 Welcome back, it is time for another Q&A and this is part eight. I'm gonna get straight to the questions because I still have a lot of questions to go through. And as always, move over there, not roll over my dog, who just left, Indy. All right, let's start. And as always, I'm gonna read out to the questions out loud, read out out loud, in case someone is only listening to this. And I'm gonna start with Pedro Oliveira, Oliveira, Oliveira. There's tons of animation styles, cartoony, creatures, games, animation, feature, mocap, TV shows, how and how much we should be versatile in the animation industry. That's a good question. The absolutely not useful answer is you should be versatile in all of these, which of course is massively unrealistic. But it will be good in terms of job security and you being able to get job somewhere else. But realistically, you're gonna probably learn cartoony in class or whatever class or studies you're gonna take, unless you specifically go for realistic creatures. That's usually kind of the tracks. You don't really have a realistic, you know, Digi double type of thing or mocap only. But I would say that's probably your beginning cartoony-ness. And maybe on the side, you're gonna learn your own stuff potentially. But I would say cartoony for sure, creatures for sure, cartoony creatures, games animation. I mean, they have tracks just for games animation or schools out there teaching just games animation. I mean, you can go into any of these except, I would say mocap and TV shows. And TV shows, again, it goes by style and they just have less time, like the budget is just crazier. But yes, the more styles you have under your skill hat, if that's a term or something, cartoony realistic games, this would be great. But realistically, you're going to probably concentrate on those one how and how much shall we be versatile, the more the better, because of jobs and you can pick and choose from from more opportunities. But again, realistically, probably going to start with one. And then in your free time, probably go on to other styles and learn different things kind of really depends on your situation and your time and what you can do in terms of your resources and what you can learn. And if you can take different classes and all that hope that helps. Ruben Nerisma. From your experience, what are your thoughts on using a helper object or basic rig in your workflow process when animating both subtle and cartoony shots? That's a great question. I would love to do it. I'm going to do a an FNA about that just kind of detailing and doing a demo of how I approach that. But I think this is super useful, especially when you have rigs that are really, really heavy. So when you have rigs that have for us at work, we have multiple resolutions of rigs, but sometimes at the very beginning, they're only high res because of renders and marketing styles and all that good stuff. So we don't really have any rest right off the bat, not always. So when you then have high res rigs, it gets very, very slow. And it's pretty tricky to animate with that, especially when it comes to facial stuff. So sometimes you'd have to do things on your own where you put cubes and spheres on arms and pelvis and chest and head, and you can turn the high res off. And then the speed, let's say the refresh rate, but the speed in your viewport gets potentially close to real time if you can. So I think that just in terms of replacing a rig is really helpful. Also helper objects, what I like to do is sometimes you have whatever the features of a rig might be tricky to track certain things in terms of nose or ears, whatever it is. Sometimes you can just take a sphere, red collar in innocence all the way up and you parent that to the nose like a clown. And then as you move around, you have that red ball that you can do a motion trail on it or just it's a visual, it's a cleaner visual reference point for tracking arcs. And you can put this anywhere, elbows, knees and a sore tip, whatever you have. So for me, helper objects, I use that, you know, geometry pieces on a rig for tracking. But in terms of basic rig, you can also put that on your on your rig. And sometimes you just want potentially only the top part high res and the legs low res or head high res for facial stuff and the body low res. So helper rigs are hopefully active. The basic stuff is hopefully built into your rigs. But if not, it's definitely something that you should explore in your workflow, especially for tracking and when animating both subtle and cartoony shots. Yeah, I think to me, both are very very in both styles are very useful just in terms of speed. And also you don't want to get distracted by all the details you might have clothing, a satchel or hair or something. And you want it to be just I want to concentrate on the movement first route is the basic movement. And then it's also very helpful to just turn off all the details and you can even just go a sphere on your route. So you have the basic bounces and the rhythm of the road, the route. And then you do a sphere on the chest and you can see how they work and how they overlap and they can one on the head and so on you can expand until you have like a marshmallow man. And then you can put on the actual Reagan and work on the details. So my thoughts are they're very useful and you should try them. Km, how much and why useful to know to the traditional animation when you work in 3d animation? I'm going to give