Getting Your 3D Artwork on the Big Screen
The Art of Getting Your Personal Ideas into Animated Films and other Designs
When working as an artist on animated films, my proudest moments came when I was genuinely able to contribute a unique look or design to the project. Something that came from my experiences or my skills that would appear on movie screens all over the world. A knowledge that this film would forever be different because I worked on it. It’s so cool.
For those outside the industry, this seems obvious. Of course you get your art on the screen…aren’t you one of the artists?!!? For those that have done it, you know it doesn’t always work that way.
There are so many designs and ideas before you even touch a shot that can handcuff you. Maybe the shots before and after yours have already been completed and you just need to create this one shot in the middle that bridges the gap. Something that matches what already exists and you have no wiggle room.
Other times you get in there earlier and you can add your input. But even then, you can pitch ideas and they get shot down or bypassed. But after years of pitching ideas in these situations, I began to notice that it wasn’t always just your idea or your visuals that mattered…but how they were presented. I saw solid ideas get approved because they were presented well and I’ve seen brilliant ideas get shot down because they were presented poorly.
The key was the “Alt Shot” method. How does this work?
Ok first…let’s cover how an artist typically works on a part of a film. First, you are given some notes on the asset, environment, or shot you are working on. You collect those notes and do your best to address them quickly before showing an updated version the next day for approval. But what if you disagree with the notes you were given? What if you think you have a better way of improving the work?
I used to only address the notes I agreed with and then sprinkle in my own personal take for everything else. Big mistake. What do you think the director or art director will say when they see the shot? It’s something like “What the hell is this? What happened to the notes I asked for?” And you have to go back and make tweaks and your thoughts get discarded.
Instead…do this…
Create one image that is 100% exactly what they ask for. It hits every note literally the way it was asked for. Then, you create a second version. Version B. An Alt Shot that has your ideas in it, too. You present Version A first and say “I also prepared a 2nd version of this shot with some ideas, can we take a look at that, please?”
What happens? The director is already secured in their notes being hit and what you created is all bonus. They can look at it as an add-on to what they already thought. Not a replacement and you can get more of your ideas considered if they are added features. And if they don’t like it, easy peasy…you already have the version they wanted and just drop your version go from there.
This not only works in animated films. It ESPECIALLY works when dealing with clients.
I have a very recent, non-CG example of this from working with a client whom I very much wanted to impress…My spouse.
BHOG
As any creator, you will often get asked by friends and family to design things for them. Recently, my wife asked me to design a little logo from her parent friend group in New York. We had already left the neighborhood and moved to California. Someone else was now moving to London and the group was breaking up. Everyone was sad and my wife had a thought…let’s make everyone a shirt or a hat or something to remember all the fun times. Not bad. Kinda cute, right?
So she started brainstorming a design with this premise. It’s a group of parents, all on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, who became close friends during COVID. All the kids met at a place called Bright Horizons Daycare and this group had an active text exchange that someone called the Bright Horizon OGs (this was later shortened to the BHOGs.) The group would often meet in Central Park to go to playgrounds, have outdoor pizza parties, or track down a local swimming pool on particularly hot summer days.
Ok…so my wife is off and running with this idea. Now she is a brilliant person. Like legitimately the smartest human being I have ever met. Like a literal doctor. But she is not a designer. But that didn’t stop her…she opened Microsoft Word and knocked out this design with nothing but screenshots and an orange font. And yes…she knows I work for Adobe and have access to incredible design tools but she she still used Word. This was the result:
She emailed it with a note saying “Like this but replace the “O” with a pizza and add the NYC to the UWS.
Ok…so this design was as little…literal? The swimming icon, NYC Parks Department logo, full pizza pie, and multi letters of acronyms…11 total. NYC UWS BHOGs. So again…literal…and problematic.
All I kept thinking about when I saw it was Roman Mars TED Talk about city flag design. Love this TED talk so much. You should watch. Then come back to reading. I will wait…..
Ok…you’ve got it. Same principles here. I wanted to minimize it. But hold up. If I would have done that…what would my wife say? “What happened to that super sweet mockup I sent you?”
So I tapped back into my artist history to implement my “Alt Shot” approach. So I first delivered the requested design. Complete with NYC and pizza logo.
Then…I minimized. I wanted to center it around one central theme. And why not just lean into an already great logo design…the NYC parks association leaf and circle. For those in New York, it’s a well-known, well-loved symbol. Then we come to the 11 letters. Let’s just get back to the roots and take it down to just the BHOGs. But if it’s for a garment…it’s no longer plural since it’s only worn by one person…we can drop it down to BHOG (or Be-Hog as I started calling it.)
As for the swimming element, I took out the swimmer and just kept the wavy water lines and pushed the color to blue. For the pizza…well…I tried a bunch of stuff and none of it worked. Graphic design isn’t necessarily my strongest field so I just left it off and figured the round shape of the overall design was good enough.
So this is the result. My Version B. My Alt Shot and I think it came out pretty ok.
So I showed the client…I mean my wife and….she was still on the fence. Then one of our other friends chimed in that she liked the simplified designs better. My wife was still skeptical. Then I mentioned that screen printers generally change by color and Boom! Like Magic!! Convinced!!! (This is perhaps another article about how you can get your designs approved when you prove it saves the client money.)
So that’s it! That’s the magic sauce.
Step 1. Give them exactly what they want
Step 2. Offer up a “Version B” on the side with your vision.
Step 2b. If that doesn’t work, show how your version will save them money.
And boom! You have your design approved!
3D News of the Week
A roundup of interesting 3D related news you may have missed this week.
Activision Blizzard planning to end full remote work - gamedeveloper.com
Is the new Burberry logo the start of an exciting design trend? - creativebloq.com
meet monocle, the world's smallest AR device that clips onto your glasses - designboom.com
Clavicula: A Free 3D Modeling and Painting App for Desktop & VR - 80.lv
A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled (paywall)
3D Artist of the Week
Love the design of this project by Matthew Kean. Click the Artstation links if you want to see it animated!
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Link to the Project on ArtStation
3D Tutorials
This one isn’t a tutorial per se…it’s that Roman Mars city flag TED talk I mentioned in the article. It’s fantastic. Entertaining and educational. You should watch.
3D Job Spreadsheet
Link to Google Doc With A TON of Jobs in Animation (not operated by me)
Michael Tanzillo has been a Senior Artist on animated films at Blue Sky Studios/Disney with credits including three Ice Age movies, two Rios, Peanuts, Ferdinand, Spies in Disguise, and Epic. Currently, Michael is a Head of Technical Artists with the Substance 3D Growth team at Adobe.
In addition to his work as an artist, Michael is the Co-Author of the book Lighting for Animation: The Visual Art of Storytelling and the Co-Founder of The Academy of Animated Art, an online school that has helped hundreds of artists around the world begin careers in Animation, Visual Effects, and Digital Imaging.
www.michaeltanzillo.com
Free 3D Tutorials on the Michael Tanzillo YouTube Channel
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