https://ianimate.net/podcasts/item/interview-with-wdas-animation-supervisor-doug-bennett.html?category_id=125
Transcript:
Unknown Speaker 0:04
Record of the did Mike for peace they're going to play this evening.
Larry Vasquez 0:15
Welcome to our second podcast.
We'd like to welcome all of our loyal listeners that can stay loyal right now because this is only our second podcast so I'm assuming you've stuck with us, thus far. We'll see how we go. After this one here. I like to welcome Rick here with this he's here once again. Hey guys How you guys doing. We have a special guest today, as I mentioned our second podcast, but we have been really fortunate here to get Doug Bennett in our quote unquote studios to talk about WreckIt Ralph released this last weekend so we'd like to welcome Doug Bennett here to the show. How's it going, very good how are you guys very well thanks, Rick. Thank you. Likewise, nice to meet you Thank you for for you know doing this.
Doug Bennett 0:57
Yeah, no problem.
Larry Vasquez 0:59
Doug and this is only our second podcast. So, you have to bear with us.
Doug Bennett 1:05
Life first so you got to bear with me. Okay.
Why don't you tell us a little about yourself. Well, I'm a, an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California. I've been there for about 17 years now I think something like Donner was
Unknown Speaker 1:27
good.
Doug Bennett 1:29
Yeah. I went to Sheridan College in 1980.
Let's just say the mid 80s. And from there I went to Ireland I worked at Don Bluth studios.
I worked on. All Dogs Go To Heaven and a couple other is movies and then I traveled back and forth between Toronto where I'm from. And in Ireland, worked in various movies and commercials and TV shows and stuff before I landed at Disney and in 95 and I've been at Disney ever since. So now were you with Jason at the time over in Ireland at all. Yep. Yeah, I met him in 93, I think we are working on a. It was a friend of ours studio Paul Bolger he had a studio over there in Dublin and we were working on a German feature film, one right, the cats one. Yeah.
It was all in, in German and we had to animate dialogue in German. So, we had, we had translations of the of the of the dialogue and we had to just try to work out the phonetics of the you know the German language so that was, it was fun, it was a lot of fun to do. Very cool. Even the name of that one. Philippe.
Larry Vasquez 2:52
Okay, was that in our notes here for people to build check that out. Yeah, class from the past there.
Doug Bennett 2:58
Yeah, obscure your movie down.
Larry Vasquez 3:02
So now your backgrounds in 2d then
Doug Bennett 3:05
yeah originally yep okay I started off in 2d, and I was drawing until I got hired at Disney and that was one of the reasons I think that I got hired at Disney because they were looking for 2d artists that were willing to train on gun computer. Okay. And so, so I did that in my first project was on tin soldier on Fantasia 2000. Okay. And that was my first ever experience with computer animation and Jason as well Well yeah,
Larry Vasquez 3:38
so yeah. How was your transition, working from 2d to computer now,
Doug Bennett 3:43
it was brutal. Yeah, yeah. I had a hard time. I'm so used to or at the time I was so used to the very tactile quality of your work being at your fingertips literally at your fingertips you know your drawing and your workers right there so there's no intermediary there's no mouse. You know, so that that's, that was one of the things I really had a hard time getting my head around was that my hand was down on my mouse and my work was up on the screen so I felt
Larry Vasquez 4:14
sort of a disconnect, which
Doug Bennett 4:16
is weird but you know that. Now it seems weird but it was really, I think that was one of the things that was hard for me getting used to it and then also, you know, that was back in the, in the Stone Age as far as computer animation goes that was, you know, 1995. We're working in alias power animator. Okay, wow wow that looks bad. It was not the most intuitive software in the world. And, you know, we animate the shots and then we'd have to, you know, if you wanted to play lasted. I'd have to walk down the hall and get a TD bring them back to my office and you'd have to write like two paragraphs where the code, just so I could look at my work. And no yeah it was it was a tough transition but eventually I like to I worked on that and then I went back to 2d I worked on Tarzan. And after Tarzan Disney said Well listen, we need help on on dinosaur, they're working on dinosaur at the time. Actually, my,
my mouse pad.
But they said yeah you have computer experience so we'd like you to go work on dinosaur, like, Oh, here we go. So, but on dinosaur they were using Softimage so I don't know if it was the, the software or the fact that I sort of had a better idea going in, of, you know what was required and you know I was sort of more mentally prepared for it I guess there are just four. But either way, I had time working on that on that movie and Jason was on that movie as well. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah I had a great time working on that and I never looked back after that I stick by stuck with with with CG. Now
Larry Vasquez 6:09
what made you want to jump to this CG in the first place was it just the fact that hey I get to animate or was the fact that I'm gonna get to animate over at Disney or how did that come out.
Doug Bennett 6:20
Well it was, it was definitely going to work out Disney was one of the big draws you know even back then it was well certainly you know 95, they were off of their their peak of, you know, those really successful film. So, You know, this was booming back then. So it was really a draw, to go and work at Disney. And also, you know as much as I ended up complaining about CG I really wanted. I was looking for the challenge you know that, you know, to learn something new and to work on something of quality and interesting you know so that's really what what drew me to it. You know the talent at Disney is really inspiring so you know just a chance to work with people that are way, way better than you, you know it's it's super inspiring I mean it's humbling, you know,
sometimes it's inspiring
Unknown Speaker 7:16
as well you know and and. Do you miss any meeting Tuesday I mean,
Doug Bennett 7:22
you know, I, I kind of do sometimes but I honestly I don't think I would want to go back to it. I've had a couple opportunities over the years to do a little bit of 2d. At the end of bolt.
We did animated, and credits, and they were animated, and we did those old school on paper and then they were scanned in and colored in Photoshop. Real guerilla kind of operation. And so yeah that was I had an opportunity to animate by hand. So, but I found myself thinking you know i, this is cool doing this but I'm glad it's gonna be over in three weeks
Unknown Speaker 8:06
to use your 2d techniques like thumbnail thumbnail a lot in 2d or,
Doug Bennett 8:12
I don't really thumbnail, a whole lot but I do, I mean I do use my drawing skills I you know I have a Cintiq at home here and I draw you know we're producing a comic book, like a collaborative anthology comic book with some of the animators that work so I did it for that so that was fun doing that, you know, I use my, my graphic sense I think in my work all the time. You know, and I think my, my drawing does help me when you know when I'm creating poses and when I'm looking for, for silhouette and and that kind of thing, you know, you know animation is certainly it's certainly an artistic pursuit you know so i think you know drawing skill. It does help I think I really yeah, and there's lots of great great animators that can't draw at all. You know, I know a couple, and they're awesome Raiders and they they cannot draw or the worst bit so
Larry Vasquez 9:14
one of the things I love about Jason's approach having watched him over the years, is he treats, even in the CG world it as a very much of a 2d like he basically you know keyframe. All wise blocking things out and even some of their breakdowns, and treating each key, as if it were a pose that he had drawn in 2d, right, do you take that kind of same approach there as well.
Doug Bennett 9:37
Definitely, yeah definitely that's definitely the way I work. You know, I mean animation is is made up of, you know, a bunch of steel images, right. Obviously, and those images you know the stronger. Those images are in terms of just like graphic quality. In terms of, you know, a dynamic pose, the stronger than the movement is going to be. So, I think it's really, really important to, to have really strong keys and really spend your time on your keys. I mean, obviously you know the movement and the in betweens have to make sense as well and that you know it all has to tie together nicely but you know it's if you have really strong poses. Then, you know you can't you can't go wrong you know your animation is going to be. You're going to be 80% there, really.
Larry Vasquez 10:33
It made a lot of sense to me watching that type of philosophy, treating them as they were almost drawings, and that made a lot of sense to me, working in the computer.
Doug Bennett 10:43
Right. Yeah, Jason is a is an anomaly, Jason is Jason's one of these guys that he just I think he just sort of already sees in his head and he just sort of, you know, it's already there and he's just like trying to get it out fast enough so he doesn't lose it, you know. No, I got a, I got a vague idea of it you know and then I put a version of it down. What I think I see in my head is like now that's not I gotta fix this. So, I think that's, you know, most of us work that way you know we put a version down that we think is going to be good and then we continue to, to make it better and I think you know there's there's a few people definitely in the industry that is just, you know, they see a finished product in their head.
Larry Vasquez 11:36
Yeah, one of the things that Jason is known for on our live weekly demos, is when he doesn't play blast and he's thinking that this thing is probably going to, you know, look very poor but it'll give him something to kind of work with, he's like oh wait actually looks pretty good. And he, and he actually acts surprised like you know everybody's gonna like yeah okay we've seen this every week now. Stop acting surprised.
