Animation in Atlanta and around the globe is changing. Join the ECG team as they discuss & explore the new frontiers of 2D & 3D animation in this weeks Naked Unicorn podcast.
Atlanta Video Animation Team Podcast:
Jason Sirotin: Hello, and welcome to the Naked Unicorn Podcast. I’m Jason Sirotin. I’m here today with partner at ECG Productions, Trey Gregory and Animator DP extraordinare’, Brandon Peterson. How are you guys?
Brandon Peterson: Hey, good. How are you?
Trey Gregory: What’s going on Jay?
Jason Sirotin: I’m good. Today, I wanted to get you guys, because I wanted to talk about video animation and the evolving world in business of that subject. You guys are experts on the subject of animation. Let’s talk video animation. Client demand seems to be up on animation for us here in Atlanta. Why do you guys think that is?
Why is video animation so popular?
Trey Gregory: I think that animation is an easier way to get messaging across. A lot of times with a production, you’re limited to what you can show, to real world things, especially with realistic budgets. With animation, the sky is really the limit. Your ideas aren’t as limited as they are if you were say going to try to shoot something in a real location.
Brandon Peterson: Right, sometimes it’s just a better way to get the information across, say, they need … They’re talking about a particular subject that’s hard to convey with just shooting B-roll: throw up an infographic, some animation, and it gets the information across better.
Trey Gregory: That’s good. You can have a more dense content … Your content can come to people in a more dense format if there’s animation because you have full control over everything that’s on the screen. In addition to what’s on the screen, you have the audio, and you just have more control. I think people find that appealing.
Jason Sirotin: With video animation, there’s a trend towards infographic style animation which is relatively less expensive than more complex things like 3D animation. What we’re seeing in clients, I think is that they’re looking for ways to avoid having to pay people, and pay residuals on stuff. Do you guys agree with that?
Trey Gregory: What do you mean by pay residuals?
Jason Sirotin: For talent, for the thing we were doing for AT&T, right?
Trey Gregory: You mean as opposed to use …
Jason Sirotin: Yeah, as opposed to using SAG actors or something. I think there’s a switch. People are getting more and more cheap. I think it’s never evolving. I think people used to look at animation or something as, “Oh well, this animation project is going to be really expensive. We can’t do it,” to now, “It would be more expensive to use a human being.”
Trey Gregory: The barriers for entry are a lot lower now. I mean it’s easy for students to get a copy of some of the best animation programs you can get out there. Everyone can do it now, whereas before, it was much, much harder to get them. Even a student license was pretty expensive. Now, you can go, and you can lease the software for $15, $20 a month, and teach yourself.
There is videos online that allow any and everyone to learn to how to do this stuff. You got to stick at it to get good at it. I mean to get your foot in the door is a lot easier now.
Brandon Peterson: That’s true. I think it’s also, I don’t know, it depends on what it is because it can be more expensive too. Sometimes, clients think they might be taking the easy way out by doing an animation instead of going on shooting stuff practically with the crew and everything. If you look at the cost per minute to produce something, it’s a lot more … usually more men hours to create a minute worth of animation than it is to do say a minute interview …
Trey Gregory: That all depends on … You got to decide based on your message, I think your content whatever you’re shooting.
Jason Sirotin: Yeah, but you don’t have to pay for the shoot. Right? If you’re talking about infographics where you’re using iconography and stuff like that, you don’t have to go out and pay for the shoot.
Brandon Petersone: True. With flat design being so hot right now, it is … you can get some nice looking animation for less expensive, I’d say, because it’s simpler. You’re not trying to do everything in 3D with reflections, and global illumination and stuff like that. Simple is better these days. That’s true. You can get good results.
Flat design in video animation. Is it a fad?
Jason Sirotin: Let’s talk about flat design. There is a growing trend towards flat design. For people who don’t know what it is, what is it?
Brandon Peterson: Getting away from gradients, drop shadows, just the simplest elements of design which are color, shape, patterns, and it breaks it down to the most simplest form, and just using color to achieve contrast,instead of using shadows.
Jason Sirotin: I’m going to look up what the real definition of flat design just to be sure.
Trey Gregory: Yes, because I wouldn’t say that drop shadows …
Brandon Peterson: I think that was verbatim.
Trey Gregory: Drop shadows and vignettes don’t make design flat.
Brandon Peterson: See, I disagree with Trey in that.
Trey Gregory: Well, then don’t. You can put a drop … Flat design can have a little bit.
Brandon Peterson: You’re using two-dimensional elements in the two-dimensional space.
Trey Gregory: It depends.
Brandon Peterson: You have to be careful. If you use too much, you’re getting into Skeuomorphism which is so ’90’s. You want to stay out of it.
Jason Sirotin: Skeuomorphism?
Trey Gregory: Skeuomorphism was not ’90’s. It’s early 2000’s at best. I mean that was in all the first iPhones. Skeuomorphism was really popular.
Jason Sirotin: I never even heard the term Skeumorphs.
Trey Gregory: It’s when you try to make a graphic look like a real thing. A Safari icon is a good example. It’s supposed to look like a compass.
What is flat design?
Jason Sirotin: Let me tell you what Wikipedia says Flat UI Design is. “Flat User Interface Design is a minimalist UI Design Genre or design language currently used in various graphical user interfaces.”
Trey Gregory: Specifically, you’re talking about user interfaces. This isn’t necessarily about a user interface. The flat user interface, I mean the new OS on iPhone is a perfect example, which is super, super flat.
Jason Sirotin: Which you don’t have.
Trey Gregory: I don’t have a new iPhone, but I have the new OS.
Brandon Peterson: I think LG made a great video about this. It’s not just using colors to achieve contrast, but it’s trying to use mature colors, not just your primary colors. A lot of flat design artists, they will not use red, green, blue, and the primary sense. It’s a more mature color. It’s like it shifted. It’s not this … I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, I guess.
Jason Sirotin: What’s so funny is now I have a definition that says, “To understand flat design, you have to understand the thing it’s revolting against, Skeuomorphism.”
Brandon Peterson: There we go.
Jason Sirotin: There you go. You got it.
What is skeuomorphism?
Brandon Peterson: Skeuomorphism is all about trying to achieve something to look like it’s a real world counterpart. That means using the shadows and lighting effects to try to make it achieve them. If you take out all of that, you’re left with light and color. Well not light, but the color and shapes.
Jason Sirotin: Got you. What programs are people using now for video animation?
Brandon Peterson: The main one is After Effects in terms of … especially with integrating with video. If you want to do something on 3D, it’s a lot of Cinema 4D, or Maya, or 3D studio Max.
Trey Gregory: We could use Blender too, which is free.
Brandon Peterson: Yeah.
Jason Sirotin: What’s Blender?
Brandon Peterson: Blender is free. It’s hard. It’s difficult to use. The UI is you might as well be writing a code.
Trey Gregory: It’s an open source 3D modeling and animation program that you can get online. It’s free and open source. I mean everybody who wants, they can take a look at it, and use it.
Brandon Peterson: Then bang their head against the wall for two hours when they can’t figure out how to …
Trey Gregory: You can’t even make [inaudible 00:07:48].
Brandon Peterson: … how to add Z Depth to text. It’s crazy. It’s not a very user friendly program at all. That’s why the good ones are expensive, like Cinema 4D and Maya.
Jason Sirotin: When you talk about Cinema 4D, I’ve heard a lot of people say that it pales in comparison to Maya. What are your thoughts on that?
Brandon Peterson: It’s a different application. It depends on what you want to do.
Trey Gregory: They all have their strengths and weaknesses.
Brandon Peterson: Cinema 4D is faster and easier to learn. You can achieve results, better results in a shorter amount of time. Maya is, I’d say, a little more advance in a lot of ways. It takes more time to get what you want.
What is Autodesk Maya animation? (We are Maya animators in Atlanta)
Jason Sirotin: Let’s talk about Autodesk Maya in terms of what they did with their new subscription roll out. I was pretty shocked because Maya used to be a piece of software that was …
Brandon Peterson: Like 2000.
Jason Sirotin: No, it’s like 17,000 at one point.
Brandon Peterson: Oh really?
Adobe, the pioneers of animation.
Trey Gregory: Let’s talk about Adobe. I feel like they are the ones we should discuss, because they pioneered this and animation. No one was doing it until they started leasing their apps. It’s what we’re talking about earlier. It makes it so affordable to buy these programs, that cost thousands of dollars otherwise. It’s revolutionary.
Jason Sirotin: It’s really in their best interest, because long term, they’re going to make a lot more money. It’s not motivated by just, “We want everybody to be able to have access to our product.”
Trey Gregory: Everybody wins. That’s a great service, I think. They’re choosing to use … Their software is no longer a product. It’s now a service that they provide.
Brandon Peterson: You no longer have to pay for the next upgrade. You’re always going to be up to date. A lot of, probably the big reason why they switch because it was so expensive, that everybody just started pirating it. It’s a lot easier, but, “I’ll pay 20 bucks a month, and I won’t have to worry about updates or the hassle with trying to find the crack that works or whatever, or the next time I update my system, it doesn’t work anymore.”
