Updog - Part 02 (Block Party All Up In Here)

Fancy meeting you here.

The next bit of progress on this piece has been sort of a blur for me. After jumping around in front of my webcam like a siezure monkey, I got a few poses that I liked. I hopped on my sketchpad and tried to get them all down. Then in accordance with the Victor Navarone method, I really tried to figure out the sequence that would give me the best reversals, contrast and clarity. I also wanted to really focus on the tempo of the main character. There is so much great energy in the dialogue piece.

The other character doesn’t have much role in the whole piece other than to get angry and possibly threatening. I will have to brain storm and see if I can’t spice it up a bit.

Also, in general, I wanted to push the poses to a “cartoony” level that I haven’t messed around with. I keep trying to remind myself that I’m not animating a piece that will decide my future fate as to whether I will be able to break into the animation industry and realize my dreams before I’m old and die, but more that I’m having fun and experimenting with different techniques. So fun, right? Ha ha heee ho, crap.

I was particularly concerned that many of my poses were too cliché. But I lost confidence that I know what cliché is. It is quite a challenge to come up with poses that instantly read to 99% of the population on the planet but don’t read as cliché or something that anyone has seen before. But something just felt right to me about the pacing and the movement, so cliché poses be damned; I’m going to give these a try.

I do always wonder if the different studios look for different styles of animators. Is a cartoony style a sure fire way not to get into Pixar or is that good, what would dreamworks do, would Blue Sky love it? How much does subtlety of emotion and movement count? I don’t know. I’m not sure if it is thought of in this way when people review a reel or maybe it’s exactly how they think of it.. From what I’ve heard, some people get a reputation for being an “actor” animator and others get a rep for having good “weighty” animation. I’d be happy to be in either class as long as I’m animating professionally. Too much neurotic worrying, I’m sure. I should just shut up and have fun. Ha hee ho hee fun.

I should stop writing now.