Andrés Suaza

How to move from animation as a hobby to a professional way of living.

The Project: Athos started as an idea more than a decade ago, evolved into a dream, and then last year was a lifetime goal. Today is a film that is the sum of my career and I feel proud of the challenge I overcome. 

Narrative: I am a visual artist and in this master course, I was introduced to a new chapter in my professional development. Learning to create a story, build a character and compose an appealing scene, are part of this world that I am enjoying in every step of the way. Narrative is a vast and interesting dimension that I feel I manage to connect with my previous knowledge. Currently, I consider myself as a Director and a Storyteller.

The Film: Athos: A resemblance of life, is a journey about life and the dark places it takes us, shaping us and making us evolve.

Synopsis: Athos is a curious particle, made of whatever material is in the immediate surrounding and has the ability to absorb everything it touches. Exploring the world, it enters a dark forest,  struggling to overcome adversity, ignites the fire within to break thru the dark leashes and fly away from its oblivion. It later finds a beautiful garden to settle in.

Character: The Character evolved as a particle not only on the film but as a project. From the first sketches to the final animation this character has become my child. Having your idea finalized makes you realized how strong self-motivation and the desire to complete a big goal can make you strive. 

Backgrounds: This places translated the stages of life.  For this, I hired a background artist to be able to deliver the film on time and this was probably the best directing decision.

Birth: the plain paradise

Growing: finding your way

The struggle: situations that stuck you. Finding yourself.

The Sky: overcoming any difficulty.

The Garden: the place to settle.

Mix media: This film combines 2D animation, a 3D shot to rotoscope in 2D and compositing in several layers with a 3D Camera.

Learning experience: Decision making. Had to get rid of some scene and short some animations.

Developed skills:

Research

Improvements in Directing a project.

2DAnimation - TV Paint.

Working with a team: The film is a sum of a creative crowd that reunite to an idea thus, each member gave it a strong input and now that idea became their own. I feel I am the captain of a big ship that started as a little boat and in every port found a craft member that ad their part and upgraded to this magnificent piece of art.

Crew

Backgrounds: Laura Blandon

3D Scene: Josh Payne

Music: Aldo Teomitzi

Sound Design: Mari Davies-Barrett

Forefront learning: The research helped me realized the professional world we are currently living in the industry, 

This helps my career greatly because now I have discovered new trends, forms and techniques that I have not discovered before. Thus, giving me an edge in the market.  For instance, the forefront researching led me to know Fortiche the studio doing one of my favourite videos of last year, Rise - League of Legends (2018). They mixed 2D and 3D seamlessly and are the best on doing videogames music videos in the industry.

Self-evaluation: I am a professional. I know what is needed to be done in order to get a project completed in time and with the industry standards. I can draw, I can compose a good scene and direct a project from beginning to end. This project is a vivid proof of this. I worked in an average of 8 hours a day every day for the last 3 months. Committing myself to a dream, an achievement that will be the statement that when discipline meets the opportunity success will most definitely occur.

Assessment of my master's course: My master’s Course is a high point in my career, not only because of the learning experience but also, the environment I was exposed to. Coming to the United Kingdom was a smart decision, this journey has open my mind to new cultures, new ideas and a new life. Due to my responsible and professional approach to all the assignments, I manage to get the best of all the knowledge that was provided to me, thus learning from scholar sources all year long made me improve skills. Moreover, meeting interesting peers and expanding my professional network for future projects. 

Acknowledgement. Thank you to the University of Hertfordshire. The Course Director Ian Willcock and the lectures, Jessica Ashman, Kate Jessop and Maitrayee Basu for helping me achieved my professional Master Level.

The film is in the final stage now. Almost all the scenes had been composed and with most of the FX done I am completing it at a fast pace. Right now I have to finish the inbetweening of some of the remaining 2D Animation and paint half of the scenes to wrap up the project.

The music of Athos.

