The following post include lecture notes for explaining concepts and active learning activities to do in class. Feel free to use and modify these ideas to fit your class structure!
Lecture and Class Activities
February 4, 2021Classic Exercises / Lecture NotesWhy does every animation student end up animating a bouncing ball early in their career? What is it about this assignment that has made it a right of passage? Moving a circle along a curved path trying to replicate the gravitational forces we see in the real world distills some of the more complex fundamentals into manageable bites. For those not confident in drawing skills, well it’s just a circle! The path of motion is obvious and intuitive, so this project is hopefully a confidence builder for most people, and a jumping off point for more complex movement. And for the skilled animator, there are all sorts of ways to add additional challenges with perspective, ricochets, and uneven surfaces.
My method of teaching the bouncing balls starts with real-world observation, a fun in-class activity that gets students up, outside and hopefully not breaking things!
You can find the assignment details here, which can be modified to your own particular goals and timeline.
And thanks to the pandemic, I’ve now got some online tutorials on how to get started.
Real-World Observation videos
Getting started with arcs and timing [...]
January 25, 2021Classic Exercises / Lecture NotesThis 5 part video tutorial takes students step-by-step (no pun intended) through creating a walk-in-place cycle.
Part 1: Planning and Keys
This demo highlights the key poses of a walk cycle through real world observation, then takes them to the drawing board in a first pass.
Part 2: Inbetweening and Plotting arcs
Once you have your key poses, how do you connect them. This demo will help you keep your limb length consistent and moving on a smooth arc and
Part 3: Adding Arms
Animators work in passes when doing complex motions. Save the arm swing until after you get the body and legs correct.
Part 4: Troubleshooting common problems
Analyze your work in progress so you can fix any problem areas before cleaning up.
Part 5: Clean up and overlapping action
Once the underlying action is satisfactory, add little details like overlapping action that are driven by the main action.
Bonus tutorial:
Adding a panning background to your cycle:
Contributed by Corrie Francis Parks [...]
February 1, 2020Animation Foundation / Blog / Lecture NotesI talk about our brains and perception a lot in class. Animation is just a weird thing. It’s like real life, but twisted and distorted in a colorful wonderful way. That’s a lot for our brains to handle and when images are whipping by at 24fps, the more help we can give our audience, the more enjoyable and satisfying the experience of watching animation will be. That’s where staging come into play.
Staging is how you present a shot to your viewers. Like a theater director or choreographer, we must always be aware of what the audience can see and how they will interpret it. Everything happening on screen works together and brings the viewer the experience we want them to have in the most efficient way possible.
When I first introduce staging to students, I break it into three parts to help clarify different things we should be thinking of when we design animation:
1. Where You Place Your Subject or Characters
Different camera angles and shots have different effects on a viewer. A close-up shot is intimate and direct. The emphasis is on emotion. A long shot allows us to take in the character’s surroundings and understand the context of the scene. A Dutch angle will heighten the tension in a scene, while a flat camera angle will provide a stage for comedy. Which shot you choose directly affects how your viewer will experience the film, so stage appropriately!
Additionally, what’s going on in the background can affect how the viewer understands the action. A cluttered, busy background will fight for the audience’s attention and your character may get lost. Find ways to pull your character out of the background through lighting, composition, or focus.
2. How You Pose Your Subject and Characters
A quick glance at a drawing should give us enough information to immediately tell what the character is doing or their attitude. The right amount of exaggeration is the key to a strong pose. We are used to seeing things happen in the real world, but when it comes to animation, we expect more than real life.
Here’s an in-class thumbnailing exercise (thumbnail drawings: fast, “thinking” drawings that allow you to quickly explore poses and actions). Draw a pose that conveys one of the following words:
angrydelighteddisappointedafraidsleepyimpatientetc.
Now, continue thumbnailing and “push the pose” further by exaggerating the attitude. See if you can push it too far so the attitude becomes unclear, then pull it back just a bit to find that happy spot.
When staging a shot, consider what you can see in a split second. A good way to do this is to look at the silhouette of the pose (animators call this the “silhouette test”). If you can generally tell what is going on without all the little details, you know the viewer will not have any trouble.