Doug Bennett 12:01
But so yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:02
Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh no, I'm, be honest with you I'm, I really want to know I really want to talk about your experience, and you know WreckIt Ralph I mean, I don't want to be talking about too much about the story but I am super, I just saw recently saw the movie I loved it I really really enjoyed it. And I'm, I guess I'm jumping the gun here because I just want to talk about it. Right now, you know.
Unknown Speaker 12:27
So you were animation supervisor if I'm correct.
Doug Bennett 12:30
Yeah, I was one of the one of the animation supervisors, or not Oh design yes was Santos was the, he was the, the animation supervisor so he was kind of like the head of the department sort of thing. And then there were five supervising animators and I was one of them. And we we kind of broke it up by, by sequence so you know I was in charge of a few sequences and although you know we split the work fairly, like, you know, there was sort of one guy nominally in charge of a sequence but really we all had a voice in everybody's sequences so we all sort of shared the work. But, but yeah that was sort of the idea is that each of us would concentrate on a certain number of sequences, and you know we can be involved with the upstream and downstream departments as it relates to our sequence and the asset production. Certainly the animation obviously you know you're jumping around from animator an animator trying to keep the continuity right and trying to keep the animation consistent the performance consistent. So that kind of thing. So that was sort of my, my job on the movie. So I didn't really get to animate a whole lot I did maybe, I don't know maybe half a dozen scenes. I did on the on the movie. Not as much as I would like to certainly but you know it really is sick, it kept us pretty busy just, you know, we had a crew of. I think there was over 60 animators on the movie so we had a pretty big crew and so it kept us hopping just like you know keeping that crew fed and and dealing with, you know, with layout and asset production and like I said, and all the way down to lighting you know or dealing with all that kind of stuff. So, but yeah really I mean it was up to us really as floor supervisors to, to make sure that the director's vision. Rich that his vision is is is coming out in the in the movie. So that was kind of our main. Our main goal and and rich, rich was the director. He was awesome. He was just so great I mean he, he came to the, to the, to the studio. And he was sort of given this this project. This project or I think he had a, they they hired him at the studio and they sort of gave him a range of of projects to to consider. And this is the one that he that he landed on this. It was originally called Joe jump it was a it was pitched years ago, at the studio a video game movie. And it was originally called Joe jumping or never kind of, there's a lot of projects at Disney that kind of, you know, they go under development but they never really make it to where they get fully greenlit. And that was one of them. And it's kind of languished for a while until rich picked it up and he had a really new, fresh take on it. And he originally I guess the you know that the original story was, it was gonna be about fix a Felix because fix a Felix is the name of the game. And he's sort of you know the good guy in the game. And they quickly realized when they were trying to create a story that it's much more interesting to have the story about the bad guy. And, you know, he's trying to be wants to be a good guy.
Larry Vasquez 15:56
Yeah, spoiler alert.
Unknown Speaker 15:59
We're sorry we should have warned you guys
Doug Bennett 16:03
give way too much. Yeah. But yeah, I mean that's it's a much more interesting arc, you know, and when you see the movie, you know, he looks is and and we've we certainly played him that way he's a very vanilla one note kind of guy he doesn't change he's a good guy, all the way through and Ralph does change and he had some much more interesting arc I think for to follow to follow Ralph.
Larry Vasquez 16:26
Yeah. So, definitely, I thought the, the emotion in the movie, definitely happened to be revolving around him and definitely played out very well. The dynamics with him and what he was trying to accomplish in the movie, as well as vanilla P. in the movie as well her story. It made it for a very compelling and emotional movie, much more than I was expecting.
Doug Bennett 16:50
Yeah. Remember the original pitch was that, you know, the relationship between Ralph and Penelope was going to be kind of like, Walter Matthau and
Larry Vasquez 17:03
Windsor nemenhah. Oh,
Doug Bennett 17:05
no no in Bad News Bears
blanking on her little girl. Anyways, but like a crusty old man and smartass little girl kind of relationship right. And that's kind of the relationship they're going for. So, and and you know I think it ended up being kind of like that, you know, certainly, I think it was a, you know, it is pretty strong relationship between the two of them right through the through the downs and the ups of the of the relationship and I think, you know, it's, it's a pretty strong swing, you know, the low, the low moments and, and the high moments kind of thing so right.
Larry Vasquez 17:43
I got to say when I saw this is obviously years back, but when I saw the trailer for The Incredibles. I knew right away. I was going to love it, you had the combination of Pixar and superheroes will very much the same thing happened with this one here when you're looking at Okay, Disney and video games of one okay how can you go wrong there, you know, having grown up playing video games, my brothers, you know, for the most of my life there. I was looking. I knew that was gonna be a great combination there How did you enjoy that as an animator.
Doug Bennett 18:12
It was, it was great. It was, it was a lot of fun and you know i'm not i'm not a gamer I'm really not a gamer I mean I you know I had my experiences with like, you know, Pac Man back in the 80s and that kind of thing. But I'm just not really a huge gaming guy and that was one thing that I was worried about this movie is like Oh, am I gonna be kind of totally lost on this movie games but you know I think that's one thing that I like about the movie is that you know it's got all these great game references and some which I don't even know. You know, like I don't, I don't even get them myself. I, you know, being like
Unknown Speaker 18:57
myself being a gamer, when I watch it I thought you guys really did a fantastic job in getting the personalities of each character. And honestly, there was some, like some great, great moments and I really felt that you guys really nailed it and.
Doug Bennett 19:12
Well, I mean, yeah, there, there were there were a lot of people that worked on the movie that were hardcore gamers. And so there were like, I think there were definitely some some good references in there. Kind of like the, you know, when he's when he's Ralph is rummaging through the box. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he pulls up the mushroom and I got that one and then then I should tell you guys actually a little behind the scenes story there was a when he does finally pull out the, the exclamation point. That was, you know, they were trying to find figure out what would be great for that he pulls something out and he throws it away and we want people to get it right away. So they were gonna come up with the, the Triforce
Unknown Speaker 20:02
that he throws it all right.
Doug Bennett 20:05
Pretty good, I think. And then, but we weren't they didn't give us the rights to use that they didn't want. Then we we figured out what about Angry Birds, you know, he pulls he pulls out an Angry Bird, and he does that and he throws in and explodes and bird said yes okay that's that's great and even though you know it's not a, it's not a console game. You know it's not an arcade game but it's a game right and I kind of accept that he wouldn't know what it is right because it's not an arcade. So, but the audience would certainly get it just based on recognition that it was it was it was playing really well, and then Angry Birds people saw it in context and they said we don't want one of our Angry Birds in a box with underwear, with
Unknown Speaker 20:58
the exclamation, so
Unknown Speaker 21:00
that's good.
Larry Vasquez 21:03
Very nice. Yeah. Well one of the things I really loved about the movie was the different styles of animation. I mean from. Even the eight bit versions that they would you guys would have both in a 2d style but then also that they seem a bit style in the CG That was amazing. And again, I don't want to give away too much here but even King Candy's animation felt different than some of the other characters like Penelope or Ralph, and his felt way more snappier, you know, can you give us, you know what your thoughts were on some of that kind of choices there and particularly like I said the eight bit in the CG realm that was very fascinating.
Doug Bennett 21:44
Yeah, well, we, excuse me, we set out to define the worlds in a bunch of different ways I mean we had four main worlds right we had the, the old fixed Felix game the eight bit game. We had Hero's Duty, which is that first person shooter. We had Sugar Rush, and then we had the real world in the in the world arcade right when you come outside of the arcade. So we, we kind of wanted them all to be differentiated obviously it was going to be differentiated in look in visual language but also we wanted the animation to, to be different. So, so we were trying to make as far as the the eight bit stuff and fix a few locks, all those characters we wanted to make them a little more staccato and, you know, sort of like a little more eight bit kind of thing. So, and we thought we were doing that, and we were we had animated maybe half of the party sequence. And then last are saw, and he goes, What do you guys do and you got to go all the way and make it really so that was a dumb last recall and I think it was a really good call. Yeah. And so we said okay and and you know, it's sort of against our instincts are Yeah, in between things and to just like blatantly leave out like you know anticipations unsettled and stuff like that. Take it out, take it out. So that's what we did and you know like we got these characters like, and I did a demo for my for my students actually using one of those shots that I that I did in the movie. It's the shot where gene jumps up on the table and he smacks Ralph's little finger off the off the top of the cake. And, And I, man I animated that thing, a few times that was one of the, one of the early shots that we animated, and we I you know we showed that one to Lasseter and, you know, one of the ones it's like no you guys got to go all the way with those characters so that's what we did. We ended up what you see in the movie like just really super staccato poppy kind of thing and you know the rules of that world were that the characters they only move on, like 90 degree grids. There's a lot of twinning, a lot of, you know, things
not supposed to do, doing.
