Spunk · How did the two of you meet and how did the idea for Lady Shaves come about?

Mike · Steve and I met in a traditional animation course during my senior year of undergrad at the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio. Originally, Lady Shaves was a much longer story called the Ballad of the Bearded Lady. It was going to be Steve‘s senior project and was only intended to be a set of storyboards. But I loved the piece and wanted to produce it as a 3D animation, so once I was accepted into ACCAD (The Advanced Computing Center for the Arts & Design) at Ohio State, it gave me the perfect opportunity to adapt the story to 3D. This original story called The Ballad of the Bearded Lady was a quirky tale of love between the Bearded Lady and a boy who goes to a traveling circus. Steve had created an impressive set of storyboards for the piece, and the more we thought about it the more we realized that it was getting a little bit too large for one person to tackle.

There were multiple crowd sequences planned, as well as seven or eight lush, decorative circus environments to be created. Since it was to be my first crack at a fully CG animated piece and my first experience with character animation, we decided to simplify the story into one environment and one character. This new story is what became "Lady Shaves."

Steve · The Ballad of the Bearded Lady had so many environments and characters that it was too difficult to tackle with such a small team. We tried to adapt it and get rid of a few of those elements, but the story started to lose its charm. So, we decided to start over and approach it from the opposite angle. Whereas the original story was so large in scale, I decided to make Lady Shaves as simple as possible. We took the Bearded Lady character, confined her to a single environment, the dressing table in her room, and locked the camera down to basically one angle. We decided to try and make a new and interesting story about that. I think our limitations forced us to be more creative in the end.

Spunk · Tell me more about your individual roles in the project.

Mike · My role in the production lasted a total of 14 months after all of the artwork was completed. First, after Steve had pared the story down into something more manageable, we convinced my friend Natalya Ugodnikova to model for our reference video, which later became extremely useful as an animation guide. Filming the five minute piece took a whole day, and Natalya was a great sport about it. With the reference video complete, I did all the 3D modeling for the piece based on Steve's fanciful character sketches. I started by building a virtual model of the main character, her trailer where all of the action takes place, and all of the props with which she interacts.

 

Taking 55 weeks to complete a 4 minutes long piece of animation short can be pretty daunting. For Mike Altman & Stephen Galgas, communication was the key as well as friendship and mutual respect for one another’s craft. Roping in all the help possible from friends and enforcing cheap labour works too. Wait a minute, there wasn’t even wages, it was all for free. In actual fact, it was for the love of their craft, that’s what it is. And that is when they realised that limitations, like the lack of a proper team, time and money liberated them both. In the end the limitations forced Mike and Steve to be more creative, spurring them on to greater heights proving that you don’t need big money to do good works.

 

Character animation is very much about acting, and it was very exciting to finally breathe life into this virtual character we had come to love. I always had a little Quicktime movie of Natalya's reference footage in the corner of my monitor which often gave me ideas for poses which I would not have imagined. After animating the entire piece, I painted the textures and created most of the surface materials for the character and props. Fellow artist Jenny Macy and I collaborated on some of the sprite particle effects in the piece. The next step was rendering in layers and compositing, which I did in discreet combustion. ACCAD‘s new render farm made rendering fast and easy to track. In three weeks I was able to render and composite about 8,500 frames. The last step was working with the sound team and doing the voice for the French moustache.

Steve · I‘m the dreamer, Mike‘s the practical one. I‘m the one who comes up with the crazy ideas, and then Mike has to find a way to make those ideas reality... or tell me how crazy those ideas really are. We drove each other nuts more than a few times in the process of making Lady Shaves. Mike would come back with some animation that wasn‘t quite yet as finished as I‘d like, and I‘d send him kicking and screaming back to the lab. On the other hand, I have a tendency to be a perfectionist and take forever to do some simple task that should take a few minutes. Mike has a knack for finding quicker ways to solve problems, or simply when to cut me off. If it weren‘t for him, this short would never see the light of day. We definitely pushed each other, enhanced each other‘s strengths, and ultimately I‘m very proud of our creation.

