Category: 3D animation school Page 2 of 7

Develop Your Skills As An Animator!

Mastering the art of animation can be truly hard. It can take years of hard work and dedication to get you to where you want to be, and as technology grows and develops, there are always new things to be learned in the animation field. However, following the right workflows and techniques can help you develop your skills as an animator faster than you might think.


It’s all in the basics!

When you start learning animation, you might want to tackle a walk cycle or a complex acting shot right away. Still, you should start out simple and try not to take on an animated shot above your skill level, as it will probably frustrate you when you should be having fun! 

Instead, you should start with a simple ball bounce. This is the first exercise any animator must master. Once you feel confident, you can move on to animating a ball bounce across the screen and eventually incorporating squash and stretch, adding more personality to the ball. Soon you will see that with each new exercise you tackle, your skill level will grow and you will have incorporated new animation principles to the mix. Remember: working in small chunks will guarantee that each technique is mastered before you can move on!

Get Inspired

One of the best ways to improve your animation skills is to find out what inspires you as an animator. Watching your favorite animated movie is a great way to study how the animator incorporated the principles, so you can then try to implement those techniques into your own shot. Keep in mind: watching these amazingly-executed animations should make you want to jump onto the computer and animate, and not make you feel discouraged by their level of complexity. Use movies to inspire you to get to that level! 

Get Your Body Mechanics Working

Once you know the principles, you can start learning about body mechanics. Knowing how a human should move is they key to a great acting shot. The best way to start is by animating a simple walk cycle. Once you have nailed that down, you can try to animate a character walking and coming to a stop. Take each exercise one step at a time and keep them short, from three to four seconds. Each shot will be a bit more difficult than the last, but as your skill level grows, you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve progressed.


Act It Out

 
Once you feel ready to take on acting and dialogue shots, on of the most useful things is to study live action films. You can take a scene in a movie and analyze the actor’s movements. This is a great exercise to help you incorporate small nuances found in great acting. 

The More Feedback The Better

Working on your shot for a long time can make you skip little mistakes. In other words, if you are the only one looking at your animation, it can get very hard to give yourself feedback and notes. Asking for someone to look at your shot, even if that person doesn’t have animation knowledge, will help you see if something isn’t looking right. Remember not to take it personally if someone has a different idea for your shot– sharing your work is a great way to improve! 

Don’t Forget!

Learning animation is a never-ending process, but learning it in small chunks and having the right mindset will ensure that your animation skills grow faster. It’s not about the length of your shots, but rather how many shots you get completed and how much you push yourself with each one!

Come join us at www.animschool.com 

Cyril Jedor – Importance of Light

In AnimSchool’s Art Class, Concept Artist Cyril Jedor discusses the importance of light in storytelling.

To know more about our online animation programs, visit www.animschool.com

AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Andrew Stovesand

Today our interviewee is AnimSchool Student Andrew Stovesand. Andrew is now working as a character animator at Moonbot Studios.


Hi Andrew! Can you share a bit about yourself and experience with animation prior to AnimSchool?

Hi there, yeah for sure! Prior to Animschool most of my animation experience came from working as a Maya generalist. I did a lot of camera animation at a prior studio and that really helped me become aware of the graph editor and how it works. I had a few 11 Second Club attempts, most of which I am not super proud of (haha). Also I made a short animation while I was in school.

Do you have any favorite artists that inspire you?

I love watching those old Disney animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and how they did it. I mean, they were just going with what felt right and they did amazing work! Nowadays there are so many ideas and theories on what to do and what not to do. Of course Glen Keane is very inspiring as well…

A clip I recently saw that inspired me:

I also like to paint and am very inspired by painting. Somehow I think they all link together, I feel like the more I grow as an animator the more I grow as a painter/artist in general and vice-versa.

Your facial performance shot is very appealing – mind to share your process with us?

Cool, thanks! Yes, that shot was fun. I knew right away when I heard the sound clip that it was the one I wanted to use. I mean, if you get a good sound clip where you can see the character easily in your head, then things fall together much more smoothly. I sketched a bunch for the shot and I believe it was Stewart who taught that class, he had us spell out the subtext for the shot which helped me get into her mindset. I also shot a bunch of reference of me and my wife acting, I got a lot of good ideas from that. I knew right away how I wanted her to start off in the shot but transitioning her to the end when she blows up was really the challenge.


Andrew’s sketches and notes for his facial performance assignment (click to enlarge).

Your character performance assignment features two animated characters and a complete modeled set. How many hours per day did you work on this shot to get it done in time?



Ha, yes that had some love put into it. My generalist background helped me there. I can model basic stuff pretty quick, so once I knew what I wanted I modeled it in there fast and kept updating as I would go along. Once I see something working in a shot and it inspires me, I feel like nothing will stop me from getting it done. I did spend a lot of time on that shot, and this is where getting laid off had its benefits. Haha!

Back to the question, I think I worked a couple hours a day give or take on that one.






Andrew’s sketches and notes for his character performance shot (click to enlarge).


How do you think your skills as an animator evolved since you joined AnimSchool?

Wow, great question. The biggest change for me, even after working in the industry for a few years, was getting it through my head that it really does take a lot of work and time to make quality animation. Honestly, it was a relief once I could do this. It kept me from being way to hard on myself. I mean really, anyone who has no experience would not think it takes so many hours to make something move in a pleasing way. We take it all for granted, don’t we (I mean isn’t this what the whole industry is trying to get the public eye to see?!)?
So really the biggest change was learning how to respect each step of the animation process (planning, reference, blocking, splining, polish) and the amount of time needed to do each one well.

Lastly, do you have any pointers or tips for your fellow animation students that are struggling to get their shots the way they want it?

Ok, yeah… Well, one really simple saying that Thom Roberts said in my very first Animschool class was “kill your babies!”, meaning, be willing to start fresh and delete something that just isn’t working. For example, the way the character is turning his/her head bugs you and you can’t figure out why? Kill your babies. I find this also applies a lot to simplifying keys. So many times I realize I just needed to get rid of a few keys and it cleans up a movement. I still am amazed when this happens. Killing your babies is not easy and still difficult to do, but usually I find it always helps (that sounds terrible)!

Thanks Animschool for all your help and for having me!

We thank Andrew for this interview. Check out his reel below:

AnimSchool Webcast: Lluis Llobera, Part 4

In Part 4 of AnimSchool’s Webcast with Blue Sky Senior Animator Lluis Llobera, Lluis discusses one of his shots from Rio, sharing his animation process. He goes over how his shot evolved with what he was given from layout, showing his blocking, splining to the final render.

AnimSchool Webcast: Lluis Llobera, Part 3

In Part 3 of AnimSchool’s Webcast with Blue Sky Senior Animator Lluis Llobera, Lluis discusses the relationship between Nigel and his human partner, Marcel.

Coming up in Part 4, Lluis breaks down a shot in Rio from Layout to Polish.

AnimSchool Interview: Animator Camille Campion, Part 2

We would like to welcome back, March 11 Second Club winner, Camille Campion. Camille are there any artists or animators that you look towards for inspiration?

I’m not a good follower… I don’t have a list of famous animators. I spend time looking for all the good animations I can find, sometimes from a famous animator, from a big american studio, and sometimes from a student’s short film.

I’ve had the chance to work in different places with talented animators. My inspiration, many times, comes from my colleagues. They don’t necessarily need to be very experienced or extremely talented to be inspiring for me. Sometimes regulars animators just have that good idea for their shot that makes it awesome.


I have special thanks for different people who’ve really improved my animation level- Yoshimishi Tamura who was my first “mentor” when I start working, Drifa Benseghir my second director of animation who transmits her good energy to me, and many colleagues in Kandor, French and Spanish!

Could you tell us a little about your process for your animation “Interview” from planning/reference to splining?

My planning for this animation was a bit rough. I didn’t have much time to do it, that’s why I didn’t use any video references or thumbnails. I usually don’t use a lot of video reference in my animation process, but to find more ideas when I’m in an inspiration crisis.

For my animation “Interview” I dedicated one day to write the idea, think about characters, and the staging, two days to make the two different versions of malcolm I use, prepare the props and the background (modeling and rigging) and compose my shots, and five days of animation.


11 second club March 2013 – Animation Process from camille campion on Vimeo.

First, I started making golden poses in the step I name “Rough”. I work fast and think only in narration and posing. Next, in the “Blocking” step, I start working on the timing, and how I can improve my narration. The first splining step is the part I don’t like, the boring technical moment.  That’s why I develop a very strict methodology to do it as fast as I can. First, I clean a bit my curves. Then, I modify the timing just moving my poses in the timeline and adding some breakdowns, to be sure about the energy. Next, I use motion trail in the camera view, following the mass hierarchy of my body, first I clean the Root (the hips), next the chest, the head etc… The objective is to have something working efficiently without noises.

When I have this first splining pass, I can look at the rough version of the animation, change some details, refine curves and arcs, improve the timing, refine the lip-sinc to make it Final.

What was the most difficult part when animating this dialogue, and how did you work through it?

The adaptation when you are discovering a rig is the most difficult part for me. Next, as I said before, the blocking is a real pleasure, there is no part more or less difficult, it just takes time. I need more motivation for the first splining process…

Your hand motion felt very fluid. How did you come up with those particular hand gestures and in general how do you approach animating hands?

