Skylanders Giants

I had the pleasure of going to New York to work on the pre-rendered game cinematics for the new Skylanders Giants for all console platforms including some unique stereoscopic sequences for the 3DS. The games are currently being splashed all over the Disney channels ready for the Christmas season.

I've written up a little about my experiences working on both sets of sequences here:
Skylanders Giants
Skylanders Giants 3DS

Cloud Catchers - Short Film

I've been working on Lucas Martell's "Cloud Catchers" short film. We've been good friends for a few years now but had yet to work together and I couldn't pass up this chance to blend our directing styles. I couldn't do it initially when he first asked me but as my schedule freed up I was able to slip in as the last recruited member of the team.

There will be more news on this project later on as it approaches completion over the coming months. In the mean time you might want to subscribe to the blog which will be updated in due time.

http://www.CloudCatchersFilm.com

Production Tips - Recruiting Database

Continuing on from the last Production Tip blog about Tracking Production...

The Recruiting Database
This might seem creepy but I kept a spreadsheet with some basic information on everyone on the team... or anyone interested in joining the team. The key thing I used this for was to remember their strengths, up to years after I last had any contact with them. We had over 400 volunteers sign up and many more that I spoke to outside of our development site. It could get very difficult for me to remember every encounter, especially since most were only over email. I tended to remember shots in reels better than the specifics about my conversations with each artist. Some would be people that left the project and rejoined a year later, and it was key to remember their strengths and weaknesses.

I would score them in a few very important areas:

Talent (0 to 4) - The quality of their reel, this would be updated with each encounter and if their work on the film differed from the work in their reel.

Communication (0 to 3) - Their communication skills including written English and responsiveness. A world wide project can have some severe problems with basic languages. I don't speak anything other than English, so it was key that everyone on the team could both read and write really clearly in English in order to avoid hitting any brick walls. Equally the best written English in the world does no-one any favors if they don't answer their messages. Not replying is the same as not turning up to work in the virtual studio model!

Signed Up? (0 to 1) - Were they signed up on the development site? It was a sign of commitment and an openness to working in the pipeline we'd built. If they weren't willing to sign up then it was always a good sign that they were going to require extra effort on the part of the team to integrate them, and it usually wasn't worth it.

Score - This was a simple formula that multiplied up the scores above to give an overall rating. Then by ordering the spreadsheet by this number you could quickly see the best team members and candidates rising to the top.

Assigned - This simply kept tabs on whether they were currently assigned to something. It could take some people quite a while to complete a task and it was useful to have a quick look-up in the spreadsheet to see where things were getting stuck, or people were being left waiting for assignments.

The recruiting database is one of the few documents I didn't share with anyone. It's a very personal interpretation and could easily offend. But it was incredibly useful for me to head off any poor assignment choices, since I didn't really know most of the people working on the film (as I'd never met them in person). It was mostly animators as that was by far the largest area we got volunteers and required the most filtering (over 340 candidates). I imagine that similar databases exist in all the major studios, and the recruiters no doubt rely on them for every interaction. With any luck they're more sophisticated than my spreadsheet. The scary part is that recruiters move around between studios all the time so the data going into such a database isn't going to be consistent... food for though!

Other related blog entries of interest - Workload Distribution

Production Tips - Tracking Production

Kenny Roy asked me to contribute some anecdotes for a presentation he's putting on, and I thought it would be a good idea to share them here.

Tracking Production
I'm a keen addict of a good Excel spreadsheet that tracks the progress of each project. My short film was no different and over time I was able to show the progress of each department across the duration of the film.

I let Excel save out an image of two charts that were then synced to a public folder on Dropbox. The first just showed the progress level in the main categories  It was published to our development website and quickly allowed anyone to see how far we were. It was also embedded into the beginning of the animatic edit. The image simply overwrote each time I saved so it was always up to date and showed up in each export of the animatic that I published about once every two weeks.

The second graph showed the progress over time. This was very useful as we could aim for a date and see roughly when departments were getting behind. It allowed me to respond by changing assignments, recruiting more or less in each skill set or simply redirect my own time to compensate.

Both charts helped to show a steady active progress so that the team never felt like they were alone, and that no-one else was pulling their weight. Including the publishing date in the images also showed they were up to date, and fortunately I was always very good about updating the spreadsheet. It becomes a bit of an addition watching those bars move closer to 100%. Since these films can take years they also tend to become a common conversation ice breaker between friends and it was handy to have a solid "42% Animated" or "67% Complete!" to show confidence in our progress. Constantly saying "nearly there" or "we're still animating" tends to feel like a downer and even though it's the same thing it casts doubts the more you repeat yourself without change. So take joy in the micro progress, and the sub-tasks you complete!

In the next production tip blog.... the Recruiting Database.

Other related blog entries of interest - At what point is the film most at risk?

'Best Animated Short Film' - Burbank Film Festival

This is the Award our film won for 'Best Animated Short Film' at the Burbank Film Festival

Updated Layout / Previs Demoreel

I've been doing a lot of spit and polish on my portfolio recently while hunting for work. Half of the shots in my Layout / Previs reel are new thanks to the release of Skylanders Giants.

Portfolio Website

Devils Angels and Dating - Directors Cut

I had some niggling doubts about the pacing of the first half of the film and I decided it was worth the time to make a few easy fixes for this Directors Cut exclusively for Vimeo. It adds 30 seconds to the overall length and it's designed to clarify a few things.