Spunk · Steve, you wrote and illustrated the concept behind the project, can you talk about the birth of the story and your choices in the overall art direction?

Steve · The very original story was based off of a song called “April Fools” by Rufus Wainwright. It always reminded me of a circus because some instruments in the song sounded like a calliope or merry-go-round. The song was really this bitter (yet bouncy) song about unrequited love, so, I always imagined a love story happening in the circus. The original story was really written in a single night at art school, when a project that I had been working on for a class was destroyed, and I needed a quick replacement. I had this story stuck in my head for quite some time, so I scribbled it out in time to turn the project in, then I spent the next year refining it for my senior portfolio.

As far as the art direction for the new story went, I really eliminated the circus motif, and concentrated on a more exaggerated, stereotypically “girly” scheme. The new story doesn‘t have to take place at the circus at all, in fact. Her identity as a circus performer wasn‘t as important to me for this story as was this idea of femininity. We took some inspiration from glamourous 1950‘s films– Douglas Sirk‘s films, for instance, and we looked at the leading ladies of film at the time.

The other big artistic decision we made was to make lighting play a more prominent role in the film than usual. Since we were confining Lady to one place, I thought we needed to give the viewer something new to look at every once in a while, so we decided to change the lighting schemes according to Lady's emotions. That way, the visuals don‘t get boring, and the lighting creates a very theatrical effect.

Spunk · Mike, tell me how do you prepare for a 3D project of this size. How long does it take?

Mike · Pre-planning is extremely important for a project this size. Staying organized is one of the biggest challenges of the production process. We assembled a huge board with thumbnails of the story and hung it up in the studio so it would be easy to refer to an stay true to the story. I also created a separate Maya Project for each shot in the animation and referenced the model and environment into each shot. This way, if we wanted to make a change to the model or environment somewhere down the road I would only have to modify the source file and the rest would update automatically. This became extremely useful as we got into the materials phase of production. The schedule broke down this way…

Steve · I think that creating student projects can be very difficult because students don't typically have a lot of money and resources to get other people interested in working with them. The other thing is that you‘re largely unproven. More people will want to work with you and trust your ideas if they can see that you‘ve got a really interesting vision. If you don't already have something great in your portfolio, it can be very difficult to convince them of your ideas.

The other thing is that, as a director, you have to find a good balance of maintaining your original vision, and making your team feel personally involved in the shaping of the final piece. You want your team to have a sense of pride in their work, and a feeling of attachment– that they helped contribute something uniquely their own. Otherwise, you come off as closed-minded and a control freak.

Design/preproduction: 10 weeks
Modeling/rigging: 4 weeks
Animation: 8 months (I was taking a full load of
courses and had a part-time job, so this phase went pretty slowly.)
Materials: 3 weeks
Rendering/compositing: 3 weeks
Sound design: 3 weeks

Spunk · What's the most important thing to remember when working on a project like this? What did you both learn from it?

Mike · Communication is key. Open lines of communication with team members makes the whole production process run more smoothly and in the end that cooperation really shines through. Another important lesson is that it is a big challenge to keep your team members motivated, especially when they are all volunteers who are also working on their own projects.

No one wants to work with you then. The best way to approach this is to realize that everyone has their strengths, and that you have your weaknesses. Allow people to do what they are best at, and recognize that your work is better because of their contributions.

Spunk · Steve, you're working at a new animation company in your town called Hot Donut Productions. How's that going?

Steve · I'm having fun there. I work with some great people and we have a great space to work in. I couldn't ask for a better work environment. I think the company has a lot of potential to grow as well.

Spunk · Mike, are you currently working in the animation field, or in a similar type of company?

Mike · I have just accepted a position at DNA Productions in Irving, Texas. I will be in their modeling/rigging department working on a new feature film tentatively called “The Any Bully.” I am very excited to have finally broken into the extremely competitive industry that computer animation has become.

