Produced By - Insight #19 - Álvaro Wallner Carrió: Animation Process Explained By an Experienced Animator
Episode Date: August 25, 2023Álvaro Wallner Carrió is a 2D animator and illustrator who has worked abroad but whose home base and native city is Valencia, Spain. Álvaro chose to follow his love for animation, studying Fine art...s at the Polytechnical University of Valencia. After 2 traditional art years, he moved to London on Erasmus where he fell in love with doing 2D animation. He talks about life in Valencia in more detail and contrasts it to his experiences studying in London as well as what Spanish education is like in general. In addition to sharing his experience working in the industry and some helpful advice, Alvaro has worked for a number of animation studios and contributed to a number of well-known television programmes. Listen to this episode to discover more about animation, learn about life in Valencia and Spain and find out more interesting facts about the animation industry. Connect with Alvaro: https://alvarowallner.tumblr.com/ https://vimeo.com/390769037 https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarowallner/ https://www.instagram.com/AlvaroWallner/ Quotes from the episode: “Try to take it seriously, do a project that you are proud of and not just try to focus on grades.” “You are honest with yourself, don't have anyone behind pushing you to finish work or anything, and then you're going to find out if you really like to do it or not.“ “I'm glad you asked me because sometimes it's hard to remember why you started doing this. You just go day by day and it's a very creative job but it's still a job so you kind of lose track of why you started doing this.” “I think it's important to stay creative, especially if you have studied fine arts you're probably a creative person and you really like to do stuff.” “Do something creative and even if you are working on something that doesn't have a lot of creativity, just try to find time to do creative stuff. At least for me, it's what really makes the difference and what I'm looking forward to because you have complete freedom of doing whatever you want and it feels great.” Connect with the podcaster: https://tomasloucky.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/ https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/ https://twitter.com/TomasLoucky Follow the podcast: 🌐 Website: https://produced-by-podcast.com 🔗 Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by 💬 Contact: https://produced-by-podcast.com/contact 📷 Instagram: https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@producedbypodcast ✉️ Email: podcast.produced.by@gmail.com Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e5Y8Wscx Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642 🎙️ About Produced By Podcast: Produced By brings you exciting stories of brave people who set out to build careers in competitive fields despite often challenging circumstances. Whether you are interested in creative industries, personal development or want to have some fun, enter the spotlight along with our guests and get inspired. Listen to people coming from all parts of the world, diverse fields of expertise and different levels of careers. So join us to follow their journeys, learn from life experience and embark on a great adventure. 🤩 If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please, leave a review on your podcast app, subscribe or share it with your friends. You can also send us a message and share any feedback, advice and tips for guests. 📭 Subscribe at https://produced-by-podcast.com/subscribe so that you don't miss out! #producedbypodcast #producedby #enterthespotlight Enjoy! Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLouckyStan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_byNewsletter: https://producednewsletter.substack.com/The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Can you introduce us a bit more about the process of how we work as animator?
Well, if you work in a studio, it's going to be very specialized.
So you get like some digital files from that someone has prepared for you.
You animate those characters.
And then you just upload them on some platform and you do it over and over again until there's no animation to do.
And then you go home, you know.
Okay, that was a brief.
Yeah, I mean, it's very simple, you think, it that way.
But depending on the production, the process is very different.
You know, it's not the same.
I have mostly worked on cutout animation so far.
What does it mean?
I mean, I'm a 2D animator.
Actually, I don't know if I have even mentioned it.
I do like, let's say, cartoons.
I have tried doing 3D.
I actually was learning last summer, but I haven't worked on that.
Is that because 2D interests you more, or?
Yeah, yeah. I really love drawing, you know, and painting and stuff.
Sort of like natural move was to go for two-d things.
I also like more the aesthetic.
I'm just more attached to the drawing, let's say.
And on cut out to the animation, it's basically having like a puppet.
It's like a digital puppet.
And you can basically like move his arm, you can move his head,
and you can replace different parts of the body.
