Animate! Why Deanna Reilly Is Keeping Her Animation Playful
Deanna Reilly is a Canadian-Irish illustrator, animator and art director, living in Dublin. She is currently working full-time at BIEN - an amazing studio dedicated to inclusive motion design. Before animation, Deanna was an interactive designer for 10 years. Her passion for animation grew within this time and in 2018 decided to focus her skills in the motion design industry.
LBB> How did you fall in love with animation?
Deanna> Since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by animation. When I graduated, everything in the industry was changing so fast. Pixar and Dreamworks were producing some amazing films and technology was starting to catch up with art in CG films. That’s when my passion really started to grow. I needed to figure out how it was done in 3D. I remember going to see The Incredibles and just being blown away with the level of acting and animation. I think I watched it about three or four times that summer.
LBB> Tell us about the animation project that kick started your career?
Deanna> My animation career is pretty young - even though I’ve been passionate about it for so long. After taking a few online courses, changing career paths, and deciding to go freelance, I was offered an opportunity to help on the School of Motion Brand Manifesto project with Ordinary Folk. It was a dream project. I was super overwhelmed and honoured to be a part of it. It was probably the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on as well. I could animate confidently, but I didn’t know much about compositing. Integrating the 2D style with the 3D animation was a huge challenge for me. Jorge R. Canedo E., the creative director of Ordinary Folk, showed me a few cool tricks. Those techniques I now use everyday. That project opened a lot of doors for me, and my freelance career started to take off.
LBB> How would you describe your art style and what are your biggest inspirations that developed it?
Deanna> I think my style is always evolving. I like playful, snappy animation with bold colours and surprising transitions. My current workflow usually involves integrating 3D elements into 2D environments. I like how unexpected the combination can feel. Maybe one day I’ll have a signature style, but right now I’m happy just experimenting with new techniques and enjoying the learning process. A few films that influenced me over the years were The Incredibles, Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Pear Cider and Cigarettes, Akira, and Spirited Away.
LBB> From your perspective, what’s the key to animation that really lives?
Deanna> I think good storytelling is essential. Follow this with clean design, good animation, editing and sound. These elements should all complement the underlying story. A great animation will be memorable if the story resonates with the viewer.
LBB> Show us your favourite or most impactful project that you’ve worked on - tell us, what is it that makes it special and what were the memorable moments or challenges?
Deanna> Red Hat Command Line Heroes: This was my first project at BIEN. We did two teasers for the podcast series. The first one was all about unrecognised black inventors in technology. As a black creator, the subject obviously resonated with me. The second episode was about the early days of the internet. The piece was super nostalgic, fun and quirky. It fit my style perfectly. Both episodes were tremendously fun and challenging. They were 2D After Effects animations, and the task was to use some 3D and cel animation to solve some of the more challenging shots. I was still quite new to Cinema 4D (my 3D tool of choice) so there was a lot of nervous excitement when I joined the team. I was the only 3D artist on the project as well, so it was important to show up with solutions that would fit with the 2D style.
LBB> How do you approach character design? What is your creative process like? Show us some of your favourite characters and their journey from notepad to screen.
Deanna> My rough sketches are usually pretty crude. These days I use Procreate a lot. I don’t spend much time on them. Once I have a rough idea sketched out, I do a lot of research and take reference photos to figure out poses. Then I work on composition and narrow in on some details in the scene - because I rarely work on characters alone. If I’m working in 2D, I like to move my sketches into Illustrator. I love vector drawing with the pen tool. The workflow with Illustrator is so forgiving and fast. I'll often finish characters by adding texture in Photoshop.
When I’m creating in 3D, I’ll bring my rough sketches into C4D and start building up my characters with primitive shapes. This works well when posing characters for style frames as you can work quickly and non-destructively. That’s about as deep as I’ve gone with 3D character development. For the project 'Different Worlds' at BIEN, I designed the characters and created the style frames. Then I art directed the rest of the piece. It was an amazing opportunity to work with a team of 3D character artists who knew more technical details about advanced modelling and rigging.
LBB> Tell us more about observation and movement - what is the process you go through to study movement of characters?
Deanna> I saw Louis Gonzales and Robert Valley do a talk in Dublin a few years ago. It blew my mind how they could sketch and exaggerate character poses. They talked a lot about acting and expression of the body form. With good pose structure, less acting/motion is needed. This is something I want to get better at. So when animating even simple shots, I like to take video reference of myself acting out the shot. It solves a lot of questions so I can tackle blocking quickly. Having this reference allows you to focus more on stylising the poses and exaggerating the movement.
