This thing called exercise...

I'm doing a very non-typically animator thing on September 7th. I'm running a swedish mile (10km)!

I have the speed of a turtle though, and probably won't actually be running the whole way. Hell, I'm impressed if I run half the way in one go.

You should all try running. It's good to see the world and get some exercise every now and then. I usually run near water and forests during sunsets. SO BEAUTIFUL. Because of that I'm going to post a few pictures that I've taken while out running. Just to get YOU to go out and run.

Visby, where I studied for three years.

Another view from Visby.

Nowadays I live in Stockholm. This is the path I usually take.

Every now and then I will go on the other side and see these houses instead!

Plotagon is out!

Hey!

Hey hey! This is exciting!

The app I've been working on since March was released around a week ago. So now people around the world can make animated movies, on their own, just by writing some words.

Mind you, it's not a final release by far, it's just a public beta. But it's available, and you can buy it and play around with it, and it's awesome!

We have already had a number of movies made since release, check it out: https://plotagon.com/movies

Unfortunately we still lack a lot of features, for example sharing videos to other platforms, so I can't add any videos to this blog post... you'll just have to go there and see for yourself!

I've learned a lot from working on this, for example how to try and produce feature film animation in a game production pipeline. I'm still working on learning that though. I'll write about it - someday.

(check out the app!!)

Evolution of Greenscreen Compositing

It's long, but worth the watch!

GIF of the week

It's not really weekly anymore, but who cares! Here's a GIF of a fabulous llama! And also a prime example of spacing, and why you should think about it. Look at how that llama goes from point A to point B!

My current work

The animation I am currently working on. Can you see what it is?

( By the way, this is a newly plotted character in MotionBuilder, I don't usually work with so many keys. )

I would be a bad blogger if I didn't post this...

The secret to learning animation!


animation tutorial part. 1 AKA "the secret of animation" from giovanni braggio on Vimeo.

GIF of the week

How to animate a fast cat

Even though the animation in this video is somewhat bad (probably done in a hurry), the slow-motion footage of the cheetah and explanation of how they can run so fast is a wonderful reference!

Sadly I can't find a way to post the video itself here, so you'll just have to follow the link to the Smithsonian webpage:

http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/sc/web/video/titles/18351/this-is-why-you-cant-outrun-a-cheetah

GIF of the week

High energy, low energy.

Away for the weekend

Spending some time with my parents, so the GIF of the week will have to wait until tomorrow!

Wonderful reactions from children in slow motion

GIF of the week

Jesse Baumgartner

I've been meaning to post about this guy for a while. He just won the 11 second club competition for April with the video above (congrats!), so I figured that it was time to do so!

The video does not show the fully finished animation though. I just think it's cool to see how developed a work-in-progress can be, even if there's not a a lot of keys. It feels like the animation is all there already, you only need to fill in the blanks.

You should read his blog!

Let it rip!

Found this old flash animation I did for a friend, showing how you can exaggerate anticipation! It's really quick and dirty, but hopefully it gets the point across.

Had a really interesting discussion tonight with another friend about giving character conflicts... that may be the topic for a blog post, in the near future.

GIF of the week

Benjamin Zander - On music and passion

I showed a talk by Benjamin Zander to a fellow animator today, as a reference for how an excited person would gesture while talking. And boy, is Benjamin Zander excited! His passion for classical music is infectuous enough that anyone would go home and listen to some Chopin after watching this talk!

I love this talk, as it holds a lot of points that are true for animation as well. I've written about this once before on the 11 second club blog, but I think it's important enough to be written about again!

During the talk, Zander shows how a young child might progress year by year as they play the piano. The first year there is an impulse on every single note, as the child struggles to find where to put their fiddly fingers.

As the years go by though, the impulses are reduced. Now the child can play with an impulse on every 4th note, then on every 8th note. Until finally, there are no impulses left. What is left however is a story, where the music goes on a travel. It might hit ups and downs, take unexpected turns, hit the grand finale, and then come home.

I try to apply the same thinking to animation. It's not just about animating movement after movement, as if it was an assembly line. It's about making those movements work together, to crescendo into a dramatic sforzando movement, until it calms down into a nice lento tempo...

You'll just have to google those last terms. ;)

Here's the talk! It's amazing, just watch it!

GIF of the week

Sometimes the lack of movement is enough to tell a story...