you my guessing answer because I'm not I've done to the in class in school, which was 161817, maybe 17 years ago, at the beginning classes, bouncing ball and walk cycles and stuff like that, which I loved. But I'm not good at drawing and I don't do traditional animation. But because it's drawing base and it's almost kind of going into step mode is you really focus on very clear silhouette line of action and just the lines and the body shapes and just to me, I think it would help in terms of posing and clean shapes where you really each drawing tells the story where in CG you can do somewhat crappy poses what I do somewhat crappy pose and then the computer emulates, you know, the truth in between something to it into the next crappy pose and then I go, if I squint, I think this looks okay. And then I can work on the pose and again, the computer does the in between and then I work on the in between and for me, the computer helps kind of seeing the rough part and then I kind of chisel away until I see something good. Whereas if you have drawings, I mean, you can do stick figures and sketches, right? But I think the 2d approach, I think the planning is going to help you the actual posing and just working in a flat medium, because you know, this is the drawing on the screen, this is going to be the pose that reads clearly. I think if you have that type of training, I think that can only be helpful for 3d animation. But again, this is my very uninformed answer because I don't do 2d animation. If anybody here that watches that does 2d and has switched to 3d or goes back and forth, maybe they can comment with their better insights. Tim, Fahey, Fahey, Fahey, I don't know Tim. When you begin a shot, how do you keyframe controls? Do you pose and then key everything and then move, remove keys as necessary for polish? Pretty much. I talked about this before and then the workflow, which I've been promising for ages, the workflow FNA, but I have my list just as the heads up. I have a list, I have a long list of FNAs that I'm doing. I'm trying to almost do them in a chronological order where we talked about planning and audio and reference. Now, I went through the blocking and now as you work on things that have the checklist and the animation mistakes, even though I went into a demo reel series, that's kind of at the end of your process. Just because I teach classes about demo reels, I kind of wanted to put that out there. But it's kind of like in that order. But I'm getting closer to actual workflow and animation. So that's going to be the whole block about demos and tips and just animation. And once that is done, it's getting into the rendering and the polish and maybe effects and just the add ons to kind of spice up the shots. But in between, obviously I'll do FNAs with things all the way back to early stuff and all the way, you know, like demo reel at the end, I'll mix and match. But anyway, that was an answer to not a question that someone had. But so what do I do? I usually control what always says I key the whole character every four frames, and I kind of don't do fingers and face, but I mean, you could. But I do like the main control is every four frames and do kind of I kind of guess the right timing every four frames and do the main posing so that if I have to change your timing, which I will, because it's not going to look great every four frames. But I look at the extremes where my example is always a jump, right? So you have whatever preparation, then you got your squash, and then you full extension with the legs on the ground, and then all the way up when you get your compression and drop at extension and compression. So these are my main extremes. And I have that cleanly keyed on all the controllers and that in the timeline. And then I can move those ticks in the timeline in Maya, until the timing looks better might not be great, but it's definitely this feels somewhat right. But then what I do is I key, then I go layer where I do root, chest, head and then the limbs and arms and legs and all that stuff. And then I go where I move and remove keys potentially. It gets very messy. At the beginning I do, like I said before frames, so it's clean. So I can move things around quickly. And you can potentially even have some very rough blocking to show as just as the pitch. And then once it's somewhat approving, going to move on, then I get very messy. So then I just the roots until you know, they could be just adjusting tangents and curves or lots of keys until really that timing works. And then I do the same with the chest. And then you go back to see how is the chest root relationship and then the head and then head, chest, head relationship and then legs and so on. It's very messy and the timeline is super messy. But that's kind of how I do it. I hope that answers it. So do you pose? Yes. And then key everything? Yes. And then move, remove keys as necessary for polish? Yes. So basically yes to all of your questions. But that's kind of the the workflow and every now and then I try different things, but I usually fall back to that. So far that's been working the best for characters. I do work a lot with ships right now because it's Star Wars. So we have a lot of ships on motion pass. And that's a completely different workflow. Clearly, because it's not a character, not in like, you know, like a human rig type of character. So there they are different workflows. And I'm going to probably one of these days do a how