It comes a time when you have to draw the line and say enough. And here is mine: 

CN Anything

Ronda is an Argentinian company that has done tv Ads for big brands. Here is a spot they did for Cartoon Network. I think the Animation is really strong, I have no idea how do they manage to move that camera around with those exaggerated movements and character expressions all over the place, which I must say I really like it. It’s all fun and games, but the colour... THE COLOUR I that thing I can’t digest. 

Is it that this is the new trend for future generations? Am I too old to see cartoons now? I really don’t feel connected with this colour scheme and I don’t know how can it be perceived by the audience. I think could be a thing of getting used to, but in my opinion, is too radical a makes want not to see it for far too long.

Is it possible that we are looking at a new trend in 2D Animation in the near future? I will have to keep looking and find out what would be the pallets that will be done in the near future. 

Reference:

As a film director, I always try to get inspired by other storytellers, but the best way to know what is in their heads is to listen to them talk, moreover talking to each other about making films and the movies and the stories that inspired them.

The Hollywood Reporter gathers in a room a handful of the most renown directors in the last decade. Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Danny Boyle,  David O. Russell and Tom Hooper sat down and talked about the current industry of moviemaking, new upcoming challenges, films and experiences as directors.

What I take from here is a couple of things. Directors, like any other human been, struggles to start a creation they want to share with the world, but these experienced leaders find their means to achieve their goals. Also, they reach their inner humanity to gather experiences and emotions to make memorable moments in their films. They talk about how film touches them, making a memorable experience and that’s the reason they pursue their dreams of becoming directors.

The most memorable moment from this chat with the directors is when Ridley Scott (49:30) talked Mentioned that he never rehears because he storyboards everything out first in order to know what does he wants, and this saves time and money on production. Also, he talks about how the experiences he gather from shooting so many commercials, and how the martian was not a big challenge, but in the other hand, David Boyle struggles with only one movie he made of outer space. So every director experience is different facing the same challenge. 

My conclusion is I kind of need to find my own experience, reach my inner humanity to create my stories and face every challenge from my films with the best of my abilities, and at the end, not worry about the frustration of starting to create my own narratives because even the great ones deal with these issues.

References:

Here is another cut. At this point, what I am starting to do is to compose from the first scene to the end. Then, I will complete the pending roughs and fill them with colours. Right now I have a strong cut, the first scene makes me believe that this will be a memorable film for the audience. 

I consider the character animation resembles a foolish and naive child, that is only aware of his body thus, discovering itself and the surroundings. Laura has delivered great backgrounds and hiring her was probably the best production decision I made, since she has done a magnificent job portraiting my vision into her own style. Also, Aldo started to compose the music and sounds magical and epic at the same time. Gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. 

I can assure that now that the deadline is approaching I will give more time to complete as soon as possible this piece to fulfil my expectations in my final major project. 

I started now to colourize some scene and for that, I brought a  beautiful assistant today. Luisa, my wife has been a massive support in my studies for my master's degree. To the point, she decided to help me do colouring in some scenes during her off workdays. Isn't she a treasure??!!!!

We spend the whole afternoon at the LRC painting and chatting having a quality time while doing my final major project. By the way, she loved the LRC facilities. 

Pic 1. Luisa and me at the LRC

Next day, I found this useful tutorial to paint a little faster, this will really will make this process of painting faster. 

Video 1. Colourize animation in TV Paint:

and then another one:

Video 2. Colouring an animation tutorial 2:

Video 3. An even faster way to paint in TV Paint:

Video 4. Painting lights and shadows:

This last one will be useful if I have the time to give lights and shadows to my film. 

It has been almost 8 weeks since I started my final major project and I have been so diligent to complete it that I haven’t embraced the fact that this may be the best project I have been envolved to date. Only in an academic environment, moreover in this masters degree curriculum where I am the only one putting limits to my project. Working freely in your idea is rare in the commercial industry where I come from. This is why I have to make a stop and look back on the amount of work I have done in the past weeks. I have been working around 8 to 10 hours a day, only resting on Sunday (and a couple of days here and there) but most of the time I have been consistent in going to the LRC at the University and hands-on, work in a new task to complete my film.