Trey Gregory: When I was a student, I could never afford any of these programs. The only way I could learn them was to either try to book time in a suite, which took forever at my school, because they were … We only had a few of them.
Jason Sirotin: You get them the old fashion way …
Trey Gregory: You get them the old fashion way when you’re a student, and you find them online. Find now what software is a service that’s pretty much gone. It’s impossible. You can’t do it anymore.
Jason Sirotin: I’ve been using Creative Cloud now. I was on CS6, and I’ve been using Creative Cloud now for two weeks for Photoshop. I can’t stand it. I don’t like their Creative Cloud version. I do like the …
Trey Gregory: It’s got more features and …
Jason Sirotin: I don’t know, something about it.
Trey Gregory: They changed their design. Their design is [crosstalk 10:28]. Their user interface is a lot flatter now.
Jason Sirotin: Is it?
Trey Gregory: They did. They flatten their design for After Effects and Photoshop.
Brandon Peterson: It can’t be that that’s bothering.
Trey Gregory: I don’t know. It might be.
Jason Sirotin: You think? I don’t know what is bothering me about a …
Brandon Peterson: It’s not the functionality, right?
Jason Sirotin: I’m not able to move as quickly as I was. The only thing I do like is how the ruler tools like the hot pink, how well that works. I find that, where you have the [inaudible 00:10:53] and space between the different objects, that’s awesome. I mean that must be really awesome for you since you’re so bad at spacing things.
Trey Gregory: Look, I like to look at something because where the mathematical center of an asset isn’t necessarily where it looks. It’s in the center. I try to do it by eye.
Jason Sirotin: That makes no sense.
Trey Gregory: If you’ve got a logo that’s balanced, it’s not equally balance, [definitely 00:11:16] with the right side is heavier than what’s on the left side. It doesn’t look right if it’s dead center.
Jason Sirotin: You won this one.
Brandon Peterson: That’s true. I agree with that. You have to compensate for him, the gravity of the object, and the weight of it.
Trey Gregory: That’s right. It’s got weight on a certain side.
Jason Sirotin: With animation moving towards flat design, and Brandon you are a big proponent of flat design.
Brandon Peterson: I liked flat designs since before it was cool.
Jason Sirotin: You did like flat design before it was cool. What I want to know is, when these trends come down the pipeline, what’s next? How do we know what is going to be the next trend in video animation.
Brandon Peterson: I think next is industrial. It’s already there now.
Trey Gregory: Like grunge, molds, and …?
Brandon Peterson: No, it’s actually a blend of flat and Skeuomorphism. That’s really more what iOS 8.1 is, and also the new Android Lollipop is industrial.
Jason Sirotin: They’re calling it industrial?
Brandon Peterson: Yeah an industrial design, and it’s still used a lot of the [inaudible 00:12:13] design. They’ll use slight drop shadows. If you look at the new Gmail, all the new icons, if you look at … A lot of it is that diagonal shadow going across, but it’s not a soft shadow; it’s a hard shadow that’s going across. Check it out.
Trey Gregory: Something I’d like to talk about with flat design I think is that for the most part, our clients aren’t really feeling flat design. I’m pushing it because I like it. You think [they’re not 00:12:44]
Brandon Peterson: Clients don’t like it because they think it looks cheap. Oh, I could do that. It’s designed to do it well. It’s actually more difficult a lot of times than doing them.
Trey Gregory: It’s a lot of key frame manipulation, and your motion is a lot of what you’re bringing to the table.
Brandon Peterson: Just finding a color pallet that works, because the colors have to work well together. You can’t just rely on the shading and the lighting [crosstalk 00:13:09].
Trey Gregory: Just choose Adobe Color, man.
The Atlanta Animation scene.
Jason Sirotin: I’ve noticed with our video animation clients in Atlanta specifically that they’re really getting on board with flat design. When I went to the CDC with the flat design when we’re working with precision toxicology, everybody was really, really vibing on.
Brandon Peterson: It’s hit or miss. It depends on how hipped your client is I think. If they are up to date with things, then they will probably like it. If they’re living in the ’90s like some clients are, they’re going to go for the Skeuomorphic.
Trey Gregory: I’m thinking of two particular logo designs that I did recently, where my pitch is I had flat 2D designs and they … I always threw in an additional 90’s 3D video [crosstalk 00:13:55] …
Brandon Peterson: 3D with a lens player and the vignette and flickering.
Trey Gregory: They always go for the real 3D one. I would say it’s like one of those situations where maybe so critically critics graphic critics if there’s such a thing, they’re into flat design. It’s so hard design,, but that doesn’t necessarily mean …
Brandon Peterson: Design is so subjective. There are great looking 3D designs out there, and I think that the one … I know which one you’re talking about Trey, and I think it look good also, but some people would be like, “That’s so old school, I hate that. I don’t like it.”
