Talk by Andy Schmidt of Pixar

By six fortuitous cancellations I was able to attend a talk on animation this evening. I'm glad I didn't miss an opportunity to hear someone from Pixar talk at length about their profession. Andy Schmidt has worked on several Pixar films including The Incredibles and Ratatouille. He went from an art background into 2D animation, learning and developing his skills from scratch, and then finally progressed into 3D animation. Although this is a natural progression - the two animation forms share the same techniques such as 'squash and stretch' - Schmidt stated during Q&A that whilst experience of 2D animation is helpful, it is not a necessary prerequisite for working in 3D.

As I have little experience of working in animation I found some insights particularly useful, in particular that "acting is the most important part of animation". Schmidt described acting as 'reacting', in other words, what happens to your character isn't as important as how they feel about it. Characterisation is a carefully refined process in animation, as the degree of control is immense. Characters can be defined very precisely by manipulating their body weight, shape and size, and through the way they move. The formal possibilities are greater for the animator than a film director casting for a role. That is not to say that animation is superior to live-action, but that the difference in style results from different options being available in real world and the CG world.

After the talk I was fortunate enough to talk briefly with Andy about how he finds satisfaction in collaborative work. At Pixar, I think this comes from animators being given particular animation challenges suited to their strengths. Therefore, talent is utilised most effectively, and a personal sense of your own importance and value to a big project is much greater.

The Art of Looking Sideways

Alan Fletcher collated a life's-worth of experience and wonder into a single megalith, The Art of Looking Sideways. Coming in at over 1000 pages this is a coffee-table book, and by its weight has a tendency to bruise those who attempt to read it in bed. Although it was compiled and written by a graphic designer, and it is an excellent book for designers, it should have broad appeal for the variety of subjects it covers. It's a difficult book to categorise; Fletcher thought it warranted its own 'looking sideways' section in a bookshop, because for all the culture, jokes, history, puzzles and science it contains, what unites the content is the idea of defamiliarising the ordinary and looking at the world with fresh eyes. For example, how many letters does the Roman alphabet contain? When you consider that many letters in upper and lower case bear little to no resemblance to each other (Aa, Ee, Gg) the figure is more like 37, and this poses problems for foreigners with different alphabets, learning a language like English.This is what makes this a great book. Revelation is an enjoyable experience, even in the case of solving difficult puzzles (or finding their solution). This puzzle is by no means new, but can be found in the book. The aim is to connect each dot by drawing four straight lines without removing your pencil. The solution can be Googled.