And this is way faster than if you actually had to redraw the puppet all the time.
Because you don't have to worry about the head being too big
or things going out of proportion
and it's like a thousand times faster.
So cut out animation,
I've done it with Flash
now animate and Tomb Boom
which are like the two main softwares
for this. But yeah, it's basically like
you have a digital puppet. I mean, they actually
give you the scene. You have the background there
and you have the characters but the characters are not moving
you know. So you actually have to move the characters
you have to make them talk with the audio
file that's attach in the file.
So you do the lip sync, you do the animation,
the acting and stuff.
make it all like move really nicely and smooth.
And then just like upload it.
So another part of the production would be like post-processing.
You know, they add some effects, shadows or something on the characters.
And that will be cut out mostly.
Doesn't change too much if you work from Flask or Tomb Boom.
It changes the software.
It's like very different approach, but the basic of it is the same.
You just remove different parts and you replace, for example, the hands, you usually replace them, you know.
So you have 20 different hands of the character.
And you can select the hand that is like closed fish.
if you want to make him angry or like an open hand
if he's like saying like this or that.
Whereas if you do like, I think they call it traditial now.
It would be like drawing animation.
You basically has drawn the computer.
Someone also prepares the scene for you.
Even though when I worked before,
it was such a small team that we were basically doing everything ourselves.
I really like that.
Like working in a small studio is also like really cool
when you can try different roles.
And like someone who is doing layout,
then it starts animating and stuff.
and you can really like learn different skills there.
Yeah, like explore different things.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, when you are drawing it,
it's just like basically the same as when you're drawing on Photoshop,
I guess.
I mean, I guess you have drawn on Photoshop and all the digital software.
But as you have like a timeline and, you know,
when you move through this timeline, like the drawings are moving.
So that would be like the two different ways of animating into the animation, I think.
Yeah.
And how much freedom do you have when it comes to?
the animation process.
Creative freedom.
Because I wonder, for example, you said,
to describe character as someone who's angry,
so you animate, let's say, hands or his movement,
just someone give you a direction,
what to do, or you know by yourself,
or you got some kind of freedom,
and then someone gives you feedback on that.
Yeah.
So one of the things that you are 100% going to get
if you start working as an animator is storyboard.
Every different file is going to be like a different shot
of that storyboard.
So on the storyboard,
you have a basic indication
of what the characters are doing,
where they are position,
the composition and everything, you know.
So you start with that.
You have that as an idea of how to move.
And first you do like a blocking phase
in which you are going to just hit the basic poses.
If the character is going to like jump,
probably you're just going to do first,
like, the posing where he's going down to jump,
and then another position in which he's up jumping.
And then like another one,
which he has already fallen back.
So that would look like a blocking phase.
Usually you have like a lead or someone who supervises your work
who's going to check that blocking phase,
going to give you some adjustments or some corrections,
and then you move into animation.
And in terms of creativity,
I personally don't think you have that much creativity.
You have like one way of doing things.
They probably have this idea of how the characters want to move
or there's more freedom.
You can like read it from one animator to the other
who has animated that scene.
but if you try to do something that is like too much outside of the box,
of course they're going to call it because you have to remember that that project
already has someone who is putting the creative vision, you know,
with deciding how the characters are going to do this or that.
So if all the animators will be able to do whatever they wanted to, you know, with the files,
it will look pretty much chaotic, I think.
So I understand it, but I don't really think there's a lot of creative freedom.
I mean, depends on what you want, of course.
on the acting you have freedom.
You don't have to follow the storyboard 100%,
especially if you make it better.
But if you want to be like too creative,
chances are that most of the time
you're going to get the work back
because you just decided to do something like
too creative, and the director just thought that
let's stick with what's in the storyboard.
And time is a big constraint
when you are working on animation,
especially on TV series, I think.
I think depends on the production,
but you don't really want to get
to creative and spend too much time thinking about things about the meaning of this and
that because if you don't get it right you're going to have to redo it and you try to be like
very time efficient when you're working in animation