About the importance of live model drawing for animators
Da importância do desenho de modelo para animadores

Live model based drawing, either naked or dressed, has a quite unique value compared to other dynamics/practices.
It allows us to understand, through reality, how does the body behave when we act in a certain way. Specifying, we can experience the real effect of twisting, weight going to one side or the other, muscle activation, joints' limits... and, from that reality, create exaggeration, distortion, magnifying effects, etc, in a plausible way, no matter how fantasizing or even crazy our creation might be.
And I truly believe!, learning to represent what is outside/the real, gives us an increased ability to represent our inner images.

O desenho com base em poses de modelo vivo, nu ou vestido, tem um valor pouco comparável a outras dinâmicas/práticas.
Permite-nos perceber, a partir do real, como o corpo se comporta ao agirmos de uma forma ou de outra. Mais especificamente, podemos experimentar o efeito real de torções, mudanças de peso de um lado para o outro, activação deste ou daquele músculo, limites das articulações...e, a partir dessa realidade, exagerá-la, distorcê-la, ampliá-la, etc, de uma forma que seja verosímil, por muito fantasiosa ou até louca que seja a nossa criação.
E, acredito piamente!, aprender a representar o que está fora/o real, traz-nos uma capacidade superior de representar as imagens que temos dentro!

Imagining new possibilities

Imaginando novas possibilidades

What is impossible? I have come to realize that impossible can be translated into in(ner)-possible, meaning what is possible for me. There are a lot of quite universal in-possibles, but there were also universal impossibles in the pas that became accessible to everyone with time.
What does this have to do with animation?
A lot!

In animation, we keep pushing limits at an amazing rhythm - both individually and collectively - and that is only possible because we have the ability to choose where we put our attention: the myriad of impossibles or the faith in our inner possibilities.
This is true in many areas of our lives, and the animation work is no exception: focusing, experimenting, testing, failing, go through the whole process again, fail better and so on and so forth. And succeeding! And succeeding better and better!!
So, one of the most important characteristics for being a good animator will be the ability to overcome him/herself, to maintain the focus on what he/she intends to produce instead of attaching to the difficulties, the obstacles. In real life as in animation production, the mental attitude may dictate success.

O que é o impossível? Compreendi, a dada altura da minha vida, que o impossível se pode traduzir em in-possível, significando o que é possível para mim. Existem muitos impossíveis bastante universais, mas também existiam impossíveis universais no passado que, com o tempo, se tornaram acessíveis a toda a gente.

O que tem isto a ver com animação?

Muito!

Em animação, estamos sempre a ir além dos nossos limites - tanto individualmente como colectivamente - e isso só é possível porque temos a capacidade de escolher onde colocamos a nossa atenção: a miríade de impossíveis ou a fé nas nossas possibilidades internas.

Isto é verdade em muitas áreas das nossas vidas e a animação não é excepção: focar, experimentar, testar, falhar, passar por todo o processo de novo, falhar melhor e por aí diante. E ser bem sucedido! E ser melhor e melhor sucedido!!

Então, uma das características mais importantes num bom animador será a capacidade de auto-superação, de manter o foco no que pretende realizar e não nas dificuldades, nos obstáculos. Na vida real como na produção de animação, a atitude mental pode ditar o sucesso. 

Dance - Emotions - Movement - Drawing - Timing - Animation

 Last year, Sabine de Clerck and me facilitated an experimental workshop which put together dance and animation in a most peculiar way...

Sabine is an experimented 5 Rhythms facilitator (what is 5 Rhythms?) whom I not only love as a human being but also admire as a professional.

We put together a workshop where students were invited to experiment dancing according to this method Sabine works with. They were invited to dance some emotions/states and afterwards translate what they felt and danced into images.

They then showed someone else a chosen drawing of theirs and the other person was invited to move/dance according to what it made her/him feel... 

The process went on going through different stages and we came up with a series of drawings, movements and timings regarding those different movements - knowing that those images and timings were directly connected with the original emotions.

In the end, the students animated the drawing respecting as much as possible the timings they'd found for them/for the represented emotions. 

Dancing my feelings - which I did along with the workshop students and a sciatics crisis which almost impeded me from getting through the weekend - was, as always with the 5 Rhythms sessions I've attended so far, an amazing experience.

The participants were all very touched by Sabine's approach and the invitation to dance themselves and then put it on paper.

The focus, from the beginning, was set on the construction of a bridge-method for students to transform emotions into animations in an unique way. 

Of course, this is something that, after years and years of trying to get a style in place, years and years searching for the thing which seems right... this is something, I was saying, ver4y difficult to achieve on a one-weekend workshop.

Bridging between dance and images, then images and decomposition of movement and timing these movements... it's work in progress. A lifetime work in progress probably. Getting better and more original one animation at a time.

The seed was planted and the work has stayed with me as a very worthy one.

My belief is that, rightly nurtured, watered, exposed to the sun, this method will help these persons in finding unique ways of expressing emotions when animating... or in any other form of creation they choose.

(all photos have been approved by the portraid people for posting on this blog in association with this article)

On animation and uniqueness

As an animation professional and teacher I've been focussed on questions like the nature of movement and "soulfull" animation... I do this working with abstract animation most of the time as a way of going beyond caricature and cartoon.

abstract animation short co-directed along with Bernardo Sarmento, Miguel Pires de Matos  and Sílvia Namorado

How can I create something unique?
How can I add value to my animations?

These questions have different answers for different creators/different minds.
For me, uniqueness is guaranteed if I get in touch with myself and find a bridge between my own emotions, the movement which characterizes them and my own original* expression.

It is not about trying. It is not about doing different from what others do. It is certainly not about trying to do different from what others do.
It is about getting to know how to make my work resemble my self.

This is the focus of this blog and what I see as my unique contribution to animation.



* original - term referring to what comes from the origin; the origin being "me" (the animator/director/artist in question), it is a matter of respecting myself in order to be original