It's already a year old, and nothing really spectacular, but it is an example of Anime Studio Pro 5.6 used in a professional production, for the pack shot of a German TV commercial.
A direct link is not possible, so please select the Payback commercial at the bottom of the page.
http://www.trixter.de/work.asp?top=1&cat=5
It is my first - and to date my only - professional use of Anime Studio, other than that I'm a traditional cell animator, and since recently also a Maya 3D animator.
The design of the character, the Payback Girl, was done by others than myself. She was an existing character that had been handled by other animators and animation companies before me. They handed out the basic design as an illustrator file. AS wasn't able to import it in a way that would be usable, so I had to hand trace the design and split it up into the necessary animation layers.
Rigging the setup was the most time consuming part of this assignment. There are many highlights and shadows in the design, and all of them had to be done in colored outlines, which was a bit of a fuss. Masking the dog within the arm was a bit of a hassle as well. We originally intended a lot more movement, including the Girl zipping in from the right, with overlapping movements on the dog's body, legs and ears, but the client toned the animation down a lot; I could have saved me some time on the rigging if I had known that before.
The artwork and rigging cost me several days, the actual animation was a matter of hours, using both bone and vector point animation (for the dog's arm and some subtle movement on the girl's fingers). Fine tuning by the client spread the actual work flow of the animation over several days, as usual.
The 3D animation of the talking envelope was done in Maya by another animator.
It was used on German television.
German Payback Commercial
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
The whole commercial looks great. You used colored lines for all the shadows and highlights? It looks like you could have used masked fills with outlines disabled, which might have been less finicky. But either way, that's a complex character design to rig. Nice work on bringing it all together. I like the way the dog flips the sign. Very cute. :D
Thanks.
I animated the dogs paw using vector point animation, as bones can be a bit rigid.
I had fiddled around a bit with Anime Studio before I started working on this assignment, but I'm hardly an expert, and, as a dinosaur pencil pusher from the heydays of traditional animation, things like rigging are actually quite foreign to me. In 2007 a former colleague of mine called me to help him develop an idea into a working concept for a TV series, and to make it all feasible and controllable, we dropped the idea of outsourcing the animation to China and opted for keeping the production in-house. We took a test drive on Toon Boom Solo. that had a horrible node tree based style of rigging, and then switched over to AS, which we found more intuitive, and not as demanding on the computer. Also, a visit to the Greykids website persuaded us to drop Solo and switch over to AS. Still, my colleague specialized on the rigging, while I mainly stuck to animation. We never managed to find reliable investors and the series never saw the light of day, but every now and then a played around a bit with AS and one day showed it at the studio where I was mostly working. Our of that, this job was born.
Still, this assignment came pretty much out of the blue, and I had to learn several things on the fly, as I had never tried to rig a character as complex as this one up to that point. I was the only one around that knew anything at all about the program, so I couldn't really ask anyone for help either. I spent a weekend day browsing through the topics here at the Anime Studio Forum to get some inspiration on how to handle things.
Still, fortunately in the end it all worked out.
It's hardly groundbreaking, of course, but at the end of the day I have a good feeling about it.
As most of the studios I worked for started specializing more and more in 3D and Maya, and 2D pretty much died, I decided to go with the flow, and I was recently hired as a 3D junior for a TV production. It's a bit frustrating if you have to start from scratch again every couple of years, though...
I animated the dogs paw using vector point animation, as bones can be a bit rigid.
I had fiddled around a bit with Anime Studio before I started working on this assignment, but I'm hardly an expert, and, as a dinosaur pencil pusher from the heydays of traditional animation, things like rigging are actually quite foreign to me. In 2007 a former colleague of mine called me to help him develop an idea into a working concept for a TV series, and to make it all feasible and controllable, we dropped the idea of outsourcing the animation to China and opted for keeping the production in-house. We took a test drive on Toon Boom Solo. that had a horrible node tree based style of rigging, and then switched over to AS, which we found more intuitive, and not as demanding on the computer. Also, a visit to the Greykids website persuaded us to drop Solo and switch over to AS. Still, my colleague specialized on the rigging, while I mainly stuck to animation. We never managed to find reliable investors and the series never saw the light of day, but every now and then a played around a bit with AS and one day showed it at the studio where I was mostly working. Our of that, this job was born.
Still, this assignment came pretty much out of the blue, and I had to learn several things on the fly, as I had never tried to rig a character as complex as this one up to that point. I was the only one around that knew anything at all about the program, so I couldn't really ask anyone for help either. I spent a weekend day browsing through the topics here at the Anime Studio Forum to get some inspiration on how to handle things.
Still, fortunately in the end it all worked out.
It's hardly groundbreaking, of course, but at the end of the day I have a good feeling about it.
As most of the studios I worked for started specializing more and more in 3D and Maya, and 2D pretty much died, I decided to go with the flow, and I was recently hired as a 3D junior for a TV production. It's a bit frustrating if you have to start from scratch again every couple of years, though...
It looks good Sempie.
I know exactly how you feel regarding having to learn Maya and work in 3d too! I'm in the same position having started out traditionally drawing on paper and painting cels etc, then stop-motion to now working in computer games using Maya.
I had the same experience with ToonBoom also. I've used AS for my own projects after experimenting with Toonboom and others. Btw, if you use bones for the main animation and then use point motion on top you shouldn't get the 'rigid look' you mentioned.
I know exactly how you feel regarding having to learn Maya and work in 3d too! I'm in the same position having started out traditionally drawing on paper and painting cels etc, then stop-motion to now working in computer games using Maya.
I had the same experience with ToonBoom also. I've used AS for my own projects after experimenting with Toonboom and others. Btw, if you use bones for the main animation and then use point motion on top you shouldn't get the 'rigid look' you mentioned.
Given your nick name, I bet you must be familiar with Take 2 then, my all time favorite animation software of them all...
Sadly, I hardly ever get to draw any more. Whenever I get involved in drawn animation, it is as a director and overseas animation supervisor for a series that outsources its animation to China, and at least in the Munich area, nothing much seems to be going on 2d wise any more. I used to be involved as an animator in some of the bigger budgeted European animation features, and I miss my old animation disk. Graph editors are so much more sterile and less intuitive than smeared and scribbly rough animation drawings on wrinkly worn paper...
Sadly, I hardly ever get to draw any more. Whenever I get involved in drawn animation, it is as a director and overseas animation supervisor for a series that outsources its animation to China, and at least in the Munich area, nothing much seems to be going on 2d wise any more. I used to be involved as an animator in some of the bigger budgeted European animation features, and I miss my old animation disk. Graph editors are so much more sterile and less intuitive than smeared and scribbly rough animation drawings on wrinkly worn paper...
Sorry Sempie, I missed your reply before. Yes, I remember Take 2 well. It was the reason I got the Amiga in the first place as up until then,as you know, line test systems cost thousands!
I still have an animation disc but rarely use it these days either. I greatly enjoy getting artwork together and creating animation in Anime Studio after working in Maya all day. I miss the spontaneity of stop-motion mostly but Anime Studio enables me to have a studio in a laptop avoiding the space required for stop - motion and a lot of the tedium of Maya and 3D in general
I still have an animation disc but rarely use it these days either. I greatly enjoy getting artwork together and creating animation in Anime Studio after working in Maya all day. I miss the spontaneity of stop-motion mostly but Anime Studio enables me to have a studio in a laptop avoiding the space required for stop - motion and a lot of the tedium of Maya and 3D in general
Since I'm personally more interested in cartoony stuff like Tom & Jerry, WB Loony Tunes and Disney, and in acting, rather than in graphics, AS isn't really a solution for my personal stuff either. Maybe I should switch to something like TV Paint. Unfortunately it's expensive and not in my budget right now, especially since I suck with Wacoms and I would need to invest in a Cintiq as well...
That's exactly what I'm mainly interested in too Sempie 
With a bit of thought something close to everything you mention can be created in AS.
Of course, TV Paint is great for hand drawn frame by frame though if that's what you intend to do. There are similar but less expensive solutions such as PD Pro 4 http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/ and probably others if you look around.
EDIT. I just sent you a PM.
With a bit of thought something close to everything you mention can be created in AS.Of course, TV Paint is great for hand drawn frame by frame though if that's what you intend to do. There are similar but less expensive solutions such as PD Pro 4 http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/ and probably others if you look around.
EDIT. I just sent you a PM.