3. How You Time the Action
Animation is a visually dense medium and our brains can get overwhelmed taking it all in. In order to have clear staging, be deliberate about what actions are happening on screen. Sometimes, the best option is to have only one thing happening at a time. Or two actions can relate and complement each other if they are carefully planned and staged.
This video by UMBC student Tory Van Dine is an excellent example of staging as it relates to the timing of action. Our attention shifts constantly from the crab to its antagonists, with action/reaction as the driving force of the animation.
Adding pauses and holds at the appropriate moment plays a big role in how we process the action on screen. Give your audience a bit of “breathing room” every so often to catch up and get mentally ready for the next action, especially if you have more than one thing going on. Take this video by UMBC student Jacqueline Wojcik. The animation on the skeleton is fantastic, but we are so captivated by it we completely miss the movements of the owl on the left. Or, if our attention strays to the owl, we potentially miss an important moment of the skeleton’s antics. Allowing more of a back and forth between the two characters would allow both the skeleton and the owl to have their 15 seconds of fame.
There you go, that’s how I teach the nuances of staging! What examples and explanations do you find work best for your students? [...]
January 19, 2020Animation Foundation / Blog / Lecture NotesThe bookends and flourishes of a primary action.
Sentient sphere with a mohawk. Drawing by Simon Lee.
When I first read the explanation of follow through and overlapping action in the Illusion of Life, I thought “This is about as confusing as it gets!” Johnston and Thomas’ description makes these two principles out to be awkward dance partners, stepping on each other’s cartoonish feet. I re-read carefully and went looking for other explanations online, most of which parroted the Illusion of Life. Then I decided to come up with my own explanation.
First, every action is a complex choreography of a primary action (a jump, a bow, a twirl, a trip) and one or more smaller actions connected to the primary action. These smaller actions are the things that make the primary action believable and interesting.
Every primary action has a moment of preparation and a moment of recovery. These smaller actions that bookend the primary action are anticipation and follow through.
Let’s illustrate: stop reading and jump up as high as you can, trying to touch the ceiling or the sky. (This is a fun and only slightly dangerous activity to do in the classroom). If we consider the movement of the body through the air as the primary action, then the crouching movement we make before we start moving upwards is the anticipation of the jump. Try jumping without crouching down first — it doesn’t work very well. Every action has a pre-action that most often moves in the opposite direction of the main action. Think about pulling your leg back before a kick or tilting your head back before a sneeze.
Every primary action has a moment of preparation and a moment of recovery: anticipation -> action -> follow through.
When you land from your jump, you will automatically bend your knees to cushion your body hitting the ground, once again going into a slight crouch. This crouch that follows the primary action is the follow through. You could think of it as the anti-anticipation. Can you land a jump without any sort of cushion or bend in your knees? (Ouch!) We need that moment of recovery to slow the momentum of the primary action and come gradually to a stop. Often times, we have to overshoot our final resting spot to account for this momentum and then settle into our final resting spot (overshoot is another, more specific animation term associated with follow through). In more complex actions, the follow through of one movement may blend into the anticipation of the next movement. For example, in a walk cycle the low point key frame is both the follow through of the previous step and the anticipation of the next step.
Animation by Diana Towner
Where then, does overlapping action dance if not partnered with follow through (as suggested in The Illusion of Life)? Overlapping action also is connected to the primary action. It’s realm is all the things that flop, flow, flap and follow behind the central mass of the subject. Tails, capes, hair, jewelry, sometimes even heads and arms. Overlapping action follows the same line of action as the primary mass, but it does so a few frames behind the primary mass. Overlapping action often involves breaking a curve or joint, i.e. going from C curve to an S curve back to a C curve.
You might have a good deal of overlapping action in your follow through stage, which is why they are often confused or at least grouped together. However, overlapping action will also appear in your anticipation phase. And in your primary action phase. So, it is not just related to follow through.
Base animation of a creature bowing.
The same animation with overlapping action added on the forelock and mane. Note the excellent anticipation and follow-through on bow. Animation by Elizabeth Khovayko.
Secondary Action is our final lonely dancer. But it too is connected to primary action. Secondary action is something that is under the character’s control that embellishes or enhances the primary action in a way that adds character or personality. The difference between the embellishments of overlapping action and secondary action is that secondary actions are voluntary on the part of the character, while overlapping action is (mostly) involuntary. We can’t control how our hair flows in the wind or our cape trails behind us as we jump, but we can control the little flick of our head and the wiggle of our fingers that show how delighted we are feeling. This little flick of the head and finger wiggle are secondary actions to the primary action of jumping, while the cape and hair are overlapping actions. Secondary actions are voluntary, driven by the character; overlapping actions are driven by momentum and physics, thus involuntary.
