Entertainment while you wait... A new chapter on creativity

I'm still working on the next segment of Back to the Future. In the meantime, Focal Press just announced that the lost chapter of my book, The Animator's Eye has been found on the web!

MISSING CHAPTER CREATIVITY FOUND! 32 PAGES !

There's cool stuff on paradigm shifting, surrealism, and an overview of the creative process with a cool chart for you to follow in your creative quest. And lots of pictures. Did you know that live action is only a special case of animation, just like Newtonian physics is only a special case of Einstein's theory of relativity?

The Animator's Eye New Chapter on Creativity

Look for the tab- Why We Create

Actually when I wrote the book, I wrote too many words and created to many pictures. So some of it had to be cut, and we decided to put it up on the web. It's actually one of my most fun chapters. It gets a little crazy. You'll also find video of the finished film from the book and the storyboard animatic for the film. And video drawing tutorials and gesture reference with me acting it out! Oh, and check out the inspiring audio journey's my friend, Toni Pace, recorded.

The Animator's Eye documents the whole process of making an animated film from idea to distributing it on the web. Now with the missing chapter found, it's your complete guide.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to keep analyzing the beats of act 2 of Back to the Future...

6th step Empty Success Storyteller's log 1-16-2013

So our character has seen that the goal they've quested so hard after was not what they expected. It was a fool's mission, a get-rich-quick scheme. So they start crashing down, accelerating at the speed of gravity. Things start unraveling.

Things start unraveling? We're learning about story weaving. Is unraveling part of the process?

The Animator's Eye clip available on YouTube

Score by Hans Karl 

What happens on this descent? How do these parts weave in with the rest of the pattern of our story structure? So far we've seen that each piece is logically connected and progressively leads to the next. They're connected in sequences of causality. Cause > effect. In storytelling terms, this is setup and payoff. We set up a cause and later pay if off with the effect of that cause. We may also need to plant extra information so we don't surprise the audience with something out of the blue.

We've set up that the character has ignored the lesson of the story and traveled up the wrong path. In life, whenever we act there are consequences to our actions. We may hurt others feelings or make them mad. Our character probably has done both and now has to face the music. The character might try a last ditch attempt to stop his or her fall but they'll probably use their old defenses and make matters worse, way worse.

The character hasn't learned the lesson, their enemies are stronger and their friends are abandoning them.

Since we're mapping the ups and downs of the character, the audience will follow the character. They will follow the character with one caveat,  they are not the character. They know more than the character. The audience is more like a good friend of the character who knew they were doing things wrong but were helpless to stop them. 

This is our dramatic irony in action. We want to help them because we care about them. Haven't you even seen a horror movie and spoke out loud, "Don't go in the basement?" And what do they do? They go in the basement. But if they didn't go in the basement, would we care about the story?

So, where is all this leading...

The Animator's Eye frames

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog, The Storyteller's Log: Storyweaving, The New Way to See Your Story Structure, to bring you this important message. In a couple of months, I'll be finishing up storyboarding on Dreamwork's The Dragons of Berk TV series. 

I had a professor of film audio at Pratt and he gave us some very important advice. He told us that if you're not working, your job for 40 hours a week is to look for work. The other thing that he told us is to ALWAYS KEEP YOUR PORTFOLIO UP TO DATE. This is especially true when you still are working. Be prepared.

So following his advice, I'm presenting frames from my animated short. They're from my book, The Animator's Eye: Adding Life to Animation with Timing, Layout, Design, Color and Sound. It's published by Focal Press. It's a silent film in the sense that there's no dialogue. It has a wonderful music score by film composer Hans Karl. J.D. Stewart provided audio production services. Bryan Cox and Chris Siemasko added the special effects for the transformation and the ending shot. My son Ryan did the film editing. 

This film was completed using TVPaint software on a 21inch Wacom Cintiq tablet. Final assembly was completed in Final Cut Pro 7. The storyboards were completed on sticky notes and scanned. ArtRage Studio Pro was used to paint the color scripts based on the storyboard images.

 Need to score? Hans Karl Music

The idea for the film evolved over many versions. The idea was to make a story that was a metaphor of the process of capturing an idea and bringing it to life. This is probably one of the most inventive uses of the classic animation exercises bring a flour sack to life. I used two of my characters that I had already created- Iggy, the impulsive pig and Scared Bunny.

Enjoy (Click to Enlarge)

Sharpen your stylus' ! Announcing Iggy and Scared Bunny's New Contest from Focal Press

ARE YOU ANIMATED?

(click to enlarge)

Enter Focal Press' The Animator's Eye Character Mentor Contest and win free books from Focal Press, a signed copy of The Animator's Eye: Adding Life to Animation with Timing, Layout, Design, Color and Sound and a drawing by Iggy.

Check it out at: http://www.focalpress.com/character_mentor_contest/

The Animator's Eye color scripts

The Animator's Eye is published! I just got my review copies today and it looks great. I hope you'll enjoy it. The color scripts for the film, The Animator's Eye are pretty small so I thought I'd let you see the full size here.

I drew the storyboards with a Ticonderoga Redisharp on sticky notes. I took digital pictures of them and sized them to make a grid layout. I painted the colors right over the sticky notes using an new layer with Art Rage Studio. Great software.

The Animator's Eye can see the light of day...

The Animator's Eye is scheduled to be published September 21, 2012. Here's a sample page. The five images on the right are flip books which run throughout the book. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Focal Press has posted the animated short with animatic insert on their web site- 

http://bestanimationbooks.com/

Music Score by Hans Karl-

http://www.hanskarlmusic.com/

And a very special thanks to Bryan Cox and Chris Siemasko ( http://www.chrissiemasko.com/) for adding some spicy special effects. And Audio Production Services by J. D. Stewart. And film editing by Ryan Glebas.

Yes, it's true.

You can see Iggy on YouTube. It's an 18 minute drawing lesson taken from the upcoming Focal Press book, The Animator's Eye. The book contains the making of an animated short starring Iggy and Scared Bunny as they learn the secrets of animated life. I can't wait to hold the book in my hands and flip the flip books.

Drawing tips and tricks- learn to draw Iggy

Yes, Bunny it is true, you are drawn on a sticky note. This is one of my favorite ways to work. I wrote my first book on sticky notes and storyboarded sequences on sticky notes while sitting in airports. They cheap available and easy to rearrange. I like drawing with Ticonderoga Redisharp + markers. They create an expressive black line, they're permanent, and no smell.

I'd actually love to have software where I could type and draw onscreen in the same program. So far I haven't found it. This blog was written in Literature and Latte's Scrivener. I drew the cartoons on sticky notes, then photographed them with a digital camera and imported them into the computer.

It's almost time...

The clocks ticking on my new book, The Animator's Eye. Finally, everything is off to the publisher. Over 6000 drawings and 100,000 words. Hmm, let's see, if a drawing is worth a thousand words then that's 700,000 words. Focal Press looks like they're on schedule for an August 2012 publication date. I've seen the proofs and they're doing an awesome job. The flip books along the side of the page look great. You get to see animation in action in a book.

This book was a killer. For my last book, Directing the Story, I created about 1900 drawings but since it was on storyboarding most of them were rough. For The Animator's Eye I completed a three and a half minute animated short to demonstrate the whole process of making an animated film. Scared Bunny, my co-author, keeps asking me why I didn't just make a 15 second film. I guess I'm too impulsive like Iggy. 

Wait till you hear the incredible score by film composer, Hans Karl. You can check out his music on his website- http://www.hanskarlmusic.com/