In this video, AnimSchool’s instructor Dan Segarra discusses asymmetry in facial expressions and how to use it to enhance appeal and personality of a rig.
For more information of our online animation school, visit www.animschool.com
In AnimSchool’s Environmental Modeling class, DreamWorks Modeler Juan Pablo Chen shows how to breakdown your environments and get a lot of mileage from modeling just a few variations of repeated assets.
To learn more about environmental modeling from one of the best online animation schools, join us at animschool.com
Those of us who dream of landing the coveted animation job have become accustomed to sitting and staring at a computer monitor for hours on end as we struggle to master the craft of giving life to our beloved characters. I can’t count how many times I have told aspiring animators to work hard and practice as many hours as possible. The more you animate, the better you will become. Of course, sitting in front of your computer moving stuff around in Maya is definitely a major ingredient to honing your animation skills, however, there are things we can do away from our computers that will add to our animation utility belt, and better prepare us for the challenges of being an animator.
1. Draw
I would encourage you to draw from life examples rather than attempting to copy existing characters, also known as fan art. In other words, stop drawing your version of Ariel the mermaid, and go to a figure drawing class. Be sure to focus your efforts on anatomy by deconstructing the main body parts with simple shapes. Study how the parts relate to one another, how they work together within the pose, how they flow together. Once you get proficient with anatomy and gesture drawings, study the fine details of anatomy and start exploring more realized figures.
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| Mike Mattesi teaching drawing in AnimSchool drawing class |
Make drawing fun by taking sketch trips to places like the zoo, museum, park, and shopping mall. Try to capture interesting moments, or poses. You should consider joining a sketch group, or an online drawing community. This is especially helpful because you will have people who can give you constructive feedback.
Whether you are trying to become more proficient as a traditional or CG animator, being a strong draftsman will give you an incredible advantage when posing your characters. You can use your drawing ability to help you plan shots, or plus poses. I often do my first blocking pass, and then draw over my poses as an attempt to find a stronger pose, or a clearer read on the action.
2. Be a Student of Acting
Acting is a skillset every animator must have. It is a discipline that you should develop with practice and hopefully guidance from others.
One of the easiest ways to learn about acting is to read books by some of history’s great performers. The time and money investment are accessible and flexible enough for anyone’s budget and schedule. Of course, you must be a diligent student and implement what you read with practical exercises.
One of the easiest ways to learn about acting is to read books by some of history’s great performers. The time and money investment are accessible and flexible enough for anyone’s budget and schedule. Of course, you must be a diligent student and implement what you read with practical exercises.
The one drawback of just reading about acting is you won’t have a professional guiding you when you practice the techniques, but I would encourage you to invest in acting books as your starter kit to acting lessons.
The best way to get practice and valuable feedback is to take acting classes, or join an improv group.
Improv taught me to make quick decisions that service a story. I also learned how to listen and react, rather than trying to think ahead and have a predetermined response.
I would recommend you get involved with a local theater group. Ideally you would be able to practice acting, but if you have to start out volunteering as stage hand, you will be exposed to others who are acting and getting feedback, which can be just as valuable.
Always be on the lookout for interesting dialogue clips that have a range of emotional beats. Shoot video reference of yourself and get feedback on your acting. Get in the habit of practicing your acting without the intent of animating every clip you act out.
I believe it is useful to learn about voice acting and singing as well. You can take voice lessons, or just listen to lectures or podcasts by professionals. I enjoy listening to voice work to train my ear for inflections and nuance that makes a character unique, interesting, and entertaining.
3. Be a Student of Movement
Understanding human and animal movement is essential for creating believable movement as an animator.
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| Ministry of Silly walks: Monty Python |
One of the best ways to learn about movement is to be good at observing and dissecting movement. At first it may be more useful to watch videos on a device that allows you to draw-over poses. Then scrub from pose to pose and dissect how each body part is getting from one pose to another. Find the root of the motion, typically the hips, and work your way out, to understand how the motion is driven and stopped.
