Anime studio Khara, the folks behind Rebuild of Evangelion, just released a YouTube video aimed at potential job applicants. It shows the skill sets pro animators need.
As reported by IT Media, the video has the following challenge:
By using the sample scene data, please show a character climbing Box A and jump to Box B, within the total length of 10 seconds and 10 cuts.
Below, you can see in-house staff take a crack.
The video shows clips made by Studio Khara’s main animators Yoshikazu Nakama, Masanori Iwasato, and Yuusuke Matsui. Interesting to see how each had a very different take, operating within the same constraints.
Each clip is also slowed down so you can count the cuts, should you like! If you think your work is up to snuff and can make a solid clip, the studio has a recruiting page for potential hires to work on the next Evangelion. Note that the page is only in Japanese.
募集要項 2014年4月22日更新 [Khara via IT Media]
Comments
11 responses to “Think You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Animator?”
I’m a professional animator, and I couldn’t achieve these results in a realistic (varies) timeline. However, my workflow is largely based on library and motion capture systems and isn’t of a stylized nature.
Hang in there folks! Unless you want to be an animator at this very specific studio, then good luck!
Ooo that’s pretty cool! Do you mind me asking where/what you work on?
It’s mostly eLearning and Communications productions for private companies. No video games 🙁
Naww! Animation is animation ^^ (and animation is dang fun… mostly)
From someone learning 3DSMax at the moment (I’ve got access to a full copy through my current work luckily) this requirement doesn’t really seem that intensely high. I guess it gives me hope, although I really need to get on to learning IK rigging and animation soon. Gotta put rendering pretty, pretty, particle systems on the backburner for a bit 😛
I dunno, I think there’s real artistry to the sense of weight and movement here that goes beyond just knowing how to handle the software. Well, to an extent that makes me nervous looking at it as someone working in 2d animation ^^
Yep, software is trivial to learn compared to the depth of study and practice required to master the underlying animation basics.
All animation is hard and requires a real artistry. But traditional 2d animation – hand drawn frame by frame, has to be the hardest form of the art, it just boggles my mind that people can make drawings come alive so beautifully.
As an anime fan I’m amazed too. Especially at things which involve complex and fluid motions, like well animated and choreographed fight scenes o.0
Yeah I see what you mean. Even with the short animations I’ve been doing so far you can tweak and tweak, basically forever, and the end result of what is superficially a rather “similar” animation can make a big impact. It reminds me of the 3DSMax essentials book I started with and the simple tutorial of keyframing a bouncing ball with some deformation. Sure it’s easy to keyframe the basic structure, but you can create a whole lot more character depending on how much finesse is put into it. Either way it’s “just a bouncing ball” but there is still a large margin for expression even with something simple.
The book ‘Animator’s Survival Kit’ is still relevant reading today, medium and tools aside. Check it out: http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/
Yeah, I highly recommend the ipad app – https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-animators-survival-kit/id627438690?mt=8
It has heaps of the examples animated and you’re able to scrub/step through them frame by frame to see how they’re put together.
It’s definitely targeted towards more cartoony animation, but it’s classic and fun to learn even if you end up doing more realistic motions or creatures.
Also, there’s two free PDFs from Animation Mentor that are worth reading:
http://content.animationmentor.com/pdfs/TipsAndTricks_Volume1.pdf
and
http://content.animationmentor.com/pdfs/TipsAndTricks_Volume2.pdf
My advice to animation students is to definitely start with the bouncing ball, and then the potato sack etc. Spend a long time on the basics, because they will always be applicable. Also, as much as possible while studying, try to have control over every frame and don’t leave much inbetweening to the computer. In real production you have to work quickly and let the curves do your easing in and out, but when you’re studying it pays to do it manually so you know how and why it works.