to animate Star Wars ships without getting fired clip where I will have some ideas where I can show things that are not secrets using shots from trailers. I'm allowed to use them and just explaining in general how I approach ship animation for the weight and the path and that type of stuff. Because again, the approach is different when you have a steady camera, fly by or something, a camera that goes with the ship really far away action versus close up where I parent the ships to the camera for close up stuff. It's easier to then kind of cheat the movement. So they're all kinds of things you have to consider depending on how far the camera goes, how fast they would travel with the ship and the ship itself, the animation, the weight and the flight dynamics. So there's lots of different stuff that should be a whole different clip. But anyway, again, an answer to a question you want to ask. Benny Youssef, Benny Youssef, I hope I pronounce is Benny, I'm calling you Benny, Benny, wasn't Benny the character in total recall, the cab driver, Benny, I have four kids or five and then he says four. Anyway, I'm 25 years old and my dream is to be an animator just like you man, don't be like me, have your own path. If you're like me, you need a lot of chocolate. That's my path. Do you think that my chance to be an animator is small because of my age? No, do you know we have this? I think the Q&A before I think two questions about age 25, 25 is not old, how dare you so you can start super super young. But I think you can also start really old. The caveat is what I said last time is that depending on your age, you're going to have different energy levels, responsibilities, constraints. So if you're young, right and 25 is young, I'm 42, 25 is a puppy, it's a puppy. 25. And if you're single, you can travel, you can do all kinds of countries, different companies, and you can explore things and your salary goes up because of switch companies, you have lots of flexibility. Now 25 and not single. Then of course, there's already that constraint of well, is your partner going to come with you or maybe they're both working the same company. It's easier, they switch blah, blah, blah. And then you have a partner and kids, well that locks you down even more because of schools and all kinds of stuff. So I think it's not so much the age, it's to me more your situation, what your constraints are and I don't mean this in a negative way, but you just have different priorities and responsibilities. So no, at 25, I don't think it's a problem. But again, if you're 50, if you're starting at 50, I'm tired at 42. I'm definitely more tired than when I started. I came here in fall 99. And so I was 22 when I got here and I graduated four years later. So 26, 25, 26, 27, around that time from graduation to getting a good job. So no, I was, I was older than you when I started. But again, I'm older now and I find that priorities have shifted. So I don't really, I try not to stay late at work because I want to go home. I want to see my family. If there's overtime, I try to make it work that I can work from home that doesn't always work. And the company doesn't always say yes, because sometimes you have meetings and reviews and you got to be there physically is much easier than from home and calling and all that. So I mean, it has to work with for the company and the people in your team. But there are ways to make it work. But again, I'm just, I want to be also at home with my family. I'm also just tired, working late and getting up early and all that I don't know, I'm just not I don't the energy anymore, but also don't really want to do it anymore. Other interests, it used to be when I was young and, and got the job, it was just the job and I love animation, which I still do, but it was just, I want to do this all the time. And it's great. But then you got, you know, girlfriend, wife, kids, and, and just things change in different priorities and work life balance is just different. So it's a long answer. So I say no, I don't think it's a problem because of your age and you're younger, I think then when I started. But the older you get, this is very specific to who you are, where we're listening to this, you will have different priorities and responsibilities and just different goals and, and whatever it is, right? So yeah, it's a very, very personal question. And I'm gonna leave it at that came Ninja 45. What advice would you give to a high schooler who's interested in pursuing animation as a career path without going to an actual art school? Well, there's an age thing again. So the advice would be, find out, ask the high schooler what their, their goal is, which, you know, at that age, it might just be a bit too early, but you have a rough idea in terms of maybe potentially your, your favorite company, right? Let's start there. I want to work, let's say Pixar. And that's cartoony. So it's not going to be realistic, I'll aim sell animation. So that already narrows down to schools in terms of art schools, but like online schools and workshops and things that, that concentrate on that style, right? So you have to know what you want to do in the future and then work towards that. So I think having a goal and knowing what type of animation you want to do is going to help. And then you look at what's there to support that. So if you want to, you don't want to go to an actual art school, then you would just go with specific art, art, animation classes, which are