Floyd Bishop

“Moving Day” 1936

floyd — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:32:46 +0000

I’m moving across town to a larger house, so I’m doing a lot of packing. It kind of reminds me of this classic Disney short, “Moving Day”. Completed in 1936, this short is one of the first ones to combine Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as a team, working toward a common goal.

Goofy is animated by Art Babbitt in this piece. He really pushed Goofy’s poses, flexing his body past the point of breaking, yet it all works and looks great. It would be nice to see more of this in today’s animation.

-Floyd Bishop

SOE Fan Faire 2008 in Las Vegas

floyd — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:27:21 +0000

I’m the nut in front of the acorn house.

What’s with the blogging silence this week? Well, I just got back from Las Vegas. I was in Vegas for the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) Fan Faire event. Fan Faire is basically a large party for the fans, where we have special events, give aways, and show off our upcoming games. This is why I was there. I’m a senior animator on the upcoming “Free Realms”.

I gave an hour long presentation on character animation that went though the ways we use character animation in the game, and then showed the audience how I do an animation from start to finish. Thanks to Online Gaming Radio, you can watch the entire presentation here. I say “umm” and “uhh” a heck of a lot, but other than that, it was a pretty good presentation.

In the presentation, I talk a bit about how animators on our title get their assignments, how we work with design, code, and other departments, and how we try and get as much entertainment as possible into all of our animations. I also got a suggestion for an animation from the audience, and animated it during the panel. That animation will be put into the final build of our game.

I’ll be sure to let everyone know when you can get your hands on “Free Realms”, and I hope to see many of you in the game real soon.

-Floyd Bishop

Animated Voting Graph

floyd — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:50:36 +0000

This animated gif (click for larger version) shows the voting results for Presidential elections from 1960 - 2004. The results are color coded, county by county, for the entire continental United States. It was interesting to see the color shifts that happened from year to year, and how voting results seemed to pool together in sections. The graph comes from a Princeton study. It will be interesting to see what this year’s map looks like.

-Floyd Bishop

Avi on the west coast…

floyd — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:42:32 +0000

…but not for long. On Sunday, I took a drive (along with Lisa Illowsky) to go visit with Avi Tuchman before he leaves the west coast. We pretty much just bummed around Burbank and the surrounding area. Avi told us all about the joys of his time at Nickelodeon and Film Roman. Avi is leaving for Israel soon, so I wanted to make sure I saw him before he headed off later this summer.

Good luck in your travels, Avi!

-Floyd Bishop

What a difference acting ability makes

floyd — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:15:53 +0000

via A Writer’s Life

This is really interesting. Here are two different projects, both written by Michael Mann, where he uses the same scene with almost identical dialog.

Here is the first clip, from a pilot for NBC called “LA Takedown”, starring Scott Plank and Alex MacArthur:

Now here is pretty much the same scene, from the movie “Heat”, starring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro:

It is amazing to me how much better the Pacino DeNiro version of the scene works. This is very relevant to animation, as figuring out how to act your scene can oftenmean the difference between good and great. You can see that for yourself in these clips.

-Floyd Bishop

Happy Independence Day: Strike TV goes live!

floyd — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:17:24 +0000

Watch the Teaser Here!

Remember the writer’s strike? During the strike, and then continuing on after it was resolved, I helped out with a thing called Strike TV. Strike TV is a collection of projects, written by WGA writers, and performed, acted, animated, and filmed by mostly volunteers, myself included. I was a part of three projects for Strike TV: “The Academy” by Michael Tabb, “Sketchtoons” by Charles Horn, and “The Write Environment” by Jeffrey Berman. The projects were a lot of fun, and I got to work with many great people, all the while expanding contacts in and around Hollywood. It was a great experience, and hopefully people tune in and enjoy the programs. Strike TV had its soft launch today, and will fully launch later this month. Keep watching for great programs featuring people from your favorite movies and shows.

-Floyd Bishop

Animation observation: Charlie bit me

floyd — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:11:16 +0000

Many times when you’re an animator, you’ll get a script or some notes with a very vague description of the action you need to create. In the above clip (which wasn’t scripted), you can see lots of great little moments that could help you out on a shot or scene later on. Observation is very important in animation, so let’s look at this clip a bit to see why it is entertaining.

The description of the clip could have been something like: “Two brothers, one older and one younger, are sitting in a chair. The younger brother bites the older brother.” Many times, it’s up to the animator to make that entertaining.

Watch how the older brother offers his finger to Charlie. Surely he cannot be hurt by his baby brother.
As Charlie (the baby) starts to bite, watch the older brother’s face as he starts to realize that putting his finger in his brother’s mouth was not a good idea.
Charlie’s face hardly does anything during the bite. Instead of a helpless baby, he’s a finger biting machine, easily capable of making his older brother scream.
When Charlie really starts to bite down hard, the older brother’s face tells us exactly what is happening. This really hurts! There are no sound effects, visual effects or the like. We get everything we need to know from the situation and the older brother’s face.
After the bite, the older brother scolds Charlie, who smiles with the satisfaction of having shown his older brother who is really in control.
After a bit of a pause, Charlie laughs a Muttley type of laugh. It’s not evil, but a very “I’m happy with what I have just done!” kind of feel.

The next time you’re animating, take a few moments to think about your shot and how you can pull entertainment from it. The most seemingly boring situations can often be the most stunning examples of character animation.

-Floyd Bishop

“Lonesome Ghosts”: Who animated what?

floyd — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:36:03 +0000

(click on the images for a larger version)

You may remember a post I did the other day about the Disney short film “Lonesome Ghosts”. While doing some additional research on the short, I found that Mark Mayerson did a shot by shot animator identification for the piece. (Mark has a great blog. Add it to your bookmarks) It’s very interesting to see just how the short was broken up, and who animated which sequences. [Read more…]

Early cartoon influences: “Lonesome Ghosts”

floyd — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:08:47 +0000

When I was a kid, one of my earliest animation related memories was of the Disney cartoon “Lonesome Ghosts”. Our family doctor had a toy called the Fisher Price Cartoon Viewer, a toy which had interchangeable cartridges which were sections of cartoons. One of my favorites was “Lonesome Ghosts”.

I used to watch the section with Mickey in the flood and Goofy with the dresser over and over again, forward and backward. It was a great way to see the overlapping action of how things moved and followed the main movement of the characters. I didn’t know this at the time. I was just watching a cartoon.

What are some of your early cartoon influences?

-Floyd Bishop

The Happy Pumpkin strikes again!

floyd — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:05:31 +0000

I did this video a while ago (last Halloween), but I really enjoy seeing these videos. If you’ve got one, let me know!

-Floyd Bishop