This morning, I walked into my office and was greeted by a jar of fortune cookies. The above fortune got me thinking about the importance of planning in animation.
Sometimes, the pace of my gigs has been so fast that it seems luxurious and perhaps foolish to spend even as little as one hour preparing before doing the shot. If I’ve done a similar shot in the past, I might be tempted to skip the planning and dive right in. But most of the time I’ve given into that temptation, I’ve regretted it.
One thing I’ve never, ever regretted: taking the extra time to get things set up properly.
Every shot is its own entity, so there’s no typical way in which I approach them. But one thing that I always start with is what a former coworker of mine called “Advanced R&D”. That is, lots of research and sketching. This gives me an idea of what the camera move should be, what the creature/ship/planet/etc. should look like, and what the lighting situation should be. When I feel I have a grasp on what I’m undertaking, I move on to the actual shot creation.
For the show Ancient Aliens, I was tasked with a shot of the Nommo, a god-being of the Dogon (a group of people in Mali). I researched the legends as extensively as I could. I did character design sketches, working with the constraints that it was both fish-like and humanoid. I looked at the Creature from the Black Lagoon, because I’ve always liked that creature design, and love throwing in an homage when I can. I thought about how it would move on both land and water, and streamlined it for swimming. Once I had a design, I planned out both the camera and the action, recording video reference of me performing the shot (that no one is ever, ever allowed to see), and then planned out the poses and keyframes. Then I sculpted the creature and set up the rig. Only then, after a full day of prep, did I start animating.
The clock was ticking, and I was nervous at having not even started animation yet. But you know what? Once I just threw in the poses and timings I’d already planned out, I was 80% done within two hours. It’s a very short shot, but even so, it still took a few more hours to get it finessed until the deadline stopped me. In the end, I wound up with a shot that the producers loved, that looked cool, and that was relatively painless to do, thanks to my preparation. What could have easily gone pear-shaped was prevented by beginning well.
Here is the finished shot: