A 2K Day and an Evening with Paul Lee

I am very excited to tell you that we are ramping up for an amazing month of events this November. Unfortunately, that ramp was a little steep so you're getting a bit of a delayed write up from our fantastic 2K Games day on October 17th.

This summer, we were proud to have had a number of Tea Timers on a short term contract with 2K games working NBA 2K14. Lucky for us, they were happy to come back and share their experiences with the rest of us! They joined us for club, becoming the opening act for Paul Lee, their animation supervisor, who joined us for a delightful Q&A.

First, we covered file referencing. You may already be familiar with referencing assets - such as your set or rigged characters - but how about a method that makes your scene file even lighter and letting you animate despite ever-changing rigs / weights? We learned that there is a relatively easy method that isn't utilized very often! Simply separate out an additional rig to animate on. You will have 2 files to reference, one that is only the skeleton joints and the rig controls and the other is the mesh and skeleton joints. Orient constrain all the parts of the animation rig, except the hip which needs to be point constrained, to the original. This way, you, as an animator, can continue working and not have to worry about the character or animation not transferring while the art team is still developing the character, the modelers still modeling, or the riggers still creating the controls and weight paints.

Following this, we discussed animation layers; that third tab at the bottom of the Channel Box. Layers are extremely powerful. Just as in Photoshop, you can build up animation on top of each other in layers without affecting anything else underneath. You can easily take a vanilla walk cycle to a character walk cycle in almost no time. Layers are particularly amazing when having to edit a complex animation. They allow you to add on top of what was already animated or to do some minor tweaks and edit some poses just to try things out, without worrying about ruining your keys and splines. Each layer can also be toggled to be on and off, so if you don't like what you see, just disable the layer to hide the extra animation -- it will instantly revert to what it looked like before without having to go through and figuring out which keys you need to delete. Like buffer curves on a broader scale!

To wrap up the night, Paul shared some of his experiences with us. When asked about his number one piece of advice, his biggest suggestion was to always find ways to keep improving yourself. As a student or anyone interested in animation that is just starting out, learn your skills and other disciplines well enough to be self sufficient and then push yourself to doing those tasks more efficiently. While there has been fear of outsourcing and people losing their jobs, Paul has expressed not to worry about it too much. Other than issues of having to manage resources and schedules, outsourcing is just another part of the equation and there will always be a need to have key people in house. Instead of worrying about the things that are out of your control, take the time to be the better, and you'll do better stepping into the industry.

A big thank you to all those who stayed on a Friday night to enjoy the evening with Paul Lee -- we hope you found the talk helpful and informative -- and obviously all of our gratitude to Mr. Lee, himself -- and all of our 2K Tea Timers -- for sharing with us.

Happy Animating!

Don't forget to join the conversation at www.teatimeanimation.com 
Questions? Don't hesitate to get in touch with us at info@teatimeanimation.com
Twitter: @TeaTimeAnimates
Instagram: @TeaTimeAnimation

The Usual Summer Hiatus

We hope you've been enjoying as much of the sun-soaking, free-slurpee season as you can because - you guessed it - fall is just around the bend, and with it, the end of our usual summer hiatus.

If you weren't aware, summer tends to lend itself to a lull in our regularly scheduled programming, as many of our on-site crew members depart for vacation -- but fret not! While we are getting a healthy dose of some Vitamin D (hissss, sunlight, hissss), we've also been busy preparing for another amazing year! Here's a quick update on what has been going down, a taste of what we're working on, and some things you can look forward to in the future:

First a shout out to our newly-annointed alumni leadership! Yes, three of our on-site leaders are all grown up and moving on to big-kid jobs - Thank you for all of your hard work Jonathan Marshall, Mendel Reis and Mike Kersey. While we will miss them dearly, this opened us up for the next generation of Tea Time Leadership, and we have been taking applications for our three new board members. After receiving many promising applications, we are nearly ready to make an official announcement, so stay tuned.

Speaking of new leadership, we are exceedingly proud to announce that we have just launched our very first additional Tea Time Chapter all the way in Pittsburgh, PA! They've just finished their first, successful semester, and you can look forward to hearing more from them in the future. Tea Time Pittsburgh is run by the charming and talented Justin Hartman (@JustinHartArt) and Tyler Palladino (@PallaSculpt). Please contact them if you're in the area and looking to participate!
Additionally, if you're interested in starting a Tea Time chapter of your own, don't hesitate to contact us at info@teatimeanimation.com. We have an amazing info package to help you get started!

If you hadn't heard already, a while back we launched our official community site teatimeanimation.com. If you want to be a part of our community, but sadly aren't located in San Francisco or Pittsburgh, we have some excellent discussions, amazing job opportunity postings, and even some events with prizes. The forums has been steadily growing and we can't wait to see more! Come discover important news, share what inspires you, or get feedback on your latest work. There is room for all facets of the animation pipeline, so amaze us with some drawings, rigs, models, or VFX. Remember, Tea Time is open to everyone -- whether you are just starting out or are currently an industry professional -- so don't hesitate to sign up (we're integrated with Facebook so it only takes on click) and start sharing.

This summer has been particularly exciting for many of our members, with the involvement and success of the Borderlands 2 Short Film partnership with Gearbox and 2K Games. Congratulations to everyone and their hard work. You can check out the delightful spot Kotaku did on the project here, and you can watch the full documentary below!

Finally (I told you we've been busy), we are thinking of starting a YouTube channel! The success of the Clothing the Morpheus Rig tutorial has been overwhelming, getting nearly a thousand hits in a matter of hours. Thus, we have decided to create a dedicated channel that will consist of video tutorials, industry news, and most likely one-on-one interviews with professionals. That being said - we're open to feedback! Let us know what you'd like to see in the comments below, or tweet us @TeaTimeAnimates.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest that summer has to offer and we'll be seeing you soon.

Happy animating!


Don't forget to join the conversation at www.teatimeanimation.com

Questions? Don't hesitate to get in touch with us at info@teatimeanimation.com
Twitter: @TeaTimeAnimates
Instagram: @TeaTimeAnimation

Borderlands Animation Collaborative!

The Borderlands Animation project class is now listed for the summer semester under the following name: 

1360_ANM_498_01: COLLABORATIVE PROJECT: ANIMATION IN PRODUCTION

David Latour be teaching the class with Chris Armstrong. You don't have to take the class to pick up shots for borderlands animation, but only folks enrolled in the class will be guaranteed to get work. This class does not have a portfolio requirement but it will require that the instructors see your ten second reel in our first module to help determine how to divide up the initial shots.

This will be a great opportunity to work on a popular franchise in a collaborative learning environment. Space is limited, so sign up right away!

Tea Time Animation* and 2K Games!

Over the course of the next semesters, 2K Games will be partnering with AAU to produce animated shorts centered around the Borderlands 2 franchise -- starting with a storyboard contest!

2K will be providing just about everything besides a pen and paper; For those interested in storyboarding, there will be a selection of various story lines for you to storyboard so you don't really even need to know the current lore. They will also be supplying students with all assets -- environments, props, rigged models, etc... -- so even if you choose not to be a part of the storyboard competition, there are still opportunities for you to work with professional-grade material!

If that doesn't entice you enough, top prize for the storyboard contest (other than seeing your vision come to life with the aid of current professionals, of course) is an internship with 2K Games! (Perhaps more than one?)

Am I getting your attention yet? Well then come to the informational panel Thursday, March 7th at 7:30pm in the 79 New Montgomery theater.

Don't miss this amazing opportunity, and don't hesitate to e-mail us at teatimeanimationclub@gmail.com for more information.

*Contest limited to registered AAU students only