Spotlight:JasonCondon
From Ani-Jobs
Spotlight On: Jason Condon
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Jason spent most of his formative years filling little note pads with doodles and comic strips starring his friends and his favorite super heroes. It wasn’t until a few years after his high school graduation that Jason realized he could be able to fool somebody into paying him to draw... if he had the proper training. Jason then embarked to Holland College where he was trained as an illustrator. After graduation he followed his love of animation to the NBCC Miramichi campus where he gathered the information necessary to infiltrate that industry. Jason has since worked for a number of animation studios on various projects. |
The Project: Holland College Commercial
A local commercial production company, Moses Media, approached me to produce a 30 sec commercial for the Holland College Video Game art & Design course.
The Art:
STEP 1
First I met with the people at Moses Media to discuss what they wanted for the spot. They had been in talks with the client already and had decided on something that would follow the creation of a character from rough drawings to final animation. With the commercial starting in a live action world and then transitioning into a digital one. We decided on a fantasy world setting and I set off to do some initial ruff designs for a hero and a beast.
STEP 2
Once I have approval on the designs I start storyboarding out the action. I only boarded the end section where everything was fully animated because the opening section was still a bit up in the air. I try to make my poses as clear as possible, though not necessarily clean. I did all the drawings in Flash 8 and upon approval I will use these drawings as poses in my animation. I also tried to give a rough representation of what the background will be.
STEP 3
While the boards are being looked over I do a quick color model of the characters and send it off to the client. I also discuss my choice of color palette for the background at this point to try and give them the clearest picture of what I’m intending to do.
STEP 4
Once the boards are either approved or revised I begin the process of animation. I start by thumbnailing and then doing a very quick & rough pass. I find doing the fast initial rough pass helps me not over think the animation and just feel it through. I would have already done a lot of my thinking during the thumbnail stage. During this stage I’m still working with the ruff background design. You can notice that I’ve used symbol animation in a few places, the beast’s head for instance. Here I created a graphic symbol of the entire skull and I will place any animation of the face inside of that.
STEP 5
This happened more in tandem with step 4. Usually I finish the layouts before heading into animation. That way I know exactly where everything is in the background and can pose my characters to compliment it’s design. Due to the short turnaround on this project I got some outside help with the background. Enter Troy Little, a good friend and illustrator extraordinaire. He worked off my ruff and delivered me a tight line drawing and then a finished painting of the background. Something I knew I wouldn’t have time to do properly myself without sacrificing in some other areas. It turned out great and he stayed close enough to my initial rough that I didn’t have to alter any of my animation.
STEP 6
Once I had a rough pass of animation done I went back and did a tight pass. This is where I’ll add any details or subtle actions that were missing in the broad strokes of the last stage. I’ve added animation to the face of the beast for instance. I’ll work in a different color or sometimes multiple colors just to keep things clear to myself visually. This is the step when I would show it to the client again. Then there would be some back and forth with minor revisions here and there until it was just what they wanted.
STEP 7
Once animation is approved I begin cleanup animation. I work in small chunks during this step so that I get a definite feeling of progression because clean up can sometimes take a little while. Since I’m using Flash as my animation tool I’ll also try to create symbols from some of my artwork to re-use and help speed the process up. I try to keep the symbol use to a minimum, things that would normally be trace backs in hand-drawn animation or things that are very solid.
STEP 8
Now onto the color and shadow pass. This step is much faster than the cleanup line for me. I already have my approved color palette so all I do is go through the animation and apply the shadow mattes, and then go back and bucket fill the rest of the areas. I applied the shadows here by using the brush tool set to paint behind and drawing in the areas where I figure shadows would be. It’s not accurate to any lighting scheme in particular. Just went by what I felt would look right.
STEP 9
Live action elements. They had planned on having the commercial open with somebody drawing the main character on paper, and then transition to a digital world. I was available and knew how to draw the character so the guys from Moses Media came over and shot the opening in my basement studio. This actually happened while I was doing the color pass. It only took a morning and I really didn’t have to do anything but sit at my animation desk and repeatedly draw the same head. ☺
STEP 10
Once the final color animation is finished I send it off to Moses Media where they add sound effects and send it off to the client. At this point I started working on the opening montage. The client liked my expression sheet for the hero character and wanted to use some of it in the opening after we transition from the live action. They wanted to show the characters personality with a series of digital drawings. I threw together a little sequence transitioning from the last frame of the live action into the other character drawings. I did a couple of mask reveals to make them feel like they were being drawn or colored. I hooked this up to the starting pose of my animation. This went back and forth a few times until we got the timing we liked. Then I sent off a high resolution render of the movie to Moses Media where they edited it together with the live action and added the still info screens at the end.