I see what you mean, but it's still too remote from the way I prefer to animate. Usually, whenever possible, the first thing I do is to animate from a strong line of action, and then build the details on top of that. There's not that much animation of mine on line right now, but there's some older examples of stuff that I did on this page from the Comic House agency.
http://www.comichouse.nl/en/animation/2d/
For number 7 in the scrolling list at the right I was the animation supervisor, and I animated about half of the scenes, both for the stars as the ape, and number 29 I animated by myself. This is pretty typical for my taste in movement, and I don't see myself doing stuff like this in AS.
I would have to check out this Project dogwaffle stuff.
Thanks.
(Good luck with your short film by the way - looks like it's going to be nice.)
http://www.comichouse.nl/en/animation/2d/
For number 7 in the scrolling list at the right I was the animation supervisor, and I animated about half of the scenes, both for the stars as the ape, and number 29 I animated by myself. This is pretty typical for my taste in movement, and I don't see myself doing stuff like this in AS.
I would have to check out this Project dogwaffle stuff.
Thanks.
(Good luck with your short film by the way - looks like it's going to be nice.)
Wow! Some great work there
Thanks for linking to that and for commenting on my stuff also.
Have a quick look at Freakish Kids work, if you haven't already, as they use Anime Studio a lot and achieve some spectacular work. I'm not trying to bully you into using AS for everything btw
I think you might be surprised at how traditional it appears. The following is easily as good as most Warner Bros in my opinion...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF3JaV7bE0
More of theirs.....
http://freakishkid.com/?cat=60
Thanks for linking to that and for commenting on my stuff also.
Have a quick look at Freakish Kids work, if you haven't already, as they use Anime Studio a lot and achieve some spectacular work. I'm not trying to bully you into using AS for everything btw
I think you might be surprised at how traditional it appears. The following is easily as good as most Warner Bros in my opinion...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF3JaV7bE0
More of theirs.....
http://freakishkid.com/?cat=60
I think it's very professional and I like it to a certain degree, but for my taste the style is too much zip 'n pose, too much Ren & Stimpy (animation wise, that is). I've never been a pose to pose animator, I always did my stuff straight ahead whenever I could, and I would usually be more interested in the movement than in the poses. I did the Wella Girl animation partially pose to pose, but most of the stuff that I did for the Moviestar King Kong commercial was straight ahead from scratch, usually on fours leaving some of the drawings for the inbetweeners, but the scene where the red moviestar runs towards the camera in panic and then zips into the building I animated straight ahead on ones, without skipping a single inbetween because of the frantic leg movement. I wanted to capture a state of blind panic, and included a split moment is which he turns in the other direction before changing his mind and zipping into the building. I would have never captured that if I had done this scene in a pose to pose fashion, I really need to go with the flow for ideas like this to come across. For me, this is how I add an element of the character thinking, and not only have the frenzy motion. And I need to have fluid motion for that, not just zipping from one pose into the next.
For the series that I mentioned earlier in this thread I tried to develop an animation style using bones for that. We planned on keeping things still as traditional as possible, in a style that would have as little zip 'n pose as possible, and I planned on manually animating head turns the traditional way for each character and use these head turns on switch layers. I like to see how the character gets from the one pose to the next, zip 'n pose always felt like cheating to me, and it alienates me from the character as well - I have difficulty believing the characters are alive, it's too much moving graphics for my taste. The lack of 3D movement in AS is also a thing that turns me off. it's an element that I personally need in animation.
It's all a matter of personal taste, of course, but for me Tom & Jerry and Daffy Duck feel alive, and Kim Possible is well crafted flashy looking professionally made moving artwork - it all looks beautiful, but I will never be emotionally touched by animation like Kim Possible, or even more so Skunk Fu, even if I admire it from an artistic point of view. It's more about the way they move than about the flatness of the designs, because I don't have that feeling with the stylized films that Tex Avery or WB did in the late 50s and early 60s, or with stylized Disney stuff like Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom. I even dug the early Hanna Barbera TV shows like the Flintstones - it's probably mainly the zip 'n pose stuff that turns me off a bit. I'm more into warm and cute stuff than into cool and flashy, I guess. (I really hated Johnny Bravo.)
For the series that I mentioned earlier in this thread I tried to develop an animation style using bones for that. We planned on keeping things still as traditional as possible, in a style that would have as little zip 'n pose as possible, and I planned on manually animating head turns the traditional way for each character and use these head turns on switch layers. I like to see how the character gets from the one pose to the next, zip 'n pose always felt like cheating to me, and it alienates me from the character as well - I have difficulty believing the characters are alive, it's too much moving graphics for my taste. The lack of 3D movement in AS is also a thing that turns me off. it's an element that I personally need in animation.