Dance is an art of movement that is very informative for an animator. Dance can be emotional. It has a texture of movement that can be good reference on how to build and break patterns. With dance it is easy to separate phrasing of motion, and to find strong, dynamic posing with flowing lines of action. The principles of animation are found in every dance performance.
I would also recommend you play a sport to stay active, and to forge relationships. Playing a sport tunes your body to execute actions. The more you do with your body, the better acting tool it will be for you.
A steady exercise routine is a good idea for every animator. We spend so much time sitting at a desk. We need to remember to take care of our bodies. It is also necessary to keep our bodies limber and able to perform, when we need to shoot some reference.
4. Be a Student of Storytelling
Animators are all storytellers. So it makes sense that we should get good at telling stories. Being a good storyteller is probably the most challenging task we are faced with, and it will take the most time and effort to master.
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| Mornoi Taylor teaching visual storytelling in AnimSchool class |
There are several passive activities that we can turn into active ways to learn to be a better storyteller. A fun exercise is to watch your favorite films with an agenda. Focus on specifics such as; staging, acting, pacing, scene negotiations, juxtaposition, conflict and resolution, character development, and so on. Attend theatrical productions and take notes on moments that moved you, and why they worked. It is just as useful to take notes on things that didn’t work. After I watch a disappointing movie, I do a fun story exercise. I try to replace the problem areas with better scenes and smarter story choices with the intent of making an overall stronger and entertaining story.
I encourage you to read the great stories of the past as well as current popular books.
The more you expose yourself to entertaining stories, the easier it will be for you to identify why you do not like poor stories. You should invest time in fiction, but I also find it valuable to read biographies of successful people that I admire. Not only will you be getting more story training, but you will hopefully find inspiration in their journey.
Finally, I recommend you write your own stories as a practical application of story studies. Start with short stories. Share them with family and friends. Be open to constructive criticism, and be willing to edit your stories based on the feedback you receive. Remember that good storytellers understand that their stories are not only meant for themselves, but for a specific audience as well. Therefore, they know the power of iteration to find the best version of their story.
5. Get a Hobby
I am reminded of a quote by the great Brad Bird, “Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can’t create it if you don’t have one.” Simply put boring people can’t create interesting characters. It’s easy to get sucked into your chair and spend countless hours slaving away at the computer. That’s definitely an important ingredient, but we can’t lose ourselves in the chair. We must force ourselves out into the world to experience it, and learn from it. I believe that having one or more hobbies helps us to become more interesting people, and more interested in other people. I would encourage you to choose something you enjoy that naturally creates opportunities to interact with people.
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| Rodrigo Rodrigues, an AnimSchool student: Enjoying with his family in Turkey |
Try your hand at a musical instrument, photography, wood-working, board games, sailing, or biking. There are so many possibilities that they are too numerous to list, so be creative and choose something that you have a genuine interest in learning. There’s also nothing wrong with going out and trying new things just for fun.
I can guarantee that you will be a better person and animator if you engage in activities that are unrelated to animation.
So remember to practice your craft as often as you can, but never forget to step away from your computer and invest in these other areas to become a well-rounded person, and animator!
Tony Bonilla
Finding bony landmarks in the beginning stages of modeling is essential even in the most stylized characters. They can help add structure and with judging proportions. No matter what body type your character has, the skeletal system stays more or less the same. So whether the character is very anatomically accurate or very stylized, finding these bony landmarks will greatly enhance your model, even if you have to smooth them out some later.
Here are some key bony landmarks to identify:
1. Clavicle
Clavicles are more defined in some than others, but most characters should at least have a hint of them. They are shaped kind of like a handle bar. Also note that the clavicle is not straight across. It actually extends back towards the shoulders at an angle.
2. Costal Cartilage
Costal cartilage connects the sternum and the ends of the ribs. They are what form the ribcage shape that you see on the torso. Again, most characters should at least have a hint of this landmark, especially in thinner or more muscular body types.