usually online, except animation collaborative in Emeryville here in the States. So I would highly recommend the animacy, especially if you want to do Pixar, because they're right across and Pixar teachers, it's great. So that would be what I would recommend. If you're in a different country, you're going to only do online, animation mentor, I animate, anim school, anim squad. There are so many, most of them are cartoony, but now there are more, I saw just one recently that I think it's called the creature workshop was over realistic creatures. So there's all kinds of stuff online. So I think I would just check on your style, the goal, and then also potentially where you want to work, which country, maybe they have not an art school, but like I said, an MC where it's a very specific animation school, but that's that's brick and mortar a physical thing to be there. So you might have that again, depending on the company in the country, but other than that, you have online a ton of schools. So I would look for that and then you can look at what the school offers is how is the tuition, how much money does it cost? And then what are the classes? What type of classes? How long are the classes? How long is the whole semester? You know, there's all that factors into again, what's the board with the age thing, it depends on your life and your possibilities and your objectives and your constraints and your responsibilities. So then it becomes a personal that I can't answer this as something that you have to decide. Hope this helps. Philip, Philip off. It's a long question when we read the whole thing. Do you think that Spiderman into the spider versus style was one of a kind occurrence or occurrence occurrence occurrence? My English sometimes fails me. Or would you say that the blend between 3d and 2d is something that will be used more widely in the future? Also, how would you describe the work of an animator in the VFX industry? What most of the work consists of mostly more cap cleanup, or there is still a lot of hand keyed animation by what by what I have seen on the interwebs nowadays, they can make most creatures move with emotion capture performance that is later cleaned up. Now lots of thoughts on that one. So do you think Spiderman versus was the one of a kind thing? I hope not. Mainly because I'm a massive fan of that movie and that style. I hope not mainly because when matrix came out that whole bullet time thing was cool. But then it was so tied to the matrix that only a few movies after that I think Swordfish and maybe there was one more. Okay, a bigger movie that featured that style of VFX. People just stopped doing that because it was just bullet time. It was matrix. It was kind of like you're trying to do matrix like Shrek thing too had it as well. But then it was making fun of it. It was fine. So I think I don't think spider verse is style that's so tied to spider verse. I think right now it is because it's the movie that that did it in a broad and awesome way. But I think if if if other movies in shorts and whatever pick that up and more are doing it right now, I think it can easily become that's just a different style and we're just going to use it and then you know, it's a different thing that we want to do. But if they don't, it might be tied to spider verse in a bigger way where maybe if someone does it again, it'll be immediately compared to spider verse instead of going that's just a style. So my answer would be I hope not. I think it's cool. And I think that blend is a really cool expansion of the look. It doesn't always have to be the current style that we have feels all very similar. I think we can expand and I think spider verse was fantastic in that regard. So I hope not that I hope it goes further into those styles. Also, how would you describe the work of an animator in the effects industry? What was the work consists of? Well, it consists of getting to work, attending daily's animating the meetings and emailing. I mean, it's the same as the companies just just, you know, different tools in different priorities in different workflows potentially, but it's not mostly mocap cleanup. Like right now, I don't have I've done any mocap on Star Wars. This is not gonna I can't get fired. This is don't fire me. It's mostly ships for me. I mean, if if there had been a creature or something, I wouldn't say that. Obviously can't divulge anything. But this show for me, other people might have done mocap like storm troopers use mocap. But I haven't done any storm troopers on this show. So for me, no mocap on this show. And then before, what did I do before? I think it was Aladdin. Aladdin. No mocap. It was a boo. I did tiny, tiny shot and do much on Aladdin was a boo and the genie. No mocap. There was one point I think mocap a little bit. But then the rest was keyframe. And then the rest was all keyframe. Before that, I did a little bit were a small work on Aquaman, which was cut. How dare you my stuff was cut up. No mocap because it was ships was the underwater stuff. And before that, it was solo solo mocap because of the four arms, John Favreau character. And because of the four arms, you had regular mocap and then you had to keyframe the other two arms. But even then there were shots that were fully keyframes. And then I did the space monster, which was all keyframe and then the ships no mocap. So it really is not mostly mocap. It really depends. It's probably when you have a Warcraft type of stuff