A CGI creature created by the author using techniques learned at Chris Landreth's Maya master class. © George Cairns.

The publicity material for LEAF promised "a chance to see a world class line-up of international experts showing the very latest work." It kept its promise. Charged with being Animation World Magazine's man on the spot, I whizzed off to Wembley, North London, for three days of animation related seminars from some of the planet's biggest and best.

Excellent Seminars
The exciting thing that came through at many of the seminars was the happy marriage between traditional animation techniques and 3D computer graphics. DreamWork's Al Holter demonstrated this clearly in his The Prince of Egypt seminar. Here 2D painted animation of foaming water was texture-mapped onto 3D geometry to create effective and dramatic waves. Holter used video clips and stills to illustrate the fact that many of the shots in the movie contained a composite of 2D and 3D images. While hundreds of 3D characters were created for crowd scenes, the principal characters like Moses were created as traditional 2D animations. Holter felt that the characters "acted better" in 2D. As the movie was character driven this ability to show the characters `acting' was crucial.

Getting good performances from animated characters was a theme that other seminar speakers touched on as well. The always amusing Mark Briely, from Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman, suggested 3D character animators work with a mirror by their desk so they can refer to their own facial expressions. Rich Quade from Pixar quoted John Lasseter's definition of animation as not simply making something move, but "bringing it to life." Talking about the forthcoming Pixar feature A Bug's Life, Quade spoke about the need to give a 3D character "an interior life." The aim should be to make it look like the character is thinking, not the animator. Quade also discussed the danger of "over animating." As animators, we see time broken down into very small units. There is therefore the temptation to have our CG characters doing something all the time. This can give the animation as a whole a "flat" sense of rhythm. Quade also paid attention to the importance of animating eyes effectively. There is a danger of a character's eyes being "doll-like" and unfocused when instead they should be leading the character's action. Quade's assertion that "the eyes have it" was certainly taken up by other experts, notably Alias|Wavefront's Chris Landreth. Landreth explained that the main character in his animation The End had no ears because he "listens with his eyes." (The other reason for the CG character's earlessness is that the animator's deadline didn't allow him time to model them!)

Chris Landreth's seminars were popular with people wanting to know how to create Maya animation like his latest short, Bingo. © Alias|Wavefront.

Bingo Explained
The highlights of the Festival for me were Chris Landreth's seminar and Maya master class. For those readers just returning from the Planet Mars, Maya is the latest 3D modelling and animation package from Alias|Wavefront that's taking the industry by storm. As a Maya user, I was eager to get some tips from one of the key figures behind the package's development. In his seminar, Landreth delved into the background behind the creation of Bingo, a 3D animation designed to showcase Maya's modelling and animation abilities. Landreth explained how the narrative of Bingo was inspired by a 3-minute play ironically entitled Please Disregard this Play, a production by the Chicago-based theater company The Neo-Futurists. I was amazed by the photo-realistic, yet caricaturized, characters he and his team had created. Bingo is like watching Waiting for Godot while under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug (not something this reviewer has tried or recommends!). The grotesque metamorphosis that some of his CG characters underwent also reminded me of Tim Burton's more outlandish creations.