Things I have found about the project:

Doing a film by yourself is an overwhelming experience. I rather work in teams and make sure we are all going in the same direction, trying to do the best in each field. Working by myself, I have found that doing the big task first is far more important than the meticulous one. Also, I have found that a film changes drastically from the initial idea to completion. This due to the huge amounts of steps to have something complete. The storyboards and the animatic are key to have a big sense of story and gives you a rough idea of time and the amount of work that a project needs.

Things I have learned:

This would the skills I have developed in the course so far. First and for most, the main skilled I acquired in this year is the research, which sounds odd coming from an Animator, because I supposed to “Animate”, but the truth is in this last year I have developed the curiosity of looking up more into sources. Where do the creative minds of our generation are taking us? and what things should be looking up more?. For instance last week I learnt that the studio in charge of doing one of my favourite videos of last year, Rise - League of Legends (2018) is located in France. Fortiche, the company in mention, is mixing 2D and 3D Animation seamlessly and raising the bar on industry standards. This helps my career greatly because now I have discovered new trends, forms and techniques that I have not discovered before. Thus, giving me an edge in the market.

Things I have to improve:

There are always things to improve in every project. In my case, I would like to be a little more consistent with my animation. I get tired and distracted very easily. I can surely draw, 20 or 30 frames a day, but there are days that I get only halfway done and this bombs me up bad. When I see the overall performance is encouraging, but THOSE DAYS that you simply don’t get focused kills me. Now that I think about this a little more I assume my conflicts rely on me expecting a LOT from me as well. Sometimes I am my own worst critic. Sometimes, when you push the limit too far, you can get exhausted. I must estimate my own boundaries a little better.

Finally, note to self:

This is a technique that has been evolving over time. Hybrid Animation term is used to describe the technique when a film has the combinations of two or more Animation types such as 2D, 3D, Rotoscope or Stopmotion. Here I will explain in further depth the combination between the 3D and 2D animation currently in the industry of storytelling and videogames cinematics and how I will use this technique in my current final major project Athos.

Video 01. Examples of Integration of 2D and 3D

Early development.

The mixed of 2D and 3D was developed in the development of Tarzan (1999) and later on, was further implemented on the film Treasure Planet (2002). For Tarzan (1999) the research team created a software called Deep Canvas. This software consists of generating basic shapes like cylinders and later create a camera that can move through this space. Later, these shapes will be painted with a stylus and this painting will replicate on the other instances. For example, if one branch was painted in a certain way, the other branches will follow this pattern.

How did they match the 2D animation with the 3D software images?

Well, they print each frame of the basic shapes camera movement (24 Frames for each second) and the Animators will, later on, draw on top of these frames. This means that the artist had to draw on once, which duplicates the production of the animation. Nonetheless, they used this technique for only 17 minutes of the entire film.

Pic 01. Pencil test of Tarzan moving across the trees.

Video 02. Deep Canvas early tests:

Pic 02. Further integration of Deep Canvas and pencil lines:

These where truly breakthrough in technology. In 1999 not only the computer generating images was rare in films, moreover, never used in animation. This technological development helped create new narratives for the films to come. Treasure Planet (2002) used more this mixed. The captain Silver arm was entirely done in 3D and matched seamlessly with the rest of the 2D character. Some props and backgrounds were modelled and painted using this software.

Pic 03. Treasure Planet (2002)

Nowadays this technique has evolved over the years, been almost a standard in the industry, where the techniques are mixed in a variety of narratives and audiovisual masterpieces. 

In the world of videogames, Blizzard’s titles like Warcraft and Overwatch had utilized this art form of 2D and 3D mixture in most of all their cinematics and video inserts in the games. But the one game that truly takes this type of animation mix is League of Legends. The cinematics from this game are outstanding and in my opinion the best in the industry right now. The way they compose every shoot and make the sequence work as a moving comic makes you feel inside the game. They animate action vividly and each sequence transition smoothly into the other one. The 2D texture has evolved greatly since the Tarzan movie and now is entirely done in 3D, but this 2D special effects that are composited into the video. The technique here helps greatly to tell the story, the profiles of the technician and animators may change nowadays, but the goal in this type of narratives and films are the same. Generate a deep impact on the audience, making them involved in the story. 