It's all a matter of personal taste, of course, but for me Tom & Jerry and Daffy Duck feel alive, and Kim Possible is well crafted flashy looking professionally made moving artwork - it all looks beautiful, but I will never be emotionally touched by animation like Kim Possible, or even more so Skunk Fu, even if I admire it from an artistic point of view. It's more about the way they move than about the flatness of the designs, because I don't have that feeling with the stylized films that Tex Avery or WB did in the late 50s and early 60s, or with stylized Disney stuff like Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom. I even dug the early Hanna Barbera TV shows like the Flintstones - it's probably mainly the zip 'n pose stuff that turns me off a bit. I'm more into warm and cute stuff than into cool and flashy, I guess. (I really hated Johnny Bravo.)
Last edited by Sempie on Tue May 11, 2010 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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neeters_guy
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I agree with all you say. Being a stop - motion animator for so long I always worked straight ahead of course Recently I had to get used to mainly pose to pose again in Maya but I do straight ahead when the situation requires. We were much faster at stop - motion than Maya and used to do in a day in stopmo what we now do in a week!
I prefer traditional Disney above all and, well, everything you mention really. I went to see Jungle Book 12 times in one week when I was a kid I was so mesmerised by it. Lately I've found I can also appreciate a lot of the more recent stylised TV animation. (I've always disliked the Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom short though so it was interesting you mentioned that)
There comes a point, especially when you are working on your own or in TV series, with the time and budget constraints, that you inevitably have to compromise somewhere. The reason you decided to go with a bone system for your series pilot I guess? I have enough trouble finding time to produce my own animation in the time I have as it is.
I'm enjoying your knowledgable posts and hope you will continue to contribute in this forum even if you don't use AS for all your work.
Recently I had to get used to mainly pose to pose again in Maya but I do straight ahead when the situation requires. We were much faster at stop - motion than Maya and used to do in a day in stopmo what we now do in a week! I prefer traditional Disney above all and, well, everything you mention really. I went to see Jungle Book 12 times in one week when I was a kid I was so mesmerised by it. Lately I've found I can also appreciate a lot of the more recent stylised TV animation. (I've always disliked the Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom short though so it was interesting you mentioned that)
There comes a point, especially when you are working on your own or in TV series, with the time and budget constraints, that you inevitably have to compromise somewhere. The reason you decided to go with a bone system for your series pilot I guess? I have enough trouble finding time to produce my own animation in the time I have as it is.
I'm enjoying your knowledgable posts and hope you will continue to contribute in this forum even if you don't use AS for all your work.
@Neeters Guy - Thanks. There was a great team working on that one. Wilbert Plijnaar, who did the storyboards, layouts and BG paintings, later moved on to Disney, he did boards for the latest Goofy short and The Princess And The Frog, and he also boarded the Dodo-sequence in the first Ice Age film, a very funny guy.
It's like I said, it's mostly a matter of taste. What works for the one doesn't work for the other. I don't need hyper realism, but I still need more than zip'n pose to get into a character, mostly. Still, I accept zip 'n pose in Ren & Stimpy a lot more than in Johnny Bravo, probably because it fits John K's over the top poses and ideas. John K's poses are beautiful, even the ugly ones, whereas Johnny Bravo is mostly just flat. I never could get into the Rugrats style, where the animation is still more or less traditional, but I think South Park just works, even if I think it's ugly a hell - it still makes me laugh.
As an animator, I'm more into character than into abstract ideas, and more into motion than into poses. That's a personal thing, I know other animators that are strictly pose to pose and excellent animators in their own right. I just need to believe in the stuff that I'm animating when I'm animating them, and some things work for me, and others don't.
Bottom line is, I'm just one of these weird, freaky animator guys. Like most of the other animators I know. We all have our own, unique approach to things. There's animation teachers like Shamus Culhane that teach that all animation should be straight ahead, instinctive and from the gut, to Richard Williams, who wants everything planned and posed and thoroughly thought over. There is no truth, and everybody has to find the way that works the best for him. As long as you can communicate your ideas in a clear and entertaining way to your audience, everything's permitted as far as I'm concerned, even if you break a couple of rules.