or storm troopers in Star Wars, or I would say transformers, but even transformers is a lot of keyframe. There's a lot of keyframe and transformers. So no, it's not mostly mocap really not really. If it turns into digital stunt doubles, then you will probably prefer mocap because it needs to look real. Probably a lot of like Marvel stuff has mocap to some degree, but not always. It's really, I think that the perception of the effects is all mocap. It really depends on the show. And a lot of times it's not. Also, when you shoot mocap, you're tied to that mocap, but you're always going to get notes from clients. So the moment for me, it's like the more, the moment I have more than like 30% changes on that mocap, then it's I toss it out and then I keyframe it and use the mocap as reference. But then it was everything is so different that you got to start from scratch. And then you might as well do a keyframe. But if it's mocap with slight tweaks, you can use animal layers or we have the controls or controls that add a second layer, you can tweak mocap to some degree, but at one point it gets too destructive. And then you just got to either shoot new mocap or keyframe the whole thing. So is there still a lot of hanky animation? Absolutely a ton. Like right now on what I'm doing on Star Wars is all hanky chips. But what I've seen on the other webs nowadays, most creature move, no, I mean, from what I've seen and what I've done, no, like the most recent thing was, which I haven't done was Jurassic World where the mocap for the raptors as a start, like this is what we can do. But then it gets heavily tweaked and a lot of creature stuff is full keyframe, like you can't capture a T-rex. I mean, like there's a there's a size difference. I think with the with the raptors, it was convenient because of height. But then the moment goes something bigger or smaller, it's not going to work. Like the mocap is not going to this the style and the weight is going to be lost. It's like if someone that's tiny, it's going to do mocap for the Hulk. It's just not going to work. So again, I think the the mocap as the magic tool is a heavy, heavy distorted perception. Also, that's a whole different subject about, you know, any circus and his performances and especially facially, the thing that if he does the performance, you don't touch it afterwards. It's also not true. I mean, a lot of the stuff from what I hear and read and talk to people, it's also sometimes fully keyframes where you have a plan of the apes or or things where you think this is fully mocap. It was actually fully keyframes. But a lot of times when you get mocap, especially with face, there are different ways of facial capture. But sometimes in the older facial days, you have to do everything by hand. It doesn't work. Nowadays, you also have things where the face gets captured as geometry. And then it's just it's one to one. It's great. But you can't really tweak it that well afterwards. So there's there's pros and cons. Some things lock you into a performance that you can't really tweak that much. But a lot of it is hanky. I mean, if I'm spoiling anything or shattering people's illusions, really mocap is super helpful. And it's a lot of times a great starting point. But it really is not the one tool that you push mocap and then you got it, and then it's done. It's just somehow it is. We do a lot of hanky, like a ton. Dimitri Milkin, hi. Talk about a shot or sequence that you worked on a long time that you worked a long time on that got cut. Why it got cut and advice you were given to deal with it. Okay, there's my question, movie please. That was for the Spider-Verse giveaway. I know what he's referring to. And I can't really talk a lot about it. But brief, like as a whole thing, there was a sequence. I don't seem battleship. And I probably have talked about this before in one of Q&A. I can't remember this big sequence, big shot. It's a long, long shot where the camera is on the ship, we see the actors, they fall into the water, we go with them on the water, we look up at the ship, the ship is heading south going up, you go back on the ship, up with the actors, then over at the top, look down and the ship breaks apart and falls down. That again, I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say, but let's put it this way is a long shot probably worked on that shot, maybe six months. And I did shots before and then I just worked on that shot. That shot had its own dailies was this big, big shot. And it didn't get cut. It was just a lot of it was keyframes, but then the shot ballooned into we need more of this, more of that. And then at the end, there was a lot of keyframing, stunt doubly stuff, but then because of the complexity and the render stuff, again, I can't say too much. A lot of it was thrown out and then you they use plates and then warped plates and stuff like that. The main thing that I will say is that there was a lot of time was spent on that shot animation wise. And then the majority of 80% was was cut out or replaced. And the reason why he's asking this is because someone, you know, it was it was slightly demoralizing having all that thrown out as a Swiss person who was into cliched time and efficiency. I just didn't feel that efficient. But things happen like this all the time, but not to that to me, not to that extent, I never worked on something for that long to have it then cut out. And then someone in the hallway heard about it that they