Timbuktoons Studio

Andreas Deja, presenter at the 2011 CTN Animation Expo. Spent 30 years at Disney, currently an independent animator and producer.

Another workshop I attended at the 2011 CTN Animation Expo was the Creator Conversation with Andreas Deja, legendary Disney artist who worked on such films as: The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lilo & Stitch, Hercules, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and more- IMDB).

From CTN’s website:
Deja is best known as the supervising animator of some of the most memorable Disney villains: Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Jafar in Aladdin and Scar from The Lion King. He also animated Roger Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, King Triton from The Little Mermaid, the title character from Hercules, Lilo from Lilo & Stitch, and Queen Narissa from Enchanted. In addition, he is the current resident specialist for the animation of Mickey Mouse.

As a key player during Disney’s “Second Golden Era” and beyond, Deja shared with us from his incredible experience and insight into hand-drawn animation.

The nature of the Creator Conversations is casual, random and in a Q&A format. There were many different topics covered but here are a few key categories that I tuned into during the back-and-forth discussion. These are not all word-for-word quotes or full descriptions, but the general idea of what he was saying.

ON HAND DRAWN VERSUS CG

(His thoughts completely tracked with 2 other CTNx workshops I attended led by Marcelo Vignali and Mike Nguyen (1988 CalArts Grad, Iron Giant, Beauty and the Beast- IMDB)

• Walt Disney always added on. He never killed old mediums.
• I loved Toy Story…but I’m inspired by Jungle Book.
• There is a level of polish on some CG films that takes away from the artists touch. The slicker it looks the less I like it.
• I want to see the artists hand on the screen. I want it to be personal.
• I had a Maya tutor for 2 weeks…but this is for other people to do.

IMPORTANCE OF THUMB-NAILING

• Thumb all possibilities.
• Thumb-nailing takes the most thought and energy.
• Thumbs must convince you it will work.
• Thumbs shouldn’t be any bigger than an orange.

DEVELOPING THE ARTIST WITHIN

• Never be satisfied with yourself. Never stop growing as an artist.

DISNEY FACTOIDS

• Lilo doesn’t have teeth. There are a few scenes where she has to show them, but for most of the movie she has no teeth.
• Disney only has a few scenes of rough animation from the old classics…which is tragic. They mostly kept clean ups.
• Everything on the Deja View blog is pretty much borrowed from Disney.
• Jafar was eccentric AND subtle. Physical and still. Subtleties and holding him back is what made it work.
• A key scene in Lilo was cut. She made up a sad song that really was about her self. It was cut from the film, but it’s on the bonus disc. The same thing happened with Winnie the Pooh recently. Sometimes budget or executive decisions win out over story.

Deja left Disney in January 2011 to venture out on his own as an indie animator/producer. Be sure to check out his inspirational blog Deja View.

Marcelo Vignali, presenter at 2011 CTN Animation Expo. Vignali is Art Director at Sony Pictures Animation.

Recently I went to the 2011 CTN Animation Expo in Burbank, CA. Each workshop I signed up for had something inspiring, eye-opening, confirming, or challenging. Of all the workshops, one of the most impactful for me personally was Marcelo Vignali’s.

From CTN’s website:
For over 25 years Marcelo Vignali has carved out a name for himself in various industries, from commercial illustration, television animation, computer gaming, theme park design to feature animation — from Disney’s Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, to Surf’s up, to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs — enjoying the reputation of being one of the entertainment industry’s top talents.

Here are some of the key things I picked up from the discussion and a few questions I had the opportunity to personally ask him. This is a random list of key statements in no particular order. There was much more he talked about but these are the things that most resonated with me at this stage as an artist. Also, most of these are not word-for-word quotes, but a synopsis of what he was saying as I franticly tried to capture the key points he was making.

ON VISUAL DEVELOPMENT

• Avoid convention and work from the source. In America, we tend to mimic someone’s style instead of going to the source and finding our own artistic voice. You have to draw from your experience.
• When drawing from a POV you have to ask what the point of view is from the perspective of a background, prop, or character.
• In 2D, the background artist sets the visual language. In CG the set and prop designers do.
• On R&D, I sketch what I want to see first, then I get reference because you need a target. If you don’t know anything about the subject you can spend hours researching things you don’t need. Yes, they might help, but most clients won’t pay for endless research hours. Also, I draw a ton of thumbnails first. A friend of mine calls them ‘menu sketches’ because I’m creating a menu of details to choose from.
• Everything about your art goes back to story.
• Sony does a different look every film.
• Simplify your design by focusing on what’s needed. Lose the rest. Clean-ups often lose the energy of the rough. Pretty people eventually lose your attention, but interesting people don’t. It’s that odd thing that stands out. When something is too polished or too resolved it loses interest.