The same animation with some added secondary action — a flair of tail movement and a subtle smile.
Okay, yes, once we start layering these things together they do all start to tread on each other’s toes and roll into some great animation. Developing a precise vocabulary is important for analysis and description, especially when trying to figure out what exactly is going wrong with an animation (“I think you need more follow through on that action…” “The breaking of the curve on the overlapping action is not quite right…” “Maybe add some secondary action to give a stronger sense of the character’s mood…”)
At some point we can then step back and enjoy the complex intertwining of all these principles around a single action. Anyone up for a dance party? [...]
January 7, 2020Animation Foundation / Blog / Lecture NotesThere’s a time and a place to flip the classroom, and I think teaching the animation fundamentals is one of those times.
First off, Alan Becker has created a series of videos that explain the classic 12 principles of animation very well in a non-Disney way. I have a whole 90 minute lecture on these that I used to do, but I think students get it just as well if they watch these videos as their reading assignment for the week. I also assign them Chapter 3 (Timing and Spacing) from Richard Williams The Animator’s Survival Kit. Then I hold them accountable for identifying those principles in a written assignment, a classroom exercise, and a hands-on animation assignment. Here’s how it works:
This is the first of 12 videos. The full playlist is here. (Thanks Alan, you are amazing!!! My students love you!)
At the beginning of class, we make a list of the 12 principles on the board; I like having lists that students can look at when they run out of ideas. Then I hand out the flashcards:
Each card has one fundamental on it. Then we start watching films. Each student is responsible for finding an example of their fundamental. They point it out and then can hand in their card. We go until everyone had handed in their card, then I reshuffle and deal again.
I start with the classic Animator vs Animation by (again) Alan Becker.
The following fundamentals are the ones I find to be the most useful for recognizing in-situ and class discussion, but with the list on the board, students will often jump in with other ones they recognize as well.
timing and spacingsquash n stretcharcsstagingeasing (slow in/out)anticipationfollow throughoverlapping actionsecondary action
Inevitably, this brings up opportunities to clarify and discuss some common hang-ups and misunderstanding with the 12 Principles, such as the difference between follow through, overlapping action, and secondary action, or the three parts of staging. We keep watching films and reshuffling the deck until we run out of time. Here are a few other favorite bits of animation I use for this project. [...]
March 23, 2019Blog / Class activities / Handcrafted TechniquesStudents come into our program at all levels of ability and experience. Some have an intuitive sense of timing and spacing while others love animation, but have never considered the actual process of breaking down a movement into frames. As in any course with widely diverging skill levels, creating an environment where the more advanced learners are challenged while the less experienced are not left behind is a teaching conundrum. My approach in the Intro to Animation course is to immediately place students into a collaborative learning environment.
After introducing the Animation Fundamentals (my version of the 12 Principles) in reading and class lectures, our first big assignment is a Group Stopmotion Extravaganza. The prompt is as follows:
You are a small stop-motion studio commissioned to create a 15–20 second animation for Instagram. Your goal is to reinvent an ordinary object and turn it into something unexpected that surprises and delights the audience.
To prepare, we watch work by PES and Jan Svankmajer and students individually complete a series of basic timing exercises, which get them familiar with the Dragonframe interface and the Animation Fundamentals. But my secret agenda for this group project right at the beginning of the semester is that it levels the playing field through collaborative learning.
Collaborative learning, which is different than group projects, focuses on students collectively searching for creative solutions as they explore and apply the course material in a setting of mutual accountability.
From one of the seminal texts on the subject: “Collaborative learning has as its main feature a structure that allows for student talk: students are supposed to talk with each other….and it is in this talking that much of the learning occurs.” (Golub, 1988)
While Golub is referring to students learning how to write through listening to each other talk, the idea that conversation can enhance student learning applies across disciplines. I’m sitting in the animation lab as I write this post, listening to groups of students talk to each other as they animate objects under the camera. They are thinking out loud, discussing how fast or slow something should move, what arc it will follow, how to apply squash and stretch. Those that have already incorporated words like “easing” and “anticipation” into their vocabulary, use those words in context and other students adapt to that vocabulary.