3. Spine of Scapula
The back can be a scary place for modelers. There’s a lot going on back there and adding too much detail can end up just looking lumpy or unnecessarily complicated. In most cases though, at least adding the Spine of Scapula can be enough depending on how muscular the character.
4. 7th Cervical Vertebra
If you feel the back of your neck, you will almost definitely find a small bump. This is the 7th cervical vertebra. It is the largest vertebra in your neck. Adding this small landmark can surprisingly make a big difference in enhancing your character.
5. Greater Trochanter
Most people mistakenly think that the widest part of the pelvis region is at the hips, but really it’s right below that at the Greater Trochanter. The Greater Trochanter is a fairly prominent protrusion located at the top of the thighs.
6. Sacral Triangle
The sacral triangle is made up of the sacrum and the posterior superior iliac spines (those two little dimples right above the butt). Those bones usually form a visible triangle and when added to a character can give some much needed structure to that region.
To learn more about anatomy for character modeling from one of the best online animation schools, join us at animschool.com
1. Spotlight
While the Spotlight feature is primarily meant to be used to project textures, it’s also great for setting up reference images.
To do this:
- Go to the Texture menu.
- Import an image.
- Select the image so that it appears in the Current Texture box.
- Then hit the “Add to Spotlight” button.
Now your image(s) should be in the document. Also, the Spotlight Dial will appear. The dial allows you to scale, rotate, and move your images as well as change the opacity, etc.
When you are done setting up your images, hit Z on your keyboard to remove the dial and start modeling. (Z will also bring the dial back for further adjusting.) Shift-Z allows you to show/hide all of the reference images if you need to.
You can also save your spotlight set-up at the top of the texture menu so that you don’t have to redo it every time you reopen zbrush.
For a more visual guide on setting up reference images using Spotlight, check out this tutorial:
2. ClayPolish
An important part of the modeling process is to define the planes. Clay Polish can help with that. It is located in the Geometry palette under the Tool menu, right above Dynamesh. This tool hardens the edges of your model while softening the rest. It’s good for when you are starting to roughly add details and helps you see the forms better and make decisions about where your planes should be.
3. ReplayLast
The ReplayLast button (under Stroke>Modifiers) re-traces your last brush stroke from mouse/pen click to release. This can really be useful when modeling in things like wrinkles or scratches. It allows you to start off with a more shallow brush stroke and then slowly make it deeper by just hitting ReplayLast as many times as needed. That way you get the exact intensity that you want, without having to undo or manually re-trace it yourself.
4. ShadowBox
If you need a more complex primitive shape and you don’t want to have to go over to a different modeling program, you could try ShadowBox (Tool>Geometry menu above the ClayPolish section) instead. ShadowBox is a tool that can create any kind of shape by projecting masks from the front, side, and bottom of an isometric cube. It will generate a shape based on the projection of the masks toward a center volume. This method of creation can be good for making props or accessories for your character. It’s not meant to create finely detailed models, but rather as a starting point for more complex shapes.
5. Lazy Mouse
Lazy Mouse (under the Stroke menu) is a tool that smoothes out your strokes by “averaging” them out. When activated, the stroke will be created by a virtual string (a red line) that follows your mouse cursor rather than directly under it. Lazy Mouse is especially good to use when modeling with a mouse, as it smooths away the jitteriness caused by your hand.
For more animation training at one of the top online animation schools, please join us at www.animschool.com
In this video clip of our online animation class, Hans Dastrup talks about twinning in a shot- when to do it and when not to do it.
Come join us in our online animation school at http://www.animschool.com
In AnimSchool’s Advanced Rigging class, Nico Sanghrajka, Rigger at Atomic Fiction, shows how to take eyebrow blendshapes to the extreme in order to give the animators more flexibility.
To learn more about facial rigging from one of the best online animation schools, join us at animschool.com
AnimSchool has released our new Game Animation Student Showcase for their work in 2015-2016!
