Up your animation game: the art of animation as seen by two pros.(Careers)

Animators are continually striving for creative excellence as they explore various story narratives, ideas, and assignments, land observe the world around them. In order to stay fresh, inspired, and motivated, they approach each new challenge as an opportunity to improve their art and learn and grow.

That is the beauty and challenge of becoming an animator and what excites and motivates most of the professional animators surveyed for the white paper "Behind the Animator" (www.animationmentor.com/report) from Animation Mentor, an online animation school. But how can animators grow as artists in this exciting profession? Here, two highly skilled professional animators draw on their years of industry experience to answer that question.

According to Rob Coleman, animation director on the last three Star Wars prequels at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the real art of animation is the performance of the characters. "Animators are actors, and they are most successful when they can use great acting to tell us stories we care about in their animation," says Coleman, who also directed five episodes and was an animation consultant for the first 15 episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series for Lucasfilm Animation. Currently, he is in development on the animated feature The Fourth Magi at Lightstream Pictures.

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"A lot of people think the Holy Grail of animation is creating a photorealistic digital human (like the characters in Beowulf)," continues Coleman. "However, I think the real goal of animation is creating a fantastic reality that touches on real life but integrates characters, settings, and action that you could never create in a live-action film. People want to be swept away and entertained."

So how do you create an extraordinary world and draw people into a fictionalized reality where they can suspend their disbelief and experience something entirely new? Coleman suggests becoming a better observer of the world. "Characters are exaggerated versions of humans. Learn to watch and understand emotions," he advises. "See how someone's face looks and what their eyes do when they say one thing but mean another. Figure out what that person is thinking based on their facial expression and body language, and then use that in your animations."

Video reference is great way to study acting, but only if you are watching good actors. "If you do video reference of yourself and your friends, and none of you are good actors, you tend to get 'vaudeville animation,' whereby everything is badly acted and over the top," says Coleman. "That doesn't make for good animation." He also cautions animators not to just copy from video reference, but to use it as a starting point to figure out weight, timing, and key poses, and then exaggerate it ever so slightly for realistic animation or more purposefully for moony animations.