Video 03. Rise - League of Legends.

Implementing this technique in my film.

I have a big scene that requires a practical way to solve it. This scene is a flying view of the main character that after release itself from a great obstacle flyes away in the sky. Athos is looking down to discover new places. So this will be the perfect opportunity to mix techniques in my film. This is also a shoot that can be easily done in 3D with camera movement like in the early days of Deep Canvas, to later be hand-painted in a 2D animation software like TV Paint. However, I am not versed into the 3D software, that’s why I asked my friend Josh Payne to help me in this task. I know the collaborative work always adds to any project and having the talent of my friend Josh, will help solve this shoot in no time. Next, I gave Josh my aerial scene sketch and the reference in order for him to create the scene. 

Pic 04. Aerial Scene and references.

Pic 05. Aerial Scene in 3D by Josh Payne. 

Up here is the scene that Josh did for my film. He applied a camera to hover the scene and the movement works very well. The basic shapes work perfectly because I will later paint over it frame by frame and I will need a bulk structure to paint over. I just had to adjust the speed and I will continue later on with the process. 

Next step now is to export this scene in a low frame rate. This shoot was 10 seconds long. I short it out to be 3 seconds and export it at 8 frames a second, the reasons for this is if I export a 3 seconds scene in 24 or 25 seconds I will end up doing 72 - 75 frames and that is a massive load of frames to paint. Next, I import the final 24 frames to TV Paint and start painting one by one. 

Pic 06. TV Paint process.  

The idea is to create brushes that resemblance forms, so that matches the backgrounds that Laura Blandón is doing for the backgrounds. I came up with an interesting movie called the girl without hands and the technique utilize here is a great inspiration for the way I will approach the Rotoscope animation for this shot.  

Video 04. The Girl Without Hands Trailer.

This is my by to pay tribute to the early developer in the animation. From Tarzan to now, technology has shown that when well executed and used creatively, can add new tools to enhance the narrative of a film, thus, delivering an innovative experience for the audience.

References:

Daly, S. (1999). https://ew.com. [online] EW.com. Available at: https://ew.com/article/1999/07/09/tarzan-changes-face-animation/ [Accessed 24 Jul. 2019].

Timbo (2009). The Art of Deep Canvas | Retro Junk Article. [online] Retrojunk.com. Available at: https://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/1400/the-art-of-deep-canvas [Accessed 24 Jul. 2019]. 

Cadwell, T. (2019). League of Legends. United States: Riot Games.

RISE | Worlds 2018 - League of Legends. (2018). [video] United States: Riot Games.

The Girl Without Hands. (2016). [film] Directed by S. Laudenbach. France: Shellac.

Treasure Planet. (2002). [film] Directed by R. Clements and J. Musker. United States: Buena Vista.

I composed the first sequence and add the particle scene after Athos is imprisoned from the dark tree, I feel like the film is getting real shape. At least the way I see it, every week has been a huge improvement and each step I am getting closer to a final result. At this point, the only thing missing is the sound. Unfortunately, my friend Aldo, who is going to do the music, and Mari, in charge of the sound design, are busy doing their projects and they told me they will work on the piece the first week of August. As talented as they are, I am pretty sure they will have something great in mind. I always share with them my advances and I hope this inspired them to create music and sound that work seamlessly with the film. I have no worries in this regard.

Getting technical: The Particle

One of my biggest satisfactions in this film is that I can put in practice my experience working in the audiovisual field for many years. Here is a technical approach of one of the biggest challenge so far (besides the hand-drawing animation). The particle of air. Athos will erupt from the dark tree in a gaseous form. Doing this in 2D will be a task that will be overwhelmingly time-consuming and the mixture of techniques in my film is always something that I like to pursuit, thus, I am now in the VFX department looking to create a particle made of air and gas that resembles a cloud. Since Athos is made by whatever it touches, this is going to be his form during the flight.

