It's the real deal !

Every month I organise an animation event where people bring their work and get feedback from seniors in the industry... and every month I see the same thing, or maybe I should say "hear" the same things, to my question "What are your references ?"

Pretty often I see people starting an animation, and I'm not only talking of students, or young professionals, without knowing what they are doing.
when I say not knowing, I don't mean, they don't know where they going or whatever, but more like they don't really know everything around what they will animate, here is an example of an animation exercise I gave to some student in Porto : They had to pick a sport and do an animation of it, for example, for tennis, they were suppose to do a service; for shot put, the throw; for basketball, a shoot ... and one of my student picked fencing, which was very interesting as I didn't knew anything about it.

The first part of the exercise, is that they had all the morning to make research and references, and I ask them to teach me stuff about their sport, that I didn't knew. It was very interesting to see all the information they gathered within an hour, they were giving me names of old champions and records, the different type of swords they had, the different type of handles, and why they were used and why, and all sort of information...

There blocking were strong, precise, good weight, everything was very good, I was really really impressed, especially compared to all the other work they were doing, this assignment was from far the best animation work I saw from them, even today, and the reason was, they gathered references, they planned, they thought about it, they didn't just threw themselves into the animation.

I see many animators, student or professionals, always saying how Pixar and other studios are doing amazing animation, and telling me they want to work in this companies, but when they animate ... they expect the same result, with all the work behind, I think people don't realise, that if they want to get a job in a big company, they have to show serious work, they have to show work comparable to the work done in this company, because there is no secret, a good animation, is an animation well thought and planned.

A friend of mine once tried to get a job at Framestore, and his animation was full a default and mistakes, weights issue, or sticking IK, and he told "I thought they would not see it", well ... if I see it they will, and for sure, they will not appreciate the work of someone lazy.

I realised how serious it can be in the industry, when I started on 9, it was my first feature film experience, and when I arrived, the first desk that I saw, was a modeler desk, and he had this little book to know how to do marines knots and I was like ... what the hell do you have this, and he told me, that he had to model knots, and that he wanted to know how they were done to model them properly, and I told him, who cares ?! just do something who looks like it, and he told me that people will notice it, maybe they will not see it, but for sure will feel it.

So if I have an advice to give you, if you want to get a job in a big company, then propose real solid and well planed work, for that, gather a lot of references, study a little bit the field you're gonna animate, try to go further than just animating, seriously a single hour will save you so much time in your creation process and make your work so much solid, because in the industry it's the real deal, and you need to show them that you are prepared for this !