STEP 11
And here’s the finished product. Two weeks from concept to completion. There are always things that could be better. Deadlines were met and the client was happy with it. As it turned out the client decided to add some 3D elements to it after I was finished. They brought on another artist and had them transition to a 3D environment and character in the final shot.
The Interview:
Q: What inspires you as an artist?
Jason Condon: I get a lot of inspiration from other artists that work from the heart. It doesn’t matter whether they are musicians, songwriters, film directors or sculptors. Any artist who is able to capture and express emotions in their work affects me deeply. My family is also a great impact on me as an artist, both in how they open my eyes to different possibilities, and in how they give me the freedom to do what I love.
Q: What part of the animation process do you enjoy the most?
Jason Condon: I enjoy the initial stages of the actual animation process, thumbnails and rough animation. That’s the part that I feel I can have the most fun experimenting with different ways to approach a scene or a specific bit of action. After those steps it’s pretty much just the refinement and polishing of the animation.
Q: What was the most challenging project you worked on and why?
Jason Condon: A lot of the projects are challenging for different reasons. Some because of their very short schedule, some because they never seem to end. Some are challenging because they demand high quality and give you lots of freedom, and others because they demand limited quality with a lot of restrictions. Each project has it’s own individual challenges. Some will challenge you as an artist while others will challenge you to try and remain artistic. One example would be a recent project I did for Chuck Gammage. It was a spot for a company called Dyadem and the boards that Chuck produced were great. They were funny, and the characters had a real great UPA sense of design to them. He wanted the animation to feel like the classic flat UPA work or the great “Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom” from Disney. That was a daunting bar to set. On top of that the client had a very tight and inflexible deadline. They were showing the piece at a conference on Friday evening. It had to be in their hands by then. That gave me about a week to finish it. It pushed me to my limits animation wise, trying to make it look nice and keep it on schedule was a challenge. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but somehow I did. Just in time. There were some very late nights, and I’d still like to go back and fix the very last shot I animated, but overall the client was happy. And that’s all you can ask for really.
Q: Did you suggest this project be done in Flash due to time constraints or did the client request Flash animation?
Jason Condon: Flash just happened to be the easiest way to get the project completed through all the stages. The client didn’t really have any preference at the start and I was comfortable with Flash and knew I could go from boards to final ink and paint in it.
Q: Do you generally do boards, animatics, animation and color in Flash like you did in this project?
Jason Condon: I generally prefer to create the storyboards on paper. I like the tactile feeling that it provides. If I’m staying digital I like to use a program called Sketchbook Pro. Its drawing tools have a very organic feel to them. If I’m short on time and know I’ll want to use the board drawings as keys, I’ll board right in flash. If I boarded on paper I might just throw the animatic together with Final Cut Pro or iMovie. I work mostly in Flash now for all the remaining stages, from animation to final color.
Q: Do you have any special Flash plug-ins or little shortcuts you use that you would be willing to tell us?
Jason Condon: I don’t really have any shortcuts per say. Actually, it’s more likely they’ve become second nature and I’m just forgetting about them. I have a few plug-ins that allow me to enter a graphic with nested animation on the frame that I have selected in the outside timeline. That’s very helpful. Other than that it’s just setting a lot of my own keyboards shortcuts for all the different menu functions that I use frequently.
Q: You mentioned another artist helped you on the background due to the quick deadline. Do you prefer collaborating on a project, or to have control of the whole process?
Jason Condon: I think I much prefer collaboration. That way everyone can work towards his or her strengths. It also gives you more people to bounce ideas off and work through ideas that you know are just a bit off but you don’t know exactly how to fix.
Q: Do you have any inspirational books or films you would like to recommend to other artists?
Jason Condon: As far as film goes you can’t go wrong with a little Sergio Leone “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly”, “Once upon a time in the West”. I’d also recommend any art books by Robert Beverly Hale. His “Master Class in Figure Drawing” and “Anatomy Lessons From the Great Masters” were very influential and inspiring to me when I was in college trying desperately to wrap my head around the human figure. I couldn’t have a favorite book list without mentioning “Chiaroscuro” by my good friend Troy Little. It’s a great black & white graphic novel with very effective visual storytelling.