Jason Sirotin: How does design affect animation? Design is one part, then you have to make it move, which is the animation part. How does going from Skeuomorphism to flat design to industrial, how does that affect your animation process?
Brandon Peterson: The movement is all the same unless you’re dealing with 3D where you can rotate the camera. It was flat. The camera has to basically just go left, right, up, down, in, out.
Trey Gregory: We can even play z-Space a little.
Brandon Peterson: You can’t rotate around an object.
Trey Gregory: Yeah, you can’t go around something.
Brandon Peterson: That effects, with flat design you’re not … You can’t do a lot of rotating because the effect will break, so just be like, Paper Mario. He turns to the side; he disappears.
Jason Sirotin: Why wouldn’t you be able to go into z-Space on a flat design?
Trey Gregory: You can. It doesn’t necessarily make it not flat.
Jason Sirotin: Brandon has argued this point with me multiple times.
Trey Gregory: You pointed out that tampon commercial that you said. You’re like, “This is wonderful flat design.” It has a big epic opening where it goes … it moves into z-Space towards all these women, who are staggered in z-Space. There is that plane that moves into the background, but you touted that it’s being very flat design. I agree with you. It looks like … It’s all icons and little Popsicle sticks essentially.
Brandon Peterson: There are no drop shadows or a vignette, vignetting.
Trey Gregory: There was a very solid color, a solid [crosstalk 00:15:42].
Brandon Peterson: There was not a vignette on them. [There was a solid color 00:15:41].
Trey Gregory: No, it was very, very subtle, but it was there. It was a vignette. Vignettes rule.
Brandon Peterson: I don’t like vignettes.
Trey Gregory: The fact that you think that vignettes make something flat or not, makes me question your skill as a designer.
Brandon Peterson: To me, a vignette is a negative attribute in a lens. You don’t want a lens to vignette. Why do you want your graphics to vignette?
Trey Gregory: Because it smooth’s everything out, and it makes it seem like you’re looking at something that was shot through a lens.
Brandon Peterson: Like crappy lens.
Trey Gregory: It doesn’t matter. People don’t think that. Nobody thinks that.
Brandon Peterson: It can look good. Have you been … What about a heavy vignette? Do you like a heavy vignette?
Trey Gregory: It depends on the project.
Is it a 3D animation or a 2D animation element?
Brandon Peterson: Anyway, z-Space it’s … You have to be careful with how you go through z-Space if you want to continue to look flat. It’s true. In that tampon commercial, they went through it, but the elements weren’t separated very far. I think it’s the difference between the separation and the elements. You don’t want to travel too far through z-Space, because then you’re getting into that awkward, “Is this 3D or 2D element?”
Trey Gregory: It would be industrial then at that point, or mixing the two.
Brandon Peterson: You got to pick a style and stick with it. Really, you can’t just switch it up all the time, I think. Otherwise, your video will start looking ‘90’s, and they used to do a different transition for between each scene. You got like the card wipe, and then you’ll do the radio wipe, and then you’ll do a starburst. You can’t be all over the place. You got to pick and choose.
Jason Sirotin: You don’t like starburst?
Trey Gregory: Yeah, what’s wrong with star wipes?
Brandon Peterson: They’re awesome.
What’s are the trends coming in animation?
Jason Sirotin: In terms of this next wave, is there a next wave of animation styles that you are seeing?
Brandon Peterson: It’s hard to know. It’s hard to predict the future. It’s hard to know what people’s tastes will be because it is also a subjective.
Trey Gregory: You’re seeing a lot more mixing of animation mediums. You’re starting to see mixes of practical animation with digital animation. I think that’s probably the direction that it will go. We’re doing a project where we’re using an artist who has created this Popsicle stick people that we’re going to use and actually act out and highlight and bring it to life with digital effects.
We did the same thing. You see these scribes outfit is everywhere.
Jason Sirotin: Right, which are the whiteboard videos.
(We make a ton of whiteboard videos in Atlanta.)
Trey Gregory: The whiteboard videos, and those are … That’s another example of mixing these artistic mediums with animations. You’ve got somebody drawing something, but you’ve also got an animator coming in and speeding it up, and timing it, and animating a little elements here and there, and adding little sparkles and this and that, and whatever. I think that we’ll see more of that. I think people respond well to that.
They like this … I don’t know. It’s all [sickle clean 00:18:21]. People like seeing something that they haven’t seen in awhile. Maybe stop motion animation, maybe that’s going to be a nice thing. On the new Star Wars movies, they’re using models and using digital effects with physical models for all their space battles, which is amazing.
