Mike Makarewicz "Ask Me Anything" Tonight

Mike Makarewicz

We're delighted to welcome Pixar animator Michal Makarewicz for a webinar tonight at 6pm with our animation students.

Mike is a 17 year veteran animator at Pixar Animation Studios, and Co-Founder of the Animation Collaborative in Emeryville, California.

Mike has generously agreed to give up an hour of his time to talk to our students about animation, breaking into the industry, and what it's like to work on a Pixar film. All questions are welcome.

Pixar Animation Workflow by Michal Makarewicz

Michal Makarewicz

Pixar animator Michal Makarewicz was at the CTN Expo in Los Angeles yesterday, running a masterclass in Pixar animation and explaining his own personal animation workflow.

Michal is an experienced character animator whose animation credits include Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E and Incredibles 2.

Michal won an Annie Award (the animation Oscars) for Best Character Animation on Ratatouille back in 2008.

Pixar Advice for Graduates

Check out this excellent just-released video from Pixar on tips for animation graduates, offering some great advice on how to break into the industry. Among the most interesting comments from Pixar employees: "I applied....three times; friends and family told me to give up, saying, 'they're just not that into you'." (she made it in the end).  Another one says "Every time you get rejected...is an opportunity for you to improve yourself". And also "the learning didn't stop in college, there are still opportunities to improve yourself".  Great advice from some great talent. To see why animation graduates need to be the rhino, read this blog post.

Pixar Animation Workflow

Incredibles 2

Pixar animator Royce Wesley was in London recently, talking about his experience working on Incredibles 2, and also explaining his own personal animation workflow.

Royce is an experienced character animator whose credits include Brave, Coco, Robots and Inside Out.

Understanding how to plan your work is one of the key parts of the animator's skill set. Every animator has their own unique approach, and it's important to develop a workflow that you can rely on to get your shots approved without too much stress.

Pixar Colour Scripts

Finding Nemo Colour Script.

Colour Scripts are an important part of the animation process; they allow the director to get a feel for what the movie will look like, long before the animation and lighting is complete.

Sequence by sequence, and even shot by shot, colour stylists (i.e. painters) plan the mood and look of the film as part of the pre-production process.

To see the master designers at Pixar at work, follow this link to view the actual colour scripts used on hits like Finding Nemo.

History of Pixar

Above is an excellent short film about the history of the Pixar studio. It's a promotional piece, but also a great introduction to the history of the modern medium, the second "Golden Age" of animation. Among the impressive insights into the story-telling process at Pixar are John Lasseter suggesting that "every Pixar film at one point in time was the worst motion picture ever made". Why? Because "it's a process". In other words, it's not the doing of the thing, it is the re-doing of it that really counts.

Learn 3D Lighting Free With Pixar's Jeremy Birn

Anyone who wants to learn the art and craft of 3D lighting in Maya would do well to watch this excellent series of videos by Pixar lighting expert Jeremy Birn, hosted at Vimeo.

The videos are recorded in an older version of Maya, so there will be a bit of a gap between what you are watching and the latest version of Maya that you are running. But, the basic principles of lighting remain unchanged, even though the interface is a bit different.

Awesome Animation by Joris Van Laar

We're enjoying this beautiful pantomime animation of a pro wrestler celebrating his victory by Animation Apprentice student Joris Van Laar.  Boris used the Norman rig (a very adaptable and dependable rig) for this shot, and used as his reference and inspiration the superb animation of "Spanish Buzz" by Pixar's Carlos Baena, on Toy Story 3.  Using other animator's work as a reference for your own shot is a great way to learn the art and craft of animation. Study the work of masters, and you can't help but get better yourself.

Finding Dory Team in London on Monday 11 July

Come and grab your free chance to meet Andrew Stanton and the rest of the team behind Finding Dory, Pixar's new sequel to the original Pixar classic - Finding Nemo.

It's not that often that Pixar royalty make it to our shores - so don't miss this chance to meet some of the greatest animation film-makers of our age.

The event is at the Apple Store in Covent Garden on Monday 11 July at 6pm.

So what's stopping you? Book your place now!

Pete Docter Explains The Inspiration Behind Inside Out

In this excellent video from Pixar, Pete Docter Explains the inspiration behind Inside Out, Pixar's Oscar-winning feature film and arguably their most inventive movie to date.  Playing with some very grown-up themes of neurology and psychology, Pixar manages to entertain young audiences while giving adults plenty to chew on.  Pete Docter is one of the most talented living animation directors, a creative artist who manages to create entertainment with a serious undercurrent. Watch this short video to get an insight into how he came up with the ideas behind Inside Out.

The Cinematography of The Incredibles - at Floobynooby

In this excellent blog post at Floobnooby, the Cinematography of The Incredibles is explored in detail, showing how the camera was used by director Brad Bird to facilitate the story-telling and bring the characters to life.

Cinematography is an art form in itself; too big for us to explore in great detail at Animation Apprentice.  But we can't ignore it either; every time an animator sets up a shot, we make choices about what the camera is doing. And those choices inform how our shot works - or doesn't.

We highly recommend all our students take ten minutes to read this post and get educated on Cinematography by the master - Brad Bird.

Free Textures from Pixar!

Pixar have recently released a number of free repeating textures from their archives - for use in 3D animation. The archive was first created in 1993, and is now free for use by the rest of us - for the first time ever.  Included in the free release are bricks, metals, fabrics, skins, ground surfaces, and tons of other stuff. All of them are designed to repeat seamlessly with no nasty visible joins.

How Do Pixar Animators Thumbnail Their Shots?

The secret of good animation lies in the planning, and experienced animators know that by drawing clear thumbnails to plan out their work, they can save a ton of time in executing their shots.

But learning how to thumbnail your shots isn't easy.  One animator who has almost all of his planning sketches is Pixar's Victor Navone, and you can see his thumbnail gallery here.

The Purpose of Storyboarding - by Eric Goldberg

This short film about storyboarding is presented by the awesomely talented Eric Goldberg, an animator who moves seamlessly between animation, storyboarding, and directing. And why not? All these skills are complementary, and all involve the telling of stories in a visual medium. I was lucky enough to work as an animator on "Looney Tunes, Back in Action", and was directed by Eric, who taught me a lot about comic timing and just how much an animator can get away with in terms of fast transitions from one pose to another. Eric is the author of the excellent book "Character Animation - a Crash Course", and there are few better people in our industry to learn from.

Renderman - Free At Last!

Pixar's Renderman, one of the leading industry software packages for rendering high quality animation images has at last been released free to students on a non-commercial basis.  Pixar's RenderMan is used throughout the CGI industry for the creation of stunning visual effects, and is highly recommended for student use. So what are you waiting for? Download it here now!

Pixar and the Twenty Two Rules of Storytelling

John Lasseter famously described the three most important things about film-making as "One: story. Two: story. Three: story". Obviously, Pixar do a bunch of other stuff really well too, like, say character animation. But there is no doubt that great stories are at the heart of their work and their success. So what can we learn from Pixar about great story telling? Fortunately, Pixar are not guarded about their secrets. Recently, these "22 rules of storytelling" were tweeted by Pixar Story Artist Emma Coats.

Pixar offers Renderman free for students!

Pixar's Renderman, arguably the leading industry software for rendering high quality animation images, is soon to be released free to students on a non-commercial basis. Register now to get your free copy! Pixar's RenderMan is used throughout the CGI industry for the creation of stunning visual effects.