The importance of ...
Today i want to talk about something very important, especially for the junior animators.
I'm going to talk about the importance of having a cool shot to animate. Ok, i know it sounds like a rhetorical and predictable topic, and maybe it is, but i don't care.
If you don't like this topic feel free to throw a dart on my testicles next time you see me.
So, for example, Robert De Niro was a great actor in the "Raging bull" movie, wasn't he?.
But what if, rather than working on such a masterpiece as Raging bull, De Niro worked on one of the many Troma film productions, for instance, "The toxic avenger"?
Maybe his career as an actor would have turned a bit different from what it is today.
This silly example is just to make the point.
Animators need a good and solid foundation to show their
talent, they need good sequences, good shots to animate.
When i say "good shot" i mean a shot that has been originally conceived ( by the film Director ) in a way that it can look AMAZING when properly animated, renderderd and composited.
We work, usually, in movies with a lot of VFX, ( monsters movies, superhero movies...that's it ). Those movies usually have at least 1-2 very big and epic sequences with very big and epic battles.
So, potentially, there is a lot of very "cool" stuff to animate.
And here comes the problem.
You, as a junior or mid animator, how can you get to animate even only one of these cool shots?
This is like the chicken and egg situation, or like the pig and the salami ( ...What?!.. ).
If your reel doesn't have cool shots, you will never get cool shots to animate.
But if you don't get the chance to animate cool stuff you will never be able to show your talent, so you will never get the chance to animate cool stuff.
So how do you get out of this vicious circle?
I don't have fucking idea!!!
But i still want to talk about this topic.
A few things you can try are:
1- The smaller is the company you work for, the bigger are the chances you gonna get something "cool" to animate.
2-If you're working in a big company and you are a junior, work hard, harder, hardest than anybody else. If you have talent ( and i'm sure you have ) it will comes across anyway, even if you're animating a 5x5 pixels digidouble. TRUST ME!
3-Put your nose well down through the animation supervisor's cheeks as much as you can ( i'm JOKING !!! )
4- Consider every task production assign to you as the most important task of your life and do it at your best.
If it still doesn't get you to get a cool shot, go back to point number 3.
5- Work on my next animated short film ( for free )and i will give you extremely cool stuff to animate :-) Ahaha.... I was joking of course...