Spunk · Mike, tell us about your skills with Maya, is this your preferred 3D application?

Mike · We used Alias Systems Maya throughout the production process, from modeling to animating to texturing and rendering. I have worked with a number of packages in the past and enjoyed the versatility and stability that Maya offered. I have worked with and taught Maya on and off for the past four years. It is an extremely robust and vast package which takes some time to learn, and becoming proficient in even one aspect of it takes a great deal of patience and commitment.

Despite the learning curve, the results are highly professional, and it‘s no coincidence that this program has become standard in the computer animation industry.

Spunk · Steve, tell us a little about your video experiments. With your strong background in illustration, fine art, why are you interested in motion design?

Steve · I‘m just a jack-of-all-trades. I think CCAD conditioned me to be that way. The program that Mike and I were in teaches a wide variety of tools and techniques, which was great for me. Mike just was a little more focused when he went there. He knew he wanted to be in computer animation, and concentrated on that. I‘m interested in all forms of visual expression. I think that working on stories such as Lady Shaves, and working on my fine art satisfy different parts of my brain. I like to entertain and stimulate.

Spunk · Steve, you also did illustrations for the Award winning, Edheds Virtual Knee Surgery project, did you also do the animation on that piece?

Steve · For the Edheads projects, I was working with another former classmate of mine, Eric Bort. He‘s another person I really trust and admire. He asked me to help develop the characters and environments for his educational website (www.edheads.com). I really enjoy collaborating with him and am excited to do more with him in the future.

Spunk · What's it like being an artist and animator in Columbus, Ohio? Are you there for good?

Mike · We have a great wealth of artistic resources here between the academic realm and a growing arts district called the Short North. We painted a prominent mural in the area 2 years ago, so I am very proud to have left a permanent mark on the area.

Steve · I think Columbus’ art scene is up-and-coming. It‘s not the most cutting edge right now, but I think it has the potential. We have a number of galleries, as well as CCAD, and Ohio State‘s renowned contemporary arts center, The Wexner Center for the Arts. Neither of us will be in Columbus for good, but I really do enjoy my time here.

Spunk · Can you both talk a little about your education backgrounds? Did you both study art and animation?

Mike · I attended the Columbus College of Art & Design for my undergraduate degree in Media Studies. This incorporated various disciplines including photography, video, traditional animation, and 3D computer animation. CCAD has an intense foundation year of courses that train the student‘s eye to understand and use color effectively, design in 2D and 3D space, and draw extensively from life.

Later in the program I began to take animation and computer animation courses. I just graduated from Ohio State with my MFA in Design.

Steve · I also attended CCAD for their Media Studies program. I am planning to go to grad school sometime in the future and pursue a fine art career, but that‘s a few years off. I‘m currently working on a comic book that I hope to have published by the year‘s end called, "The Incredible Mr. Grant." It's about a little girl and her uncle who travel the globe in search of his escaped robots. (Check my website for release info!) I‘ll probably only consider going back to school after that‘s done.

Spunk · Who are the animators, or artist who are giving you inspiration these days?

Mike · One of my inspirations are the wizards and master storytellers at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California. Their humor and strength stem from a devotion to telling compelling stories above fancy effects simply intended to dazzle our eyes. Many computer animation companies seem to be in love with the medium simply because of its novelty, whereas Pixar never loses sight of the heart and imagination of good storytelling.

Steve · I find most of my inspiration in music, actually. Of course Rufus Wainwright inspired the original Bearded Lady story, and continues to inspire me. I‘ve had a lot of musical training early in my life, and that definitely has impacted my work. I‘m very inspired my Michel Gondry– no coincidence that he directs *music* videos, either. Oscar Fischinger, the experimental animator that inspired Disney‘s Fantasia, is another of my influences. ∞

Links:

www.mike-altman.com
www.galgas.com
www.accad.ohio-state.edu
www.ccad.edu
www.dnahelix.com
www.edheads.com

Columbus, Ohio , August 2004

Process Work for Lady Shaves