That’s again another example of animation and graphics in the movie where they’re using a mix of practical and digital effects and making them work together.
Brandon Peterson: I think of design as … It’s just another way to get your message across. Especially when you look at the way videos evolve recently, with just the more insane odd ball it is, that’s becoming mainstream. They’re really odd. I’m trying to think. I mean that GE, I love that GE commercial with Jeff Goldblum.
That was totally odd ball. Some of that stuff is becoming a lot more mainstream, or like Hump Day, the camel running … walking through the office, “Hump Day.”
Trey Gregory: What does this have to do with animation?
Brandon Peterson: My point is, is that the message. It’s all about that getting the message across, so getting people’s attention. That kind of video was getting people’s attention, and it was getting the message across better. Flat design is getting the message across better because it’s like … It’s you stripped down all of the elements you don’t need, and then you’re just left with the basic.
This is the message, and it’s clearer to people. I think the future is whatever is the best way to get the message across and whether it’s a blend of the video plus the design, I think that’s what’s going to win out.
How is access to affordable software changing the animation landscape?
Jason Sirotin: As we are looking at the evolving world of animation and business, how is the access to software and more and more people knowing how to do it, how do you guys see that affecting the price, and what we charge as a business for those services?
Trey Gregory: I can speak to that. Anyone can learn how to key frame something. Anyone can learn how to move an object in After Effects, or Maya, or Cinema 4D. What a client pays for is they are paying for the designer’s taste and what they like. A lot of times, you could pay anyone to animate an infographic, but you pick a designer whose style you like. They bring their own personal style to every animation that they do, and that’s what people are paying for.
It’s not just a person who operates the software. It’s an artist who operates the software. You got to like that artist style.
Jason Sirotin: That’s a good point.
Brandon Peterson: There are more and more artists entering the market because the barriers to entry are smaller.
Jason Sirotin: Then what makes an artist better than the next?
Brandon Peterson: To answer your other question, I think the price will probably continue to go down as it becomes easier to do and as there are more artists on the market.
Trey Gregory: We’re in a unique position because it’s not just … I mean as with any art, it’s not just artistic merit; it’s also technical ability and technique. I think that just being a really good artist with a great vision, it doesn’t do you any good if you can’t. You don’t have the technique and the technical; know how to get your vision into a video or onto a [screen 00:21:44].
Jason Sirotin: It’s both. It’s a mixture of tastes and technique.
Trey Gregory: It’s definitely a mix of both. You got to have both, right, yes, taste and technique. Absolutely, that’s a good way to put it. If you don’t have good taste, and you don’t have good technique, or you only got one of the other, you’re in a bad position. You got to work …
Brandon Peterson: I think the 3rd element that’s crucial is communication. It used to be that you put a guy in just a brilliant software guy who can’t communicate with people. “Hey you’re good at the computer. Go sit in this broom closet, and I’ll communicate with the client.” I think designers nowadays need to be able to communicate with client, and understand their needs.
Otherwise, the client is not going to want to work with you. If you can’t meet deadlines, if you can’t … Clients often can’t tell you exactly what they want. You have to have this sixth sense to be able to read their mind and make decisions on their behalf, and present it to them, and hope that they’ll like it. That’s what makes a good designer, being able to do that.
Trey Gregory: We should go in a tangent about this. It is incredibly hard to communicate something visual, especially as an animator, as all of us. We’re all visual storytellers. We all know. We all know how to describe. We can describe something to each other, and we can all see what the other person is talking about.
We can ask the right questions to get clarification. Clients do not have that. They’re not equipped to turn words into pictures as readily as we are.
Brandon Peterson: They don’t do it every day. It’s not that they can’t. They probably could, but they don’t do it every day.
Trey Gregory: I mean we’re practiced at it. The part of our job is trying to communicate something that you see in words to someone. I think that that’s a huge challenge. Something we face a lot is when do we need to draw the line at. We need to board this one out. We can’t just write what we’re going to do for this client. We need to present them boards so that they can really see what we mean by this. They’re not getting it otherwise.
Animation and storyboarding. Why don’t clients want to pay for it?
Jason Sirotin: It used to be that animation companies would have to board out everything. Now, nobody wants to pay for boarding even though it’s the only way that they can see it come to life. Thankfully, I think the situation we’re in is we have enough of a portfolio, where people can go and view ton of different options and say, “I like what you guys did here. Try this.” I think the hard part for us is when we decide, “Hey we’re going to try something new.” We’re going to go down a new path, and you really have to get buying from the client.”