For this particular project, I find three is the magic number for group dynamics. With three, everyone has something to do and everyone’s opinion is heard. Every student has to animate some part of the final piece, though they are allowed to divide up the work according to their strengths and weaknesses. Inevitably, the confident, experienced animators do a lot of the moving and the less confident animators do more of the camera work and constructing of backgrounds. Though this may not seem “fair” on the surface, I’ve noticed that these less confident students absorb a lot from watching their peers make decisions about timing and spacing. The experienced students do a good deal of one-on-one instruction in directing the animation, attention which I could never give to every student who needs it.
I’ve found that the key to making this not a burden for the more experienced students is to make the environment low stress. If the project isn’t rushed, the capable students won’t try to take over and finish it themselves, but will patiently direct the less experienced students and help them make excellent animation.
The other residual benefit of this collaborative project is that everyone is crammed in the lab for several hours working energetically and the class sort of comes together as a cohort. So the rest of the semester there’s a level of familiarity that makes critique more comfortable and the classroom atmosphere more collaborative as a whole. Even though out class is primarily focused on drawn animation, this initial stopmotion project targets a lot of our learning goals in an efficient way.
At the end of the project, I ask students to take an individual survey with the following questions:
For you personally, what do you feel like you learned the most from this project? The “what you learned” questions seem corny, but students take ownership over their outcomes by articulating them, and the project becomes more than just an assignment.
How did you divide the work in your group? Did you feel there was a fair input on everyone’s part? Which part of the project did you animate? Were your ideas discussed as a group and completed as a group? This is a chance for group members to anonymously let me know if someone wasn’t contributing, but it also asks students to think specifically about their roles in the group and how different roles can still achieve a balanced contribution.
What do you feel was your biggest contribution to the project? This helps students to specifically articulate their strengths and how they approached the project.
Anything else you’d like me to know, or suggestions for future classes that do this project? This question has helped me hone the project over the years to where it runs pretty smoothly!
How do you work collaborative learning into your classes?
References:
Golub, Jeff. “Focus on Collaborative Learning: Classroom Practices in Teaching English.” Focus on Collaborative Learning: Classroom Practices in Teaching English, National Council of Teachers of English, 1989, pp. 1–1. [...]
January 21, 2019Class activitiesRWO: Real-World Observations
The illusion of life is grounded in the observation of life.
You will need a collection of different balls and an open space to bounce them. If the weather is nice, this is a great change to go outside!
Organize students into groups of three (I find three to be the magic group size for most activities). Each group should choose two balls from the collection and move to a space where they can safely bounce and throw them around.
Throw the balls multiple times, and in different ways. Record your observations in your sketchbook, noting the following:
Observe the shape of the arc for each bounce. Is it symmetrical? Does it change over time? If so, what causes the change? Note how much height a ball loses with each bounce.Note how far a ball travels with each bounce.Time each bounce. How long does the ball take to come to a stop? How many bounces are there in a full sequence? Does the timing change as the bounces get lower?Try bouncing the ball of a wall or in a corner. What happens? How are the angles of the surface and the arcs of the bounce related?How does spin or backspin affect they way a ball bounces?
Students should make their own observational sketches but can discuss and compare notes as they do so. Groups can trade balls to make more comparative observations as well. Video footage can be helpful for future reference and is encouraged.
Discussion: When returning to the classroom, discuss some of the common observations groups had. If time allows, post your best observational sketches and review. Look for commonalities and differences, particularly if two groups use the same type of balls. [...]
December 1, 2018Blog / Lecture NotesA lifetime of animating is only possible if you develop healthy habits early.
Now is the time of the semester when students (and instructors) might start feeling the physical effects of hours upon hours of intense work. I think some of you can already attest to the fact that Repetitive Stress Injuries are a real risk. When I was in grad school, I began having horrible pains in my wrists. Cortisone shots, physical therapy, and wrist braces did nothing to alleviate the pain. I had to stop using the computer for 3 months and only then was my body able to heal, but I still have to be aware of my working ergonomics, or it starts to come back!