And it was really fun it was really liberating really to do that it was, it was a lot of fun. And once we got the style it actually started to go pretty quick but there is like eventually when people get the DVD and confirmed through in the shop pretty fun to watch and stuff, because there's a lot of different things going on in that animation
Larry Vasquez 24:43
right as an animator you're trying to figure out what are they doing, you know that because you know that there's that like you said a lot of that anticipation and overlaps taken out, but it wasn't just hitting a wall, either. Can you explain a little bit about that.
Doug Bennett 24:57
Yeah, I mean, we're trying to use different, different elements in different masses to create the idea of overlap. And the idea of follow through and it's just patient kind of thing so you know when you know if a character. Well, I'll use my shot as an example. When Jean stretches up to put his hand up to smack the thing off the cake. His body stretches up over one frame and stops but in the head keeps going. Right, right. And you know the same thing with it with the arms like the body stops but then the firewall keeps going, one frame doesn't slow in it just like it just it's just sort of like just stops, that sort of thing right yeah and like anticipation as it goes. It goes straight into bang and anticipation, it'll hold that intense anticipation for two frames, but then the head will will follow for rain right and then pop back out of it so it's kind of like these, one or two frame, sort of, nods to, to, to real animation. So yeah, but there's there and it's funny because different animators did different had different solutions to that so I mean it all kind of looks consistent but you know if you frame through, you know, you'll see differences shot to shot and what what animals are doing and it's really interesting actually to see the way some people approached it you know it's it's it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
Unknown Speaker 26:31
So that was that world and
Doug Bennett 26:33
we figured, you know, I don't know if you notice that Ralph in that world is fully animated, he never goes a pit, and the thought was that Ralph is so fed up. And so done. And so jaded that he doesn't even follow the rules of his own game anymore. It's kind of like, you know, all the nice landers are like, you know, you're totally into their game, and Ross like whatever off duty. Yeah, and then Felix is somewhere in the middle. He's coming. Yeah, he's sort of, he's the king of that game, so he kind of doesn't have to really fall, even though he is a little more staccato, but he's not as staccato is a nice landers because, I mean, you know, we talked about it and when we figured you know the Felix had more elaborate programming than the nice landers to hit, you know, a more he's the star character right yeah we're finally programmed. So then, yeah and then Hero's Duty was you know like hyper realistic, you know, sort of, tangled type animation fully animated you know as as realistic as we can, as we could get. And still, you know, try to be entertaining as well about it but you know we're trying to go fairly, fairly realistic with that so that presented its own challenges. Yeah. And then Sugar Rush we're thinking. Early on, we're talking about like, you know, like early Disney Peter Pan and Disney thing. You know like the song in the south like fully, you know, lots of squash and stretch and follow through and, you know, that kind of stuff. So that was kind of the thing there, and King Candy was no he's the king of that world. So he's the most like that he floats up in the air. You know, when he goes
petals floats up in the air. That was not awesome seen the
Larry Vasquez 28:44
negative ask you, was it intentional or not intentional that he seemed like a past Disney character.
Doug Bennett 28:51
And when right like there was a it was Alan tunics take on Edwin. Okay, was the was the Mad Hatter right yeah yeah,
Larry Vasquez 28:59
okay. That's, that's what I thought when I did my wife had mentioned the same thing in, which was cool though because you're you're looking at this CG character, and it's feeling very much the same type of animation as that 2d is from the Mad Hatter very snappy and very cartoony
Doug Bennett 29:17
yeah he was very very cartoony and he was a lot of fun to do and when we were building the character. We had Eric Goldberg, do a bunch of drawings and a bunch of character notes and and you know he had a lot of influence on on, you know, sort of how that character was built and he did some early hand drawn tests as sort of as visual development for that for that character so it's great to have a lot of cues from that and from Eric's drawings, a lot of the face shapes and stuff. And a lot of the animated shots, the CG animated shots are so cheated for camera on that character, you know like, okay, really bent a lot of arms and, you know, we just sort of push things around like good from camera view where you know if you look at it from rather view, it would look totally, totally broken so got that kind of stuff.
Larry Vasquez 30:17
You got anything else. Any other questions I got some other ones so.
Unknown Speaker 30:20
No, go ahead. Man, I'm enjoying this more I should be participating but I'm enjoying this.
Larry Vasquez 30:30
One of the things I had a chance to go to the Disney inspired a free one that was earlier this year, I think, gender and there yeah it was able to catch you there. And one of the things I really, really liked about visiting the studio was just how enthusiastic the studio was about their projects. Obviously, this was on the heels of a big success with tangled you know. And, but you could tell the vibe there was very strong, it was very enthusiastic people were very excited on what they were working on how much of that played into this movie here, because like you're saying you've got a nice mix of different types of animation whether you're saying in Hero's Duty where it you still kind of have that same Oh, to the animation entangled but then yet you're doing different kinds of animation, you know,
Doug Bennett 31:18
you know, coming off of tangled like you said it you know tangled was sort of our first modern era success. And, You know that really does. It really does inject a level of confidence in the studio, as a whole, that. Okay. I we're on the right track we're doing something right here. And it makes everybody a little less. I don't know if you if this scared is the right word but like you know you're not second guessing yourself as much, you know it's like okay, we're not idiots. Okay, we know. So we did something right so let's let and and I really like how
you know we didn't
WreckIt Ralph is such a completely different direction entangled right and that's one thing that everybody was really excited about was the fact that we're not trying to do the exact same thing over and over and over again we're kind of stretching ourselves, and where we're kind of taking a bit of a chance going in a different a different direction. And, and, I think, you know, I think that that really contributed to it as well. The fact that we're every film that we're making is is quite a bit different than than the last. And it's just, it does feel like a studio on the upswing yeah cuz you know we kind of know we hit our bottom, and then we're slowly sort of climbing out and we all felt that every movie that we were making is better than the last longer and stronger yeah I really felt that way I felt like it was getting better and better and I think you could see it in the in the films but I think almost equally importantly, you could feel it in the studio because just in terms of studio culture. In terms of the tools that we're using. You know you can you can see a marked improvement every, every every movie you know so I think that's really what contributes to that that that excitement is that you know we can all sort of feel the studio getting better and we can see the movies getting better. And, and, you know, we can see that the audience is responding. So yeah, that's it's huge. It really is huge huge huge for us. Very cool. So yeah,
Larry Vasquez 33:49
yeah it was a lot of fun just visiting and feeling that enthusiastic enthusiasm, it felt like man this be a great place to work and I was hoping that that would kind of bleed into, you know, because you know you guys are pulling a lot of hours as well we this is a quick shameless plug. We, we have quite a few of our students who actually were able to work on that movie. Instead of over there. Yeah. And so keeping in touch with them, they mentioned that there was a, you know, times where they were working long hours and just like any other studio. But that's that neat part that when you you have that adrenaline from the enthusiasm from a studio that's really feeling a lot stronger,
Doug Bennett 34:26
you know yeah you know also when you're when you're doing those kinds of hours on a project that you don't really completely believe in that sucks. And I think we've all been there, but when you're doing those kinds of hours on a project that you know is good. And that makes it does make it a little bit better. Right, right, as at least you know okay when I'm done I can be proud of this thing, you know,
Larry Vasquez 34:51
absolutely.
Doug Bennett 34:52
Yeah. So, it was it was definitely a baptism of fire for some of those animated series, you know,
Larry Vasquez 35:01
Joey, Joey Yeah, Daniel clue who's over there.
Doug Bennett 35:05
That's right. Yeah. Those guys are doing great. I mean they're they're really doing good, so awesome.
Larry Vasquez 35:10
Yeah, this is your second or third block here I enemies my second second block. Yeah, I know talking to some of the past instructors, a lot of them had mentioned that he kind of even helped challenge them as they went into work, you know, throughout the week and stuff because they had now consciously taught on a principle or subject that now that they were going into the work right, thinking about you know so can you elaborate you know how teaching now has influenced both you in the studio. But now also vice versa the studio now kind of bleeding into teaching your enemy.
Doug Bennett 35:47
Yeah, I mean it definitely does.
It's amazing when you have to
put into words and and formulate thoughts, actual thoughts that you can express about what you do, you know, instead of just doing it. You know, you actually have to think about, well, okay, I'm doing it but the why, why am I doing it and why do I do it this way and try to actually come up with a coherent thought on.
