Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530710
o c t o b e r • n o v e m b e r • d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 2 c g w 1 3 Do you have any advice for up-and-coming animators? RZ: It depends on where you're at as far as your animation journey, but I always recommend keeping a sketchbook. I think it's just great for yourself to always be drawing. Whether you're going to end up hand drawing your animation or not, I think a skill set of always de- signing a bit for yourself is really important. I think that's why Jeff is such a strong visual effects guru and master—he also has a very traditional background in art, and I think that's really important for animation. The other exciting thing about animation is you can really find out a lot online just for yourself, and that I think is amazing. You can find all the different places to go and learn, and then learning even from YouTube. There's just so much out there that we didn't have growing up in this business. I think that's really exciting for people that are curious about animation. JB: It's all about the quality versus the quantity. I don't want to see a five-minute piece that's subpar. Show me five seconds that blow me away. That requires a discipline that is difficult to grow because you have to not only execute the work, you have to be almost like a painter when you think about, "What am I trying to do? Where am I trying to guide the eye? What am I trying to achieve?" You can use a lot of references, and the reference could be oth- er painters, it could be traditional artists, it can be 2D animation, it could be live action, it could be photoreal. Whatever you're trying to achieve, find some artists or photographs that you really love and try to replicate that. Be very meticulous in trying to evaluate. What about the light quality here do I like, and what am I trying to repli- cate? Why is this texture so rich and interesting? What are all the details on this corroded piece of metal that I'm trying to recreate? Can I put something that's CG in a photograph and convince you that that thing is real? That requires a sense of discipline to look at an image and deconstruct it and really think, what about that im- age makes it believable? I would say, just focus on the quality over quantity. RZ: Having a point of view and what kind of statement you're try- ing to make is really key. It's all about communicating. What are you trying to get across? Is it coming across strong enough? Walk away from it. Come back. Is it coming through for you? That's such a big discipline. JB: Ask your buddies. Have someone else look at it, get their feed- back, and don't take it personally. It's not a reflection on you. You're always just trying to make it better. I think that's the big takeaway. I think it's less important to learn very specific pieces of so- ware and more important to learn the fundamentals behind them. Because in my career, and I'm sure Raymond's as well, things have changed dramatically over the years. We've gone from one DCC [digital content creation] to another, or you've gone from traditional painting into digital painting into other disciplines, and things will al- ways change in technology. You have to be able to adapt with it. At the end of the day, the computer is a pencil and you need to under- stand the limitations of the soware and be able to move beyond that to achieve something novel. Feathered edges were a key feature of the film's painterly aesthetic.