My way happens to be rough, straight ahead and scribbly, mostly based on animating a line of action first, and based on empathy and warmth rather than on coolness and mockery. I need round and three dimensional characters to achieve that.
But I'm certain that for certain assignments that I will get, and for certain graphical styles, Anime Studio will be the perfect solution, I expect to be using the software in the future. It worked fine for me in the Payback commercial, so why not?
It's like I said, it's mostly a matter of taste. What works for the one doesn't work for the other. I don't need hyper realism, but I still need more than zip'n pose to get into a character, mostly. Still, I accept zip 'n pose in Ren & Stimpy a lot more than in Johnny Bravo, probably because it fits John K's over the top poses and ideas. John K's poses are beautiful, even the ugly ones, whereas Johnny Bravo is mostly just flat. I never could get into the Rugrats style, where the animation is still more or less traditional, but I think South Park just works, even if I think it's ugly a hell - it still makes me laugh.
As an animator, I'm more into character than into abstract ideas, and more into motion than into poses. That's a personal thing, I know other animators that are strictly pose to pose and excellent animators in their own right. I just need to believe in the stuff that I'm animating when I'm animating them, and some things work for me, and others don't.
Bottom line is, I'm just one of these weird, freaky animator guys. Like most of the other animators I know. We all have our own, unique approach to things. There's animation teachers like Shamus Culhane that teach that all animation should be straight ahead, instinctive and from the gut, to Richard Williams, who wants everything planned and posed and thoroughly thought over. There is no truth, and everybody has to find the way that works the best for him. As long as you can communicate your ideas in a clear and entertaining way to your audience, everything's permitted as far as I'm concerned, even if you break a couple of rules.
My way happens to be rough, straight ahead and scribbly, mostly based on animating a line of action first, and based on empathy and warmth rather than on coolness and mockery. I need round and three dimensional characters to achieve that.
But I'm certain that for certain assignments that I will get, and for certain graphical styles, Anime Studio will be the perfect solution, I expect to be using the software in the future. It worked fine for me in the Payback commercial, so why not?
@Amiga Man - The basic reasons why we wanted to do the series in a Anime Studio type of software were threefold - the graphical design of the characters permitted it, the budget would be very tight, and we didn't want to outsource the animation to China. I was a supervisor in China on several occasions, and because of the cultural differences, the Chinese really have insurmountable problems with understanding western style humor.
I directed a TV show, that was mostly based on straight story telling, that was outsourced to China for the animation, but whenever a scene was intended to be funny, we got into problems. I was just a hired director on that show and I made most out of the means that I had at my disposal, but that other show was supposed to be our little baby, and we wanted it to be really good.
That's why we looked for a way to keep the entire production in house.
The Jungle Book was my first experience with the cinema and basically got me hooked to animation as well. But there's a lot of stuff that I like; also non-Disney style stuff like The Cat Came Back by Cordell Barker, or The Monk And The Fish by Michael Dudok De Wit, or Rooty Toot Toot by John Hubley.
There's animated TV shows that I like, but I rarely like the animation in these shows (including even in my own show). A lot of it is done too sloppily by animators that just don't care, especially when it's outsourced to cheap foreign studios. The animators that worked on my show were supposed to chunk out an entire minute of animation per animator per week, and I was still happy with the result I got - I couldn't have done it at that speed. But to get as fast as that, they would send their scenes to the linetester room and not even look at the end result. If I approved the scenes, they would forget about them, only when I would ask for corrections, would they take the effort to watch their own animation. They also didn't look at the storyboards: we gave them detailed instructions on the x-sheets, with all details already there; every pose was thumbnailed en the sheets, every eye blink even already planned by the sheet directors. They animated in a painting by numbers sort of fashion. They would carry out the instructions on the X-sheets, based on the layout and the model sheets, and that was all that we could expect. Many of the animators didn't have a clue about the story. And I could only communicate to them through an interpretor, as my knowledge of the Mandarin language is zero. It was sometimes frustrating to work on that basis.