Pic 01. Creating a particle:

I am using a third-party plug-in in after effects called Particular. This allows me to create and control the physics of any particle from this plug-in or I can create it as well. In the image above I show the features of the particle. This is only 1 of the 4 types of particles I create/manipulate to produce the effect of the moving cloud. I change the velocity, the gravity, colour, type and many other features in each layer so I can get the results I wanted.

Pic 02. Animating the Path:

After the particle is done or at least to a point that I feel satisfied, the next thing is to create a camera and a thing called Null Object. The Null object is an invisible asset that helps moving things around without rendering it. Then, I linked the 4 particles to one single Null and I moved the Null and as the particles are emitting, they will leave a trace, thus creating the effect of a moving cloud. This was an interesting test, but it came up better than I expected. I animate the movement creating a path from back to front, showing a big arc in the character movement, so we can see the character not only been playful but also coming forward closer to the camera.

Pic 03. Creating Athos’s face:

After the particle is done I have to make sure the audience understand that THIS is our character. Therefore, I create a new composition with my characters' face in order to compose it later into the scene. This had to be in a rectangular composition because I will later apply a sphere effect that will create a circle out of this expression. I use temporarily a grid to get a reference on where was the face in comparison with the particle. 

Pic 04. Compositing the face in the scene: 

In this picture, we see that I placed the pre-composition of the face above the particular layers. thus, applying the effect on Athos’s face. To achieve the correct position in this feature, I must manipulate the rotation in X, Y and Z position in order to put the face in the right angle.

Pic 05. Animation and facial expression:

Above I show how by manipulating the CC Sphere, a built-in plug-in in After Effects, I can generate a circular face, that later will be matched with the moving cloud. I manipulated the Radius and the rotation in order to fit the cloud movement. Later, I eliminate the grid once the face matched in the scene. I tried to convey the facial expression so the character looked happy as it’s scaping from oblivion into a better place. 

This mastermind narrates his legacy and his most memorable scores' stories. Hans Zimmer is one of the most influential musicians in the history of cinema today. He has been part of most recent blockbuster movies and his music has inspired many including myself. 

Zimmer depicts between the lines, how he has continued searching for that perfect tune, that melody that connects with your soul to evoke the most profound feelings in the audience. His vehicles, the films, his craft, soundtracks. 

This inspires me to continue looking for that perfect timing, that character performance that is yet to be done to communicate does emotions that I am looking for. The music is a key aspect in a film. In my opinion, is half of the piece. One of my goals is to call Mr Zimmer and commission him one of my films. That would be one for the bucket list.

Reference:

This has been a GREAT ride. This week I decided to make a complete piece of the film a decided to make a list of the things I MUST fix ASAP. This, in order to achieve a complete narrative experience even if I don’t fully complete the whole animation as I imagined, I still can see the entire project as one piece. I decided to take the time and make a pause, step back a look at my film with a critical approach. Trying to let go of my ego as an artist and stepping back as a creator. I try to be my own teacher and see the piece like it is, a work under development.

Pic 1. My notes after reviewing cut 5:

I took notes shoot by shoot looking for things to improve right away. The main thing now is to finish the rough animations, like scene 2 where the dark tree entangled Athos. This is the midpoint and climax of the film, for this reason, has to be as dramatic as possible. Therefore, I have to make sure generates the right emotion to the audience. One key scene that is really underdeveloped is the final scene, the resolution when the character emerged from the flower, fully transformed in a structural being. This needs hours of work as well. Later I will start composing scene by scene in order to get a final piece as I finish the animations.

Also, Laura Blandon started to send me the first background so I can start composite the first scene. I must say that this artist exceeded my expectations greatly. She took my reference and made a beautiful environment that my character can live and discover.

Pic 2. This was the line I sent to get the background.

Pic 2. Laura’s Background:

Words can not express how happy I am with this result. Was almost exactly as I designed it, but way more beautiful. I like her colour proposal and I think I may stick with it. 

Probably one of the top schools in animation today. Gobelins always create outstanding ads for the Annecy festival, and this year was no exception.