It's not as easy as it's
so, so yeah I mean it has, I think it's it's definitely made me a more thoughtful animator, you know, teaching because it makes it does it just makes you think about what you do, right, that's never a bad thing. So, yeah i mean it's it's it's really a learning experience in that respect for sure. And then, you know, as far as bringing the studio to to I animate it you know I think, I think we all do that as instructors i mean you know we we all have our take on it and and you know we all sort of come from different studios, with different house styles and the different styles of the project that we're working on. And I think that influences are teaching as well, and and you know I love you know seeing examples of what people have recently worked on and stuff and I know the students love seeing that stuff too so i don't know i think it's it's cool I think it's a really, it's a great program and it's a it's a great way for just for students to get free first person access to, you know, professional animators I think it's unparalleled. I think it's really cool.
Larry Vasquez 37:37
Absolutely. We will forget the great things about gin, and we really do appreciate your time deck tonight. I know you work and teach, and we really do appreciate you joining us tonight.
Doug Bennett 37:48
Sure, it was great I really, really enjoyed it.
Larry Vasquez 37:50
Awesome, awesome. Rick you got any closing ones for
Unknown Speaker 37:53
questions I want to say that I enjoyed this more than anyone else is able to watch this live.
Unknown Speaker 38:02
And I could ask any questions I want but Larry you did a fantastic job when I say bad and Doug. Honestly, it is good to have you come back again. I mean there's so much
Doug Bennett 38:12
talk about it. Yeah. Sure, absolutely.
Larry Vasquez 38:16
That's really like the movie, it was, it was a lot of fun took the whole family. This actually the opening weekend, and the kids loved it. My wife loved it. My three year old got a little scared at one point I gotta admit that
did our job.
But, you know, couldn't stop talking about even the next day talking about some of the character inaction and like I said somebody's been that emotion, you know, so you guys really did a great job on it and that's why we're really happy to have you here tonight
Doug Bennett 38:45
yeah we're hoping that, you know, we were seeing while we were working on the movie, you know that the trailer went out and there was a couple of trailers that went out and some images and there was like a little bit of buzz about the game and we're, you know we follow that stuff really closely at the studio you know we're always looking at, you know, just like, you know, buzz on people's blogs and stuff we're always looking at, and a lot of the comments were sort of a lot of the negative comments were, you know, this is just gonna be a reference fest it's just gonna be, you know, pop references about games and it's just gonna be fun to
Unknown Speaker 39:22
do.
Doug Bennett 39:23
Yeah. I think people. I think we got an audience part of the audience went in thinking, Okay, I'll go see it just because it's a bunch of cameos about video games I'm into that. But I think, you know, once you're there, you get. It's an actual story, yeah physically how to show the way you know the cameos are definitely there but there's definitely a story but in the movie so i don't know i i hope that was the case anyways for people that went thinking that it was gonna be a you know a cameo faster or reference.
Larry Vasquez 39:56
I definitely think there was a nice balance that there was a knife cameos that you felt like, oh hey you know when, and point that one or agency that one in the corner there. Yeah, like I said this story. Definitely, particularly at the end just really pulled together where I was just like, wow, you know, so definitely enjoyed it.
Doug Bennett 40:12
Cool. I'm glad to go see it four times.
Larry Vasquez 40:14
That's right. Hey, we've got some people who have not seen this yet, because it hasn't come out around the rest of the world so that's what we want to get this podcast out quickly to kind of plug that so awesome. Look, we'll check it out now. Cool. Well, thanks again Doug really appreciate it. Thanks guys. Take care.
Doug Bennett 40:33
Thanks Laurie. All right. Very cool. That was awesome.
Unknown Speaker 40:37
That's what I love about this medium,
Larry Vasquez 40:38
just the fact that you get to kind of just sit down and talk. I caught up.
Unknown Speaker 40:43
I just, I was just listening, this was great. I loved it so awesome, awesome well
Larry Vasquez 40:48
no Doug did a fantastic job I really appreciate him spending this time with us here.
Unknown Speaker 40:54
Yeah, I mean I I really got caught up into it and I this was just I was just listening I was really enjoying myself.
Larry Vasquez 41:02
Well let's go into some of the things that we wanted to kind of talk about coming up this week, and just about animating general.
Unknown Speaker 41:10
Okay. Okay, so how you want to do this you just want to do, like, why do
Larry Vasquez 41:16
we have a guest speaker coming up this weekend.
Unknown Speaker 41:18
Oh yeah okay okay okay so you know what. Um, so yeah we're gonna have Aaron Gilman the animation supervisor at when he's been animating characters for and creatures for over 11 years you know he worked on titles like the Avengers tainting avatar, you know, Rainbow Six, which is a video game matrix Hellboy, and recently he just finished working on the hobbit if I'm, if I'm correct, and now he's supervising and animation supervisor on Iron Man three. Oh, very cool.
Larry Vasquez 41:47
Wow. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 41:49
yeah, yeah, Aaron, he's a he's a great guy. I know him personally and I mean he's his he's obviously he's, he's really brilliant He's talented and extremely smart and this is philosophy and thought process on animation is is fantastic. I'm very cool. Oh yeah, we're gonna have this, he's gonna do a really great presentation for for our students. And, of course, as always it's always recorded so any future students that come online they'll be able to watch all our guest speakers, you know lectures or interviews that we have with them. So,
Larry Vasquez 42:24
yeah, absolutely. Yeah, one of the things that we've been doing here this particular this last block and I know a large part has been with you and David getting a lot of guest speakers coming in and, which has been amazing because you mentioned this is not an easy task to do within DHS and stuff like that. But then, also, as you mentioned here we keep all of you because maybe you're thinking okay i'm not part of my animate yet, so why you know why they're talking about this Well one of the things we do is we keep all of the recordings of those and you can go watch past lectures past guest speakers and check that out but if you do decide to join us. So,
Unknown Speaker 42:59
you know, again, the guest speakers and lectures that we have is for all the students regardless if you're in feature film, or in games or in rigging, you know it's open to all the students and we encourage the students to come and, you know, ask questions directly to to our guests, you know, so it's really important like just enjoy it I mean absolutely
Larry Vasquez 43:20
CTN, we talked a lot about that in our first podcast that's coming up here we want to go a little bit more information on that our booth will be at B 37. COMM check us out, we'd love to meet you and rub elbows a little bit. One of the things that's, I really enjoy about CTN, is that it's a very relaxed low key environment,
Unknown Speaker 43:41
I think, you know, I would say, you know, it's really relaxed, but it's also personal yeah yeah get, I mean you get to meet these guys up front, they're, you know, they really like the instructors that we have coming. They're coming to see, you know, see our students are coming to see people that are really, you know, excited about animation and, you know, technology and whatnot so they come because they really love what they do and right it's not like they come because they have to they just come because they want
Larry Vasquez 44:12
to do yeah definitely come check out our booth we'll be at V 37 and just come and say hi, check out our booth we actually got a sneak peek. Kind of going a little segue here. We got a sneak peek from the CTN showreel that David Huber was putting together. And this is kind of a combination of a lot of work from just the last two years here I animate so some from the very beginning all the way until now, I gotta tell you it is just amazing work, and you kind of forget sometimes that these are students, you know, and obviously we have a lot, who are working in the industry as well. But it's amazing work that you guys gonna be able to see.
Unknown Speaker 44:48
Yeah, I mean these shots are these are fantastic shots I mean, these shots really, you know, I think says a lot about, about, about the animators that come because they really come dedicated come with you know full passion and and willing to learn and you know go beyond. I mean, one that really personal relationship with our with our students and, and, and it really shows that they work because they really work hard and it looks fantastic. Yeah, I gotta say it's fantastic work,
Larry Vasquez 45:15
so we'll definitely have IT UP AT CTN and eventually on the website as well so if you can't make it to CTN via your location, we'll definitely have it up on the site.
Unknown Speaker 45:23
Yeah, yeah, I mean, check out our Facebook we post a lot of cool stuff there's a lot of information that you know we try post day today, and of course our website, and our blog so
Larry Vasquez 45:34
last note, we've opened up with applications now for the next block starting in January, January 7, so check out our site for more information but we've just recently opened up enrollment now. So, check us out on enjoying the innovation. Now listen to me on IBM.
Unknown Speaker 46:07
Can you see something there, just a one, two microphone check you're good, you're good. My
Larry Vasquez 46:21
career.
Hello and welcome to our third podcast your enemy. I am your host whether you ask us, joining me again. The Royal, we have actually two guests with us today that David Hugh bear are games and animation division there. And we have one of our new instructors Jonah Austin who will be joining us as well. I apologize for my voice here I'm a little bit under the weather but the show must go on. So, here we are. And I'd like to welcome you guys here, Rick.