LBB> We all know of some ever-green adult animations, but lately they have definitely been on the rise, from Rick and Morty to Arcane. What sort of opportunities does this open for animators, both within and outside the advertising industry?
Deanna> I think the rise of adult animations has helped the appreciation of animation grow and be recognised as an art form for everyone. Animation is truly everywhere these days. Every business can benefit from an animator or motion designer helping with advertising. We’re a generation that wants to be entertained and great visuals are a status symbol. Business leaders have recognised this, and smaller companies are following suit. Augmented and virtual reality technologies are improving. Creating animation for entertainment in these areas will continue to grow, and animation opportunities will start happening here for product advertising as well. AR and VR are great tools to help educate viewers about complex structures in science, space and history. Teaching our children with this technology is becoming very exciting. There's never been a better time to be an animator.
LBB> How does one figure out what kind of animation style or styles fits a particular story or project?
Deanna> I start by figuring out the target audience. Who is the animation for? What’s their demographic? What is it about the product that will appeal to them? When you start with people in mind, you create authentic characters in real situations that viewers can relate to. From there, I start thinking about the visual style and what would help get viewers to pay attention to the message. You have to figure out what will work best with the concept. Sometimes cel animation, CG or live action makes most sense. Visualising an animation that has a serious tone, might have a really smooth polished style. A snappy animation style can work well on product advertising that is quirky and fun. Another option is to mix animation styles and play with the timing - fast snappy shots blended with slow-mo sections of exaggerated content makes things really dramatic. It can be a lot of fun blending styles.
LBB> What is your favourite piece of technology or software that you use and how does it help your creative process?
Deanna> I’d have to say Cinema 4D. It’s one of the industry standards in motion design. In my daily workflow I use it for look development, style frames, motion tests, and finished scenes - usually rendering in Redshift. I use it often in my 2D work as well for things like solving complex camera moves, compositing 2D artwork to 3D nulls. For that, I’ll use the Sketch and Toon renderer to apply a flat shaded look to blend with the animation.
LBB> What sort of briefs or projects do you find more personally satisfying to work on?
Deanna> I’m most satisfied working with or leading a team on projects that have a funny, heart-felt, or up-lifting message. It’s nice when the project has a positive impact on society. I love working with BIEN because every chance we get we’re trying to lift up underrepresented people. We practise Inclusive Motion Design (InMoDe) celebrating diversity and creating authentic, accessible content.
Paralympics - Wheelchair Basketball
LBB> Outside of the field of animation, what really inspires you?
Deanna> My husband and our six year-old son are my biggest sources of inspiration. We’re just two big kids and a little kid getting into shenanigans. They help keep things light-hearted wherever we go and this inspires me to be playful in my animation.
Music is another big inspiration to me. I love heavy metal and I’ve recently started to play the drums. It’s a great creative outlet. I listen to a lot of heavy instrumental stuff when I need to focus. When working, I'll listen to music with the same energy as the concept. I feel like it helps me keep the animation pace. When animating to a music track, I try to find the time-signature of the song and animate elements to those beats. I feel like the more I learn about music, the more successful I am at achieving well timed animation.
LBB> What do you think are the misconceptions about animation throughout the industry?
Deanna> I think one big misconception in 3D is that you should specialise. People often think that if they specialise there will be more employment opportunities. For example, it’s great to get really good at character modelling, but I don’t think it’s enough to find steady work as a freelancer. It’s best to have abilities in two or more areas. For example, a company might look for a 3D character artist that can model, rig and animate. Or a company might look for a 3D generalist who can work on shading, texturing, lighting and dynamic simulations. From my experience it’s a good idea to continue learning other areas of 3D even if I don’t use those tools much. If called upon, you’ll be able to come to the next meeting with ideas on how to solve the problem.
LBB> What are the biggest changes to animation and challenges facing animators at the moment and what are your thoughts on them?
Deanna> There’s so much change happening, from new 3D techniques and tools, to AR,VR and AI technologies. It’s incredibly overwhelming to keep up with it all. I think it’s important not to focus on the tools. New tools are great and a lot of fun to play with, but I still think story and crafting the message are more important.
LBB> Any advice you would like to give to aspiring artists?
Deanna> Always be a student. Things change fast in the industry so it’s a good idea to always be looking past the horizon at what is coming next. I highly recommend online courses or learning from industry professionals. Patreon is great for this. Learning bite size tricks from pros is great when you’re too busy to commit to a full course with assignments. Holdframe Workshops are also great, where you can learn from looking at project files. I find this really inspiring and eye opening to see how others put their scenes together.
