had made the rookie mistake for myself.
Advice and aphorisms do their best to steer people through life’s lessons without the pain of failure.
But mostly – you just have to learn from practical experience and take your lumps.
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Fighting the irrational fear of lost ideas
Apr 19th
One of the key attributes that separates creative professionals from other people is the value they bring to the table with their ideas.
No ideas = no art.
Artists often worry about their ideas in two ways
- They worry someone will steal their ideas.
- They worry they will run out of ideas.
While it’s hard to calm yourself down if you’re particularly vulnerable to either (or both) of these fears, you can reduce your anxiety by admitting that these are largely irrational concerns.
Ideas by themselves aren’t worth that much
I’ve got an idea for a movie.
I’m thinking of a science fiction movie with an intricate storyline, huge battles with spaceships populated by exotic aliens in an epic battle of good versus evil.
What movie am I describing? Star Wars or Battlefield Earth?
One is a critically-acclaimed, genre-defining classic that has become a cultural touchstone. And the other is Battlefield Earth.
The truth is: an idea by itself without at least some execution is nearly worthless.
When thinking about what true creative professionals do with their ideas, one of the key differences is that they take their idea and turn it into something concrete.
It could be a script, a sketch, a storyboard. But in order for an idea to be worth stealing, it has to have some physical form.
It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. – Derek Sivers
Worrying about someone stealing your script might be a leigitimate concern, but at least then you have copyright law on your side if you have to mount a challenge.
You cannot copyright an idea – only the execution of an idea. Which makes it even more critical to get your ideas into an artifact as soon as you can.
No-one knows where ideas come from
This comes to the heart of the fear of either running out of ideas, or having yours stolen by someone else.
David Lynch is one of the most creative filmmakers in the world. In his book on creativity, Catching the Big Fish, he freely admits he worries about where the next idea will come from.
It’s like fishing. You caught a beautiful fish yesterday, and you’re out today with the same bait, and you’re wondering if you’re going to catch another. – David Lynch
Ideas are unlimited
If you want to have some fun, sit down and make a list of as many things you can think of to decorate a child’s party with.
Go on.
After half a dozen or so items, you probably think you’ve exhausted your ideas. Balloons, streamers, hats, candles, stars, table cloths etc.
But now – narrow the birthday party to a pirate theme. Ironically, adding constraints to the problem, will allow you to come up with a dozen or more new ideas.
Trust your process
One of the things that gives Lynch confidence is his awareness of his process and what works for him. With his method, ideas come gradually.
It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. Soon there are more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. – David Lynch
There is evidence to suggest that changing your surroundings can help with creativity. Maybe, like Lynch, it’s a particular diner you visit to drink coffee and think deeply.
It’s important to be aware of what works for you and believe in your process.
There are no new ideas
Everything has been done before, but not by you.
Even using the oldest archetypes can allow you to bring your own unique take on an idea.
Human beings have been telling a fairly limited number of stories over thousands of years, and yet we still find ways to retell ancient tales using modern methods.
Once you understand how irrational the fear of lost ideas is, you can divert your energy into executing your concept.
And then you’ll really have something to worry about.
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Networking for the shy guy part 2
Apr 12th
As promised – here is the second, and final part of the ultimate film festival networking guide.
If you haven’t read the first part of networking for the shy guy then have a quick look and come back.
In truth, all of these tips and techniques work, regardless of whether you see yourself as super confident, or as a retiring wallflower.
In order to get around the “but I don’t know what to say” problem, I’ve tried to be as practical as possible.
This is what works for me, and once you get comfortable, you’ll establish your own method as well.
Here’s what’s next after doing these things from the first part:
- Bring a friend if you like
- Look for opportunities to start a conversation
- Use a pickup line
- Remembering names
- Share a story
Include others
Seek to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
If you’re talking to someone and another person joins the group, make sure you introduce your new friend.
Acting as the person who helps people meet each other at a festival or conference is an incredibly useful role. You are doing the festival organizers a massive service.
And here’s the bonus: knowing that you need to introduce people you’ve just met in the next few minutes will help you remember their name.
If you get their name wrong, it doesn’t matter. It just gives them another opportunity to correct you and maybe re-ask for your name.
“Hey Chris have you met Sharyn. Sorry Sharyn, did I get your name right? Oh Sally. Sorry – there’s so many people here. Sally was just saying she’s working on an animated film for her final year student project …”
Not only have you helped connect two people, but you’ve given yourself an option to leave the group politely once the new conversation gets started.
Exchange details
Sometimes the conversation goes extremely well and you will want to exchange contact details.
Instead of just thrusting your business card into their hands, why not just start by asking: “I’d love to see more of your work. Do you have a website or a blog where I can learn more?”
You can always find a way to reach someone through the “about” or “contact” section on their website.
I’ve never been a big fan of business cards. For me, my personal website is my business card.
Always accept a business card if presented with one. If you don’t have one, offer to write your details on the front of one of theirs. If you write on the back, you run the risk of them accidentally giving the card (and your details) away to someone else.
Say goodbye
After a few minutes, when it’s polite to do so, it’s okay to excuse yourself and leave.
Good cues are when you’ve finished your drink, when they start calling people into the next session, if either of your phones ring, or when another person has been introduced into the group.
I normally finish with something like “Well it was good to meet you. Best of luck with your final year project. Enjoy the rest of the festival.”
Making a quick exit not only frees you up to meet other people, but it also lets your new friend know that you’re not going to stalk them for the entire festival.
Follow up
Immediately post-festival, it’s important to drop a quick email to everyone you met.
Three quick sentences is enough to be polite and remind them who you are:
“Hi Mark. It was good to meet you at the festival. Looking forward to hearing how the new project turns out. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
If they’ve been as busy as you in gathering new acquaintences, this is handy reminder for who you are. Plus – now you have an email on file with the person’s details and a few short lines about the project they’re working on.
Meeting celebrities
Do these methods work with “famous people”?
Sure.
I’ve met Oscar winners and movie stars using these methods, so it will definitely work for you.
Honestly, if you spot Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch or Brad Bird by themselves at the bar, you can consider it a sign from above. If they’re on their own, not talking to someone, by all means, go up and say hi.
Just don’t turn it into a nightmare for them.
Here are some extra guidelines for the celebrity guests at your film festival:
- Don’t be a pest. Don’t ask for a photo or an autograph right off the bat. There might be an oportunity to ask for one at the end of your encounter, but not at the start.
- Say something complimentary and specific about their work.
- Instead of saying “I love your movies”, it’s much better to say: “I really liked the opening title sequence where you used shadow puppets to introduce the main characters.”
- Ask about what projects they’re currently working on.
- And then leave.
- No seriously. Leave.
There are a lot of demands put on special guests at festivals. They have interviews, photos, panel discussions, keynote presentations, their own friends they want to catch up with. They need to know that you’re not going to follow them around and make a nuisance of yourself.
Now is the perfect opportunity to say: “Okay – well it certainly was a treat to meet you. I’ll let you enjoy the rest of the festival. Would it be all right if we had a picture taken?”
Simple.
Hopefully that has taken some of the mystery and awkwardness out of meeting people at festivals.
Remember, the next time you’re at an event: watching films is only half of the reason you’re there.
Make enough new friends, and you might have already found the cast and crew for your own next film.
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