approached me and said, Well, I was, you know, like you're somewhat upset for a day or two. But then the question was, well, did you get paid? Yes. And then the answer was well, if it and the reason why he's asking that's the reason why I'm telling the stories because ultimately, you have to understand that depending on where you are on the company, you are there to fulfill someone else's dream, but work on someone's demo reel. Right? That's my job at the company right now. I'm not the creative director. I'm not the director. I'm not I'm not designing on things. I'm here to help out on certain tasks on the shot, maybe on a sequence, but I'm here to help someone else. That's the director's vision. That's the director's demo reel. If that's, you know, the term you want to use. And that's okay. I mean, that's the agreed upon service. I am providing that animation service for this director on this shot for that movie. So it doesn't matter if I work on the shop for one day or six months, if they use 100% or nothing, it doesn't really matter. I am hired to do as told and to help and do the best I can. That sounds very demoralized, but it's not that's the that's the agreement you work at a company for someone that's we're going to do. And the thing is, it's important, at least to me, it's important that I detach myself from all of this. It doesn't matter at this point now. It doesn't matter if it gets caught or not. I mean, it's always kind of demoralizing. I mean, you do really you think you do you did a good job. And then it's in the movie like a bummer, because you want to use it potentially for your reel and you want people to see it. I mean, there are many reasons why you want your shots not to be caught. But the main point is that if you're always worried about your shot being in the movie, and then you get demoralized because it's not or there are changes made to it, it might affect how you continue working on that shot. You might try to salvage previous animation, you don't really incorporate the nodes fully, just hang on to things and that's not good, because then you get slow, the nodes are not addressed, the client might not be happy. So you just have to approach every version on the shop 110% do the best you can. And if even it's 50 versions, and then if they used version 12 out of 50, that's fine. They cut the whole thing. That's fine. At the end of the day, I still got paid not to make this about money, but that's a relationship. It's just I am here to provide a service and I'm getting paid for the service. That's the very simple back and forth. Whatever happens within that, if they use my work or not is not up to me, and I shouldn't work harder or less, depending if they use my shot or not. Every time you get a shot and every time you do a version for that shot, you should do the best you can. That's I think that's my answer to this nebulous thing. Now, if you meet in person, I can tell you more details about that shot and what happens. But that to me was a really great, let's say learning process. And one of these days, maybe one of these days when I'm not employed at ILM anymore, and I can take shots and put them, rip them and put them online without getting fired because I'm already not working there. I would love to do a compilation. There was a time for a couple years where shot, show after show after show, I had shots where the animation was at the end covered by something, leaves, snow, water, all kinds of things. And it felt like on every show, it started, it just sort of happened so many times, it became almost a joke. And it's, you know, it is frustrating because you do all your finger compression, all kinds of things or impact points and compression on that. And then you have leaves in front of it and you can't see anything and you go, well, why did I spend so much time on it? And that gets frustrating. But it's always a short shot or something where you get over it. In this case, it was a long time. And it was much more of a blow to my creative ego. And it was a bummer. And it was upset. Like the moment I heard it like, oh man, why? And then of course, you get over it. But I think when that person that gave me that advice, or just made that comment, it really hammered down like, yeah, it's, it's okay. It's, that's the job. It doesn't matter how much they use. It doesn't, you know, I still do the work that's needed. And at the, at the end of the day, that's the deal that I have with the company and I still got paid. And, and that's the job. It's a job. And that's, that's what we have to do. But yes, it's not always easy when things get cut. And especially if you project person, because you need those shots before you're real to get your next job. Again, all the things that I'm saying are from the perspective of full time staff employee, which is totally different when your project person goes to the stakes are different. So their reaction has been also very much different, probably more devastated. But yes, that's my answer, Dimitri. Nicolas Suarez. Suarez. I know you probably said this in some video, but how did you get into the industry? Was it right after you finished high school, now regarding animation itself, how do you find at the appropriate performance for each specific moment? What do you focus on in order to make the character feel alive? Alive. And I've said this before, and there's some videos that you can check why I have interviews where I talk about my things. But in short, how