Framestore's Oz Gani and Ross Burgess Reveal Animation Workflow Secrets

Ross Burgess and Oz Gani acting out some dinosaur action

Think of Framestore and you think of high-end animal and creature animation. Paddington, for example, was animated at Framestore, raising the bar for the whole industry in terms of the quality and believability of the animated performance.

Today we were lucky enough to have two senior Framestore animators (and the head of talent development) visit us at Escape Studios, to check out our students' work and give us some insights into the Framestore animation workflow.

Finding Great Reference
Animation supervisor Oz Gani and Head of Animation Ross Burgess explained that the secret of the Framestore animation process is "all about finding great reference". This involves filming your own reference for a shot, or - more commonly with animal and creature work - searching through YouTube to find the right clip - which can then be used to create convincing and believable animation.

Head of Talent Development, Andrew Schlussel (left), and Oz Gani

As animation gets more and more complex, especially in high-end VFX work, it becomes more and more important that the animator's work is rooted in real, observed locomotion and action.

Client Approvals
As a result, Oz said that he spends about "50% of his time searching for great reference".  Sometimes, it's a question of finding a series of clips, trimming them, editing them together, and splicing them together to create the perfect shot. This then gets shown to the client, so that the client can approve the basic moves.

As Ross put it, you "show your reference as blocking", because "if you can get the right reference, you know that the shot is going to work". Ross learned this technique at Dreamworks, where he filmed his pregnant wife walking, in order to capture just the right reference for a particular shot. "As animators", he said "the most important thing is to observe; we are all observers of life".

Andrew Schlussel, Oz Gani and Ross Burgess

The "Frankenstein Approach"
Oz talked about "Frankensteining" different bits of reference, to combine different clips of animal business and use this as reference.  He explained how he learned this technique at ILM, on The Revenant, where the animators who worked on the grizzly bear created an astoundingly realistic performance. And the secret of getting this right was all about finding the right reference.

Live Action on "Boss Baby"
Ross showed an example of this process, featuring acting filmed by "Boss Baby" animators Anthony Hodgson and Rani Namaani, who cut together a progress reel of their acting on the movie, juxtaposed with the final shots, showing how much work went into the acting and preparation of each shot. 

Boss Baby Animation & Reference Reel 1 from anthony hodgson on Vimeo.

Importing Live Action Reference into Maya
Ross also gave a demonstration of how he imported reference video into Maya, directly onto an image plane, in order to have the reference footage in the shot.  This process is "all about satisfying the vision of a director", which is "the hardest thing to learn as a junior - how to get into the head of the director quicker". And, "once you have the right footage, and the right action, it's so much quicker to animate". 

Ross explained that on a film, an animator might have to do "70 to 100 iterations of the same shot", especially on a high budget feature. On lower budget pictures, there isn't budget for constant meddling, so you have to get it right first time - and reference can help a lot with this.

Using reference is a smart way of working because it saves tons of time in blocking animation, and also ensures that the animators' work is rooted in the real world.

Many many thanks to Oz Gani, Andrew Schlussel and and Ross Burgess for taking the time to visit us, and help our students reach for the highest possible standards in animal and creature animation. 

Escape Studios Animal and Creature Reel
To see some examples of animal and creature work done by our students here at Escape Studios - almost all of which is based on live-action reference - watch the video below.


To read more about how to use live action reference to create great animation, follow this link.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog is a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link.  To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here.  For the next 12 week animation course, click here. And to apply for the next evening class in Producing Animation, see this page.