Leopard/cat reference

Borrowed link from Spungella.

If only...

GIF of the week

The Animator's Survival Kit as iPad app!

Sadly it's only for iPad, but it looks amazing! It's supposed to have a lot of extra functionality, like scrubbing through animations frame by frame, etc. I'm buying this as soon as I get home :)

https://itunes.apple.com/app/the-animators-survival-kit/id627438690?mt=8

Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture

I know this talk doesn't have a whole lot to do with animation... but it's a talk that I keep coming back to whenever I feel down, or when I need some inspiration. The premise of the talk was, if hypothetically you were to die very soon, what would your last lecture be about? Except in Randy Pausch's case, the premise is reality.

Randy Pausch speaks with sincerity about dreams, virtual reality, accepting the cards you're dealt, how to overcome obstacles, and all in all he's just an awesome guy with a good sense of humor.

My favorite quote from this lecture is this: "Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things."

Also he talks about critique, and how to take critique. This is something that has stuck with me and helped me through a lot of bashings on my animation. As long as people are giving you critique, they are taking the time to do so because they want to see you improve. In a sense, they do it because they care about you.

When people stop giving critique altogether even though you are screwing up badly, that's when you should start worrying, because they have given up on you.

It's around an hour long, and well worth your time. Go watch it now!

Whoever said rules are not for breaking?

Beautiful animation, with a unique format!

Happy birthday to meeee

I am officially one year older today! And to celebrate that, I will not just give you the GIF of the week, but a whole video!

Enjoy this creative take on how different animals eats...

If you ever wondered how to animate a hummingbird...

Hummingbird Slow Motion from Bruce Douglas Johnson on Vimeo.
This video might be a good reference to you! It was filmed at 225fps, and it's just glorious. How do they manage to do all of that in a much much shorter time normally?

Sorry...

Had to skip last week's GIF of the day, life got busy!

On the other hand, I'm becoming good friends with Motionbuilder (despite fighting a bit with the program in the beginning). Today I finished an slap animation, which got a pretty positive reaction from the rest of the crew. Feels nice! :D

New critique

It's been a while, but I wrote a new critique on YouAnimator. I like using their tools for feedback, as it's more intuitive to comment on a frame directly, than to write a long text and referring to the frames you're talking about (especially when the animation doesn't have a frame counter...)

Here it is! And while you're there, check the website out. It's pretty neat. :)

Basic Motionbuilder tutorial

A friend of mine recorded a Motionbuilder tutorial for newbie animators (like me). It's really helpful, go check it out!

(this is not an april fools by the way)


Recorded by Erik Svensson on Vimeo.

GIF of the week

One thing we learn in animation is that, provided with a thought-through pose, even the simplest of actions can tell an intriguing story. Here George from Seinfeld demonstrates exactly that:

On being creative

Very true words in the youtube video below, that I would like for every single person on this planet to take into their hearts. There's no magic way to become "good", and even the people who are "good" are probably still working on fulfilling their ambitions.

I've only been animating since 2010, and if you count the actual time animating it's probably less than two years... but before that, I drew close to two hundred pages of comics and filled 20+ sketchbooks with drawings of all kinds.

So you could say that in a way I've been studying animation since I was 11, going in-depth on appealing poses, staging, sillhouettes, line of action, and lots of other important principles of animation. And I was crap during the first 4-5 years!

Here's Ira Glass to explain it better than I can:

A few thoughts about MotionBuilder

- Woooow it has NEVER been as easy creating a looping animation as it is with Motionbuilder. NEVER. The pose tool is, well, awesome. I can easily choose if I want to mirror a whole pose or part of a pose, if I want it to continue from a certain part of the body (making walkcycles a breeze), I even get little thumbnails! Squeal!


- I can pin anything! It comes with its ups and downs of course. While the ability to pin anything is very useable, Motionbuilder has also left a lot of the functionality of the rig up to you and your imagination.

Something that frustrated me a lot in the beginning was that I didn't have a foot roll for the feet of my rig. I've grown used to having a slider or two that I'll manipulate to create a walk, and I couldn't imagine animating a foot movement without them.

However, in Motionbuilder there are no sliders for foot rolling. Which frustrated me to no end for the first day or so. But I've slowly started learning the Motionbuilder way of thinking, which includes clever use of pinning various body parts. For example you could pin the toes of the foot, and lift the heel of the foot while the toes stay in place. Very similar to what you would do with an elbow or knee using Maya!

