EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Morgan Williams: Joey and I were really excited to get the chance to sit down with the amazing Fraser Davidson. Now if you're not familiar with the name Fraser Davidson, I would be shocked if you weren't familiar with one of his most awesome [00:00:30] pieces, "A Guide to American Football", which was a staff-pick on Vimeo and kind of burned up the internet, there, when it came out. And it's a beautifully designed and beautifully animated piece with a lot of energy and life. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out. Fraser is the man behind A Guide to American Football, he's the co-founder of London-based Cub Studio that produced the piece. [00:01:00] He was also a part of the now defunct animation collective, Sweet Crude, and he's also the creative director of a sports branding agency called Field Theory. So he's obviously has got a passion for sports that informs his animation and creative work. Part of the reason why we were really excited to talk to Fraser, besides the fact that he's a BAFTA award winning director, animator, and designer, but also because his path [00:01:30] is probably more similar to the path that many of you find yourselves on. My background is really in traditional character animation and I kind of ended up in motion design backwards through that door. But Fraser came from a more traditional graphic design and then motion graphic background and found himself working with character and obviously having quite a flair for it. So let's enjoy this awesome conversation [00:02:00] with Fraser Davidson. It's really nice of you to take the time to talk to us, we really do appreciate it. So let's kind of start with some basic stuff, sort of at the beginning. Were you a character animator first who then discovered After Effects or were you more of an After Effects person who kind of found their way to character? How did you get involved with character? Fraser Davidson: God, I don't think I did any character animation at all for the first [00:02:30] ... I don't know, four years in After Effects? I mean, I worked at a motion graphics house, really, I mean I possibly did some but nothing with any sort of level of complexity. So, yeah, I'd used After Effects for about four or five years before I even started thinking about doing that kind of thing. Morgan Williams: So you basically learned on [00:03:00] the job. Was it one job in particular that came along that sort of introduced you to doing character work or how did that happen? Fraser Davidson: So I worked at, what is now, almost a VFX house but, at the time, it was kind of an animation house called Mainframe. I started there in 2004. I'd kind of self-taught After Effects at university so I had [00:03:30] probably about two years, I think I started learning in my second year. They kind of ran an extremely basic course on it. And I thought, okay, right there, you know, immediately just thought, "Right, this is for me. I get this and I kind of understand how it works." And relative to today, it was the wild west back then like everybody was self-taught. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: By the time you came to get a job, there were relatively few animation houses. And [00:04:00] I had a quite a sort of, relative to lots of other people, quite a ... What's the word ... Kind of a commercial looking show reel. When it came to bidding projects, I would do things that were MTV bumpers and donuts and that kind of thing. Morgan Williams: Sure. Fraser Davidson: It was a bit easier for me to find jobs when it came to having a reel. So I got this first job at Mainframe as a junior motion designer. I did [00:04:30] that for ... I was there in total for nearly six years and probably only ... Yeah, the last three, maybe three years, I sort of moved away from ... I studied graphic design at university so I didn't really have any kind of basis in character design so it was kind of something I moved into along with illustration and logo design about [00:05:00] the same time as I moved away from ... Sorry, someone's closing a giant iron door next to me. All at the same time as I moved as I sort of was thinking about leaving that company. Morgan Williams: So was it, again, was it a sort of specific job that came along that kind of pushed you in that direction? Or ... Fraser Davidson: I don't think so. It was kind of a gradual [00:05:30] ... Yeah, sort of gradual move towards it. We hired illustrators every now and again and we had very simple kind of character stuff that needed doing. We'd get a break bumper for a property that had kind of simple characters for it and we would have to do the animation for that. Yeah, little bits here and there doing [00:06:00] bits and pieces and then kind of seeing the work from one of the illustrators that we had and just thinking, "I can do that." And, yeah, started doing it that way, really. Morgan Williams: Great, great. So how long did it take you to get proficient at it or start to feel like you had some proficiency with it? Fraser Davidson: God, I don't know. If you're sort of self-taught, I don't know if you ever really feel like you have [00:06:30] a handle on it, to an extent. I mean I had to be ... Our office junior had to remind me how to use Duik this morning, you know? We're not all required to do the things in ... Otherwise, once it's all rigged and everything, it's fine. But it's like, god, I can never remember from scratch how to do this. Hitting mid-thirties and you can't learn new shit. Yeah, you know, I've never really been ... Nobody's ever [00:07:00] taught me character animation. Nobody's ever gone, "Okay, this is where you start." So the bits I know I've kind of picked up from what other people are doing and from little pieces here and there. So what I do do in terms of character animation is sort of cobble together from just bits and pieces. I wouldn't say that I have an education of any sort in the subject and I wouldn't then, therefore, know to the extent to which I'm ignorant. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure, [00:07:30] sure. There's a clear, high level of taste in your work. So you must've early on had an eye for good movement. Can you talk about that at all? Like how did you know when the character was moving well as opposed to not moving well? Or did you? Fraser Davidson: Well I think you guys probably notice the same thing. But first you have a [00:08:00] real ... It's very clear when somebody has timing. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: You see young designers ... I have a friend, Meg, and she's never done any animation and she showed me something she did the other day and it was the first thing in After Effects. And I was like, "Oh." I was going to tell her it was good anyway, but I saw it and I was like, "Oh shit, no. That's really good." Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Fraser Davidson: And you just go, "Oh, maybe you've missed [00:08:30] out on this and you could be really good at this." I mean there's such a learning curve after that. But I think in terms of ... I mean, you get a sense of ... I think when you first start doing things, you start with very simple characters. You start with very simple walk cycles, whatever, because they're simple characters, kind of often ... It's very easy to give them simple movement and simple movement often is very, [00:09:00] is more characterful. It's very, very difficult to create a silhouette of a properly proportioned human and have them move in a lifelike way because the nuance in the movement is so complex. But if you have a very .... You look at the most of the stuff I do, to be honest, and they're very simple characters so the simple movement that you give it gives it ... It needs to be cartoonish, I guess, in a way, to imbue them with [00:09:30] the character that they need to overcome their simplicity. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: So, I think, the first thing ... You first when you get a sense of whether or not you're getting it if you can kind of make yourself laugh with a walk cycle or something like that, I think that was kind of ... I remember doing some very, very, very early pieces, I think I've actually got them on YouTube somewhere, they're just these sort of stupid little superhero characters. One of them gets hit in the nuts with a ball and it's extremely simple [00:10:00] and yeah. I managed to make myself laugh. And I'm a bit of, I'm a sucker for it anyway, but I'm a bit of an easy target for myself. Yeah, that's where I thought, "Oh, I'm sure other people may find this funny, as well." Morgan Williams: Yeah and I thought it was interesting that you were talking about that sense of timing and how much is it that timing that gets you to that point [00:10:30] of humor or that point of character like is that timing kind of the key for you that sort of locks it in? And, obviously, the poses are important, too. But I tend to think you're right that the timing is really at the heart of a lot of that. Fraser Davidson: I think it's the most important fundamental of all animation, really. [00:11:00] But it's especially kind of true of character animation. I mean we've all been to the [gre 00:11:08] shows or whatever sort of student shows where there is a character screen-left walking across a snowy field for 20 seconds and, I'm sorry, but you can't do that. You have to fucking give me something else. Morgan Williams: Right? Fraser Davidson: [00:11:30] People that, you just know, you look at their work and you go, "Okay, right, this is sort of ... I'm entertained throughout, there's no point in this when I feel I'm staring at a walk cycle and you just lose that instantaneous attention or you sort of ... You just don't care for a second." Morgan Williams: Right, right. Fraser Davidson: And that's kind of I think that's sort of the way that you tell. But it's one of those things that you kind of look at and know, I guess. Morgan Williams: Sure. [00:12:00] Well that kind of leads well to this question about maybe talking about the differences between being a character animator and a motion graphics animator. First of all, is there a difference? As you said, timing is kind of at the root of all animation. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as the differences or maybe even the lack of differences between being a character animator and being a motion graphics animator [00:12:30] in a more traditional sense? Fraser Davidson: In a technological sense, they're relatively similar, I think. They kind of ... You have to have, to work in motion graphics, you have to kind of ... I guess it's not a prevalent idea that it's techie and things move in an unnatural, techie way. But actually, you know from looking at things you sort of had [no doubt 00:13:00] nice [00:13:00] kind of white and black apple promo piece. It's just lines and dots and it moves around. The reason it's beautiful is because it has a sense of weight, it has a sense of natural movement. To that extent, I think the feeling behind all good animation or motion graphics is the kind of sense of natural movement and weight and physics [00:13:30] and all the things that are kind of crucial in character animation. Morgan Williams: Sure. Fraser Davidson: The difference, I guess, is the characterful nature of it. Not everybody, I guess, has an ability to kind of, you know, characters need to express infinitely more nuanced and detailed things than lines and dots or whatever or text or anything like that. You need to be able to, if you're kind of serious and you do it for a living, [00:14:00] well how do you make somebody look happy? How do you make ... In my case, you use very simple characters. So how do I make an American football player made out of stroke widths look surprised? Or hurt? Or happy? You know? It's those kinds of things. I guess maybe there's a ... I'm sure all people have the potential to empathize [00:14:30] with tiny characters, but I think, maybe, there's something in sort of being able to express that that is the difference there. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's great, that's great. Let's talk a little bit about After Effects and does After Effects kind of dictate the types of movement you create or do you kind of conceive of the movement and then make it do what you want it to do? Or do you kind of let After Effects kind of guide and dictate [00:15:00] the kind of movement that you're creating? Fraser Davidson: I think ... Wow, I mean it depends on what you're doing. So if you use standard, out-of-the-box After Effects, there are, certainly in terms of character animation, there are huge limitations, you know? Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: I mean, that's what I did use for a long time not really knowing that that was necessarily the case, but knowing that I couldn't really animate in frames or I certainly didn't really have [00:15:30] the time or budgets to do that kind of thing and learn how to do that thing. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: And then you sort of get ... You have things like, great tools like Duik and whatnot and with that, you're able to cobble together more ... Well, you initially you sort of you're all, "Well, this completely turns everything on its head." And then you find that there are slight limitations with that and you don't quite get the secondary movement you once had or [00:16:00] those kinds of things, so you start to ... Your characters start to ... You start to use these things more as kind of tools for specific purposes and, I guess, you kind of, yeah, you sort of have a little toolkit of things that work in specific instances. But, I mean, I guess, with After Effects, you're always, not necessarily fighting the program, but you're kind of ... There are limitations that come with the ease [00:16:30] and speed of the facets of it. So I think there's a bit of both, really, I guess, really. Morgan Williams: Sure, yeah. Right, right. I don't know how much 3D character animation you or your studio has done. Do you guys pretty much only do 2D or do you do some 3D as well? Fraser Davidson: I've done a little bit of cinema 4D, but I find it painful. I don't like things that aren't immediately renderable. [00:17:00] I don't want to have to leave it overnight and see if it's okay in the morning, because it never is. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: I just don't have the patience for it. I think if there, sort of going back to something you said earlier, I think if you kind of have a process that's based in [tork 00:17:18] fundamentals, and if you went to [gobble house 00:17:22] [inaudible 00:17:22] or something like that, you kind of go, "Right. Well, this is how I start. This is how I rig, I know how to rig this properly. Whereas, [00:17:30] like I said, I don't really kind of know how ... Well, I could do it, ish. But I don't ... In my mind, I think like, "Wow, I could be spending my time doing quicker more interesting things." I'm not going to compete with the people that do that well so I kind of think my niche is somewhere else, I guess. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting this is something that Joey and I, one of the reasons we were really interested [00:18:00] in talking to you, is because part of what we want to say to the students is that there's a lot of different techniques, there's a lot of different software, there's a lot of different approaches, but there's kind of fundamentals at the core that drive it all. Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Morgan Williams: And regardless of whether you're doing 2D or 3D, or this software or that software, the core fundamentals are the same it's just those individual processes shift around just a little bit. So it makes a lot of sense. [00:18:30] So when we were talking a little bit ago about that idea of characters have to express more complex ideas and, in particular, we're talking about emotions. Like how do you get a very, very simple character to look sad or to look proud or to look happy. So do you actually really think about it like a performance? Do you act out the things you're animating before you animate them? Or how do you kind of approach that side of it? Fraser Davidson: Yeah, I think, yeah, definitely. [00:19:00] You definitely kind of end up acting things out, slightly. Do I think of it as a performance? I guess so, yeah. I guess you are, to an extent, going from pose to pose, but ... Yeah, within that, everything's kind of in how you do that, I guess, and how you get between those things. So you know like a walk cycle is extremely straight forward and maybe [00:19:30] having a character kind of [michelof 00:19:33] stare at the screen, check his phone, and do something else is very straightforward. To combine those two things, this is what I'm doing at the moment, so when you talked about posing something out, to get from one to the other is a real pain in the ass. Yeah I guess it depends on what is kind of being done and it's sort of ... The [00:20:00] primary thing to consider is like does this not look weird? Because you're a human being so you're very, very finely tuned to when somebody is purporting to show you something that is supposed to be human or is a character and everything, if it's even for just a very, very short period, not quite right, that sort of suspension of disbelief that something like a simple character is real, is just gone, you know? Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fraser Davidson: If their feet are sliding on the floor [00:20:30] or they do something like they're a 2D character and they turn and then kind of the head doesn't rotate properly or something. The secondary motion is off, they would have the right weight for a little period, the walk cycle is nice but then he stops and he comes to a jarring halt, like it's ruined. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: So like the whole thing's kind of torn asunder. So you need to kind of ... The primary [00:21:00] consideration is make sure it doesn't look unnatural and then ... That's the hardest bit, getting the kind of character in, I think, afterwards is easier than that. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you ever even videotape yourself acting something out? Or do you just kind of do it and feel it? Like maybe with a really complex movement or something? Fraser Davidson: No, I've never videoed myself. I mean, most of the characters that I create barely [00:21:30] even have elbows, so you're kind of going from one thing to another. I guess a lot's kind of hidden in the kind of animation we do a lot of because we've got a ... Kind of one of the ways we work is by using strokes for arms and legs, very, very basic situation. [00:22:00] So if you bend, if you have an arm that's extended and then bend it, the points of the stroke only move in straight lines. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Fraser Davidson: So you get unnatural bending for those frames. There, in those situations, what you try to do is hide that by putting a rotation, maybe, on the ... If it's an elbow bending that looks slightly unnatural, put a bit of rotation on the shoulder of the sort of stroke and then maybe a little [00:22:30] bounce in the character and then some heavy influences on the key frame so that it all happens ... That little bit that's quite unnatural happens very quickly and is kind of hidden rather than dwelling on it and trying to pose everything out by filming myself. I'm lazier than that, I guess is what I'm saying. Morgan Williams: Sure. Let's talk about posing a little bit. Are you kind of always conscious of going pose to pose? Or are you sometimes a little more focused on kind of building things [00:23:00] with the graph editor or even with loops and oscillations and things? Or do you really focus more pose to pose? Fraser Davidson: I think the majority of it is pose to pose, yeah. There are interesting things, we did sort of a piece with cyclists in it and it sort of worked out about, you're thinking, "Oh, this is going to be a pain if I have to speed them up or slow them down." I thought, "Oh, I can use [00:23:30] sine waves that are contingent on the rotation of the pedals to have the guy kind of head bob up and down, his back end bob up and down, his knees move and kind of oscillate backwards and forth." So in that situation, it's really pleasing to create a character who has only a single input. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: And you can use those tools, but you don't get very many instances where that's kind of the case. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Fraser Davidson: So a lot of it does tend to be ... And you've got [00:24:00] a responsibility to get things done quickly so it's ... Yeah, I think that a lot of it's pose to pose. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. You were talking about Duik before, do you generally rig your own characters or do you have people help you with that? Do you take your- Yeah, go ahead. Fraser Davidson: Well, yeah. Other than [Lynne 00:24:17] our junior animator this morning helping me out helping me remember how to use the software, we pretty much do everything ourselves. I think the kind of culture from which I came [00:24:30] at Mainframe, initially when we were a small company, was you have to learn how to do all of this yourself and rig your own characters cause [inaudible 00:24:41] you're going to breed resentment by creating characters that are, you know .... You can make anything you like as long as you can make it work, you know? Morgan Williams: Right, sure. Sure, sure. Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Morgan Williams: How far do you generally take your rigs? I assume it depends, somewhat, what the needs are, but do you do fairly elaborate [00:25:00] rigs for, say, a character that's going to be on the screen for a while and that's going to have a lot of busy action? Fraser Davidson: Yeah, I mean, the rig is always contingent on what the character's going to be doing. Morgan Williams: Of course, yeah. Fraser Davidson: So, yeah. That's kind of where everything starts from. And if there are nice ways to crash through them and kind of swap out, you might find ... I've got to animate a character tomorrow who is a flat kind of two-dimensional character, [00:25:30] but he has to turn from facing a window that the viewer can see to the camera. And so I could create an extremely complex character that's going to ... His shoulders are going to swivel around, his torso will then sort of have a clever rotation on it that will spin round, all for that kind of 15-frame bit. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: But in reality, what I'm probably going to do is stick a camera warp on and move the camera at such a speed that I can just hard-cut them or blur between [00:26:00] them or something and nobody will know the difference. Morgan Williams: Sure. Fraser Davidson: One of the guys I used to work with, Simon Tibbs, he's great at kind of rigging, you know a lot of kind of Duik stuff combined with puppet tool combined with other bits and pieces, he'd create quite elaborate characters. And I guess his approach was kind of different to mine in that he would go, "Okay, right. This character has to be able to do almost everything and then we'll see what he has to do later on." So he'd spend a lot [00:26:30] more time doing that kind of thing than me. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Fraser Davidson: But I try to cut corners I think. Morgan Williams: Yeah, right, right. Well we talked about this a little bit about giving the character that sense of character, that sense of emotion, and you were saying, in a lot of ways, that's sort of the easier part after getting that sense of realism, the sense of weight, and all that kind of thing. So can you talk about how you think about [00:27:00] that when you do say have a very, very simple football player that you have to infuse with a sense of emotion. How do you approach that? How do you think about giving them that sense? Fraser Davidson: I guess to kind of start from the beginning and ... So something like the punters or the guys kicking the field goal, I don't know if you're referring to that particular piece. Morgan Williams: Yeah, [00:27:30] sure. Fraser Davidson: They were the hardest characters to animate because it's quite ... It's one of those things that ... There's a lot of rotation but there's a lot of [yore 00:27:45] in the body to kind of effectively compensate for in a two-dimensional way. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: So the very first thing is like, "Right, okay. He's got to kind of ... It's not an ordinary run cycle, I have to have him build up from a standing start and then kind of really shift [00:28:00] his weight and do this quite complex mechanical thing where he kicks a ball and you have that sort of I guess like the follow through of a golfer where he's sort of watching the ball and his leg's still in the air and he's continuing to lean forwards, and then puts his foot down." And so often what you'll find is, like a lot of the sort of ... I guess, the form is the function so his character is [00:28:30] concentrating on a ball and you get a lot of that just from kind of getting the mechanics of the kick right. So you're like, "Okay, well he kicks the ball, his head's going to immediately jerk up, he's going to be watching it." And that itself kind of gives him ... Oh, you know he's interested, he's kind of watching his kick, and then to sort of put a sort of fist-pump on the end of that and have him kind of hunch over slightly, is relatively trite. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fraser Davidson: You get as much out of the action itself sometimes or just [00:29:00] by tweaking it slightly so, I mean, you know, you could do the opposite. So his head goes up and just by the order of, maybe, in which you bring all his rotating parts back down, so if like the head goes down first, you immediately think, "Oh, well he's missed it." Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: So you often find that just by getting the mechanics of something right, you get a sense of personality already and [00:29:30] then you can kind of fine tune that to get exactly what you want. Yeah, it's not really a two-part process it's really kind of getting one thing right and then sort of just the emotive sense of it is just kind of the polishing on it. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Right. Do you use the graph a lot, the motion graph a lot when you're animating characters? Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Morgan Williams: It [00:30:00] depends? Fraser Davidson: More so for actually what they're ... Normally for what they're doing in space as a whole. So if they're walking forward three steps and then stopping, that's kind of the hardest bit like how do you ... Do they start off kind of like with purpose walking? Does the torso need to go from left-screen to right-screen quickly and then sort of slow down or does he gradually speed up? [00:30:30] That would be, normally, where I'd use the graph editor the most and then everything else you sort of follows that in a more straightforward way. So, okay, he's going to need more footsteps as he speeds up, but actually that's just the case of kind of condensing some of those key frames. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. Fraser Davidson: So that his feet are moving quicker. That tends to be where I find it more ... Yeah, like where I tend to find myself using it more. Morgan Williams: Sure, [00:31:00] sure. Do you prefer the speed graph or the value graph when you're using the editor? Fraser Davidson: It depends, actually. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I'm just trying to think of an instance where the speed graph is quite useful and they weren't really characters but it's like if you have a car following a [00:31:30] track, you very much need to use the speed editor well and have it ... I guess if you're following a line, an object is following a path, then the speed editor is much more useful. But, yeah, on the whole, you, I think, the graphs in the 3D packages tend to be far superior to the graphs in After Effects, but you're kind of stuck with what you've got. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: So, yeah. A bit of both, but, yeah. I guess I'm more used to the [00:32:00] After Effects graphs. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. We already talked about Duik a little bit, which I think all of us doing character in After Effects love dearly, are there any other plugins or scripts that you use? Any other things you use for character that you like? Fraser Davidson: Yeah, I mean if you use a lot of the, and it seems quite popular at the moment, like using strokes and things that are attached to paths for limbs [00:32:30] and everything like that, actually there are some of the more old fashioned plugins like 3D Stroke by Trapcode that are like complete pigs to use in terms of the RAM they use, the memory they use, and the way they don't properly refresh correctly, and you have all these work arounds for how you use them. You probably work is constant rasterization so you have to make the files, the comps really big, then shrink them down. But like, I guess, that's [00:33:00] ... But then you can take the strokes. I guess that's what I probably use it for mostly. After all that, it's all just about, okay, I can taper it. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Fraser Davidson: So there's that kind of thing. That's it, probably, in terms of character animation. I can't really think of anything off the top of my head that I would use other than Duik or something like that. I mean the [10T 00:33:27] use things like ... I quite like some of the old fashioned, [00:33:30] you can find plugins that have quite horrific default settings, but if you just sort of mess around with them for a bit, they can produce quite interesting results. Morgan Williams: Right, right, right. Fraser Davidson: Like spherize can be quite useful sometimes for facial features that don't necessarily have to be on a sphere but it gives you a very easy way to rotate things in [00:34:00] a 3D way. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Fraser Davidson: There's the Knoll Unmult plugin that create the most useful plugin of all time. Like I mean it's not really character related, but you have to have that. That'll save you so much time. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fraser Davidson: Yeah, Luma Keys and things. But otherwise, no. Not really, no. Morgan Williams: Okay, okay. [00:34:30] When you're looking at beginning animators or people you're hiring or work you're looking at, what's the biggest mistake or the worst kind of bad habit you see beginners making a lot? Fraser Davidson: I guess at the moment ... I guess the sort of problem a lot of people used to have was things like spacial interpellation, which is entirely understandable. Morgan Williams: [00:35:00] Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fraser Davidson: But what things like, is it Motion 2? You know the thing that allows you to very quickly adjust all the key frame influences? Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: THat's great as long as you don't slide the key frames about afterwards and not reapply the thing. So I spot those things, that really jars because it used to bother me a great deal. Having to go through everything and you could only change positional key frame influences and then you'd have to change the [00:35:30] path key frame influences and all those kinds of things separately and now you can just go, "Swoop," [crosstalk 00:35:33] this whole thing. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Fraser Davidson: The problem that kind of gives is that people go, "Oh, cool. 100% key frame influence." You get a lot of things that are just key frames with an influence applied to everything. I guess it can be initially impressive to somebody who doesn't quite know how you've done that, but it's sort of something you see a lot, isn't it? Morgan Williams: [00:36:00] Sure, sure. What do you look for in junior animators that you might hire? Fraser Davidson: Work with no corporate logos on. Stuff that you made for fun. Morgan Williams: Oh, oh. Yeah, cool. Fraser Davidson: I mean, if you do it outside of work and you know that people are into it. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah. Fraser Davidson: There's a lot of people just sort of do it as a job or don't really kind of have any ambition to make something themselves. [00:36:30] You learn an awful lot more about somebody by something they've made in their own time, off their own bat, when they could be doing anything else and they've chosen to do that. Like that's sort of peering into somebody's soul. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Fraser Davidson: Our junior, what I was interested in, was like everything ... She put a lot of stuff up on Dribble, and what I liked was it was very clear these are all just things she's done for fun like only [00:37:00] better. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: Try new things and that's much more interesting than trying to discern which part of shop that you're allowed to use in your show reel you actually did. You did the particles but only some of them. Yeah, they're impressive pieces of work and everything, but it's normally the personal pieces I sort of go and have a look at and initially just the quantity [00:37:30] of it is going to tell you more about how that person is going to end up than anything else. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. Because we're going to have students in the course kind of maybe looking at doing more character work from what they learn from the course, if you're an artist who doesn't have any character on their reel at this time but they kind of want to get into it, what would you recommend they do? What would you recommend they add [00:38:00] to the reel or how they should approach that? Fraser Davidson: Well, I mean, it's difficult to say what kind of ... I don't think it's necessarily really a question of sort of anything that you should be doing that's formulaic and that should fulfill a role in your reel. So I had when I was sort of working on character stuff, I made a couple of personal pieces. One of them was sort [00:38:30] of a ... I was trying to get lip syncing right so I made a piece about Christopher Hitchens, it's a little monologue he gives. It's about a minute-and-a-half long. I thought, "Well, I'm going to do all of this and I'm going to show him expressing with his eyebrows and this kind of stuff and his hands while he talks about this." And that's all it really was, it's not an especially great piece, but it's just sort of proof of concept of that. But rather than it just sort of being a proof of concept, it [00:39:00] has some sort of value in itself. Not because I've made it, because it's an interesting little sort of thought he's talking about and now it's got another kind of medium that it's expressed in. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: And there's a couple other pieces I've done with comedians where, yeah, I sort of wanted to try out new character techniques and ... Yeah, I guess sort of finding something [00:39:30] that's going to give you a little platform so other people are going to see your new technique or something. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Fraser Davidson: So just finding something like that that is just going to give you an incentive to kind of actually make something and not just kind of stick something, make something look as impressive as possible for the sake of itself, I guess. Morgan Williams: Right, right. Well, and it kind of gets back to what you were telling about. About showing your real interest and passion through kind of personal projects [00:40:00] rather than just commercial work. So, yeah, yeah. Cool. I've just a couple more questions for you here, some more kind of specific ones to your work. What's the most difficult character piece you've animated and what made it so difficult? Fraser Davidson: I think, possibly, it's the cricket piece that we did for ESPN, I think, possibly. [00:40:30] And it's because you have this sort of bowler, have this extremely complex movement that is sort of initially, you think it be like kind of more simple to animate in two-dimensions than say somebody throwing a baseball. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: But actually, because you fully turn your torso from facing the camera to it being away from the camera and then back again [00:41:00] and then you have this sort of elaborate [overum olding 00:41:03] going on with a sort of a weird hop, skip, and jump animation. So to get all of that to move in one go simultaneously was quite tricky, yeah. Morgan Williams: That's a beautiful piece. Is it hard to find good character animators to work in After Effects? You were talking about the person you just hired as [00:41:30] your junior animator, did you have a lot to choose from? Fraser Davidson: We're very lucky in that we get a lot of people apply to us. Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fraser Davidson: It'd be a part-time job, almost, to wade through everybody's stuff and actually kind of see if they are available for anything ever, and that kind of thing. So we try to keep our pool quite small [00:42:00] and look for people whose work is very obviously quite, not necessarily similar to our own but is applicable. And that leaves a relatively small number of people. There are great people, you probably know the work of the guys at Radio whose stuff is really, really lovely. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: But I guess, realistically, they're more competition [00:42:30] than potential employees or freelancers. But you sort of try to find people who you spot them every now and again. You go, "Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have to tap that person up for something." Morgan Williams: Sure. Fraser Davidson: Yeah, it's not as easy, as straightforward as it might purport to be. Looking at the vast number of people that have a walk cycle in their show reel or on Dribbel [00:43:00] or whatever, you've kind of got it right. " Can this person animate cricket?" And there's a world of difference. Morgan Williams: There is, yeah. For sure, for sure. Is there anything you wish you had known about character animation when you were starting out? Something that you wish somebody had whispered in your ear? Fraser Davidson: THat's good question. God, I don't know really. It's difficult to kind of look back [00:43:30] at that stuff and go ... I guess maybe Duik. If somebody said, "Uh, hey, look, this is how this thing works." That would have saved me a bunch of time on a number of things, but, I think at the same time, without that, you learn ways around the sort of standard parrot and pivot animation in After Effects that kind of give you kind of more neater, more interesting character animation, sometimes. I mean, you sort of get a sense [00:44:00] of how you can .... I think you get a better sense of sort of secondary motion in character stuff if you don't immediately start using Duik. Morgan Williams: Yes. Fraser Davidson: But, you know it is the best tool for the job. Morgan Williams: Yeah, sure. Fraser Davidson: And it probably would save you a lot of that time. Morgan Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know everyone loves the Guide to American Football, it's such a huge, popular piece. It's so nicely done and you've gotten a lot of [00:44:30] work out of it that's very similar. Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Morgan Williams: Is that starting to drag on you a little bit or are you thrilled that people want more of that? Or do you start to be a little bit like, "Ah, I'd like to do something different"? Fraser Davidson: Yeah, I mean, well I guess, yes. We're going to flog that dead horse for what it's worth. As long as it'll take it. This is the thing, we're always kind of conscious that ... Yes, [00:45:00] you end up doing a lot of work that you're known for doing so you gradually are sort of forced down a narrower and narrower tunnel and the way you kind of break out of that, the way that we've always done stuff is you go, "Okay, right. I'm going to make something completely different that has no relation to this that I, hopefully, think will also be good and people are going ... " So, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's great. We've [00:45:30] had the chance to meet various national Olympic committees to do things for them and we've actually met the proper people off the back of making something about the NFL so it's given us a lot of opportunity because it's sort of quite a very niche thing. [00:46:00] THere's only a few of us in the market of explaining sports things using simple 2D characters, at the moment. So hopefully that market won't fill up too quickly. Yeah, it's where we find ourselves, at the moment. Morgan Williams: Sure, sure. And last question I have here is how much prep do you give to your client to get them ready for an animation job to kind of educate them about the process? Fraser Davidson: Yeah, the [00:46:30] way we work has come about as a result of working with all different kinds of clients from agencies to working directly for businesses. What we tend to find, actually, working direct with the businesses or institutions or whatnot is they're extremely easy. Actually, working for agencies can be quite a bit harder [00:47:00] because they have a sort of creative impetus themselves. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: And you know how the model works, it sort of adds a layer of stuff to the process. The way we do work is that we will normally we won't do any visuals until we kind of have a script and it's always been the case that we say that. Don't write visuals into the script. Don't say, "Well, you know, our product is color like this." [00:47:30] Every copywriter would love to do because it means more words. Write what you want to say in as straightforward a manner as possible then go away. We let all the visuals do all the other stuff. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: Like we edit straight and move through all the kind of bits that augment that. So we'll then come back to the client with annotated script, [00:48:00] which has the directions for each slide. So on this slide, this is what's going to happen on screen. That can still be a little bit abstract for some people, which is fine. But as long as they as long as they kind of broadly agree with what, in their minds, is sort of going on onscreen, that's normally sort of another layer of sign off. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: We tend not to go away and draw pencil [skamps 00:48:23] and storyboards that way, which used to be the kind of way I would do things when I worked for other companies. I think [00:48:30] certainly with what we do, it's as easy to make the stills sometimes. You know, [inaudible 00:48:39] You've seen how basic some of our stuff is, it's easy to go away and go, "Well, like here's the character and here is in a scene and this is how he's going to looks." What we give people is, every line we go through and go, "Okay, is this a new scene or does this have new characters or something that we need to show that you can't ascertain from the rest of the script?" So if we've got [00:49:00] a 12-line script, we might go, "Okay, here. We need to produced 8 star frames that will show the totality of the characters and the sets." So that, and we go, "Here are all these key moments. This is exactly what you will see on screen." Morgan Williams: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Fraser Davidson: And, yeah. From there, it's very ... People sort of tend to be very responsive to that. Like you're not asking them to make a huge mental leap. You're just saying, "Hey, this is what it's going to look like and then it's going to 'poof' like the [00:49:30] other things that you like." Yeah, and that's worked really well for us. We've had very few people come back and go, "What the fuck is this?" Morgan Williams: Yeah. Fraser Davidson: But we've got delivery on Friday, so we'll see. Morgan Williams: THat's great, that's great. Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Morgan Williams: This has been so great. This is just going to be gold for our students. Joey, do you have any followups or anything that you feel we missed out on? Joey Korenman: Well [00:50:00] there's one thing that I was kind of curious about and this is something I've kind of developed my own strategies to deal with in the motion graphics kind of more traditional motion design-y world, and that's dealing with client feedback and revisions. You know, when you're doing something that has this many layers and key frames and interlocking parts as a character, it's a huge pain in the ass if the client comes back and they're like, "Yeah, you know, there's something about that I don't like. Maybe he needs to feel [00:50:30] like he weighs more or maybe he needs to be prouder." And I'm curious how do you manage that? Do you ever make the character walk three different ways and say, "Hey, pick the one you like and we'll base everything else off of that." Are there any strategies you use to manage that process? Fraser Davidson: I guess we try to run interference by leaving glaring spelling mistakes in. It's that [00:51:00] old kind of like pick a card thing, isn't it? You shuffle the deck and you slide one up further. I don't know. I don't know if that's necessarily the case. We try to keep characters ... Like I said earlier, if I had created a truly elaborate rig for the character who has to turn around, that would be very, very difficult to change. Whereas it would be easier to have two quite simple animations that don't really [00:51:30] kind of relate to each other in a technical sense but they have to so there has to be a moment of crossover. Now when they go, "Okay, once he turns around, I don't really like the way his hands