Daniel Jeannette (Communication and Design in Animation)

[Rodney]

These are a bit tough to wade through due to the age and poor quality but for those that take the time there is some real gold to be mined from these videos.

 

Daniel Jeannette has come a long way from the days of tape playback and if nothing else this is a great demonstration of just how good we've got it these days when it comes to our ability to access, review and analyze animation. These guys really had to devote themselves to it. Read the quote at the very end of this post for Daniel's contextual notes that describe what prompted him to conduct his demonstration.

 

Part 1:

[vimeo]49005851[/vimeo]

 

Part 2:

[vimeo]49150442[/vimeo]

 

Part 3:

[vimeo]49624744[/vimeo]

 

Part 4:

[vimeo]50142975[/vimeo]

 

Part 5:

[vimeo]50519165[/vimeo]

 

The first of these videos were initially uploaded to www.onanimation.com but to date the rest still haven't made their way there. Those of us that were impatient just followed the link to wait for and eventually watch the other videos as they were uploaded to vimeo. If the quality of the video was better these would be real treasures.

 

Daniel Jeannette has been very active in animation but is perhaps best know for 'Happy Feet', 'Where the Wild Things Are" and "Hunger Games". A fuller list of credits:

 

2009 Where the Wild Things Are (animation supervisor, visual effects supervisor)

 

2006 Happy Feet (animation director)

 

2004 Van Helsing (animation supervisor)

 

2001 The Mummy Returns (animation supervisor)

 

1999 The Mummy (animation supervisor: ILM)

 

1998 Mighty Joe Young (animation supervisor)

 

1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (lead digital character animator)

 

1996 101 Dalmatians (character animation supervisor: ILM)

 

1996 DragonHeart (character animator)

 

1995 Jumanji (computer graphics animator: ILM)

 

1995 Casper (character animator)

 

The kickstarter for the project he is involved with recently raised the desired level of funding toward initial production of a teaser to gain additional support for an animated retelling of 'West Side Story' but with city park animals (primarily squirrels) and hip hop music. 'Happy Feet' seems to do pretty well for itself... perhaps so will squirrels.

 

 

In the vimeo commentary on vimeo Daniel added the following to give some context to the videos:

I wanted to give some context to these video and why they were made.

In early 1993 there was a studio in London set up by Universal and Amblin (Amblimation) and we had just finished production on our latest film "We're Back: A Dinosaur Story". Unfortunately the next production "Balto" was not ready so rather than layoff the entire team the management kept a good part of the crew (unfortunately not all the crew) and put together an internal artist development program. We had animation, acting and life drawing classes all with a view to prepare the crew to the challenges of animating dogs.

We had just made one of the most dreadful film featuring a weak story and a visual style that lacked consistency. At the time every supervising animator was redesigning their characters to suit their personal tastes and it resulted in a film in which so many visual styles came clashing together on the screen....

 

There was also an obsession about what would qualify as a good drawing or not (an infinitely subjective matter as it were...).

So I decided to put together this contribution to the program to share my thoughts about "realism in drawing and animation" . At the time I strongly felt that cell animation was on a path to self destruction, chasing realism in themes and visual style that the then very young and emerging field of CG animation promised to do far more successfully. I felt that the future of cell animation laid in what made it unique, the expression of mood and movement through graphic elements. At the time a lot of the tried to make the most realistic humans (Anastasia, Titan AE, Atlantis...) using fancy computer generated camera swirling around painstakingly cell animated characters. While amazing feats of draftsmanship and technique, these never really hit the emotional chord (at least that was my point view).

 

History has sadly proven me right, and here we are 19 years later in an industry dominated by CG.

The irony is that the quest for Photo Realism has been taken to new levels.

I never thought these tapes would one day find their way out into the world, and I wish that my command of English had been greater at the time to make them more entertaining to watch.

[Rodney]

In the first video note where he speaks of drawing a line and how that line fails to express anything of value until it moves.

This has great applicability to splines and three dimensional forms.

 

He wastes no time really diving deep into the how to present... to animate... three dimensional forms from what appears on a two dimensional screen. Break out your pencils and pens folks... this is well worth taking notes!