What a great workshop! Big thanks to Pulse College for hosting our workshop. We were the first ones to try out their new lab before college starts and the space is amazing.

Big shout out to Dan, our mentor, who squished 4-5 years of his animation experience down to a few hours!

And to everyone who showed up on the day, I am glad you enjoyed the workshop. I'm going to chase up with Dan to run a practical one at Pulse.

Cool animation workshop from @CodingGrace @Pulsec https://t.co/7PQfhRckCE

— Alexandra V. (@AndraConnect) September 5, 2015

Here are some notes I took (when I was around), which I will condense down for this post.

After Dan introduced himself, he showed his studios showreel.

Giant Showreel 2015 from Giant Animation Studios on Vimeo.

Afterward the he went straight into the 12 principles of animation.

The illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.

The big lesson learnt was "fail fast & fail cheap".

When someone asked "How many principles can you combine?". Dan answered that it depends on the acting, and on the budget.

Just before lunch, he showed "The Curly Hare" animation, you can see it in 2015 showreel above.

After lunch, Dan talked about the amazing experience working with Sir Terry Pratchett on a animation called The Duel. How books are shown to be magic without any spoken words from any characters. And also note to the 12 basic principles mentioned at the beginning of the workshop are used in this short. Videos of the draft and finished work:-

THE DUEL_GIANT Animatic Draft 4_UNCUT from Giant Animation Studios on Vimeo.

Terry Pratchett's The Duel from Giant Animation Studios on Vimeo.

The next short we watched was very different, it's less cartoony and fun, and deals with leading the viewer from one element in one scene to something else and anticipating what's going to happen next in this short thriller. Here's the trailer:-

GEIST TRAILER from Giant Animation Studios on Vimeo.

The Last Train was another short that was made as part of The Animation Hub, a new scheme set up by BCFE and Trinity college to promote working relationships between BCFE’s animation students and TCD’s computer science students.

To get outside the normative world of mainstream animation (or what we think animation is), Dan showed us a video made by David O'Reilly called "The External Word". It was premiered at the 67th Venice Film Festival and the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. He's an Irish artist living in Germany, and directed some episodes for Adventure Time.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_OReilly_(artist)

And next it's a French animation called Clik Clak (2006).

"The eyes are the window to the soul" - Dan

Court - Click Clack from Cube Creative on Vimeo.

Réalisation: Victor Moulin

Animation for games

Giant did the animation for for StoryToys

• Dino Dog - 3D Studio max / Unity3d (before spine)

  • 17mins of animation as well as assets
  • fraction of budget for tv animation
  • 12fps instead of 25fps
  • quick turns
  • little anticipation when picking something up/digging
  • limited faces
  • games are always work in progress; always going back on finished scenes

• 3D game - High Tail it! - It's a platform game

  • if they did it again, not have 3D background because it took more memory

So a quick two things that are different in tv animation and games animation:

• animation - design at the start & animatics / pre-edit how the animation will play out
• games - only thing you can plan other than gameplay, how economic your assets are.

Q & A afterwards

Software Giant Animation uses

3D:-

• aftereffects
• 3d studio max (windows only), will be moving to Maya in the future as it's industry requirement now
• photoshop
  • has Timeline

Even on 2d - use above

He hates Flash (as do most of us!). :-)

Other software: Maya/Blender

TIP: Good entry to 3D - cinema4D, similar interface to Maya (grayscale gorrilla, tutorials)

Job in animation

• Know at least photoshop
  • painting/compiling graphics
• Aftereffects
• Practice, know the time (e.g. bouncing ball); translate what is in your head onto the computer. Flipbooks is a good way to learn, you will find mistakes when you put them under the camera and playback.

2D software

Aside from using 3D software mentioned about, also try the following:-

• ToonBoom Animation / Harmony
• Cartoon Saloon uses Anime Studio Pro

Other areas in animation to look out for

Localisation of animation

• e.g. Accents

Any other tips?

• Pre-plan assets before animating the scene - character speaking

• Library - character sheets

• Lighting?

  • 2D - flat as possible, shadows not so much an issue
  • 3D - colour boards as well as storyboards - show transition of the atmosphere of the story (google "chorton colorscript theory" for more results, here's one: http://jenbetton.blogspot.ie/2013/01/dice-tsutsumi-colorscript-for-horton.html

Cartoons

• Gravity Falls - http://disneyxd.disney.co.uk/gravity-falls
• Japanese animé about making animé - http://www.crunchyroll.com/shirobako, be warned, it's quite meta. :-)

Industry at the moment

• 32% tax break

• 3rd country for animation

• lobby for additional dev growth;

• 2 more colleges doing animation courses; up to 12 animation courses in Ireland

It's big opportunity in all parts of the pipeline - design, composite, etc

Even if you are not a good storyteller, you can still make a good animator! :-D

I've storified the tweets from the day, you can read them here: https://storify.com/whykay/introduction-to-animation

Dan did a quick blog about the day: http://danielspencer.ie/portfolio/2015/09/06/coding-grace/.

If anyone has a write-up to share, do share in the comments below. If you have any questions, you can ping me at contact@codinggrace.com.

Coding Grace events

Introduction to R workshop @ Insight Centre for Data Analytics (DCU)

• When: Sat Sept 26th (11:00-16:00)
• Details: http://www.codinggrace.com/events/introduction-r/55/

Coder Girl Hack Day @ DCU (8 - 17 year olds)

• When: Sat Sept 10th (10:00 - 16:00)
• Details: http://www.codinggrace.com/events/coder-girl-hack-day-celebrate-international-day-gi/56/

Creative events

Rebase

• When: Sept 30th – October 2nd
• Details: rebase.ie

dubLUDO @ The Liquor Rooms

• When: Wed 9 September at 18:05
• Details: https://www.facebook.com/events/897573110324176/

Female-friendly events

Women in Animation Ireland

• Details: Check wiaireland.com

PyLadies Dublin @ TOG Hackerspace

• When: Tue Sep 15
• Details: dublin.pyladies.com

Codess Dublin @ The Marker Hotel

• When: Mon Sep 21
• Details: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/codess-dublin-tickets-17919561892

Ireland Girl Geek Dinners @ TBC

• When: Thu Sep 24
• Details: ireland.girlgeekdinners.com