EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Morgan Williams: Just about everybody in the Animation and Motion Graphics Industry is aware of the terrific work done at Buck. And we were lucky enough to get to chat with two of Buck's artists, [00:00:30] Chad Colby and Justin Lawes. We were particularly interested in talking to them because they both come from very different backgrounds in terms of their relationships to character animation. We also wanted to speak to them because of their association with Buck, which does a lot of beautiful and brilliant character animation as part of the motion design and motion graphics [00:01:00] work that the studio does. So Chad and Justin were a great opportunity to talk about a variety of issues in and around the subject of character animation. We got some absolutely terrific insights from these two guys and it was fun hearing their kind of different points of view and how they and the other artists at the studio work together. So enjoy this really fun conversation with Buck's Chad Colby [00:01:30] and Justin Lawes. Okay, Chad Colby and Justin Lawes, thanks so much for talking to us today. We really appreciate it. Justin Lawes: Of course. Chad Colby: No problem, thank you for havin' us. Morgan Williams: All right, cool, well let's kinda start right at the beginning. We'll start with you Chad. How did you get into character animation? What was kind of your hook into doing character work? Chad Colby: Well, I, like growing up, there was a patented or just the classic. Always loved Looney Tunes. Morgan Williams: Sure. Chad Colby: But not as a ... Justin Lawes: Yes. Chad Colby: [00:02:00] All types of animation and comics and such. Yeah, after, just always loving that and drawing them over and over again, I went to Edinboro University. It's in Pennsylvania ... Morgan Williams: Oh wow. Chad Colby: Yeah, and they had ... in Pennsylvania, not in ... Morgan Williams: Oh not in Scotland? [crosstalk 00:02:19] I started to hear bagpipes. [crosstalk 00:02:21] Chad Colby: Yeah, then after that, I just went there and I [00:02:30] moved to ... after graduating there they just had hand-drawn and stop motion program. Morgan Williams: Okay, cool. Chad Colby: So, I did that, yeah, and then moved to New York City and then started working in motion graphics. Morgan Williams: Oh, oh. Interesting. Chad Colby: Yeah. Morgan Williams: So, you sort of originally started doing more classical, but then ... Chad Colby: Yeah. Morgan Williams: ... plunked yourself into motion graphics. That's an interesting path. Chad Colby: It was interesting, yeah. I ended up coming here ... I knew I wanted to move to New York. [00:03:00] Since I got here, I found motion graphics and then started working in that for a bit. Then later on, decided, "You know what, I kinda like character animation." Morgan Williams: Oh-oh. Chad Colby: So then I went back to ... I did some online schools. Morgan Williams: Oh, cool. Chad Colby: Yeah, and then did that and started working ... We had a little friend pop in and say hello. Yeah, [00:03:30] once I finished the online schools, I was full-time at Buck during ... Am I going on too much about this? Morgan Williams: Oh no, no, this is what we're here for. Chad Colby: Okay. I was full-time at Buck then and started doing more character jobs at Buck. Morgan Williams: Okay. Chad Colby: And ... Yeah. Morgan Williams: Oh, that's great. Was that Animation Mentor, do you mind naming the school? Chad Colby: Yeah, it was Animation Mentor, I did the whole [00:04:00] school. Morgan Williams: Yeah, right. Chad Colby: And afterwards I went back and I just ... I took a refresher course at AnimSchool. Morgan Williams: Okay. Chad Colby: Kind of like, I don't know. I think it's kinda nice having online courses, I believe, 'cause you can go and get a good critique by a good person that's in the industry. Morgan Williams: Sure, yeah. Chad Colby: Keep fresh. I feel like it's good to keep stretching yourself and keep trying. Morgan Williams: Yeah, well, that's why we're doing what we're doing, for sure. So, yeah. Agreed. [00:04:30] Yeah. When you went to Animation Mentor, did your classical background doing hand-drawn and stop motion, did that help you, do you think? Did it give you a little bit of a leg up, do you think? Chad Colby: You know, it's interesting. I've thought about this. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: What I didn't know ... I didn't prepare well enough, I think, for Animation Mentor. I should learn a little more Maya. Just to have been a little more proficient with Maya. When I went into it, I feel like the [00:05:00] people that had a good background at Maya, at first they were excelling, because I feel like a lot of people were still getting comfortable with the program. Morgan Williams: Sure. Chad Colby: Then at the end of the course, I feel like the people with the more traditional background could pose the characters better, have better understanding of gesture and acting and timing. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Stuff like that. So then I felt like at the end, it all kind of like ... Everybody kinda caught up. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, that's cool. That's awesome. So, you were able to just kinda [00:05:30] transition right back to Buck but now bring this new tool set to what they were doing, right? Chad Colby: Yeah, I did it during ... I did the classes when I was full-time, so there was a lot of ... That time was pretty rough. It was like a lot of late nights, like, going to work, coming home and animating. Morgan Williams: Wow. Chad Colby: ... Til two or four in the morning and getting up and doing it all over again. Morgan Williams: Crazy. Chad Colby: I put on some pounds. I spend a lot of time sitting down at [00:06:00] the computer. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's great. Well, Justin, how about you? How did you end up at Buck? What's your background? Justin Lawes: Yeah so, I think I have more of a classic motion designer story 'cause I talked to a lot of people and their stories and basically, like ... Ever since I was a kid I've been making videos. In middle school, I'd grab a video camera and was shooting and editing with friends. [00:06:30] I talked to a lot of other people in the industry and it seems like half the people have made skate videos. They're doing skate videos and then they wanted to put cool titles on them so they started slowly discovering After Effects. But that was pretty similar for me. I was shooting and editing up until senior year of high school. Then I wanted to animate some stuff, so I was messing around in Flash. But I didn't really know what Flash was, so I was motion tweening [00:07:00] in there and all that stuff. Morgan Williams: Okay. Justin Lawes: Then, basically, literally just one day my friend was like, "Hey you should check out this After Effects thing. I've been playing around with it." Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: He was always making really cool light saber videos. He made some sweet lightning in After Effects. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: So I pulled that up and then it kinda just spiraled from there. [00:07:30] I did the classic, like, doing all the Andrew Kramer tutorials. Everybody was doing those at the time. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Justin Lawes: Yeah. So, I did a bunch of that for my senior year project. Chad Colby: Were you in high school then? Or was this in ... Justin Lawes: This was in high school. Morgan Williams: In high school. What a go-getter, right? Wow, that's amazing. Justin Lawes: In high school, I did one of these like kinetic typography things that were really popular then. Morgan Williams: Sure. Chad Colby: I didn't even [00:08:00] know what kinetic was when I was in high school. Justin Lawes: So I did one of these and it turned out kinda cool. I got "Best in Show" at the art show and it was whatever ... But I didn't finish by the end of the year, but I liked animating so much that once I graduated I kept animating through the summer 'cause I wanted to finish that piece. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Justin Lawes: Basically, my friend who was two years older, Ian Sigmon. Actually, you've probably seen his name around. [00:08:30] He had already been freelancing a little bit, he had more experience. He gave just that one video to this little studio. Grew up in Michigan, so it's a little outside of Detroit. He gave this animation to them. They thought it was cool, so they brought me in for an internship. I was going to school at the time, community college, but that's as far as I got. [00:09:00] So basically, I did one semester of college and in the middle of that I got an internship at a little studio doing pretty much all After Effects stuff. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: ... Which is crazy 'cause I was really young. I was animating stuff for like the Detroit Auto Show, for like these massive screens and it was pretty horrifying. At least in the area, there really weren't very [00:09:30] many animators so it kinda worked out for me. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Justin Lawes: So yeah, from there I just kinda worked my way up through internships and small jobs. After probably three years working in Michigan, I knew I may have to move to New York too. Looking at motionography you check the job posting and it's like Chicago, New York, New York, New York, New York. So I thought, that's probably where I should go then. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Cool. Justin Lawes: So [00:10:00] yeah, I just winged it and I literally just looked at all the top studios and the places that I wanted to work and just applied for internships or if they didn't offer one I just applied for a job. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: So I sent five or six emails at the time. Not that many. I didn't hear much at the time and then within one week, I had a friend that was working at Vimeo. He got me a phone interview with them, so I [00:10:30] thought I might end up working for Vimeo just being their video guy. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: Three or four days later, Buck emailed me. Five or six months later that I emailed them. Morgan Williams: Wow. Justin Lawes: And that was it. So basically, they offered me an internship. I moved out here pretty quick. I took that through the six-month internship then got hired. I've been at Buck the whole time that I've been in New York. Morgan Williams: Oh, that's cool. That's [00:11:00] awesome. Well, great place to land. That's an awesome place to end up. Holy crap. So, you never actually studied character. You kinda taught yourself MoGraph stuff. How did you kinda start getting involved in character work there at Buck? Justin Lawes: Well, I mean ... Morgan Williams: Even just a little. Justin Lawes: Yeah, yeah, I mean there's always character stuff going on at Buck. A lot of the people here are generalists [00:11:30] in a sense that not many people specialize in one thing. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: You kinda have to be able to jump around if you need to. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: There's always going to be a job where we don't have the resources to hire a bunch of character animators. That's half of it, just needing to pick it up. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: It's always just like, "Do you think you can do this?" "Yeah I'll figure it out." Then you go figure it out. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Well that's great. Justin Lawes: That's how it works. Morgan Williams: Well, and you've got character animators [00:12:00] around you so I imagine that helps too? Justin Lawes: Oh, yeah. Totally. Especially for a reference you can call when you get in there. That kinda stuff, yeah. Morgan Williams: Yeah, see. You get your own little tutors right around you there, which has gotta be pretty nice. Justin Lawes: Yeah, getting feedback from them is huge. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like your other animation work has improved or changed from learning character? Has it taught you more than you knew before? Has it been broadening, that kind of thing? Justin Lawes: Yeah, [00:12:30] totally. There's a lot of similarities but there's also a ton of differences where. I think one of the main ones is that I'm so used to animating very graphic design-based, just making squares and simple compositions. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: Really smooth and that kind of stuff, whereas character animation is a little more involved in [00:13:00] a sense that, I feel there's actual steps. There's a process you kind of need to know. It's harder to just figure it out. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm, right. Justin Lawes: I did a lot of it without learning all the basics. I was able to figure it out a little bit. But once I started reading Animator Survival Kit and all that kind of stuff, or taking tutorials online. That's when it's like, oh, there's a process to this. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: And that makes it a lot [00:13:30] easier. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah. Chad Colby: I think too, it's like when you're putting limitations on your animations where okay, it needs to be based on reality. Okay, now physics are involved. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Now a human skeleton's involved. Like, this is how that happens. I think that's when we're all like, "Okay, now I have to make it look like something." Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: And there's the fact that I can just make this thing look really cool. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Chad Colby: But when it comes down to it, it's still all the same principle so the principles are timing [00:14:00] and spacing ... Morgan Williams: Yep. Chad Colby: They go back and forth between whatever type of animation you're doing. Morgan Williams: Yeah, its true isn't it? It's giving life to something whether it's a logo or a letter form, or a character, right? It's all the same purpose in the end, right? Chad Colby: Yeah, totally. And, too, when ... Well, Justin wouldn't know this because he didn't go to school ... Going to college classes, like you're doing this school life and you're just all like, "Why do I have to make it look like this? [00:14:30] Why do I have to make it look like that? I just want to make my own thing." But just the exercise of doing it and learning. And learning how to render something, how to draw something. That's where I feel like if you do the character animation you can take this stuff and apply it to your different aspects. It's not just things that are in your head. You're tying to make it resemble something. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Justin Lawes: And I actually did forget to mention that maybe a year-and-a-half, two years ago, I took a .... With a friend, I took a basic drawing for animation class. Morgan Williams: Oh, great. Justin Lawes: At Pratt. Morgan Williams: [00:15:00] Sure. Justin Lawes: That was mainly 'cause I had like no background in drawing. I was always just playing with computers and doing graphic design and all that kind of stuff. It really started to catch up to me. Some of the guys at Buck here are just incredible illustrators so you always feel really bad at drawing [crosstalk 00:15:20]. So yeah, I took that class and it was basic drawing but it was also like [00:15:30] learning how to draw for animation. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: Very gestural and learning poses and all that kind of stuff. That taught me a lot about ... I feel like since I was always so graphic design-based, a lot of my attempts at illustration were always very static characters. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: Whereas, in animation, you're doing these poses of actions. That's something I never really ... It never really [00:16:00] occurred to me. Morgan Williams: Yeah, it's a very different way of thinking in a lot of ways. Fundamentals are the same, but there are some real differences in how you gotta approach that. So, Buck is kind of known partly for the character animation that's done there. How much of the day-to-day work there is character? Justin Lawes: I feel there's at least a couple of jobs always going on there ... Chad Colby: Yeah. Justin Lawes: ... That involve characters. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Justin Lawes: [00:16:30] But I feel like there are a couple going on but again, like my downtime, I'm doing something else. Morgan Williams: Yeah, sure. Justin Lawes: Which for me is actually kind of fun. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Justin Lawes: Mix it up and being able to go between the two. Morgan Williams: Right, sure. Justin Lawes: Like we were talking earlier. You can experiment in more MoGraphs, then go and try to apply that timing and whatnot and appeal [00:17:00] to the character. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Chad Colby: Yeah. Morgan Williams: That's one of the really nice things about the MoGraph world is it's so diverse. It's great to have people with different backgrounds, mixing and working together. We were talking about that with Enrique, too. He's got that same situation at Giant Ant where he's got all these different artists and everybody's got different strengths and backgrounds. It really makes the work fun and everybody gets to learn from everybody else, which is [00:17:30] really cool. Chad Colby: I think that's like ... Going back to what Justin was saying, like talking about how he applies it to his work, I think like ... I mean, I'm not a designer, but I feel like your job as a designer is to solve a problem. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: Right? Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: And it's kind of like a lot of times as a MoGraph designer, a motion graphics artist, your problem involves a character. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: At what level you're at, you have to be able to represent this character and represent him moving, and represent believability. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Some sort of aspect. [00:18:00] You have to know enough in order to get it to pass or make it believable or connection. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Do you agree that learning some character, as you're just saying, is a pretty good idea for any motion designer, because it's a problem you're gonna have to solve? Do you think it also just strengthens them overall and makes them better at all of their animation work? Justin Lawes: I feel like it's definitely [00:18:30] something that you should learn the basics of. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: From there, it's up to you on how deep you want to go into it. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: 'Cause it never ends, its like ... Morgan Williams: That's true. Justin Lawes: Especially in the industry lately, there's a lot of clients wanting characters or I guess it's just the way people are designing lately. It's very popular right now especially. So you're gonna have to deal with it one way or another. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: The next thing, it [00:19:00] is, like you're saying, amazing how the industry cycles. Like right now it's character. Six months, we could be having this conversation about stop motion. Morgan Williams: Yep, yep. Chad Colby: The thing is, six months from then, it's back to character. You're like, "Hey! That's [inaudible 00:19:13] cool right now." Morgan Williams: Yep. So true, so very true. Great. Well, Chad, let's dig in a little bit to some of the deeper character stuff here. [00:19:30] How do you approach when you're animating a character? How do you approach creating that performance? Chad Colby: Well, I think it depends on first, what type of thing you're working on. How far to push it, knowing the audience. Just doing ... At Buck say, working on a fruit snack spot, which is super cartoony, Looney Tunes style. Then going and working on a pharmaceutical [00:20:00] commercial, or an investment banking thing where you just have to have some generic person slowly move. [crosstalk 00:20:08] Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: So first, it's figuring out what is the audience. Then, diving more into that. What is the character like? You can go as far as, on some of the other stuff that I worked on, writing a story. Knowing the story [00:20:30] of that character, where he's at, what he's doing. Even when you're assigned a shot, if you're working on a spot or working on a film or working on something. Knowing what was happening in the scene before, and the shot before, and the shot after where he's going emotionally and emotion-wise. A lot of it too is, if the story people or the story board artists or the designers, they're figuring out the beats of the spot, or the beats of the film; then [00:21:00] it's you trying to figure out how to hit those beats. How to sell it and how to make it believable and connecting. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: And entertaining. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. So, maybe we can break that down a little. Let's talk about the believable thing. How do you get believability? Chad Colby: It can go a couple ways. Like one, believability is in saying, you want to make this person look like he could actually be there. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Or, we were just watching a [00:21:30] spot that we did. I don't remember the name of it. I don't know if we're allowed to name it. But it's something like a person on the moon. Believability that way. Okay, this person's running on the moon. How would it, physicality-wise, how would running be on the moon? Another way about believability would be emotion-wise. How do you ... Okay, this person that I'm supposed to be connecting to and realize that they're happy or they're sad, or they're something. How [00:22:00] do I connect to them emotionally? Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Those are the two different types of believability. I guess physicality and emotional. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. And when you're thinking about that emotional believability, do you think about it like an actor? Do you study acting? How do you kind of approach that? Chad Colby: Technically, you're supposed to. I know some people get really into that. There's even an online class with Dustin Hoffman. You could download [00:22:30] his videos and he'll talk about it and stuff like that. I think too, a lot of times as an animator, I found myself ... I don't know if I should be repeating this because I should be like, "Oh yeah, I totally study acting, I totally do this, I totally do that." But I think a lot of times it's like you just walking through the actions and seeing what you write. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: 'Cause a lot of times, you're not gonna get the shot [00:23:00] in the future film where it's all peaking at the climax and you need so sell this big emotional part. So when you're doing this, it's like how do I do that? What are the little nuances and things? What makes me special, the way that I pick up this glass? Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: What makes me special the way I do this? Or, if I'm this person, if I'm sad, that's I guess how I look at it. Like okay, the character's supposed to be sad. If I'm sad, and I'm going in and doing this, how do I do that? Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Kind of just [00:23:30] like walk through it. You put yourself ... It's almost like you're acting by yourself, acting through yourself. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Chad Colby: If you read any animation book or go to animation blogs, all the other people are going to be like "No, no, you really need to study acting to do that," which I think is important. You should be doing it. But, especially when it comes to commercial work or more MoGraph, it's altered, not so much like feature film. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: I think it's just finding what you do that's important. Morgan Williams: Sure, [00:24:00] and you can study acting by just watching some good Al Pacino movies and stuff, right? Chad Colby: Exactly, exactly. Those are those other things. I think it is important though to reference that, watch that. Watch the eye movement. [crosstalk 00:24:15] Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: I like seeing what people do with their eyes and things like that. Morgan Williams: Oh yeah. Justin Lawes: Yeah, the subtleties are like really huge in the emotion of character animators 'cause it's really easy to just be like, "Oh, I just have to go from this pose to this [00:24:30] pose." And you can just animate those key frames. But if there's no real performance, it's like a boring actor, who's just reading the lines. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: It's a really big deal. It makes such a difference. Chad Colby: I think, too, what Justin's saying, on top of that, you're also an animator. This is where, for me coming in as a motion graphics artist, also being a character animator, finding a way that they'll move. So, if you have like Justin's [00:25:00] saying, instead of going from A to B ... So, this character goes from A to B, but if he's nervous about ... Like if he's sitting at his seat and he's grabbing a glass and he's really tired or he's really something like, or kind of defeated, he would just drag his hand up. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: You decide. You make that conscious effort through design. Okay, he's leading with the hand and the rest of the body's being dragged by that hand. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Or something like that. It's finding that and designing. Actually I was reading [00:25:30] something recently about character animations, designing the movement. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: Picking those arcs. Designing those arcs. Figuring out how they flow and how they move. What moves first and what moves last with the body. Morgan Williams: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Chad Colby: That's what'll sell the emotion and sell the believability. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Right. Joey Korenman: Hey, Chad. I have a question. Like, it's a little more technical I think, but it's kind of on the same note of figuring out how a character would move. I'm looking at these fruit [00:26:00] snacky commercials that I know you were the lead animator on. Were you the lead animator on all of them, or just a few of them? Chad Colby: Just a few of them. I think I animated on just about all of them. Joey Korenman: I remember when they came out. They were some of my favorite things Buck has ever done because they're so cartoony. I'm going frame-by-frame through ... There's one called "Airport" where you got this like ... The TSA guy like grabbing and basically making the little guy puke and do his ... It's really, in a weird [00:26:30] way, it's pretty dark. But there's so many movements that are like two frames. Chad Colby: Yeah. Joey Korenman: One frame. You go from extreme pose to extreme pose with one frame, right? There's no interpellation happening at all. To me, that is the biggest difference between what I typically do, what Justin probably typically does, and what a character animator has to think about, going from these extremes. When you were working on those spots, does that sort of style going from one [00:27:00] frame here and then like a two-frame transition to the complete opposite body shape, is that something you learned? Or do you have to experiment and figure that out with each new character that you work with? Chad Colby: I think that style of animation can be applied to anything. I think it's just choosing that, being established by the leads or by the animation director or director on the spot. Really snappy. [00:27:30] 'Cause you can figure that out. You can apply that anywhere. You're making that conscious choice that I want it to be quick and snappy and fun. I think then there are some spots that are, through doing that exercise of being like, "Okay, this is gonna be short, quick, and snappy." You have to study that and figure out how to do it. I know one part where he goes to grab, the TSA agent goes to grab [00:28:00] Larry, the little gusher. I have him snap up to anticipate the movement so he goes, "Wah!" Throws his hand up in the air and then goes down and grab him. Like those were basically like one pose, two pose. So when he hits that one pose, it was too jarring. So I stretched the hand and dragged the hand just so it kind of leads your eye, so you see it. Then, okay, move this hand up in the air to anticipate. But it's so broad, once you hit that pose [00:28:30] then the hand settles. So your eye goes to the hand. You're like, okay. His hand is moving. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: And then it goes down and grabs him. Joey Korenman: Yeah, it's amazing 'cause I'm looking at that frame right now. That frame out of context makes no sense. It's so strange looking. Chad Colby: And there's not a [inaudible 00:28:46]. Joey Korenman: Yeah, and this is what's so interesting to me about character animation is that frame is ... If you didn't have the stretch on his arm in that frame, that move doesn't work as well. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Joey Korenman: I'm wondering, 'cuz Justin you're exposed [00:29:00] to this sort of stuff all day being around character animators. Have you ever ... I mean 'cause to do extreme stuff like that, that only lasts for one frame. It's not something that I think most motion graphics, just typical motion graphics artists do. I think it's mostly, here's a key frame, twelve frames later is the next one. Let me grab the speed graph and do something with it. But have you found any of that trickling over into your non-character work? Justin Lawes: [00:29:30] Part of what Chad's talking about is literally just leading your eye in the right place, which is something you should absolutely, always be thinking about. It's the same thing with motion graphics. If you have a circle in the bottom left corner, you can't just like snap it to the top right without some way of leading your eye out there. You always got to be paying attention to what the focus should be on the frame. It's usually one [00:30:00] thing, and then there's some secondary elements that are kind of supporting it. But like Chad was saying, if that frame wasn't there, it wouldn't lead your eye quite nearly as easy. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: I feel like Justin is saying, it is about leading the eye. It is about doing that. And I think it is ... I think that concept though, of what you're talking about, like the snappier timing and the snappier stuff, which has been established like in old-school [00:30:30] cartoons, for example. Morgan Williams: Yeah, that's a ... Chad Colby: I feel like that type of stuff could be applied more to motion graphics, like more interesting timing. But the thing is, a lot of the problems that motion graphics are supposed to solve, are more exercises dealing with where it doesn't call for that snappy timing. It doesn't call for that. I know you and Saunder and whatnot have done a lot of those things where it is kind of more fun, upbeat, snappier, [00:31:00] geometry movement and things like that. I feel like there are opportunities, though, in motion graphics to add more texture to the timing rather than just slow eases and eases outs, things like that. Justin Lawes: That's one thing that separates the good animators a lot. Chad Colby: Exactly. Justin Lawes: Like you guys interviewed Jorge. He's kind of figured that out early on. That's why it just sets his stuff apart so much. And like Phil Borst, the same way, and Saunder. [00:31:30] They're not just making it smooth, which is what I fall into a lot 'cause I like things just really buttery smooth. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Joey Korenman: Right. Justin Lawes: But sometimes that can take the life out of it. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, that snappy technique is classic Warner Bros. stuff. The Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones love to do that thing of snapping to a pose over one or two frames with just that tiny little bit of overlap [00:32:00] and settle on one little part to keep your eye moving forward. It's really a cool technique. It's fun. Chad Colby: They did that 'cause they didn't have any time [crosstalk 00:32:12]. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: They couldn't compete with Disney doing the full animation. So they sat around and they were like, "Okay, we're gonna make this good. We're gonna figure out what we have to do to make this good. Like put our heart and soul into it." And they figured out where to spend the money. Morgan Williams: Right, and it [00:32:30] started to really add ... What is great is that limitation, they turned it to an advantage and able to really make those. The humor came out of that hilarious snap pose, snap pose, snap pose. It's definitely something that set their work apart, I think. It was fun to see Disney almost copy them years and years later with the Emperor Got His Groove Back and then BOOM!, suddenly there's Chuck Jones' [00:33:00] Street Tweens. And I'm like, "Hey! Chuck Jones, there he is!" at Disney, turned in his grave probably. But super cool, that's awesome. So, I think kind of following up on this, let's talk some more about kind of nerdy wonky stuff here. When you're starting, let's maybe start with Chad ... When you're starting a piece of character animation, like say you're given a scene or a shot [00:33:30] and you've got characters got to do XYZ, what's the first thing that you do? Do you do research? Do you sketch it out? Do you act it out? What do you do when your in it? And I get that it depends, but maybe just give some general thoughts about that. Chad Colby: My first thing ... I'll look at what was done before and after or see if anything was done. Like say fruit snacks were on peanuts or like any other [00:34:00] stuff, you'd be like, okay, what was in the shot before or the shot after? I kind of like get a feel. Then I'll do a couple thumbnails and just kind of brainstorm. Then just show it to everybody. What do you think of this? What do you think of this? Does this read, does this read, does this read? And then after that be like, okay. You're going through that library in your head about , where have I seen this? Somebody had ... So one thing I've been really thinking about lately is, [00:34:30] somebody has done this better than me before, and somebody has a better idea than me now. It's how you find both of those, as soon as possible, is the most important thing. Morgan Williams: Wow, that's like a t-shirt right there, I think. Joey Korenman: Get that tattooed on my stomach. Morgan Williams: Yeah, no kidding. That's brilliant. Chad Colby: That's the thing that really is ... That's one thing that I've been having a hard time with, especially when you get stumped too. You just keep it so close to your [00:35:00] chest. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Chad Colby: You're like, no, no, no! I can't. I gotta get it done, I gotta get it done. I think it's just getting it out there and talking to people about it and showing it. The other thing is, you can take something and you can polish it so much. I bet you've heard that before, "Oh, you don't polish fur. Oh, that idea isn't worth polishing." Even if you run out of time, a better idea that isn't executed as cleanly as a bad idea, is still a better idea. So, yeah, [00:35:30] that's kind of where my head is. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. And it was interesting, I just wanted to follow up, you were using the word "read," you know, showing people your thumbnails. "Does this read?" I thought that was kind of interesting because we're going to be talking to the students a lot about communicating through poses, which is kind of a new idea if you haven't really worked with character. So is that partly what you're looking for when you're showing them those thumbnails? Chad Colby: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 'Cause a lot of times [00:36:00] in commercial work and feature work, you have to go from A to B. You have to be like, in order to progress this story, this character is doing this. This character is feeling this at this point and ending this at this point. And does that happen? Is that happening? And in your thumbnails or whatnot, is the action reading, is the emotion reading, are the beats reading? To [00:36:30] go even, if you're super studying it and getting really into it, every single shot, doesn't matter, anything, you can look at it. You can look at any commercial, character commercial, any character film, any movie. Every single scene has a goal, a conflict and a resolution. Each character has that no matter what you're thinking when you're looking at it. So you can break it down. A lot of times they tell you to break it down that far. [00:37:00] But you know, if you got a 26-frame shot, and you're just all like, this guy needs to raise the hand out and do that, I'm not thinking about the goal, conflict and resolution. Move this guys arm across the screen, so I can move on. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: It's like that. Joey Korenman: Well, I have a question, Chad, sort of on the idea of getting the pose right. One of the things in my limited character animation experience that I always fight with, and I'm sure Justin, you probably agree is, [00:37:30] you're trying to get a pose, but you're fighting the rig a little bit. So this brings up the question of how important is the rig to what you do? Why don't we use the fruit snacky stuff as an example, 'cause I'm assuming those rigs were pretty elaborate. What do you look for in a rig and if you have a bad rig, does that make your work not as good? Can you talk about that a little bit? Chad Colby: Yeah. A good rig, you can work quickly in. A good [00:38:00] rig costs money. Joey Korenman: That's another t-shirt right there. Chad Colby: So it's like what I find is if I have a bad rig, I want to be able to have full control of the character. Be able to pose it. It's almost like you're sculpting the character. On the fruit snacks, on Peanuts, on other things, you're literally almost sculpting that character to hit those poses. If you don't have [00:38:30] the money to get a really, really good one, then you better just have one that you have full control over and you can get what you want. And another thing is that even if that's not the case, you can still just pick your battles. Just like Warner Brother's guys do. Just like how you do when you get put on a spot, when you get put on a BP spot, and you need to animate this character going up the stairs and doing this stuff. You're fine. You just pick your battles and you go [00:39:00] through it. I mean you need a good rig. You need a rig that makes the character look like it can walk at least. You know what I mean? It bend in the right places. You at least did that. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: I think the importance of that and like you said, working quickly is really a big part of it. If you're just struggling to move things around the whole time, then you're not gonna be able to put the energy into it. As an artist, your energy is flowing [00:39:30] through your work. That's how it's supposed to be. It's like how painters get into what they're doing and make beautiful paintings. I've actually learned a lot from Saunder about that too. I don't know if you guys talked to him about him building his own After Effects rigs and that kind of stuff. I do a lot of that now. In After Effects I'm building my own tools whether it's for a character or just a certain way I want these shapes to move around. So, if I have a move in mind, and [00:40:00] it's gonna be way too hard to animate everything individually, then I'll build a simple little tool that'll allow me to animate it a lot easier. It's the same exact thing as building a character rig. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm, yeah. Chad Colby: I'm so jealous of those guys and their ability to do that. I'll come over by Justin's computer and I'll be like, wait a minute, how'd you do that? What is that little slider you got there? He's like, "Oh, I just made it." Yeah. Joey Korenman: Well, it's funny 'cause I talked to Saunder about this and one of the things we [00:40:30] both agreed on was that sometimes doing that is almost like a way of distracting yourself from the creative challenge that sits in front of you. If you can make a little rig and it works, then you win. Whereas, when ... There's not always like a situation where you know you just won, when you're animating something, yeah. And I talked about this with you too, Morgan, that animation, especially character animation, it's such a technical thing. There's obviously a lot of art involved. But [00:41:00] you're talking about software and key frames and animation curves and all of this technical stuff. Morgan Williams: Like physics. Physics and physiology. Joey Korenman: Yeah, yeah. It's like science and computery stuff you need to know. Morgan Williams: ... And anatomy. Joey Korenman: So I'm curious, and I'll throw this out to both of you guys, Chad and Justin. Do you feel that ever goes away and you're just able to just make the thing move the way you want? Or are you always kind of fighting the complexity of the process that we're doing? Justin Lawes: [00:41:30] I actually think about that a lot because of that problem. Since it is such a technical craft, that's probably why I like it is 'cause I'm like pretty middle-brained. I'll be coding one second and the next I'll be drawing. I love that back and forth. But you're right, it's really fun to code tool then see it work, like, "Great, I did it!" The point of doing [00:42:00] that is to get the result that you want. I try to treat it where, I'll get deep into that tool and I'll make that tool and then I just have to change my mindset. It's, like okay, now we did that so we can animate quickly and put more life into it. For me it's really just kind of knowing how to flip the switch and turn on your artist brain. 'Cause [00:42:30] that's really, all the best animators, that's how they do it. A lot of animators that I look up to. Saunder is kind of an exception where he can get really technical, but he still really has an eye for animation. Then there's some guys who only have a great eye for animation and they're not really technical. But in my experience, those guys are still making way better work than the guy that can write a crazy [00:43:00] script. I don't know if you've ever opened up one of those Phil Borst After Effects projects, but they're a mess. It's amazing though. Morgan Williams: Who cares, if it looks amazing right? Yeah. Justin Lawes: The only thing I consider on that, is that from what I understand he is working a lot alone, so that's fine. But a place like Buck, [00:43:30] we're passing around projects a lot. So your stuff needs to be clean and other people need to be able to use it. Otherwise, that's gonna really screw up the pipelines. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Justin Lawes: So, yeah, that's a big part of it. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Great. Let's talk just a little bit about hardware and software. Chad, do you mostly use Maya? Do you work with other software as well? Chad Colby: Yeah, like Maya, [00:44:00] After Effects, Flash, Final Cut. I'm a jack of all trades. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. And Justin, how about you? You're obviously an After Effects guy to begin with. Have you gotten into 3D stuff too? Justin Lawes: Yeah. Most of what I do is After Effects. I do a little bit of Cimema 4D. That's another thing that's the industry nowadays, you should at least know how to do basic stuff in there. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: No matter what you're doing. Whether you want to be doing a lot of 3D or not. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Justin Lawes: [00:44:30] Once you've learned one or two programs, they're all so similar. You can learn how flash works in about a day. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: All you need to know to do character animation, you can learn that in a day. It's really all the other stuff that's the hard part. All the classic Photoshop, Illustrator, all the NW stuff. Morgan Williams: Sure. Justin Lawes: But mainly After Effects. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Since this is an After Effects based class, [00:45:00] let's maybe dish scripts and plug-ins. Do you guys have any favorites? Any favorite After Effects or Cinema or anything? Any favorite plug-ins or scripts that you love? Chad Colby: For character or just [crosstalk 00:45:16] Morgan Williams: For character and/or in general. Chad Colby: I feel like we've played with them all. Justin Lawes: Yeah. Chad Colby: Because there's always something new coming out and we're like, "Well, let's see if this works any better than the last one." We're always trying new things. We've used DUIK [00:45:30] or D-U-I-K. Morgan Williams: Yep. Chad Colby: We've used Puppet Tools, which is great. Justin Lawes: Yeah. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: It kind of depends what you need to do. Justin Lawes: I feel like none of them are there yet. Chad Colby: Yeah. Justin Lawes: I like them all. I'll sit down and in theory it should work. But for me I'll sit down and I'm all like, I'm so confused. Or I don't get or I can't get what I want out of them. [00:46:00] You can do a lot, I think it's pickin' your battle too. If you know what your character has to do, something simple, then you'd be like, "Okay, I'll use this script for that." Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: If I want to go in and make a walk-cycle and do that, I'll use this one. For me they're not as intuitive as I would hope they would be. Morgan Williams: Right. Chad Colby: Right. Justin Lawes: I don't know why. Chad Colby: For some of the stuff we do, if it's like a medium shot of a character and all you need to do is [00:46:30] a pretty simple A to B pose, we just won't use the script. Morgan Williams: Right. [crosstalk 00:46:40] Chad Colby: A lot of times we get too caught up in the scripts. Justin Lawes: Yeah. Chad Colby: We end up deleting it and starting over and it looks better. We'll end up, just really simplify it and not even use one. Scripts in general there's some really cool ones coming out like, Motion 2. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: I don't know if you've played [00:47:00] with that. That one is just a giant toolkit of fun stuff. Justin Lawes: It's neat. Chad Colby: A lot of my favorite ones are really simple workflow things. Being able to set your anchor point by clicking one button. Keyframe velocity stuff. If you can select a bunch of keyframes and type in the keyframe velocity and change those all at once. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: I think it's like, KVC Keyframe Velocity Changes. Justin Lawes: Yeah. [00:47:30] Wes told me he got that one form you. Chad Colby: I use that one. I use Rift a lot. A lot of that stuff, like managing keyframes is huge. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Right, right. Great. Chad Colby: Sometimes I'll accidentally set all my cuts to the wrong frame rate. There's a script for that, to select them all and then change them all back to 30 or whatever, 24 or whatever I need to. Morgan Williams: [00:48:00] Right, right. Chad Colby: A lot of workflow stuff. We use this one called Immigration sometimes. If you're doing, importing 3D passes, it's a way quicker way to import a bunch of them at the same time and post too. Normally how you have to do that in After Effects is Command + I, select one of the passes, import. Command + I, select another pass, import. Morgan Williams: Yeah, right. Chad Colby: So Immigration let's you can select them all at once and import. Morgan Williams: Nice. Chad Colby: Yeah. Just a lot of workflow things. Morgan Williams: [00:48:30] Sure. Have you tried doing any character work in Cinema 4D? Justin Lawes: I have started. [crosstalk 00:48:37] Chad Colby: We've tried to a couple times. Justin Lawes: I've started to do a little bit of it, yeah. I don't know many people that actually know it well. I've done some tutorials and I was leaning into it a little bit. Any real character animator I talk to, they're always like, "Oh the C40 rigs aren't there yet." Morgan Williams: Yeah. Justin Lawes: Because they're, [00:49:00] I guess Maya just does it so well. Morgan Williams: Yeah I think it's still pretty much King. Chad, have you tried doing any character stuff in Cinema? Chad Colby: Yeah. They tried to get us to do it a couple times. I feel like when you get to that point with Cinema, for the character things, it ends up it's going to be not really rendered, or just be flat color or something. Then [00:49:30] I'd rather just do it in After Effects or Flight. Morgan Williams: Right, sure. Chad Colby: If it's gonna be a heavily rendered thing, it's gonna be like, well, it's not gonna work with the C40 Pipeline, let's just do it in Maya. Morgan Williams: Sure. Chad Colby: So I feel like it's that weird in between. If you're more comfortable with Cinema 40 and that's part of your pipeline, I'm sure you could kill it. Justin Lawes: Yeah. Morgan Williams: Oh sure. Justin Lawes: That's a big thing at Buck, there has been a lot of thought [00:50:00] and process in creating the Maya pipeline with rendering and all that kind of stuff. Whereas Cinema's a little more free flow here, for character stuff. Any 3D stuff here is Maya. Morgan Williams: Right. Justin Lawes: Probably for that reason, it's just how Buck works. I'm sure there's people doing awesome stuff [crosstalk 00:50:23] Morgan Williams: Oh sure of course. Like one of you guys said earlier, the tool doesn't really matter does it. [00:50:30] It's about the idea. It's about the quality of the work, whatever tool you're using. Right? Chad Colby: Yeah. Justin Lawes: Totally. If you end up working at Buck, then you're probably gonna learn Maya. If you want to be doing character stuff, that's kind of how it works here. It kind of depends on where you work. Morgan Williams: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Lot of great stuff here for our students. Joey, do you have any other [00:51:00] questions before we let these guys go? Joey Korenman: Sure I have a couple questions. I have a couple. I mean I have more but I'll leave it at two. One thing that always blew me away, and I've heard different statistics, I guess Chad this would be a good question for you, when you're working on let's say the Peanuts movie, how many seconds of polished finished approved animation should a character animator be expected to churn [00:51:30] out in a week? Chad Colby: Well, Peanuts was a very unique situation. Joey Korenman: How so? You gotta qualify that. Chad Colby: It was a little different then your typical feature film because you have to match Charles Schultz's original drawings and everything. So [00:52:00] it was very labor intensive I found. I'd say a good example is those fruit snack ones. Like the 15 seconds. I think we would animate them in three weeks. Joey Korenman: So 5 seconds a week. Chad Colby: Yeah. But that is also with client revisions. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: Did you hear that? Did you like how I did that, "with client revisions?" Joey Korenman: Now how many animators would work on those? I mean that [00:52:30] wasn't one person doing it in three weeks, right? Chad Colby: It was just me. Joey Korenman: Really? Chad Colby: Yeah. With just the two characters. That's the thing. That one, with just two characters, that was fine. Joey Korenman: Right. Chad Colby: But then like, another one with background things or more complicated stuff, then we'd have a couple people on. Joey Korenman: One thing too that I guess will be kind of interesting to some of our students, 'cause you know, if you're a motion graphics artist working at a small studio or you're freelancing, you're not exposed to these big pipelines. When you're animating, [00:53:00] you're just animating. You're not lighting, you're not rendering or texturing or any of that stuff, right? Chad Colby: Just animating. Yep. Joey Korenman: Gotcha. So just the pure animation part. 5 seconds a week, that's pretty good? Chad Colby: Yeah. Joey Korenman: I mean that sounds like nothing. Chad Colby: I know right. Joey Korenman: Like Justin, you have a week to make 5 seconds of animation, it's crazy right? Justin Lawes: I mean sometimes it happens for me, if it's a really crazy shot and it's complex and I have no idea how to do it [00:53:30] at first. But then, like Chad said, the revision part is a big process. There are client revisions, but there are also internal revisions of art directors. I'm sure Thomas sends you lots of notes. Chad Colby: Exactly. Also, internal notes. Joey Korenman: Right. So how do you manage, what's a good way of managing the revision process in a character piece. When you're doing a more traditional motion graphics stuff, you're gonna have changes but typically [00:54:00] you're not talking about hundreds of keyframes, the way you might be with a character piece. So is there a more strict process when you're doing something like that? Justin Lawes: Yeah I think it's the cliché, the general, the specific. By doing the same things, it's doing those thumbnails, hitting those main poses. If you can get those main poses to read. Say, with the fruit snacks ones, the airport one for example, minus the intro and the end tag, it's just [00:54:30] three shots in the middle there. So what you're doing is like, I'm figuring out what poses tell the story. Then I'll pose that character in those. Once I get that to read, then I'll go in and I'll figure out the breakdown. How does each character get into that pose. That breakdown from there, defines the timing of it. Once that reads, then it's just gravy. Joey Korenman: Profit. Chad Colby: [00:55:00] I think a lot of people starting out would fall into, I'm sure I've done it too. You want to animate a character and you're like, "Okay I want 'em to do this thing. All right we'll start at frame one, and start animating." Justin Lawes: Right, yeah. Chad Colby: That's not a great way to do it. That's not a great way to do a lot of things. Whether it's story boarding a whole piece, if you're doing a whole motion design piece you don't just start animating from frame one, hope it all closes up by 15 seconds. Justin Lawes: [00:55:30] At the end of the day, it's not what you think. It's not if you think it's good. It's not if you think it's reading. More importantly, find out ways to do it, to get your idea across as quickly and as efficiently as possible. A lot of times it's not like, oh I've got to stay late and work so hard, this this this ... it's like, how do I just make this read and get my idea across. Sometimes you'll do a pose of a character, [00:56:00] then I'm thinking to myself, I kind of want him to do this. So then you take that pose, you'll bring it into Flash, then draw over top of it and just show how you're thinking that movement will happen. 