This entry is in response to a few postings we’ve seen on Facebook and Vimeo over the past week or so.
Animation Mentor supports animation all around the world, and we love to see student work.
We are flattered that students of animation are choosing to emulate Animation Mentor student and graduate work in their quest to learn how to animate, and we want to offer a few guidelines to help them in their journey:
1. If you want to receive feedback on your work, or use it in a demo reel, it should be ORIGINAL work. Please do not reference another animator’s work.
2. If you do reference another animator’s work for the purpose of practice and learning, and the work is a straight copy, it is my humble opinion that this work should not be distributed on the internet and called a show reel.
3. It's also an incredible amount of work to recreate someone's short film shot-by-shot AND light/render it. We'd much rather suggest you work on original work that is uniquely yours showing the value of what your voice has to bring to the craft.
The industry is super duper small and word travels fast when work is copied or plagiarizer and we encourage those folks, I'm sure their intentions were not meant with any ill will, to rather work on new, original works instead.
And a note to Animation Mentor students and graduates: Please remember that what you post online is often public, and not easily deleted. We appreciate supporting your fellow students, and we encourage you to keep it positive, professional, and supportive. Thanks.
Bobby
ReplyDeleteDo you have any tips for how to present work that was done in a team?
For example, what if you did the body animation, but someone else did the facial?
Or what if your work was "plussed" by another member of the animation team?
I'm thinking I'll just do my best to credit the other animators in the breakdown that accompanies the reel.
Thanks for the advice.
--Phil
While I agree that plagiarism is a no-go and claiming someone elses hard work as your own is also fraud humanity has copied each other since the dawn of the species in order to learn how something is achieved and then how to make it better.
ReplyDeleteanimators over the years have taken classic disney animation and copied it in order to learn how to improve their own work and get feedback from others about it in order to see how close theirs compares to the original.
It's when they start claiming that it's their own original idea that they will get in trouble. Stick a big fat "This is my own attempt at copying someone else's animation" label on it and it's fine for feedback. There's no way I'd stick it on a showreel though but uploading it to the net with that disclaimer embedded in the video for feedback doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. In fact it show that they have a high regard for the original work and would like to understand the process behind it's creation.
Not picking a fight, just giving my opinion because I've copied heaps of other people's animation in order to learn a little about the sort of things they did that worked to show such great poses, face shapes and other technical stuff. I've never claimed it was my own original content or ideas as that's just lying, sneaky and flat out not on.
Josh, glad we can respectfully disagree.
ReplyDeleteTaking an idea is one thing. Copying an entire film, reel verbatim and calling it a show reel seems a little much.
I personally do not believe animation is about the final result; animation. I feel it is about life, about experience and about entertainment. Although there are techniques used by other animators to make something look "nice", those things can also be interpreted and made your own. In this situation, that is not the case. There is zero creativity being displayed. All of the things that go into making animation entertainment are void. It is, of course, a sign of a beginning animator to think these are the things that will make them a great animator. I feel there could be nothing further from the truth.
I have to agree entirely with Bobby Beck...
ReplyDeleteSeverall times on forums and blogs, I have come accross this discussion, and I come out with the same conclusion.
I don't understand the concept of copying animation frame by frame to learn from it....
It seems like spending a lot of time for not much learning experience. Why not spend half the time on studying the shot and not copying it. Taking notes, drawing some poses, studying the timing etc... But copying it seems so long and teadious for a minimal result (yes you might learn something, but I don't think it's much compared to the time it takes).
Fine arts artist have often copied the master pieces to study their technique, but do actors copy other actor's performances ? Personnally I feel closer to an actor than a painter.