For me it's still a very abstract concept, that instead of pre-set sliders I have to create my own controls, but oh well... I'm sure I'll grow to love it. Maybe.


- Story mode is of course a nice thing as well. Trax editor in Maya is pretty similar to Story I think, although I haven't used it much. Somehow it feels like the Trax editor is more of an addon, while Story is more of a core function in Motionbuilder. It's got a button on the main interface and everything!

Together with takes, you can quickly edit your animation to see how the end result could look. You can keep a whole short movie in one file, using multiple timelines!


- Comparing the two, I'm not sure which one I prefer to work with more. Maya has a bigger userbase, and as a result more useful scripts, tutorials, assets, you name it. Motionbuilder is kind of like the Apple of the animation world, you get a sleek efficient program with lots of awesome tools. However it creates a lot of limits for the rig, it has to fit the blueprint provided by Motionbuilder.

One of the biggest joys of animation for me is working with a rig that is tailored to the needs of a specific character, and that's a freedom that Maya is able to provide. But the pose tool is awesome..... hm. I will have to think about this.

By the way, have a great Easter!

GIF of the week

Two days late, sorry about that! The weekend got a bit busy.

I won't say much more than that, only to enjoy this silly GIF! You have to love the change in face expression, and how he attempts to look innocent at the end!

t minus 5 days

Only 5 days until I start working as an animator!!

Just popped in to say that!

Whee!

GIF of the week

I've been collecting GIF (animated pictures) for a while now, as I've encountered them around the web. A lot of them consists of little snippets of an actor or person, as they have a reaction or just act in a funny way. The one I'm posting today is a longer GIF of mr Bean, well, doing his thing. He's a master of body language after all, and seeing the subtle changes as he goes from anger to hopeful, to hopeless, is very inspiring!

I plan to post one of these every sunday. I hope you like this idea! Feel free to share any GIFs that inspire you.

Imaginism

Imaginism is a group of artists, working mostly with pre-production for movies and children books. I am mostly familiar with the work of the founder and co-founder of the group, Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera. Even though they aren't directly related to animation, their art has a certain quality to it that makes the images comes to life. It often feels like you could jump into the picture and enter a living breathing world.

Their most famous work is probably designing the creatures for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. This illustration was done by Kei  Acedera.

Drawn by Bobby Chiu. Note how the assymmetry of the face adds to his character!

They also do a lot to help other aspiring artists. For example they founded Schoolism, which offers classes similar in style to iAnimate.

Imaginism continues to amaze and inspire me, they seem to have an endless pool of ideas to draw from. Their art also reminds me to continue to push myself, to think outside the box and pursue a style of animation that is as endearing as their art is.

To finish this post off, my favorite illustration, drawn by Bobby Chiu:

Demoreel 2012

  Stina Boberg Demoreel 2012 from Stina Boberg on Vimeo. This is my demoreel from 2012. It doesn't include the latest animation, but hey, I thought it might be fun to post! You can also find this by clicking "Demoreel" on the top bar.

In progress

Hey there! Welcome to my very newly started blog!

It feels right that the first post should be an introduction of myself, so here we go. My name is Stina Boberg, currently residing in the beautiful (and cold) country called Sweden. I spent most of my younger years studying music, playing instruments such as upright bass and piano. Besides music, I drew comics, designed websites, drew avatars on Gaia Online, and spent my time being creative in general.

Halfway through the swedish version of high school, I had an epiphany. I decided to ditch music as a career path, and venture into comic drawing instead! Although pretty soon after that, comics morphed into animation, as I realised animation is way cooler. And here you have my very first animation in Blender (isn't it pretty?!)

I started studying Computer Graphics and Animation in Visby, and last year I finished up three years worth of studies! A couple of months after graduating I was approached to do a work test, which then got me a job as an animator at Plotagon! Woohooo!!

I figured that if there's a good time to start a blog, it's when life takes you out on an adventure. And I think I'm just about to embark on one of the bigger adventures of my life.

A few things I hope to include on this blog are:

- General thoughts and musings on animation!
- Inspiration!
- Gifs!
- Book/tutorial recommendations!
- Awesome animators!
- Aaaand a bit of everything...

Until next time, wishing you the best on your animation adventures!