Mental health is important too. The end of the semester stress can trigger anxiety attacks depression and exhaustion. I have had students disappear during finals, fail to turn in their projects. When I see them next semester, they resignedly tell me they just got overwhelmed by all the projects, or had a mental breakdown. Sometime just knowing the instructor cares about their state of mind can help a student hang on during a rocky period.
This week I spent the first half of class going through the points below. One student (a senior) told me I was the only professor that had ever talked about being healthy during finals. I don’t want to be the only one! Have these conversations. Being mindful of how you work, both physically and mentally, will help you manage the intense periods and set up up with good habits for a long life of healthy animation.
Track your time
Knowing
how long an animation project will take you is a skill acquired through
experience and discipline. When I started doing freelance work, I
didn’t have a clue how much to charge for a 30 second logo animation or a
2 minute segment of documentary animation. Clients would ask for a cost
estimate, which means I had to estimate how many hours I would spend on
their project and multiply that by a liveable hourly rate that would
cover my overhead and expenses.
I started using a time tracking service to categorize the time I spent on projects and also how much time I spent on other art and business related stuff (applying for grants, sending emails back and forth to clients — all the mundane stuff that sucks away our time without us realizing it!) I wish I had done this in school because I would have started out in business with a much better sense of how long it takes to animate certain things.
There are lots of apps out there to help you do this! I use Paymo*, which has a free version that allows for 3 different projects and an unlimited tasks assigned to each project. This works well for academia because I have Teaching, Research, and Service as my “Projects” and then can assign different tasks under those projects to be more precise about where my time is going (e.g. Under “Service, I list each committee I’m on as its own separate “Task”; under “Teaching” I have tasks like Grading, Classroom Time, Course Prep, Advising, etc.)
I use tomatotimers.com to keep students focused during work days in class.
When tackling a long day of work, using the Pomodoro Technique helps maximize your efficiency and schedule mini-breaks to reset your focus and get up and move (see next section). You can use this to track your time too, but just need to manually enter in your “tomatoes” into a Google Spreadsheet or other doc.
After my lecture on healthy work habits, I pulled up this very cute, animated tomato timer and we all worked on our projects in 25 minute spurts, taking a 5 minute stretch break after each tomato. It was a great success! I think because we did it in class, more of them will actually make use of this technique on their own.
*I don’t necessarily promote Paymo as the “best” app. It’s just what I happened to start using when I was freelancing and didn’t want to switch when I started teaching.
Get up and move
As
someone who is constantly managing RSI, I can’t stress how important it
is to move your body in order to protect it! The tomato timer is great
because you can train yourself to stand up every 25 minutes and do a few
stretches before going back to work. Smart watches and phone health
apps now also have this feature. Clearly the research says we should be
moving more than our modern lives require.
One
thing I’ve found very helpful in managing my RSI is to change up my
working position. I’ve tried a lot of things in crafting my perfect
studio. I have a sit/stand desk from IKEA that lets me work part of the day standing. I do a lot of work on a Cintiq Touch,
which keeps my hands away from the mouse (the main source of RSI
problems for me). I try to spend part of my day sitting on an exercise
ball, to build core strength.
Cartoon yoga stretches by Roman Muradov. You can download a poster-sized version to print out and put in your animation workspace here.
Most
students don’t have the resources for all these studio gadgets, but
they do have one thing — laptops! Laptops enable you to change your work
environment frequently. Spend an hour working at a desk, then move to
the couch for a bit. Find a place on campus with a counter that’s ideal
for standing while you work. Working in different body positions
distributes the stress on your joints and tendons so that nothing gets
overworked. And don’t forget those 5-minute breaks to get up and move!
Things to do during your 5 minute break:
Do these hand and wrist stretchesTry some cartoon yogaWalk to the window and look at something far awayDrink a glass of waterDo a lap around the building (inside or out)
Encourage students to check in with each other
As
teachers, we can reach out to students who seem to be having a hard
time, but we don’t have the ability to keep track of everyone on a very
personal level. Friends and classmates are much more aware of what’s
going on in each other’s lives and can be a huge encouragement to
students struggling with stress, depression, and anxiety. That’s why
it’s important they look out for each other.