are." So you only have to change one of those things. I guess that's sort of a less, slightly subconscious way that I learned to do things because I have had to change horrendous amounts of animation. But, yeah, the other thing is you try to kind of ... I guess when you ... Yeah, I mean, I hope you know, [00:52:00] so like when you sort of discuss these kinds of things, you maybe direct people in a way that's going to be fairly superficial in terms of changes. So you might go, "You know what? I'm not quite sure about the last ... The way the guy catches the ball, here." Rather than, "Do you like the folding?" That's a question that has no good answer other than, "Yep, fine." Whereas, "What if he catches the ball [00:52:30] and then sort of throws it up into the air?" "Yeah, fine. Absolutely. I'll go away and do that." It's more of a psychological game than a pragmatic kind of process, a [yurman-like 00:52:45] process. Morgan Williams: Right. Fraser Davidson: It's one of those things that only comes with years of experience, but yeah. You gradually learn the techniques. And, yeah, like I said, spelling mistakes are great for client feedback because everybody needs everyone's [00:53:00] help, then. Save the project, that sort of spelling mistake, I got it done. Or, "What color do you think this should be?" That's always a useful question to ask. Morgan Williams: That's great. Joey Korenman: That's killer. And then one last thing, Fraser. I want the students over the course of this bootcamp to basically get a little bit calibrated to the pace of character animation. And [00:53:30] so I was wondering if maybe, cause you know the Guide to American Football, you're well known for that, how long did that piece take to create? Fraser Davidson: It was about two-and-a-half weeks, I think. Joey Korenman: Two-and-a-half ... 20 minutes, that's way faster than I would've guessed. Morgan Williams: Yeah, that seems really fast. Fraser Davidson: So, if you look at that piece, [00:54:00] it looks like a lot of animation on the players. It probably is less than it looks. If you watch any of the sort of punter and the field goal and the extra point are all the same animation bar, a guy holding a ball, I think, slightly differently. The quarterback, there are two different quarterback moves, one where he jogs backwards, hands the ball off, and one where he jogs backwards and passes the ball. [00:54:30] The camera then moves away from him and that's him done, he's finished. There are people running with and without the ball who run in exactly the same ways with the only difference being that they have one has a ball and one does not. The way you sort of distract from things, if you look at the offensive and defensive line, they are the same two guys jogging forwards and backwards sort of slapping each other like sumo wrestlers. And anybody that's blocking, you've sort of just stood there on the spot kind of moving [00:55:00] in that way. You know when you watch like a bad kung fu movie and there's like 20 people sort of lining up in a way to attack the guy? Never watch the action, watch the 15 guys sort of stood around them, sort of moving about to create a sense of sort of atmosphere and environment and threat. Cause if they all just jumped on the guy that was beating the shit out of them one-by-one, it'd be over. But you sort of see them kind of do this elaborate dance around. They're all [00:55:30] doing the same thing around the actual actor, it's just that your attention is drawn to one person. So if you sort of go back through it and don't watch any of the immediate action, you will see very quickly that a lot of the character stuff is very, very, very simple. Morgan Williams: Yeah, well, it's brilliant. Hard to believe you did it that fast. I hear what you're saying being a character animator myself, I know all those tricks, too. How you hide and disguise [00:56:00] and distract and all that kind of stuff. It's still really impressive, such a great piece. Joey Korenman: Yeah, and it's amazing to me cause I don't really know much about character animation, but you do the same kind of stuff even with traditional motion design. You cut to a totally different setup that's going to be easier for the specific thing that you need. Fraser Davidson: Yeah. Joey Korenman: I think with character animation, maybe, you have to be even more thoughtful about when you're planning out the shots, knowing how you're going to hide those little cuts, and [00:56:30] things like that. It's really funny because Fraser, as you were describing it, I'm watching the piece, and I'm like, "Oh yeah! Oh, you sneaky bastard." Fraser Davidson: But next time you watch a Stephen Seagal film or something like that, it's not just character stuff, it's everything. All the guys in the background are sort of throwing punches at nothing. Morgan Williams: Right. Oh that's great. Joey Korenman: That's great. Well, Fraser, I want to say thank you, man. There was so much insight in this [00:57:00] interview. I mean, I wrote down like 15 things that I was like, "Oh, that's brilliant! I love that." So thank you one again, man, really. Fraser Davidson: It's all cheesy, it's all cheesy. Morgan Williams: Yeah, the students are just going to love this, it's going to be really great for them. Fraser Davidson: Awesome, cool. Morgan Williams: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. What a great conversation with Fraser Davidson. We got some great nuggets of wisdom, there, and I couldn't believe that the Guide to American Football was turned around in two weeks. That is an unreal [00:57:30] turnaround for work of that quality level. Absolutely amazing. I also thought it was really interesting that when he was talking about his tutorial creating a walk cycle using oscillating expressions and so forth, I thought it was interesting that even so he said that he's still thinking pose to pose, that it's his understanding of what the poses need to do that allow him to kind of use those techniques to [00:58:00] get to what he wants, which is exactly why we've structured the course this way. We want you to really understand the way the movement really functions at a core level, and then by all means employ all the tricks in your arsenal to get the work done. And I think that's a great lesson that we can draw from Fraser's comments. You can find Fraser Davidson at fraserdavidson.co.uk and he's got links there to Field [00:58:30] Theory and Cub Studios and all that kind of stuff, so make sure you keep a close eye on Fraser and Cub. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of amazing work from them in the future.