Unknown Speaker 46:55
Yeah guys. And all we had inside your comments.
Unknown Speaker 0:04
Record of the did Mike for peace they're going to play this evening.
Larry Vasquez 0:15
Welcome to our second podcast.
We'd like to welcome all of our loyal listeners that can stay loyal right now because this is only our second podcast so I'm assuming you've stuck with us, thus far. We'll see how we go. After this one here. I like to welcome Rick here with this he's here once again. Hey guys How you guys doing. We have a special guest today, as I mentioned our second podcast, but we have been really fortunate here to get Doug Bennett in our quote unquote studios to talk about WreckIt Ralph released this last weekend so we'd like to welcome Doug Bennett here to the show. How's it going, very good how are you guys very well thanks, Rick. Thank you. Likewise, nice to meet you Thank you for for you know doing this.
Doug Bennett 0:57
Yeah, no problem.
Larry Vasquez 0:59
Doug and this is only our second podcast. So, you have to bear with us.
Doug Bennett 1:05
Life first so you got to bear with me. Okay.
Why don't you tell us a little about yourself. Well, I'm a, an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California. I've been there for about 17 years now I think something like Donner was
Unknown Speaker 1:27
good.
Doug Bennett 1:29
Yeah. I went to Sheridan College in 1980.
Let's just say the mid 80s. And from there I went to Ireland I worked at Don Bluth studios.
I worked on. All Dogs Go To Heaven and a couple other is movies and then I traveled back and forth between Toronto where I'm from. And in Ireland, worked in various movies and commercials and TV shows and stuff before I landed at Disney and in 95 and I've been at Disney ever since. So now were you with Jason at the time over in Ireland at all. Yep. Yeah, I met him in 93, I think we are working on a. It was a friend of ours studio Paul Bolger he had a studio over there in Dublin and we were working on a German feature film, one right, the cats one. Yeah.
It was all in, in German and we had to animate dialogue in German. So, we had, we had translations of the of the of the dialogue and we had to just try to work out the phonetics of the you know the German language so that was, it was fun, it was a lot of fun to do. Very cool. Even the name of that one. Philippe.
Larry Vasquez 2:52
Okay, was that in our notes here for people to build check that out. Yeah, class from the past there.
Doug Bennett 2:58
Yeah, obscure your movie down.
Larry Vasquez 3:02
So now your backgrounds in 2d then
Doug Bennett 3:05
yeah originally yep okay I started off in 2d, and I was drawing until I got hired at Disney and that was one of the reasons I think that I got hired at Disney because they were looking for 2d artists that were willing to train on gun computer. Okay. And so, so I did that in my first project was on tin soldier on Fantasia 2000. Okay. And that was my first ever experience with computer animation and Jason as well Well yeah,
Larry Vasquez 3:38
so yeah. How was your transition, working from 2d to computer now,
Doug Bennett 3:43
it was brutal. Yeah, yeah. I had a hard time. I'm so used to or at the time I was so used to the very tactile quality of your work being at your fingertips literally at your fingertips you know your drawing and your workers right there so there's no intermediary there's no mouse. You know, so that that's, that was one of the things I really had a hard time getting my head around was that my hand was down on my mouse and my work was up on the screen so I felt
Larry Vasquez 4:14
sort of a disconnect, which
Doug Bennett 4:16
is weird but you know that. Now it seems weird but it was really, I think that was one of the things that was hard for me getting used to it and then also, you know, that was back in the, in the Stone Age as far as computer animation goes that was, you know, 1995. We're working in alias power animator. Okay, wow wow that looks bad. It was not the most intuitive software in the world. And, you know, we animate the shots and then we'd have to, you know, if you wanted to play lasted. I'd have to walk down the hall and get a TD bring them back to my office and you'd have to write like two paragraphs where the code, just so I could look at my work. And no yeah it was it was a tough transition but eventually I like to I worked on that and then I went back to 2d I worked on Tarzan. And after Tarzan Disney said Well listen, we need help on on dinosaur, they're working on dinosaur at the time. Actually, my,
my mouse pad.
But they said yeah you have computer experience so we'd like you to go work on dinosaur, like, Oh, here we go. So, but on dinosaur they were using Softimage so I don't know if it was the, the software or the fact that I sort of had a better idea going in, of, you know what was required and you know I was sort of more mentally prepared for it I guess there are just four. But either way, I had time working on that on that movie and Jason was on that movie as well. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah I had a great time working on that and I never looked back after that I stick by stuck with with with CG. Now
Larry Vasquez 6:09
what made you want to jump to this CG in the first place was it just the fact that hey I get to animate or was the fact that I'm gonna get to animate over at Disney or how did that come out.
Doug Bennett 6:20
Well it was, it was definitely going to work out Disney was one of the big draws you know even back then it was well certainly you know 95, they were off of their their peak of, you know, those really successful film. So, You know, this was booming back then. So it was really a draw, to go and work at Disney. And also, you know as much as I ended up complaining about CG I really wanted. I was looking for the challenge you know that, you know, to learn something new and to work on something of quality and interesting you know so that's really what what drew me to it. You know the talent at Disney is really inspiring so you know just a chance to work with people that are way, way better than you, you know it's it's super inspiring I mean it's humbling, you know,
sometimes it's inspiring
Unknown Speaker 7:16
as well you know and and. Do you miss any meeting Tuesday I mean,
Doug Bennett 7:22
you know, I, I kind of do sometimes but I honestly I don't think I would want to go back to it. I've had a couple opportunities over the years to do a little bit of 2d. At the end of bolt.
We did animated, and credits, and they were animated, and we did those old school on paper and then they were scanned in and colored in Photoshop. Real guerilla kind of operation. And so yeah that was I had an opportunity to animate by hand. So, but I found myself thinking you know i, this is cool doing this but I'm glad it's gonna be over in three weeks
Unknown Speaker 8:06
to use your 2d techniques like thumbnail thumbnail a lot in 2d or,
Doug Bennett 8:12
I don't really thumbnail, a whole lot but I do, I mean I do use my drawing skills I you know I have a Cintiq at home here and I draw you know we're producing a comic book, like a collaborative anthology comic book with some of the animators that work so I did it for that so that was fun doing that, you know, I use my, my graphic sense I think in my work all the time. You know, and I think my, my drawing does help me when you know when I'm creating poses and when I'm looking for, for silhouette and and that kind of thing, you know, you know animation is certainly it's certainly an artistic pursuit you know so i think you know drawing skill. It does help I think I really yeah, and there's lots of great great animators that can't draw at all. You know, I know a couple, and they're awesome Raiders and they they cannot draw or the worst bit so
Larry Vasquez 9:14
one of the things I love about Jason's approach having watched him over the years, is he treats, even in the CG world it as a very much of a 2d like he basically you know keyframe. All wise blocking things out and even some of their breakdowns, and treating each key, as if it were a pose that he had drawn in 2d, right, do you take that kind of same approach there as well.
Doug Bennett 9:37
Definitely, yeah definitely that's definitely the way I work. You know, I mean animation is is made up of, you know, a bunch of steel images, right. Obviously, and those images you know the stronger. Those images are in terms of just like graphic quality. In terms of, you know, a dynamic pose, the stronger than the movement is going to be. So, I think it's really, really important to, to have really strong keys and really spend your time on your keys. I mean, obviously you know the movement and the in betweens have to make sense as well and that you know it all has to tie together nicely but you know it's if you have really strong poses. Then, you know you can't you can't go wrong you know your animation is going to be. You're going to be 80% there, really.
Larry Vasquez 10:33
It made a lot of sense to me watching that type of philosophy, treating them as they were almost drawings, and that made a lot of sense to me, working in the computer.
Doug Bennett 10:43
Right. Yeah, Jason is a is an anomaly, Jason is Jason's one of these guys that he just I think he just sort of already sees in his head and he just sort of, you know, it's already there and he's just like trying to get it out fast enough so he doesn't lose it, you know. No, I got a, I got a vague idea of it you know and then I put a version of it down. What I think I see in my head is like now that's not I gotta fix this. So, I think that's, you know, most of us work that way you know we put a version down that we think is going to be good and then we continue to, to make it better and I think you know there's there's a few people definitely in the industry that is just, you know, they see a finished product in their head.
Larry Vasquez 11:36
Yeah, one of the things that Jason is known for on our live weekly demos, is when he doesn't play blast and he's thinking that this thing is probably going to, you know, look very poor but it'll give him something to kind of work with, he's like oh wait actually looks pretty good. And he, and he actually acts surprised like you know everybody's gonna like yeah okay we've seen this every week now. Stop acting surprised.