did I get, I didn't do it right after high school. So high school in Switzerland was kind of high school pre college. So I graduated when I was 20. Something, something like that. We have different school things. It was a longer six, seven year program. So it's kind of high school plus somewhat pre college before you go to university. So after that, took a year break, a little bit of military service was it's mandatory in Switzerland, but then was allergies kicked out and long story, or short story if you want nine days of military service. Then it took a year off to travel through Europe and kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And then I came to the States for the studies. And that was fall 99. Academy of Art here in San Francisco graduated in May 2003. And got a job in January 2004. So it wasn't right after definitely not right after high school. I had to go still to go through studies, and then fairly close after graduating. And that's it. How did you get into it? I mean, into more again, check my other clips, I talk about this, but it's basically you just send out reels and it was when I graduated, nothing happened, sent out another batch of reels, six ish months later, eight months later, through Christmas time. And then interviews came in, and then I got hired. And then here I am, almost 16 years later. Actually, just if you go on my Twitter, I did a long thread about my 20 years have been since last week, or this week, 20 years in the United States. So a little thread, you can see my nerdy, my nerdy things in there. Now regarding animation itself, how do you find your pro people performance at each specific moment? What do you focus on in order to make character feel alive? It's a tricky was it's a hard thing to do. I'm going to say I'm good at it. I try and it really depends on what the character is, where the character is, the surrounding environment, what happens to the character, what the goal is, what the action is of the character, what happens before and after. I mean, there's there's so many variables and what does the client want? Or if I do something at home, what do I want to get out of the shot? So the appropriate for the moment you have to look at what's happening at that moment, where is the character, first time or not for the first time, all those outside influences that will change your acting choices. And then you have to look at where is the character, what does the character want? What is the character's objective? Is there anything in their way? How are you going to try to get around that obstacle? Just I mean, there's so many parameters that will dictate the goal of the performance that I try to look at all of that. And this sounds very highfalutin, but you know, sometimes an X-wing flies through the frame. None of that really matters. You might just go, is it an invasive maneuver? Is it attacking? Is it, you know, I don't know, is it turbulence? Not that it's very Star Wars-y, but you just, you know, they're just outside factors and there's always something that will dictate the action of whatever you're animating. Let's put it this way. All right. I hope that answers it. Cartoon War Studios. That's a good name. What's your favorite part of the process and why? And that's the last, that's the last question. The favorite process and why? That's a good question. Depends on my mood. Depends on what I've been eating. I like the first initial creation, the blocking process or like on, not to get fired, but what can I say? Like sometimes like Star Trek Star Wars when there's like a space battle that people can't shoot, has to be all CG. Sometimes we just have a blank card that says space battle. And if you just say space battle, then you come up with the whole thing, then you might get some pointers, but sometimes you don't. Sometimes you just have something before and after and you go, well, I just got to make something up and you make up the composition, the camera moves, the action within. And I really like that. I really like animating cameras. I really like what we call post-vising. We post-vis the shots and it's what I'm doing a lot on this show, where you have battles in space at Star Wars. And I like being able to, I like the freedom to have the opportunity to come up with a shot in terms of this is the camera move, this is the action, whatever it is that the shot needs to be. I like that a lot. I like the initial blocking process and figuring things out. I also like and why do I like it? Because it's the interesting exploration of ideas and it's coming up with something from scratch and then seeing that eventually in the movie like, oh man, this is cool. We came up with this and we had some back and forth and dailies and clients and this is the final thing. It's cool that you were there from the very beginning and you had a hand in creating that shot. I think that's really cool. It's creatively very satisfying. But I also like the end process of polishing, where you just really focus on the last bits to give it that extra flair, the texture and the timing or for instance of right now in ships where I decide when the blasts happen and how a ship gets hit and the timing of it explodes. Not that the composters, the effects people look at my timing of explosions. Sometimes they do fit something very specific, but I get sometimes lost in those details and I like doing that. I like adding useless stuff that really actually slows me down and I should stop. But I