I think that that’s difficult, but I think earlier when we were talking about Brandon saying that the price is going to drop, I think when more people enter into a marketplace; it doesn’t necessarily mean that the price is going to drop. If the talent is not there, then you have an influx of people who are doing lot of bad work. I think that drives up the price.
Brandon Peterson: For the people who can do good work and who can communicate too.
Fuck you. Pay me!
Jason Sirotin: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of conversations with people about how … Why are prices the way that they are? Because we’re like an insurance policy that your project is going to turn out great; it all comes back to that … I don’t know if you ever saw the video that’s the guy from Mule who. The video is called “Fuck You, Pay Me”. It’s really about pay me because I do great work, and we’re going to turn around a great product.
Trey Gregory: On time?
Jason Sirotin: On time.
Trey Gregory: It was Mike Monteiro.
Jason Sirotin: Is that his name?
Trey Gregory: Yeah.
Brandon Peterson: I think on time is huge. There are so many designers, and whatever business here. What separates the person from the job is, “Can you get it done on time?”
Jason Sirotin: Right.
Brandon Peterson: That’s what we do. I can’t think of the last time we missed the deadline because we take it seriously. We’ll stay here all night if we have to. We’re not going to miss a deadline.
Jason Sirotin: You won’t find many animation companies, especially in Atlanta that follow that rule.
Brandon Peterson: They want to make an excuse. There are no excuses. If you say you’re going to do something, do it.
Trey Gregory: There’s a lot of Millennials out there.
Jason Sirotin: Says the Millennial.
Trey Gregory: It’s critical to build trust with client. This goes back to what we’re saying about boards too. When we have a preexisting relationship with the client, rarely do we need to board anything out for them anymore, because they trust us. They know what we want to do and what we’re trying to accomplish, and they let us go with it.
They don’t need to see it. They know we can do good work. You said something earlier that I think is worth talking about too. A lot of times when we send clients an example of something we want to do, that we haven’t necessarily done, a lot of times we end up sending them samples of things that we haven’t done being like, “Look! We found this. We think this is really cool.”
We’ll send clients style samples. We’ll send them one or two or three things that are in our warehouse. We have samples of stuff we’ve done, but then we’ll also include one other thing that we think looks really awesome. We like to try.
Jason Sirotin: That we would be able to do.
Trey Gregory: That we would be able to do because that’s … We’re passionate about doing this, so we want to try new stuff all the time. We get bored all the time. We’re sick of the scribe style videos. We do them all the time. Everybody does them all the time.
Brandon Peterson: Trey has a theory that that style died when Weird Al made his video.
Trey Gregory: As soon as Weird Al made that video, that lampoon, that corporate.
Jason Sirotin: I agree.
Trey Gregory: That’s it. It’s over. It’s [inaudible 00:26:43] lexicon. It is done. You need to move on and find something. What’s the next one that people are going to want to do all the time?
2D Animation and Motion Graphics.
Jason Sirotin: While we’re talking about the scribe style video, let’s talk about 2D animation for a second. For people who don’t know who might be looking into getting into animation, what is the difference between 2D animation and 3D animation?
Trey Gregory: You should watch the intro to South Park and compare it to the show South Park, because the new South Park intro is fully 3D.
Brandon Peterson: That’s cool.
Trey Gregory: The South Park show is 2D. They make it in a fancy 3D program, but it’s like … You imagine. 2D is like pictures on Popsicle sticks. That’s 2D, and you’re moving them around, and that you turn them on their side, and they’re the line segment. They turn into nothing. 3D if you have that same image, and you look around the side of it, you’ll see the side of it. Not a line segment, but it actually turns. If it’s a person, you see them in profile. That’s 3D. It exists in 3D.
Brandon Peterson: The technical definition is when you introduce the Z axis. 2D is X and Y Axis. 3D is X, Y, Z. If you have a camera, you can rotate around the object and see the object from 360 degrees.
Trey Gregory: X is left and right. Y is up and down. Z is back and forth.
Jason Sirotin: With 2D design, do you guys think that it’s something that … Will there ever not be a need for 2D design? Will we be moving into a new dimension or will 2D design always be part of what we do as an animation company?
Trey Gregory: It will always be a part. That’s like asking if watercolors will ever be something we never see anymore in paint.
Jason Sirotin: Watercolors are gross.
Trey Gregory: Ridiculous, but people are never going to stop using them.
Brandon Peterson: I think it was interesting. I almost thought that there wouldn’t be a resurgence of 2D design. Once Toy Story came out and that became the type of children’s animation movie, everybody started doing those. You don’t have any more Lion King movies anymore. Then they did Lilo & Stitch later on after that period.