Annecy is a marvellous festival that gathers the best of the best of the animation all over the world. This piece is a reflection of this year’s theme, Japan. It seems that everything was perfectly timed. Netflix announced new films in partnership with Japanese companies and also sponsorship internships for the westerns animators in the country of the rising sun. 

This bumper ad is a great piece that combines the best of that world. The giant monsters, the retro TV Shows, manga and fantastic action sequences. all this in the middle of the routine in a monstrous city like Tokio. 

Gobelin definitely sets the pace for all schools in the world for what is a standard for the animation. The timing, the arcs and the character performance create a great piece that inspires me to continue pushing myself to be a better animator.

Reference:

This is one big shot I have almost completed. It’s only 10 seconds long but took me a week and almost 200 drawings to complete it. 

I really like the line that I am achieving. I would improve the timing but the movement looks great. I really enjoyed doing the final part where the character starts evolving and discover the arm transformation. This painstaking process has thought me a couple of things.

Start cleaning the keyframe first, then rough the in-betweens.

Is more important to achieve a great movement, than a polish line.

The eye will follow the movement, not the details.

I will “roughly” explain the process of inbetweening. This is a time-consuming process of the 2D animation and basically consists of filling the gap between the Keyframes and the Breakdowns in the 2D Animation blocking stage.

Pic 1. Example of the process of doing clean-up lines:

I started by roughing the positions so I can get a sense of the movement which is really important to make a believable scene. Get the acting of the character first and add details later. Thus, I clean up the drawing and then I do rough in-between keyframes. Then, I turn on the light table on within TV Paint so I can have a view of the previous and new frame, and then I polish the in-between so looks good. 

This is the advances in week 6 (approx.) and I am pretty happy about it. First of all, I finished my roughs and this massive task helped me realize all the huge work ahead. 

Things I price about myself so far? been able to work almost every single day in this piece. For me is huge merit to commit to this project and I hope all this effort pays off at the end. Second, the story feels there, it’s a matter of making some adjustments in the timing but eventually, it will all make sense. Third, the character movement seems good on the keyframes. I will polish them and then do the inbetweens.

Things to improve? the design of the character at the end needs tons of adjustments, it doesn’t reflect the same feeling that the initial character communicates. Also, the particles at the 1:59 minute are yet to be done. That would be a whole week of work because I need to get a computer with a plug-in called Particular. 

As a matter of news, I was looking for a 2D artist to help me with the animation, but instead, I will hire a background artist to help me polish my initial designs. So I contacted a couple of friends that I have worked in the past. 

Here was a project I worked for called: Mi Genial y Fantastico Sasquatch. A Colombian series of 2 young explorers looking for a Sasquatch that would share the cultural myths from different parts of the world:

Pic. 2 Mi Genial y Fantastico Sasquatch trailer:

Juan Ortíz the producer gave me the name of the talented artist Laura Blandon, I contacted her and she was immediately on board and as she shared her art with me I knew she was the right input for the project. This was a hard decision to make because I wanted to do every part of my project, but, as the weeks go on, I have seen that is almost impossible for me to get to the deadline without assistance. So as a director, you have to make choices, either you get there half way or you look for help to complete your piece. Clearly, I don’t want to drown in a glass of water, thus I seek for help. 

Pic. 3 Here is Lauras’s outstanding art:

Laura has a clear line, great sense of depth and excellent colour handling. This will add greatly to the artwork of Athos. I will give her some directions on the backgrounds that are already advanced but needed to be polished/upgraded to take them to the next level.

Pic 4. Here are my instructions:

I hope this inspires Laura to achieve greatness. I have great expectations because I found her talent really uplifting. I will make sure to lead her in every step of the way as necessary, but not overwhelm her with directions. Just be clear, concise and let her do her own thing.

I will now focus on the clean-up and doing the whole 2D animation by myself.

References:

Navarro, S. and Ortiz, J. (2017). Mi genial y fantástico Sasquatch. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq6I6WlwWsA [Accessed 3 Jul. 2019].