like when I can X-wing it. I can X-wing of whatever ship, whatever. There's a blast and I put a color on that blast that lights the ship at that moment and the explosion happens and I like to put in lights to illuminate this so that I can play with potentially silhouette where you have, you might just have this really good boom and then the ship and that's it. But I like to dress it up to have when we use effects cards. So we have little 2D cards with an effect, like a shot effect of a plume of smoke or an explosion, something on Alpha channel. And I like to play with that so that if something explodes, like right now I'm doing this and I won't get fired because it's very general. Something explodes in Star Wars, I know. And I have a ship in front of it. Happens. But I like to play with that moment of if there is an explosion and it's a big light, so it's very bright, it's not all cloudy and yellow. So it's very bright and I try to bring that ship in and turn exactly at that point so that the ship gets really silhouetted in front of that white. Doesn't mean that when you do the actual shot and the effects work that it's gonna look like that, but I try to kind of play with those elements and I like that a lot. I like dressing up a shot with all kinds of things. But yes, that might just be me. And it's sometimes, again, it depends on where you work. Sometimes you just concert just an animation into any of the lighting part or dressing up. But I like dressing it up and in order to sell it, if that makes sense. I just like effects animation. I like doing destruction stuff. But even if I do something cartoony, I did a long time ago, crappy shot of a huge parrot flying through and grabbing a guy and I can put the links here in the description somewhere. I think I have it online. And I liked doing the deformation of the ground and the grass blades moving and the thing on the water. I like doing all that stuff and then with the camera moves. I just like animating. How about that? What's your favorite part? I like animating. The process and after 16 years, it just doesn't get old. I like the process. I like the whole process of animating, coming up with things, fleshing it out, polishing it and just seeing how the whole thing ends. And then seeing it rendered is the bonus. Oh, wow, this is actually fully rendered with the right lights and it looks photoreal. That's so cool. I just like animating. I like everything. I like animating characters. I like animating ships. I like animating creatures. I like animating cameras, set pieces. I just like that. I like the whole combination of all those things that will make a performance cool and performance as in a ship performance, character performance. I just like doing that. And right now in Star Wars, that's the big thing of figuring out ship animation and does the ship roll like a Falcon has always kind of a roll versus other ships don't have it. And I like figuring out the language of Star Wars. Like Star Wars is always everything has it up and down. The camera doesn't really go inverted like it's Star Trek. Star Trek has a lot of moving cameras and upside down cameras. So Star Wars has a very specific language. And I like looking at the older movies to reference like the teaser came out and you saw in the teaser that there are bee wings. So that's not a spoiler and don't fire me. It's in the teaser trailer or the trailer and there's a bee wing. It was awesome to go back and look at the old footage of episode six and how do bee wings fly? When do the wings open? When they turn, the cockpit stays put, like gimbals and then do they fly like this or like that. I like researching all that. It's also a process that I like. I like researching this and the fact that this is work, I get paid for this that I have to watch Star Wars and look at those elements for research and study that. And then I get to put that into the movie and then add more to the canon and the legacy of Star Wars. This is very, very sappy. But I like this. I like that. And I love working on those movies because of those movies were my childhood. So the whole process like again, what's your favorite part? So much. And why it's because I love it. I love everything that surrounds it where the research and implementation and then the changes where you get notes and it makes the shot better. And at the end you see it rendered and then you see it in the trailer and then you see comments and you watch it in theater with people around and they react to the shots that you did or react to the shots that your friends did and seeing how those shots affect people. It's like my friends worked on a ton of Marvel movies and seeing their reaction on people love those movies. Seeing how they contribute to that is so cool and having their shots turning to memes or just it just that whole process is really, really cool. So what's your favorite part? I mean, yes, the creation and the polish stands out. Big fan of that. But as a whole to close this Q&A, I just love animation. What can I say? I still love it. I love I love the filmmaking process and everything that goes around the shot, the sequence, the movie, just love movies. That's it. I think that's it. So yeah, the end of this Q&A. We have more questions. It's definitely a part nine. This might be the end. Maybe. I think I'm done with all the other questions. I'll have a long time to go by the verse clip, but that's it. So yes, I love animation and I'm gonna leave it at that.