Doug Bennett 12:01
But so yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:02
Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh no, I'm, be honest with you I'm, I really want to know I really want to talk about your experience, and you know WreckIt Ralph I mean, I don't want to be talking about too much about the story but I am super, I just saw recently saw the movie I loved it I really really enjoyed it. And I'm, I guess I'm jumping the gun here because I just want to talk about it. Right now, you know.
Unknown Speaker 12:27
So you were animation supervisor if I'm correct.
Doug Bennett 12:30
Yeah, I was one of the one of the animation supervisors, or not Oh design yes was Santos was the, he was the, the animation supervisor so he was kind of like the head of the department sort of thing. And then there were five supervising animators and I was one of them. And we we kind of broke it up by, by sequence so you know I was in charge of a few sequences and although you know we split the work fairly, like, you know, there was sort of one guy nominally in charge of a sequence but really we all had a voice in everybody's sequences so we all sort of shared the work. But, but yeah that was sort of the idea is that each of us would concentrate on a certain number of sequences, and you know we can be involved with the upstream and downstream departments as it relates to our sequence and the asset production. Certainly the animation obviously you know you're jumping around from animator an animator trying to keep the continuity right and trying to keep the animation consistent the performance consistent. So that kind of thing. So that was sort of my, my job on the movie. So I didn't really get to animate a whole lot I did maybe, I don't know maybe half a dozen scenes. I did on the on the movie. Not as much as I would like to certainly but you know it really is sick, it kept us pretty busy just, you know, we had a crew of. I think there was over 60 animators on the movie so we had a pretty big crew and so it kept us hopping just like you know keeping that crew fed and and dealing with, you know, with layout and asset production and like I said, and all the way down to lighting you know or dealing with all that kind of stuff. So, but yeah really I mean it was up to us really as floor supervisors to, to make sure that the director's vision. Rich that his vision is is is coming out in the in the movie. So that was kind of our main. Our main goal and and rich, rich was the director. He was awesome. He was just so great I mean he, he came to the, to the, to the studio. And he was sort of given this this project. This project or I think he had a, they they hired him at the studio and they sort of gave him a range of of projects to to consider. And this is the one that he that he landed on this. It was originally called Joe jump it was a it was pitched years ago, at the studio a video game movie. And it was originally called Joe jumping or never kind of, there's a lot of projects at Disney that kind of, you know, they go under development but they never really make it to where they get fully greenlit. And that was one of them. And it's kind of languished for a while until rich picked it up and he had a really new, fresh take on it. And he originally I guess the you know that the original story was, it was gonna be about fix a Felix because fix a Felix is the name of the game. And he's sort of you know the good guy in the game. And they quickly realized when they were trying to create a story that it's much more interesting to have the story about the bad guy. And, you know, he's trying to be wants to be a good guy.
Larry Vasquez 15:56
Yeah, spoiler alert.
Unknown Speaker 15:59
We're sorry we should have warned you guys
Doug Bennett 16:03
give way too much. Yeah. But yeah, I mean that's it's a much more interesting arc, you know, and when you see the movie, you know, he looks is and and we've we certainly played him that way he's a very vanilla one note kind of guy he doesn't change he's a good guy, all the way through and Ralph does change and he had some much more interesting arc I think for to follow to follow Ralph.
Larry Vasquez 16:26
Yeah. So, definitely, I thought the, the emotion in the movie, definitely happened to be revolving around him and definitely played out very well. The dynamics with him and what he was trying to accomplish in the movie, as well as vanilla P. in the movie as well her story. It made it for a very compelling and emotional movie, much more than I was expecting.
Doug Bennett 16:50
Yeah. Remember the original pitch was that, you know, the relationship between Ralph and Penelope was going to be kind of like, Walter Matthau and
Larry Vasquez 17:03
Windsor nemenhah. Oh,
Doug Bennett 17:05
no no in Bad News Bears
blanking on her little girl. Anyways, but like a crusty old man and smartass little girl kind of relationship right. And that's kind of the relationship they're going for. So, and and you know I think it ended up being kind of like that, you know, certainly, I think it was a, you know, it is pretty strong relationship between the two of them right through the through the downs and the ups of the of the relationship and I think, you know, it's, it's a pretty strong swing, you know, the low, the low moments and, and the high moments kind of thing so right.
Larry Vasquez 17:43
I got to say when I saw this is obviously years back, but when I saw the trailer for The Incredibles. I knew right away. I was going to love it, you had the combination of Pixar and superheroes will very much the same thing happened with this one here when you're looking at Okay, Disney and video games of one okay how can you go wrong there, you know, having grown up playing video games, my brothers, you know, for the most of my life there. I was looking. I knew that was gonna be a great combination there How did you enjoy that as an animator.
Doug Bennett 18:12
It was, it was great. It was, it was a lot of fun and you know i'm not i'm not a gamer I'm really not a gamer I mean I you know I had my experiences with like, you know, Pac Man back in the 80s and that kind of thing. But I'm just not really a huge gaming guy and that was one thing that I was worried about this movie is like Oh, am I gonna be kind of totally lost on this movie games but you know I think that's one thing that I like about the movie is that you know it's got all these great game references and some which I don't even know. You know, like I don't, I don't even get them myself. I, you know, being like
Unknown Speaker 18:57
myself being a gamer, when I watch it I thought you guys really did a fantastic job in getting the personalities of each character. And honestly, there was some, like some great, great moments and I really felt that you guys really nailed it and.
Doug Bennett 19:12
Well, I mean, yeah, there, there were there were a lot of people that worked on the movie that were hardcore gamers. And so there were like, I think there were definitely some some good references in there. Kind of like the, you know, when he's when he's Ralph is rummaging through the box. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he pulls up the mushroom and I got that one and then then I should tell you guys actually a little behind the scenes story there was a when he does finally pull out the, the exclamation point. That was, you know, they were trying to find figure out what would be great for that he pulls something out and he throws it away and we want people to get it right away. So they were gonna come up with the, the Triforce
Unknown Speaker 20:02
that he throws it all right.
Doug Bennett 20:05
Pretty good, I think. And then, but we weren't they didn't give us the rights to use that they didn't want. Then we we figured out what about Angry Birds, you know, he pulls he pulls out an Angry Bird, and he does that and he throws in and explodes and bird said yes okay that's that's great and even though you know it's not a, it's not a console game. You know it's not an arcade game but it's a game right and I kind of accept that he wouldn't know what it is right because it's not an arcade. So, but the audience would certainly get it just based on recognition that it was it was it was playing really well, and then Angry Birds people saw it in context and they said we don't want one of our Angry Birds in a box with underwear, with
Unknown Speaker 20:58
the exclamation, so
Unknown Speaker 21:00
that's good.
Larry Vasquez 21:03
Very nice. Yeah. Well one of the things I really loved about the movie was the different styles of animation. I mean from. Even the eight bit versions that they would you guys would have both in a 2d style but then also that they seem a bit style in the CG That was amazing. And again, I don't want to give away too much here but even King Candy's animation felt different than some of the other characters like Penelope or Ralph, and his felt way more snappier, you know, can you give us, you know what your thoughts were on some of that kind of choices there and particularly like I said the eight bit in the CG realm that was very fascinating.
Doug Bennett 21:44
Yeah, well, we, excuse me, we set out to define the worlds in a bunch of different ways I mean we had four main worlds right we had the, the old fixed Felix game the eight bit game. We had Hero's Duty, which is that first person shooter. We had Sugar Rush, and then we had the real world in the in the world arcade right when you come outside of the arcade. So we, we kind of wanted them all to be differentiated obviously it was going to be differentiated in look in visual language but also we wanted the animation to, to be different. So, so we were trying to make as far as the the eight bit stuff and fix a few locks, all those characters we wanted to make them a little more staccato and, you know, sort of like a little more eight bit kind of thing. So, and we thought we were doing that, and we were we had animated maybe half of the party sequence. And then last are saw, and he goes, What do you guys do and you got to go all the way and make it really so that was a dumb last recall and I think it was a really good call. Yeah. And so we said okay and and you know, it's sort of against our instincts are Yeah, in between things and to just like blatantly leave out like you know anticipations unsettled and stuff like that. Take it out, take it out. So that's what we did and you know like we got these characters like, and I did a demo for my for my students actually using one of those shots that I that I did in the movie. It's the shot where gene jumps up on the table and he smacks Ralph's little finger off the off the top of the cake. And, And I, man I animated that thing, a few times that was one of the, one of the early shots that we animated, and we I you know we showed that one to Lasseter and, you know, one of the ones it's like no you guys got to go all the way with those characters so that's what we did. We ended up what you see in the movie like just really super staccato poppy kind of thing and you know the rules of that world were that the characters they only move on, like 90 degree grids. There's a lot of twinning, a lot of, you know, things
not supposed to do, doing.