If you don’t see a classmate for a while, check up on them with a text or stopping by their dorm. Make sure they are ok and know that someone cares. If you are really worried about their mental state, offer to go to the counseling center with them.If you know a friend is sick, check in with them, just to make sure they are OK and not getting worse. (Seriously, people die of the flu!)Have a study session or work session for your project. Being around other people working can be energizing. Plus you can problem solve together, get a second opinion on your color choices, and encourage one another to get to the finish line!If you are feeling completely overwhelmed, or if something personal is seriously interfering with your ability to finish your work, please, please contact your professor about it. There may be resources on campus or alternative options that you don’t know about. We care about you, and want you to succeed!
This was a great conversation with my class this semester and I actually noticed that the energy level and attitude of the class collectively jumped a lot this week. Feel free to share this post or use it as a guide for your own students. Happy finals everyone! [...]
November 18, 2018Blog / Lecture NotesIt’s all about the layers!
Our program has a sound design course that all animation students are required to take, but not all of them have taken it when they get to my Intro to Animation course. So as we move into final projects, I spend part of a class period with a brief lecture on how to approach sound for animation.
Good sound design is all about layering. There are several different types of sounds you might include in your films to create a realistic sound environment.
Ambience – the background noises that define the environment
jungle atmospherewind blowingraincity soundscrowd noisesroom tone
Hard Effects/Foley – sound effects that are timed specifically to an action on screen.
footstepsclothing rustlingcartoon sounds
Soft Effects – sound effects that are not synchronized to something on screen but still important for the story line.
doorbelldog barking in the distancetea kettle in the next room
Music – music is a powerful for telling the audience what to feel. Be aware that the music you choose will play a huge role in how your audience experiences your film.
Dialog/Voice Over – anything the characters say in the film, including efforts, laughs, cries, screams, snorts, sniggers, etc.
Frequently
sound effects are not just one sound, but several sounds blended
together and processed through various filters. Pixar’s sound designer
Ben Burtt reveals how he made the sounds for Wall-E in a series of
lecture videos. Check out all the random things he uses to make unusual
sounds. Here is the first part of the lecture. Parts 2-4 are on this website, along with an interview.
All these sounds fall into two categories. Diegetic sounds can include anything on or off screen that belongs to the world of the film. Anything that the characters could potentially hear and respond to would be part of that world: footsteps, telephone rings, howling wind, music on the jukebox. Non-diegetic sound are the surreal or external sounds that add to our experience of the film, but are beyond the world of the characters; a musical score, voice-over, laugh tracks, surreal sound effects.
Two different approaches to sound design
Some approaches to sound design are realistic, i.e. they try to accurately represent what we are seeing on screen. Other approaches may have varying level of surrealistic design i.e. matching unexpected or unusual sounds to a visual. Animation has the additional benefit over live action in that the viewer is already suspending a hefty bit of their disbelieve to accept that those puppets, drawings or bits of paper are full of life and vitality. That means a good sound designer can manipulate that acceptance by making unusual and creative pairings in the sound design. It is amazing what we will accept as belonging together when our ears and eyes are coordinating their processing.
In the two examples below, listen carefully to the sounds you hear and ask how do the sound effects play in our understanding of the image?
Surreal sound complimenting realistic images.
Realistic sound complimenting surrealistic images.
Sound and music are incredibly powerful emotional triggers. Through our absorbing of cinematic vocabulary, we instinctively know that we are supposed to tear-up as the orchestral strings swell in a music track, and our heart rate will automatically quicken when we here deep, menacing undertones in the ambience. Watch this short film twice. The first time, just experience the film. The second time, pay attention to the subtle changes in tone and ambience and what that does to your emotional state.
Where to find sound for your film
Creative Commons
Creative Commons AttributionNon-commercialShare-alike
When using CC (creative commons) material, there are certain limitations determined by the author. Read the specific license details on how to properly credit the work and what you can and cannot do with it. Read best practices for attribution before you use!
CC Licensed sound effects on freesound.org
CC Licensed music on freemusicarchive.org and mobygratis.com
And a few more http://socialtimes.com/royalty-free-music_b37470
Purchasing Music
These websites allow you to buy royalty free music for a small fee (usually $10-40 depending on length). Most of these are made specifically for media projects so there are a lot of options for genre, style and tempo.
AudioJungle
iStock Audio [...]