I don’t have a specific treatment for the hand. Hands are include in the blocking process composing the silhouette of the character, I try to make it cool and appealing. In the splining process, I spend time cleaning the curves frame by frame, improving the spacing and the timing when I can. Many students make the error of systematically having the hand follow the chest, but the hand expresses many emotions like the eyes or facial expressions. Many times your fingers nervously react before the rest of your body

Lastly, what advice would you give to students that are just getting into animation?

You have to find your method, your way to animate for fun and pleasure. The better shots are made by happy animators. We need to have fun during the full process.

Animate and animate and animate again, this is the practice that we find all of this and how we can improve our level. Try to find people who can give you advice, and feedback on your work. If you’re a student,  ask your teachers and the others students. If you are working,  ask your colleagues. And, if you’re alone in front of your computer, try to contact animators by vimeo, linkedin etc.. to asking for feedback on your work (there are many generous animators in the world).

AnimSchool’s Malcolm Coming to Life in the 11 Second Club June Competition

We were excited to see that AnimSchool’s Malcolm was featured in 8 of the top 10 animations from June’s 11 Second Club Animation Competition (the other 2 of the top 10 were 2D animation entries).

AnimSchool founder, Dave Gallagher said: “Before there was such a thing as AnimSchool, I had a personal dream: I wanted to make very flexible, appealing, and expressive characters that people all over the world could use for free.”

Over 15,000 animators from all over the world have downloaded the Malcolm rig. We can’t wait to see what the animation community does with AnimSchool characters next!

Here’s what past 11 Second Club contestants have said about Malcolm:


Camille Campion, March 2013 winner
“The first important thing for me is the model, the design and appeal.
Malcolm looks good, his design is simple, but with potential- I like
that. The rig is very complete, the facial rig is superb and powerful.”

Aju Mohan, September 2012 winner
“I was blown away by its flexibility, and I knew instantly, that Malcolm was the one for my shot! “The Malcolm rig is fantastic for facial expressions, actually now when I
look at my shot again, I think I could have pushed the expressions a
bit more.”

Aulo Licinio, April 2012 runner up
“I looked at other animations and his flexibility looked amazing. I just kept imagining all the things I could do with it.”

Tim Kallok, March 2012 winner
“I would like to thank AnimSchool for making such an awesome rig
available for public use. I really love Malcolm’s design and his overall
flexibility. He can be pushed and pulled further than any other rig
that I have used. His facial setup is awesome; it’s really easy to get
appealing shapes and expressions. Because of the nature of the
competition’s dialogue, I didn’t get to utilize the rig to its full
potential, but for my shot, the IK elbow pinning and the IK/FK switching
came in very handy.”

Peter Nagy,  January 2012 winner
“Malcolm is the best rig I have ever worked with! (And I’m not only
saying this because I won with Malcolm) Until now, I have always
thought that there are no bad rigs, just weak animators, but I have
found out, it is crucially important how much latitude a rig can
give to the animator. At first I got frightened by seeing the amount
of controllers, but with a little practice, it can easily be seen
which controller should be used to which action. It was a great help
that I could change body position by moving the hip or the abdomen,
and the shoulders kept their position at the same time. I loved that
I could handle the arms in arch and that I could stretch the
character. These are very important factors on a rig for a nice
cartoony animation.”

Will Sharkey, September 2011 winner
“The thing about the Malcolm rig is there
are also lots of additional controllers for specific situations (e.g.
elbow pins, hyper extend), things that aren’t essential, but really help
when animating.  It took a few poses to work through the controllers
but Malcolm Rig is very light weight, so all that extra control isn’t
slowing the rig down. All these details really speed up animation and
makes things a lot more fun.”

Featured animation images from 11 Second Club June competition animators. In order from top to bottom: Muhammad Irfan Farooq, Ozan Basaldi, Sean Liu Jian Woei, Kiran Jay Babla, Muhammad Zohaib, Josiah Haworth, Linus Gan, and Kenta Lee.

AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Ricardo Puertas

We would like to introduce Ricardo Puertas. Ricardo, can you tell us a little about yourself and what animation experience you’ve had before AnimSchool?

For as long as I can remember, drawing, video games and films have fascinated me. So, when I had the opportunity, when I was 17, I started to study Illustration at an Art School.

I had never had drawing or art lessons before, so it was very difficult for me, but I was very grateful to learn. In school I learned much more than before, because in the past I had always taught myself. Those years, I learned so much about my passion of drawing, and I finally had the opportunity to start 2D animation.

After that, I had a course in Animation at the University of Balearic Islands. This gave to me the opportunity to better know the 3D world. In the course they taught us a bit about the process of creating an animation short, so we learned a bit of everything, modeling, rigging, and animation.  Then each of us focused on what we were interested in for our final project. Obviously, I decided to go into animation. My final project was selected for several national and international festivals, and I won some awards.