And it was really fun it was really liberating really to do that it was, it was a lot of fun. And once we got the style it actually started to go pretty quick but there is like eventually when people get the DVD and confirmed through in the shop pretty fun to watch and stuff, because there's a lot of different things going on in that animation
Larry Vasquez 24:43
right as an animator you're trying to figure out what are they doing, you know that because you know that there's that like you said a lot of that anticipation and overlaps taken out, but it wasn't just hitting a wall, either. Can you explain a little bit about that.
Doug Bennett 24:57
Yeah, I mean, we're trying to use different, different elements in different masses to create the idea of overlap. And the idea of follow through and it's just patient kind of thing so you know when you know if a character. Well, I'll use my shot as an example. When Jean stretches up to put his hand up to smack the thing off the cake. His body stretches up over one frame and stops but in the head keeps going. Right, right. And you know the same thing with it with the arms like the body stops but then the firewall keeps going, one frame doesn't slow in it just like it just it's just sort of like just stops, that sort of thing right yeah and like anticipation as it goes. It goes straight into bang and anticipation, it'll hold that intense anticipation for two frames, but then the head will will follow for rain right and then pop back out of it so it's kind of like these, one or two frame, sort of, nods to, to, to real animation. So yeah, but there's there and it's funny because different animators did different had different solutions to that so I mean it all kind of looks consistent but you know if you frame through, you know, you'll see differences shot to shot and what what animals are doing and it's really interesting actually to see the way some people approached it you know it's it's it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
Unknown Speaker 26:31
So that was that world and
Doug Bennett 26:33
we figured, you know, I don't know if you notice that Ralph in that world is fully animated, he never goes a pit, and the thought was that Ralph is so fed up. And so done. And so jaded that he doesn't even follow the rules of his own game anymore. It's kind of like, you know, all the nice landers are like, you know, you're totally into their game, and Ross like whatever off duty. Yeah, and then Felix is somewhere in the middle. He's coming. Yeah, he's sort of, he's the king of that game, so he kind of doesn't have to really fall, even though he is a little more staccato, but he's not as staccato is a nice landers because, I mean, you know, we talked about it and when we figured you know the Felix had more elaborate programming than the nice landers to hit, you know, a more he's the star character right yeah we're finally programmed. So then, yeah and then Hero's Duty was you know like hyper realistic, you know, sort of, tangled type animation fully animated you know as as realistic as we can, as we could get. And still, you know, try to be entertaining as well about it but you know we're trying to go fairly, fairly realistic with that so that presented its own challenges. Yeah. And then Sugar Rush we're thinking. Early on, we're talking about like, you know, like early Disney Peter Pan and Disney thing. You know like the song in the south like fully, you know, lots of squash and stretch and follow through and, you know, that kind of stuff. So that was kind of the thing there, and King Candy was no he's the king of that world. So he's the most like that he floats up in the air. You know, when he goes
petals floats up in the air. That was not awesome seen the
Larry Vasquez 28:44
negative ask you, was it intentional or not intentional that he seemed like a past Disney character.
Doug Bennett 28:51
And when right like there was a it was Alan tunics take on Edwin. Okay, was the was the Mad Hatter right yeah yeah,
Larry Vasquez 28:59
okay. That's, that's what I thought when I did my wife had mentioned the same thing in, which was cool though because you're you're looking at this CG character, and it's feeling very much the same type of animation as that 2d is from the Mad Hatter very snappy and very cartoony
Doug Bennett 29:17
yeah he was very very cartoony and he was a lot of fun to do and when we were building the character. We had Eric Goldberg, do a bunch of drawings and a bunch of character notes and and you know he had a lot of influence on on, you know, sort of how that character was built and he did some early hand drawn tests as sort of as visual development for that for that character so it's great to have a lot of cues from that and from Eric's drawings, a lot of the face shapes and stuff. And a lot of the animated shots, the CG animated shots are so cheated for camera on that character, you know like, okay, really bent a lot of arms and, you know, we just sort of push things around like good from camera view where you know if you look at it from rather view, it would look totally, totally broken so got that kind of stuff.
Larry Vasquez 30:17
You got anything else. Any other questions I got some other ones so.
Unknown Speaker 30:20
No, go ahead. Man, I'm enjoying this more I should be participating but I'm enjoying this.
Larry Vasquez 30:30
One of the things I had a chance to go to the Disney inspired a free one that was earlier this year, I think, gender and there yeah it was able to catch you there. And one of the things I really, really liked about visiting the studio was just how enthusiastic the studio was about their projects. Obviously, this was on the heels of a big success with tangled you know. And, but you could tell the vibe there was very strong, it was very enthusiastic people were very excited on what they were working on how much of that played into this movie here, because like you're saying you've got a nice mix of different types of animation whether you're saying in Hero's Duty where it you still kind of have that same Oh, to the animation entangled but then yet you're doing different kinds of animation, you know,
Doug Bennett 31:18
you know, coming off of tangled like you said it you know tangled was sort of our first modern era success. And, You know that really does. It really does inject a level of confidence in the studio, as a whole, that. Okay. I we're on the right track we're doing something right here. And it makes everybody a little less. I don't know if you if this scared is the right word but like you know you're not second guessing yourself as much, you know it's like okay, we're not idiots. Okay, we know. So we did something right so let's let and and I really like how
you know we didn't
WreckIt Ralph is such a completely different direction entangled right and that's one thing that everybody was really excited about was the fact that we're not trying to do the exact same thing over and over and over again we're kind of stretching ourselves, and where we're kind of taking a bit of a chance going in a different a different direction. And, and, I think, you know, I think that that really contributed to it as well. The fact that we're every film that we're making is is quite a bit different than than the last. And it's just, it does feel like a studio on the upswing yeah cuz you know we kind of know we hit our bottom, and then we're slowly sort of climbing out and we all felt that every movie that we were making is better than the last longer and stronger yeah I really felt that way I felt like it was getting better and better and I think you could see it in the in the films but I think almost equally importantly, you could feel it in the studio because just in terms of studio culture. In terms of the tools that we're using. You know you can you can see a marked improvement every, every every movie you know so I think that's really what contributes to that that that excitement is that you know we can all sort of feel the studio getting better and we can see the movies getting better. And, and, you know, we can see that the audience is responding. So yeah, that's it's huge. It really is huge huge huge for us. Very cool. So yeah,
Larry Vasquez 33:49
yeah it was a lot of fun just visiting and feeling that enthusiastic enthusiasm, it felt like man this be a great place to work and I was hoping that that would kind of bleed into, you know, because you know you guys are pulling a lot of hours as well we this is a quick shameless plug. We, we have quite a few of our students who actually were able to work on that movie. Instead of over there. Yeah. And so keeping in touch with them, they mentioned that there was a, you know, times where they were working long hours and just like any other studio. But that's that neat part that when you you have that adrenaline from the enthusiasm from a studio that's really feeling a lot stronger,
Doug Bennett 34:26
you know yeah you know also when you're when you're doing those kinds of hours on a project that you don't really completely believe in that sucks. And I think we've all been there, but when you're doing those kinds of hours on a project that you know is good. And that makes it does make it a little bit better. Right, right, as at least you know okay when I'm done I can be proud of this thing, you know,
Larry Vasquez 34:51
absolutely.
Doug Bennett 34:52
Yeah. So, it was it was definitely a baptism of fire for some of those animated series, you know,
Larry Vasquez 35:01
Joey, Joey Yeah, Daniel clue who's over there.
Doug Bennett 35:05
That's right. Yeah. Those guys are doing great. I mean they're they're really doing good, so awesome.
Larry Vasquez 35:10
Yeah, this is your second or third block here I enemies my second second block. Yeah, I know talking to some of the past instructors, a lot of them had mentioned that he kind of even helped challenge them as they went into work, you know, throughout the week and stuff because they had now consciously taught on a principle or subject that now that they were going into the work right, thinking about you know so can you elaborate you know how teaching now has influenced both you in the studio. But now also vice versa the studio now kind of bleeding into teaching your enemy.
Doug Bennett 35:47
Yeah, I mean it definitely does.
It's amazing when you have to
put into words and and formulate thoughts, actual thoughts that you can express about what you do, you know, instead of just doing it. You know, you actually have to think about, well, okay, I'm doing it but the why, why am I doing it and why do I do it this way and try to actually come up with a coherent thought on.