September 21, 2018Blog / Lecture NotesI am not exactly sure where the story spline originated, as I have come across it in a variety of contexts. I first encountered it while looking over materials from the Art for Animation course offered by the UC Berkeley Undergraduate Graphics Group (UCBUGG — check ’em out!). A few keystrokes later google brought me to Josh Sutphin’s summary of a Pixar master class in storytelling with Matthew Luhn. Sutphin give a detailed summary of several storytelling exercises Pixar uses in their development process. The story spline is a fun one. It’s an exercise for teasing out variations in a story by thinking about cause and effect. This is the format of the spline:
Once upon a time…And everyday…Until one day…And because of that…And because of that…And because of that…So that finally…And the moral of the story is…
You can smash all sorts of stories into this structure. This week, we did a couple in class exercises based on the story spline.
First we tried breaking down The Incredibles into a story spline.
Once upon a time… there were super heroesAnd everyday…they went out and rescued peopleUntil one day… someone sued themAnd because of that… they went into hidingAnd because of that… they got boring jobsAnd because of that… one of them had a mid-life crisis
At this point, we got hung up a bit because we still had the entire film in front of us and there were going to be a lot of “because of thats”. After further discussion, we decided that this was the spline for the backstory to the film — the Story of the Supers, which we then revised to fit the arc of the movie.
And because of that… they went into hidingAnd because of that… they got boring jobs that they went to everydayUntil one day… an evil supervillain attacked the cityAnd because of that… the last Supers came out of hidingAnd because of that… the city was savedAnd because of that… the people appreciated the Supers againSo that finally… the Supers could use their powers openly and for good againAnd the moral of the story is… appreciate the talents of the people around you and don’t sue them!
Our discussion then led to the idea that there were story splines for all the characters in the film as they went through their hero’s journey, so we decided to do a spline for Bob, aka Mr. Incredible. I won’t write it out here, but you can give it a go on your own.
After that, I passed out scratch paper and we did another spline activity. As a class, we came up with three options for Once upon a time…
Once upon a time there was… a shy boyOnce upon a time… there was a tired studentOnce upon a time… there was a cat with a gun
Then we voted (the cat with the gun won, obviously!) and moved onto the next line, doing the same thing. And then repeated with the third line. So by the end we had:
Once upon a time… there was a cat with a gunAnd everyday… he worked for the mafiaUntil one day… he found another cat in his litter box.
From here, I asked the students to complete the spline on their own. Then we read them aloud. It wasn’t long before we noticed a trend.
Once upon a time… there was a cat with a gunAnd everyday… he worked for the mafiaUntil one day… he found another cat in his litter box.And because of that… he shot the other catAnd because of that… the mafia got mad because it was the don’s sonAnd because of that… he had to run awayUntil finally… they caught up with him and killed himAnd the moral of the story is… don’t work for the mafia
I would say about 70% of the student’s splines were something along these lines — basically, the plot of every mafia movie you’ve seen. (Two students wrote that the cat fell in love with the other cat in the litter box and they ran away together).
I wasn’t quite expecting such uniformity in their stories but it was the springboard for a great discussion on how easy it is to pluck the “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to story and rely on conventional expectations. This is a mafia movie, so it has to have these plot elements because every mafia movie has those. Plus, it’s the first thing that popped into my head and it’s too much work to think of something else. So, with that in mind, I challenged them to climb the ladder to the top of the tree and get that gorgeous fruit that no one else had touched. We did the exercise again, starting in the same place. The results were very different the second time around.
Once upon a time… there was a cat with a gunAnd everyday… he worked for the mafiaUntil one day… he found another cat in his litter box.And because of that… he discovered a long lost cousin who worked for the circusAnd because of that… he ran away to join the circusAnd because of that… he became a trapeze artistUntil finally… he became famous in his new life and the mafia left him aloneAnd the moral of the story is… you can always make a change for the better
Breath… of… fresh… air! It really drove home the point that writing and then re-writing will get you to the next level.
Leave that low-hanging fruit for the amateurs!
We did one last exercise in which each student wrote down the first three lines of their project idea into story spline format. Then we passed those around the class, with each subsequent student filling in one line before passing it on. After getting hers back, one student commented, “Well, that didn’t go in the direction I expected!” Which is sort of the point. External review can bring unexpected ideas to the table.
Whether or not these exercises will result in some better stories for their final projects remains to be seen. But overall, it was a great day in class! [...]
