ciao [ background ]

Hello.

I think what you want to know about first are layouts - they are the drawings which lead to 2D painted backgrounds (BG's)...or 3D environments.

The Mike Fowler book is a great start.

The important thing to remember is that the layout's job is to support the animation. The layouts are the next phase after the storyboard drawings are approved. The layouts define the compostion of the scene, the time of day, month and year; and the over mood of the scene...and the camera angles.

Each layout HAS TO HAVE A FOCAL POINT. In animation, the FOCAL POINT is the animation(WHERE THE CHARACTERS ARE ACTING IN THE SCENE).

You can achieve FOCAL POINTS in three ways... by perspective (leading the eye to the characters), by lighting (for instance, the old WB spotlighting effects) or with framing devices (elements such as trees, boxes, ropes, leaves, etc. which again lead the eye back to the subject - the animation)

ALL GOOD 2D AND 3D ANIMATION HAVE THEM....

Here are some examples from SCAD students:

DaeSup Chang, Changsoo Eun, Suwimol, B. Smith and Bill Hodman

Here's few more...

from...Camille, Travis Ennis, DaeSup Chang, Travis Ennis, and Stephen Hollis.

Even more...

These layouts are from:

Suwimol, Michael Terry, Bill Hodman (now a WD Senior Layout Artist in Sidney), Travis Ennis, and Suwimol.

Hey,

I remember running into a very clear and helpful layout and background tutorials at this very site.... www.awn.com .

Just scroll down the left side of the screen and look the "tutorials" section. Basic stuff, but stuff that you should remind yourself of on a regular basis.

Adam

These are a few new ones from this term at SCAD- parts of Pan Layouts.

The first two are a pan by Chrisitine Phelan
The second two a part of a pan -the work of Rei Cayetano
The last one on the rightis part of a pan by Nathan Engelhardt

If you don't mind me asking Larry, who teaches that?

Oh, and you can really tell who 'gets it' and who takes it to another level.

It's amazing to me in that pirate ship how nice everything looks and how instantly none of that matters when that character in the background is there. It lacks a certain appeal. If I'm correct character design usually comes before layout, but some place concept art deals with everything or is purely inspirational and precedes nailed down character designs. I wonder what would happen if they tailored designs to the layout, if -that- was the invariable control.

I'm not sure what sort of creature in terms of person/other animal/etc. I'd go for, but once I made that decision I know for a fact what specific energy I'd go for that would match the look of the ship.

Hello.

These drawings are all from my students and their class work.

Most of these are from Layout and Character Design class.

Phil Young is a former lead Disney animator who workedin Burbank for 24 years. He's a great guy and once in a whilewe go out and "break a few pool cues over people's heads".

Thanks.

It boggles my mind that SCAD gets such a bad rap -- is it just the area?

It depends what your after - on City (see www.yogyog.org/animation/city.htm ) I created some very simple backgrounds with twisted perspective that allowed each detail to look fine but the whole background to look a little odd. Your frame of refference for this sort of thing would be M.C.Esher.

Oh yeah - There's only a few back-grounds on city that work like this. Most are just stills. I think this might be a point as well.

If you don't mind me asking Larry, who teaches that?

well, i'm not Larry, but i can answer your question :)

Larry and Phil Young both teach the Layout and Character Design class at SCAD.

That's gotta be a pretty high-powered class. I was unfamiliar with the latter name, so of course I looked it up - yeesh, that man is prolific!