'Cause that'll take you 10-15 minutes as opposed to half a day if you're doing it in Maya. You know what I mean? Joey Korenman: That's really smart. Chad Colby: You want to catch the revisions as early on as possible too. That's one of the problems we have with clients sometimes. They'll give you notes at the very end and you're [00:56:30] like, you could have told me this when we were story boarding. Justin Lawes: That's tricky too. You have to think about if you show a client a 3D spot with hand-drawn animation overtop of it, are they gonna get it? You have to hope that the people you're working with can hold their hands through it and explain stuff like that. Joey Korenman: You must have some good producers over there at Buck I'm imagining. Justin Lawes: We do. Chad Colby: They save our lives every day. Justin Lawes: Seriously. Joey Korenman: So let me ask you guys this. [00:57:00] This is a character animation course and a lot of the students taking it have literally never attempted to animate a character before. When you're talking about character animation, it's a really, really deep topic. I have the animators survival kit sitting right next to me right now. It's a very thick book. If you were to try and think about the one or two most important things to focus on, what would they be? Would it be posing [00:57:30] or would it be follow through or arcs? Is there something that if you get this one thing right, a lot of the rest is forgivable. Is there anything like that? We can start with Chad and then Justin you can chime in. Chad Colby: Oh you put me on the spot guy. Joey Korenman: Yeah buddy. We can edit out the awkward silence. Chad Colby: I mean, it's all of them. They say if you're [00:58:00] animating a character the weight is always in the hips. That's something to always think about. Joey Korenman: Huh. Chad Colby: It's seeing which way the hips are moving. That's a big one. That's one there. Then I think, the weight is in the hips, and the emotion and thinking are in the eyes. Joey Korenman: That's good! Morgan Williams: That's great. Joey Korenman: You did very well Chad. Morgan Williams: That's another t-shirt. I think that's another t-shirt right there. Joey Korenman: [00:58:30] Hips and eyes. Morgan's gonna, he's gonna extrapolate a bunch of interesting stuff out of that in the outro, he's gonna tie it all together, so it seems like this was the goal all along with the interview. I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on that a little bit more. You know, where the weight is shifting through the hips, I'm a mo-graph guy Chad, I don't [00:59:00] know what that means. Chad Colby: The weight shifting through the hips. The way the hips are angled, shows what side the body weight is on. That's important for walks. That's important for how the character's standing. Joey Korenman: That's awesome. Chad Colby: If you draw a line from ... When you're doing a figure drawing and you're holding the pencil up and you're tilting it to see which way the hips are tilting. 'Cause that'll show contrapposto. [00:59:30] I'm originally from Ohio so I'm like, con-tro-post-oh. Yeah so that's that. Then with the eyes. You can just animate eyes and you can show somebody thinking. I always think, this is totally cheesy, but I always want to animate the scene from Madmen. Where Don Draper's on the telephone, or at least I would study [01:00:00] it. He's getting a call from the real Mrs. Draper that lives out in L.A., well no she died and he was getting the call from her daughter. It cuts back to him, and you just see his eyes moving. And just all that's he's thinking, there's so much in there. He's said so much without saying a word. You know what I mean? Joey Korenman: Yeah. Chad Colby: Yeah and like the way that his eyes move around [01:00:30] and stuff. Joey Korenman: We'll put a spoiler alert before you say that. Chad Colby: Spoiler alert! Joey Korenman: That's why I love the idea of being good at character animation. 'cause you can get a lot more of an emotional response out of it I think, than the typical, even as beautiful as some of that stuff is, the geometric shapes doing interesting things moving smoothly, you get one correct eye animation and all of a sudden you've made the person feel something. By the way, I have to say this and [01:01:00] I feel comfortable saying it 'cause I know I'm not the only one that didn't know this. I actually never knew why artists hold their pencil out like that. You just taught me something about drawing, so thank you. Chad Colby: There you go. Coming back, if you watch that shot I think it's season four, season five ... season three, season four ... his head doesn't move. His body's not moving, his head's not moving. Sure, he makes himself cry. But he sells this huge emotional reaction, just [01:01:30] in his eyes. Can you imagine how hard that is? Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chad Colby: Right now if you were trying to tell somebody that your dog just died with just your eyes, how hard would that be? But he does it. It's insane. Morgan Williams: That's great. Joey Korenman: Yeah he makes it look easy. Justin, is there anything like that, just kind of the one or two things that you can screw everything else up but if you get these things right, you're half way there. The important stuff. Anything like that jump out to you? Justin Lawes: I think, [01:02:00] like Chad was struggling with the question which is the same thing I am. All the basics are really important. Whether it's the hips or the way the feet hit the floor. The important thing is to get a general overview of how all that stuff works and then go try it. Then you'll be like, oh, that's why this is important. Whenever I tweak this thing, I see that it makes it way better. [01:02:30] Start broad and learn every little step. Once you've done a couple projects or experiments, then you dig deeper into what's it look like if I make the foot hit harder on the floor whenever it does this or whatever. So yeah, it's just starting broadly. Chad Colby: If you start broadly and you get an understanding of all those or you start broadly and you just do it, you kind of [01:03:00] see what happens as you're getting a job and as you're getting put on each spot. Each character, the thing is with motion graphics, each spot you're doing looks totally different than the next one. So every time you do a new commercial, the character looks different. Justin Lawes: Yeah. That's a huge thing. When I started at Buck, it was really hard working here, especially trying to work at the level that these guys to here. I was like, I'll just work here a few years and then I'll really get the hang of it. It's felt the same [01:03:30] way the entire time. Joey Korenman: You never get comfortable. That's good. Justin Lawes: It's like every job is totally different. There's usually at least one thing I've never done before. That's where you should always be too. Joey Korenman: That's what's fun about it man. By the way this has been such as great interview. You guys are so amazing. Thank you. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Joey Korenman Korenman: Thank you guys so much. Morgan Williams: Yeah really appreciate it. Chad Colby: Yeah it's been fun. Justin Lawes: Thank you! It's nice meeting you guys. Morgan Williams: It was a really fun [01:04:00] conversation. A lot of great insights from both of those guys about character animation, I thought. And really exciting that Chad got to work on the Peanut's feature which has not come out at the time we're recording this but I'm real excited to see - I'm sure you guys are excited to see it too. So look for Chad in the credits. That's really exciting. It was very nice of Chad and Justin to try and make us all feel better, [01:04:30] trying to tell us, "Oh people at Buck we're just like all the rest of you guys." When we secretly know, they're really superior. No, I'm just kidding. But truly Buck does have tremendously good tastes in artists and I think our interview with Justin and Chad proved that as well as anything else could.