Disney style feature animation was slower than 3D animation in Maya. I managed to do the Wella Girl animation in a single day, but the more complex Disney like designs really slow you down. I mainly worked for German studios, on films in a Disney like style, like 'Help I'm A Fish'. We were required to do about four seconds per week and we had to slave like hell for that. Especially for slow head turns you had to control all the details, otherwise you would have swimming eyes and that sort of stuff. I knew some animators that could do that sort of stuff with their eyes closed (some of those made it to Dreamworks later on and worked on El Dorado and Sinbad) but I really had to struggle hard for that. I'm better at bouncy cartoony stuff than at subtle realistic animation. Still, I loved being involved in these feature productions, and I miss them.
For the European productions that I know, Maya Juniors are supposed to do about 6 seconds per week, seniors about 10 seconds. (At Pxar the footage requirements are much lower) Trixter, where I worked for a while, had the benefit of having a former Pixar animator, Kyle Balda, as animation supervisor for some of their productions. I worked on the 2D TV show at that time, not on the 3D film that they were doing then, but I still could attend the lectures. It's great if you get to work with very talented and experienced people - I once worked with Tahsin Ozgur, a former Disney Animator that worked on Hercules and Tarzan: you really get inspired by that - and very humble.
Right now, I'm mostly unemployed, as jobs for 3D juniors are scarce. The third season of my TV series should start soon, that will get me going again.
I was fortunate enough to be around when things were still happening, so I really shouldn't complain too much, but I miss those good old days..
I directed a TV show, that was mostly based on straight story telling, that was outsourced to China for the animation, but whenever a scene was intended to be funny, we got into problems. I was just a hired director on that show and I made most out of the means that I had at my disposal, but that other show was supposed to be our little baby, and we wanted it to be really good.
That's why we looked for a way to keep the entire production in house.
The Jungle Book was my first experience with the cinema and basically got me hooked to animation as well. But there's a lot of stuff that I like; also non-Disney style stuff like The Cat Came Back by Cordell Barker, or The Monk And The Fish by Michael Dudok De Wit, or Rooty Toot Toot by John Hubley.
There's animated TV shows that I like, but I rarely like the animation in these shows (including even in my own show). A lot of it is done too sloppily by animators that just don't care, especially when it's outsourced to cheap foreign studios. The animators that worked on my show were supposed to chunk out an entire minute of animation per animator per week, and I was still happy with the result I got - I couldn't have done it at that speed. But to get as fast as that, they would send their scenes to the linetester room and not even look at the end result. If I approved the scenes, they would forget about them, only when I would ask for corrections, would they take the effort to watch their own animation. They also didn't look at the storyboards: we gave them detailed instructions on the x-sheets, with all details already there; every pose was thumbnailed en the sheets, every eye blink even already planned by the sheet directors. They animated in a painting by numbers sort of fashion. They would carry out the instructions on the X-sheets, based on the layout and the model sheets, and that was all that we could expect. Many of the animators didn't have a clue about the story. And I could only communicate to them through an interpretor, as my knowledge of the Mandarin language is zero. It was sometimes frustrating to work on that basis.
Disney style feature animation was slower than 3D animation in Maya. I managed to do the Wella Girl animation in a single day, but the more complex Disney like designs really slow you down. I mainly worked for German studios, on films in a Disney like style, like 'Help I'm A Fish'. We were required to do about four seconds per week and we had to slave like hell for that. Especially for slow head turns you had to control all the details, otherwise you would have swimming eyes and that sort of stuff. I knew some animators that could do that sort of stuff with their eyes closed (some of those made it to Dreamworks later on and worked on El Dorado and Sinbad) but I really had to struggle hard for that. I'm better at bouncy cartoony stuff than at subtle realistic animation. Still, I loved being involved in these feature productions, and I miss them.
For the European productions that I know, Maya Juniors are supposed to do about 6 seconds per week, seniors about 10 seconds. (At Pxar the footage requirements are much lower) Trixter, where I worked for a while, had the benefit of having a former Pixar animator, Kyle Balda, as animation supervisor for some of their productions. I worked on the 2D TV show at that time, not on the 3D film that they were doing then, but I still could attend the lectures. It's great if you get to work with very talented and experienced people - I once worked with Tahsin Ozgur, a former Disney Animator that worked on Hercules and Tarzan: you really get inspired by that - and very humble.
Right now, I'm mostly unemployed, as jobs for 3D juniors are scarce. The third season of my TV series should start soon, that will get me going again.
I was fortunate enough to be around when things were still happening, so I really shouldn't complain too much, but I miss those good old days..