ON STORY

• Develop your ideas fully. You can’t over think your ideas. You can over design it, but you can’t over think it.
• It’s not so much how to make a good film but how to unmake a bad one. You will hit problems.
• The biggest difference between TV and features is that in TV you CAN’T develop a concept fully. The duration and schedule won’t allow it. Features have to be 90 minutes of engaging and well thought out story to be really successful.

ON STUDIO CULTURE

• I got to Disney Animation in 1994 after being at DIC and Disney Imagineering. The culture at Disney Animation at the time was not one of camaraderie. You build camaraderie in a sweatshop where you are shoulder to shoulder. Sony is closer. Smaller.

ON DEVELOPING AS AN ARTIST

• When you sketch you should be at your most comfortable place. The Cintiq isn’t it for me until I map out and know the core of what it is I’m working on. I need to be loose on paper with nothing taking me out of the zone. I don’t use the Cintiq for initial concept sketches. I sketch on paper. Xerox paper on clip board in a chair outside is my zone.
• I forgot who I was in art school. Look at who you were as a kid when you were in the zone. You have to draw from the place inside where the 13 yr old kid is. What did you draw when you were 13?
• You have to develop your own sense of taste, your own visual language. Do only what you are good at.
• Hide details. Tease the viewer. Draw the viewer in. That’s where I am personally in my career. Comics, CG, 2D, visual story, illustration.

I’ll be sharing my notes from other workshops as well as notes from my pitch meetings in LA in upcoming posts.

Don’t draw what you want them to see, draw what you want them to feel. In addition to being a good draftsman, concept artists, designers, animators, and art directors need to pay a great deal attention to mood, lighting, color, pattern etc.

As artists, our goal is not to draw what we see (a camera can do that), but to draw in a way that makes the viewer feel a certain way. Our goal is to tell a story visually relying heavily on emotion.

I think one reason I love animation so much is that it is so expressive. You have many art forms (writing, drawing, color, movement, sound design, voice acting, art direction, etc.) colliding to tell a story around a core story with powerful emotional themes….or very cartoony or light hearted themes depending on the genre.

So today when you pick up your stylus, mouse, brush, pencil, pen, marker, or the like, remember to draw the emotion and tone you want to convey.

Creatives Need Some “R” and “R”! Not rest and relaxation, but research and reference material.

Before launching Timbuktoons I toured a large animation studio to learn all I could about each step in the animation process.

One area I absolutely fell in love with was the Visual Development Department. Concept art, character designs, inspirational sketches, color studies, prop and environment design all take place in “vis dev”.

One of the things that amazed me was the amount of research, reference, and inspirational material on hand to give the concept artists everything they needed to work their magic. Each artist had a huge (I’m talkin’ 5′x8′) foam core board with tons of visual reference material that someone had meticulously researched and prepared for them.

They had anatomy diagrams, photographs, illustrations, inspirational artwork, lighting and color reference, all right there in front of them.

I point this out because I’ve talked with other artists who feel like they are somehow cheating if they use reference material. Here at Timbuktoons we use a ton of reference material to generate ideas and use as spring boards.

We spent the summer developing the story and key artwork for a show concept we’re going to start pitching in November. The main characters are from different time periods.

The thing with reference material is that you notice details and nuances you would otherwise have overlooked. Those are the exact details you need to make your designs unique.

I confess that I don’t enjoy research…at all! I just want to dive into sketching. Fortunately Sean Copley, our Creative Director (AKA “The Think Tank”) is a one man research department.

For each of our characters, he researched everything he could about their clothing, culture, personality, similar characters, etc. He created a huge digital file of images as well as a reference board with the best stuff for me to have on hand when I designed each character.

I also had images pasted up all over my wall in various artistic styles that inspired me in different ways.

Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We build on what others have done. We are influenced by all sorts of visual complexities that we often don’t think about. The job of a concept artist is to unpack those attributes and use them with intentionality in their visual story telling.

So, if you are a creative of any stripe…a little R and R will help inspire you and take your art to new levels!