Thanks to that, I had several opportunities to begin my career as an animator, and I finally started to work in a little studio dedicated to making Films and TV Spots. I have been working and enjoying animation for about 7 years. In the last few years, I have mostly been working in video games. Most of time we animate the body, making cycles, transitions, etc. I felt that I needed to improve on the acting of my characters, I was a little rusty in that aspect.

For this reason, I was interested in learning from better professionals of the animation world. I know that this world is a continuous learning cycle. For this reason, I decided to apply to AnimSchool to improve my knowledge in animation hand in hand with great professionals of the animation industry.


Student Ricardo Puertes – Class 4 Body Acting from AnimSchool on Vimeo.

What inspired you to get into animation?

I remember one day when I was 5 years old, while I was having lunch with my grandmother, I saw the Woody Woodpecker show about how to make animation. I liked drawing so much, and this gave me the opportunity to see all these people drawing, and giving life to the characters who fascinated me. At that moment, I said to my grandmother: “Grandma, I want to be an animator.”

What stands out the most to you when you’re watching an animated film?

As an animator, I can’t avoid looking at animator’s timing, poses, etc. I’m always looking and focusing my attention on the character’s movement. I don’t know if this is the best, but I can’t avoid it. After that, when I have the opportunity, I always buy the movies. I can’t stop myself from watching some scenes hundreds of times. I go frame by frame to see how it’s done. I love it!


Student Ricardo Puertas – Class 6 Facial Performance from AnimSchool on Vimeo.

With every AnimSchool test comes new challenges. Out of all the tests you’ve done, which one has been the most challenging and why?

The most difficult part for me was my beginning with lip sync. In video games, most of time, we’re animating the body, making cycles, transitions etc. Some times we get to animate the face, but I never had the opportunity to go too far with facial animation in TV or film. So, when I started my facial assignment, I was really exited to learn and go further with my character.

Can you talk a little about your process for your Facial Performance class shot, from selecting the dialogue to polish?

It was a lot of fun. The most important thing to me at this time was to enjoy the assignment, so I wanted to select funny audio to work with to have fun all term.

All the pre-production was really fun: sketching, searching for and making video reference… this was crazy. But, the most important thing for me was to enjoy it. When I had my sketches, planning and references ready to start, all went easy.

To begin with the blocking, it is very important to have a clear idea. You have to keep in mind all key poses. In this aspect, I had it in my mind from the beginning. In this process I needed to make some changes and to adjust the timing, obviously. But once timed, I passed into splining and it was simple enough to fit and polish the rest.

It’s very important to spend your time in good planning. You can save a lot of work.

What is your favorite part to work on within your process, why?

Obviously, all the phases are a lot of fun. The searching of ideas, the first sketches, when you start the blocking and you can see how your character starts to become alive… But, I think that the best part is polishing your shot, because you can play around and add the little spark of life to your characters.


Student Ricardo Puertas – Class 7 Animating Appeal And Entertainment from AnimSchool on Vimeo.

How has your experience been at AnimSchool? What is your favorite thing you’ve learned?

First, I want to thank all my teachers, Anthea, Mike, Tim, Tony, Stewart and JP, and all the teachers and people who make AnimSchool possible. Especially Dave, for creating this fantastic school. Many people haven’t had the opportunity to learn animation in their city, and thanks to AnimSchool, they’re making their dreams come true. I want to give thanks to my wife too, for supporting me from the beginning in all of this, and my baby, for always being there laughing at his father while I’m recording video reference.

To me, applying to AnimSchool has been one of the best decisions that I’ve made recently. I’ve learned many things each term, but I think in the beginning, I learned a great important thing that I’ve used in every term. In Term 2, with Anthea Kerou, she taught us that the most important thing is that the character, as simple as it can be, has to always, always, always, have one story that motivates him to do what he does in the shot.

What advice would you give to students just starting out?

For the people who are starting in the world of animation, I would say to them that they should be persevering in their work, and go forward. Do not be afraid to show your work to other people, this is very useful. Sometimes you spend many hours working on a shot and it’s not possible for you to see some issues by yourself; other people can indicate those to you.

When someone gives you a critique, this isn’t a bad thing, quite the opposite. It’s the best thing that can happen to you, because you always learn new things from your mistakes. Another thing is, you should keep your eyes open and look at the world with “animator eyes.” 😉

AnimSchool Webcast: Lluis Llobera, Part 2

In part 2 of AnimSchool’s webcast with Lluis Llobera, Lluis goes over his process of animating the villain, Nigel.

Coming up in part 3, Lluis talks about the relationship between Nigel and his human partner, Marcel.

AnimSchool Classtime: How To Use A Point Constraint

AnimSchool recently added an Introduction to Maya class. This class is a great start to our Animation and Character Programs. In Introduction to Maya students learn the basics of Maya including: how to use the Maya interface, work with objects, use basic modeling tools, animate objects, apply textures, and use lights and cameras.

In this clip Instructor, Justin Barrett shows how to use a point constraint.



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