When Toy Story came out with that, “Oh wow! This is going to be the end of 2D animation in the sense we know,” and it kind of was, but when I think flat design became popular again, there’s this resurgence of, “Let’s take it back to the basics, and let’s …”
Jason Sirotin: That and high-waisted pants back at the same time. Who would have thought? Lucky us.
Brandon Peterson: Maybe that’s why I don’t mind the high-waisted pants like you guys do.
Trey Gregory: You can open up any magazine and flip through the advertisements, and it will give you a really … Advertisements I think are really great litmus tests of what’s in right now, and if you flip through Entertainment Weekly, or Maxim or Cosmo or anything.
Jason Sirotin: What’s a magazine?
Trey Gregory: Magazines will tell you what’s in right now. That’s an oxymoron. In terms of just design, leave the animation out of it. Flip through a magazine and look at the logos of the major, major brands that are out there. You can get a real feel for what’s going on in design right now, and what’s popular.
3D Animation Clients in Atlanta.
Jason Sirotin: Let’s talk about 3D animation. 3D animation, there seems to be an increase in demand especially from our clients in the Atlanta area. What are people looking for in terms of 3D animation right now. Why is it so popular?
Brandon Peterson: I would say 3D animation is the next level of production value. If you can do it well, then if you can get people to think, “Holy cow! Your mascot looks … That duck looks like a real duck; I wouldn’t have known.” This 3D character moves realistically or fluidly. It doesn’t look cheap.
Then it’s like, “Wow your brand, it must be impressive. You guys do things well.” If you see the flip side which is bad 3D animation, it’s worse than anything. What’s the commercial that … It’s a car insurance commercial. The guy, the gentleman, “Go to the general and save some time,” and then the guy is super stiff. You’re like, “Oh men, they must have crappy car insurance, because their 3D animation is so bad.”
Jason Sirotin: Would you say that brands are judged based on the quality of their 3D animation?
Trey Gregory: Absolutely.
Brandon Peterson: I think so, definitely. Once you enter the 3D realm, you’re taking that risk. You either go all in, or don’t do it. Just stick with 2D.
Trey Gregory: Yes, stick with 2D and keep it simple. 3D is just … It’s a whole big bag of worms.
Brandon Peterson: If you go with it, you got to make sure you’re a good artist, and to pay the price because to get to that level … I mean you’re talking to render one frame of good CG animation with global illuminations, so it matches the scene. It can take 20 minutes or more per frame just to do a render, and then obviously you’re not just doing one render. You’re going to have different drafts. You’re really getting into a different ball park in terms of the amount of time that it takes.
Jason Sirotin: With 3D animation, there are a lot of other things that come into play. You’ve got global illumination. You’ve got rigging. Brandon, explain what rigging is for people who might not know.
Brandon Peterson: That’s when you have a wire frame of the character, like a skeletal structure basically, and you have to do all the proportions, and rig where the joints are going to be and where all the different moving points can be in a complex rig.
Trey Gregory: You got to set the dependencies. If the shoulder joint for example moves, you got to make sure that the elbow, the hands, the fingers all move too. There, each of those points of articulation is that’s the point that you can animate.
Jason Sirotin: It’s making a digital puppet.
Brandon Peterson: Exactly, it’s skeleton and there are … Especially if you have a moving mouth and moving eyes or just the complexity of the rig, that’s a huge job, to rig a whole another word.
Jason Sirotin: Then you have the lighting and then you have texturing. Talk about texturing. What can you do with texturing, and why is it so important?
Trey Gregory: There are people who specialized just in texturing or lighting scenes.
Brandon Peterson: Or just in rigging.
Trey Gregory: Just in character animation. I mean you can drill down and get really, really specific about what kind of animator you need. We’ve worked with people who only really focus on creating textures for 3D objects.
The lighting goes hand in hand with that because your textures are really dependent on how the light bounces off of them, how reflective they are, if they do … Do they make a really high … Is there a really shiny bright point? That is called specular light? Is it not? Is it soften or diffused?
Brandon Peterson: Or do they have tessellation, which is like the … It doesn’t actually have butt mapping.
Jason Sirotin: Butt mapping?
Brandon Peterson: Bump, sorry. Bump mapping, where it actually … It’s actually is a flat surface. It’s a flat texture but the way that the render tessellates it, it looks like it’s …
Jason Sirotin: Tessellates, tessellates?
Brandon Peterson: It’s like if you play video games.
Jason Sirotin: Can you use that in a sentence, please?
Brandon Peterson: If you play video games, and say you’re looking a stone wall, it looks like the stones have roundness to them, and the crevasses, they react to your perspective and the light. The light will bounce off in a certain way. That’s all an illusion actually. If you get right up against the wall, where it’s flat, you’ll see that those stones are not actually protruding. That saves polygons, and saves render time in the video or in a video game.