It's not as easy as it's
so, so yeah I mean it has, I think it's it's definitely made me a more thoughtful animator, you know, teaching because it makes it does it just makes you think about what you do, right, that's never a bad thing. So, yeah i mean it's it's it's really a learning experience in that respect for sure. And then, you know, as far as bringing the studio to to I animate it you know I think, I think we all do that as instructors i mean you know we we all have our take on it and and you know we all sort of come from different studios, with different house styles and the different styles of the project that we're working on. And I think that influences are teaching as well, and and you know I love you know seeing examples of what people have recently worked on and stuff and I know the students love seeing that stuff too so i don't know i think it's it's cool I think it's a really, it's a great program and it's a it's a great way for just for students to get free first person access to, you know, professional animators I think it's unparalleled. I think it's really cool.
Larry Vasquez 37:37
Absolutely. We will forget the great things about gin, and we really do appreciate your time deck tonight. I know you work and teach, and we really do appreciate you joining us tonight.
Doug Bennett 37:48
Sure, it was great I really, really enjoyed it.
Larry Vasquez 37:50
Awesome, awesome. Rick you got any closing ones for
Unknown Speaker 37:53
questions I want to say that I enjoyed this more than anyone else is able to watch this live.
Unknown Speaker 38:02
And I could ask any questions I want but Larry you did a fantastic job when I say bad and Doug. Honestly, it is good to have you come back again. I mean there's so much
Doug Bennett 38:12
talk about it. Yeah. Sure, absolutely.
Larry Vasquez 38:16
That's really like the movie, it was, it was a lot of fun took the whole family. This actually the opening weekend, and the kids loved it. My wife loved it. My three year old got a little scared at one point I gotta admit that
did our job.
But, you know, couldn't stop talking about even the next day talking about some of the character inaction and like I said somebody's been that emotion, you know, so you guys really did a great job on it and that's why we're really happy to have you here tonight
Doug Bennett 38:45
yeah we're hoping that, you know, we were seeing while we were working on the movie, you know that the trailer went out and there was a couple of trailers that went out and some images and there was like a little bit of buzz about the game and we're, you know we follow that stuff really closely at the studio you know we're always looking at, you know, just like, you know, buzz on people's blogs and stuff we're always looking at, and a lot of the comments were sort of a lot of the negative comments were, you know, this is just gonna be a reference fest it's just gonna be, you know, pop references about games and it's just gonna be fun to
Unknown Speaker 39:22
do.
Doug Bennett 39:23
Yeah. I think people. I think we got an audience part of the audience went in thinking, Okay, I'll go see it just because it's a bunch of cameos about video games I'm into that. But I think, you know, once you're there, you get. It's an actual story, yeah physically how to show the way you know the cameos are definitely there but there's definitely a story but in the movie so i don't know i i hope that was the case anyways for people that went thinking that it was gonna be a you know a cameo faster or reference.
Larry Vasquez 39:56
I definitely think there was a nice balance that there was a knife cameos that you felt like, oh hey you know when, and point that one or agency that one in the corner there. Yeah, like I said this story. Definitely, particularly at the end just really pulled together where I was just like, wow, you know, so definitely enjoyed it.
Doug Bennett 40:12
Cool. I'm glad to go see it four times.
Larry Vasquez 40:14
That's right. Hey, we've got some people who have not seen this yet, because it hasn't come out around the rest of the world so that's what we want to get this podcast out quickly to kind of plug that so awesome. Look, we'll check it out now. Cool. Well, thanks again Doug really appreciate it. Thanks guys. Take care.
Doug Bennett 40:33
Thanks Laurie. All right. Very cool. That was awesome.
Unknown Speaker 40:37
That's what I love about this medium,
Larry Vasquez 40:38
just the fact that you get to kind of just sit down and talk. I caught up.
Unknown Speaker 40:43
I just, I was just listening, this was great. I loved it so awesome, awesome well
Larry Vasquez 40:48
no Doug did a fantastic job I really appreciate him spending this time with us here.
Unknown Speaker 40:54
Yeah, I mean I I really got caught up into it and I this was just I was just listening I was really enjoying myself.
Larry Vasquez 41:02
Well let's go into some of the things that we wanted to kind of talk about coming up this week, and just about animating general.
Unknown Speaker 41:10
Okay. Okay, so how you want to do this you just want to do, like, why do
Larry Vasquez 41:16
we have a guest speaker coming up this weekend.
Unknown Speaker 41:18
Oh yeah okay okay okay so you know what. Um, so yeah we're gonna have Aaron Gilman the animation supervisor at when he's been animating characters for and creatures for over 11 years you know he worked on titles like the Avengers tainting avatar, you know, Rainbow Six, which is a video game matrix Hellboy, and recently he just finished working on the hobbit if I'm, if I'm correct, and now he's supervising and animation supervisor on Iron Man three. Oh, very cool.
Larry Vasquez 41:47
Wow. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 41:49
yeah, yeah, Aaron, he's a he's a great guy. I know him personally and I mean he's his he's obviously he's, he's really brilliant He's talented and extremely smart and this is philosophy and thought process on animation is is fantastic. I'm very cool. Oh yeah, we're gonna have this, he's gonna do a really great presentation for for our students. And, of course, as always it's always recorded so any future students that come online they'll be able to watch all our guest speakers, you know lectures or interviews that we have with them. So,
Larry Vasquez 42:24
yeah, absolutely. Yeah, one of the things that we've been doing here this particular this last block and I know a large part has been with you and David getting a lot of guest speakers coming in and, which has been amazing because you mentioned this is not an easy task to do within DHS and stuff like that. But then, also, as you mentioned here we keep all of you because maybe you're thinking okay i'm not part of my animate yet, so why you know why they're talking about this Well one of the things we do is we keep all of the recordings of those and you can go watch past lectures past guest speakers and check that out but if you do decide to join us. So,
Unknown Speaker 42:59
you know, again, the guest speakers and lectures that we have is for all the students regardless if you're in feature film, or in games or in rigging, you know it's open to all the students and we encourage the students to come and, you know, ask questions directly to to our guests, you know, so it's really important like just enjoy it I mean absolutely
Larry Vasquez 43:20
CTN, we talked a lot about that in our first podcast that's coming up here we want to go a little bit more information on that our booth will be at B 37. COMM check us out, we'd love to meet you and rub elbows a little bit. One of the things that's, I really enjoy about CTN, is that it's a very relaxed low key environment,
Unknown Speaker 43:41
I think, you know, I would say, you know, it's really relaxed, but it's also personal yeah yeah get, I mean you get to meet these guys up front, they're, you know, they really like the instructors that we have coming. They're coming to see, you know, see our students are coming to see people that are really, you know, excited about animation and, you know, technology and whatnot so they come because they really love what they do and right it's not like they come because they have to they just come because they want
Larry Vasquez 44:12
to do yeah definitely come check out our booth we'll be at V 37 and just come and say hi, check out our booth we actually got a sneak peek. Kind of going a little segue here. We got a sneak peek from the CTN showreel that David Huber was putting together. And this is kind of a combination of a lot of work from just the last two years here I animate so some from the very beginning all the way until now, I gotta tell you it is just amazing work, and you kind of forget sometimes that these are students, you know, and obviously we have a lot, who are working in the industry as well. But it's amazing work that you guys gonna be able to see.
Unknown Speaker 44:48
Yeah, I mean these shots are these are fantastic shots I mean, these shots really, you know, I think says a lot about, about, about the animators that come because they really come dedicated come with you know full passion and and willing to learn and you know go beyond. I mean, one that really personal relationship with our with our students and, and, and it really shows that they work because they really work hard and it looks fantastic. Yeah, I gotta say it's fantastic work,
Larry Vasquez 45:15
so we'll definitely have IT UP AT CTN and eventually on the website as well so if you can't make it to CTN via your location, we'll definitely have it up on the site.
Unknown Speaker 45:23
Yeah, yeah, I mean, check out our Facebook we post a lot of cool stuff there's a lot of information that you know we try post day today, and of course our website, and our blog so
Larry Vasquez 45:34
last note, we've opened up with applications now for the next block starting in January, January 7, so check out our site for more information but we've just recently opened up enrollment now. So, check us out on enjoying the innovation. Now listen to me on IBM.
Unknown Speaker 46:07
Can you see something there, just a one, two microphone check you're good, you're good. My
Larry Vasquez 46:21
career.
Hello and welcome to our third podcast your enemy. I am your host whether you ask us, joining me again. The Royal, we have actually two guests with us today that David Hugh bear are games and animation division there. And we have one of our new instructors Jonah Austin who will be joining us as well. I apologize for my voice here I'm a little bit under the weather but the show must go on. So, here we are. And I'd like to welcome you guys here, Rick.
Unknown Speaker 46:55
Yeah guys. And all we had inside your comments.
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