Jason Sirotin: I just looked up what tessellation means.
Brandon Peterson: What is it?
Jason Sirotin: A tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes called dials with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellations can be generalized to higher dimensions. Interesting.
Brandon Peterson: It’s all flat, but it does play … The light plays off as if it wasn’t flat. It’s an optical illusion. It’s a trick to save on render time, but still get realistic looking results.
How did you get into animation?
Jason Sirotin: That’s crazy. For maybe some of the younger people who are listening, how did you guys get into animation.
Brandon Peterson: I used to do flip books when I was a kid on paper. Just flipping through, and all of mine were … I would draw them in pencil, and then I would do the blood in red pastel. They’re all violent. It was a guy. One of the favorite ones I used to do is I just … because you want to keep the background simple, because you always draw the same background over and over.
It would just be a big longest bike, and then different people would land on this bike in sequence. They would land in different ways. Their body is looking toward in different ways, and their blood would spray out. That’s where my background is. It’s a very flat design.
Trey Gregory: Totally flat.
Jason Sirotin: My background is murdering people on paper basically? Don’t worry about it.
Trey Gregory: I first got into this. My parents gave me a video camera when I was young. I had a camera that they never used, and I would do stop motion Claymations. I call them Treymations.
Jason Sirotin: Because his name is Trey.
Trey Gregory: Me and a friend of mine, we did a whole series of animation. He’s actually a graphic designer now too, graphic designer director who works up in Philadelphia. He and I made a whole series of animation because …
Jason Sirotin: Who is better?
Brandon Peterson: Probably you, because you’re in Atlanta not Philadelphia.
Trey Gregory: I’ve been doing a lot more than he has recently. He’s a really talented guy though. He does really good … He actually turned me onto Adobe color which I didn’t know anything about. We made a whole series called “The Box”, where it was just a clay box, and all these different things would come out, and move ways.
A guy would come out and walk away, or like a snake would come out, and it’s just all the stuff comes out of the box, very rudimentary stuff.
Jason Sirotin: It would be on a tripod. You just hit record for one second and turn it off?
Trey Gregory: You could hear us talking in certain frames. This was on VHS. This camera … I mean, all right, this was a camera that had a separate … Basically you wore a VCR on a strap over your shoulder. There was a cord that went from that VCR up into the camera, and then you held the camera, and it was really just the chip and a lens and the handle.
That was on a tripod, and we would just “click, click” really quick and that’s how I got into animation.
Brandon Peterson: I did a claymation where it was two guys fighting, and the guy ripped off the other guy’s head. Mine was always people and violence, stuff like that.
Jason Sirotin: What is it with boys and violence?
Trey Gregory: I don’t know. It’s just so entertaining. My son is currently hitting himself, and apparently this is very normal. He hits himself hard in the face with toy, with everything. He doesn’t cry or get upset.
Jason Sirotin: Some people get paid to do that.
Trey Gregory: Really? How much?
Jason Sirotin: I don’t know.
Trey Gregory: Could I get paid for him to do that? I mean because I’m his agent.
How to Find a Great Animation Company.
Jason Sirotin: You’re his agent. Last thing, what do you think it takes to be a great animation company? Everybody is trying to start little companies.
Trey Gregory: Taste, technique, and communication. We’ll stick with what we said earlier. I think that’s killer. It’s taste, technique, and communication, and it’s like a three-way. They all got to work together.
Jason Sirotin: I want to thank you guys for …
Brandon Peterson: One thing, I would like to add a team for that too.
Jason Sirotin: No, you can’t add.
Brandon Peterson: It’s taste, technique, team, and communication.
Jason Sirotin: Taste, technique, team, communication, that’s what makes a great animation company.
Brandon Peterson: It takes a team. You can’t do this stuff alone.
Trey Gregory: I like the team.
Jason Sirotin: You should make a book.
Brandon Peterson: I know. The last two, is there a synonym for communication that starts with T?
Jason Sirotin: Talking.
Jason, Brandon, trey: Talking there we go, taste, technique, team, and talking. Talking team.
Jason Sirotin: All right, if anybody is looking for a great team, with great taste, that’s good at talking and really great with technique …
Trey Gregory: We talk good.
Jason Sirotin: … contact ECG Productions. Trey Gregory, Brandon Peterson, thank you for your time today. Make sure you keep up with us at www.ecgprod.com. You could check out our blog at www.ecgprod.com/blog. This has been the Naked Unicorn podcast. I’m Jason Sirotin. We’ll see you next time.