We would like to salute our game animation students, recognizing the amount of
work each one of these assignments represents and the level of talent
they are achieving.
The quality of our students, our programs, and instruction is seen in this impressive showcase.
If you want to recognize their efforts, comment on the youtube section.
To learn 3D game animation skills with us, apply at www.animschool.com. Talk to an admissions advisor using our Live Chat, phone, or email.
(The work of AnimSchool’s feature film animation students and amazing rigging and modeling students (Character Program) are featured separately in another Showcase.)
Finally, after spending hours on YouTube and audio clip sites, you have finally found an amazing audio byte that you think is perfect to make an awesome animated shot. You are excited. In your head this would be your “THE shot” to apply for jobs with. So excitedly you open Maya and start animating. But as you progress, your enthusiasm begins to fade away and you realize that even after laboring over this shot for days, it is nowhere as good as it should have been. It was perfect in your head, what went wrong?
The answer is may be simple: you didn’t plan your shot well.
Pre-planning a shot is an important step that we 3D animators tend to forget. In our quest to jump into Maya and start blocking the shot, we leave a lot to our imagination. Things like camera angles, character position with respect to camera, storytelling poses and the character’s thought process become a subject of whims and moods. The shot starts with a lot of energy, but then as we start questioning our acting choices, the shot begins to reflect our frustration. There are parts of it that work and parts of it that just don’t. In other words, it is nothing like your imagined shot.
“Shooting video reference is one of the most important tools at your disposal to add believability to your shot . “
How? I am glad you asked.
Reason#1: Experimentation
Video references help you to experiment with a lot of ideas. In this fast paced global world, having a good animated shot is not enough to get a job. You have to be a good storyteller and must have some good original or interesting story ideas. Usually it is said that after getting a dialogue shot, you need to understand the subtext of the scene and know where your character is coming from and where it’s going to. Then you’ll probably need to scratch the first three ideas for they likely will be cliched. For the rest of the ideas, experiment with them.
With video camera on a tripod, start experimenting with the ideas, and see which one works best for you. Check the camera angles you think are interesting, and act standing in the character’s position and move around to see how much freedom of movement you can have without compromising the clarity of poses and silhouette. In other words, this is your time to be loose and check all the ideas that you have for your story without making any serious commitment to any. Use props, be an alien– heck, become a stranded pirate in desert. Everything is allowed.
Reason#2: Body mechanics
Hips certainly don’t lie and neither does every other part of the body, especially in an animated shot. They have to work together to be believable. One tiny movement out of ordinary and every person will notice that. You can’t take a risk there.
So when you shoot a video reference, acting a shot out the way you want it to be, it helps you to study how the body moves from one pose to another. You then bring that knowledge to your poses and suddenly poses and transitions begin to work.
There are many ways you can translate the body mechanics aspect of your video reference to your shot. One of the ways is to bring all the movements of the body into your poses. You might have to essentially block in 4’s for that. Then get rid of the reference, and build on the existing body mechanics. With a strong body mechanics base, exaggerating poses and pushing them to the cartoony side becomes easier–without getting out of the realm of believability.
Reason#3: Acting choices
Once you refine a pose in Maya, it becomes harder for you to kill it because you feel committed to it. You have spent hours on it and it is “perfect” so you become attached to it and try to keep it in your shot even at the expense of the storytelling. Shooting video reference and experimenting with acting choices are much easier and less time consuming.
A general tip to follow is to go as non-traditional as possible. Bring in acting choices that are interesting to look at and are different from what anyone else is doing. Don’t go too random, but try to bring in something that is unique to your shot. So if you are acting standing up, sit down. If you are sitting, try to move around. Will it be ok for your character to move his hands a lot or just use them only once? Every idea that you get, perform it and then perform the opposite of it. Within the parameter of your story idea and character’s personality, test as much as possible. Figure out the beats, the motions and the poses. Go with the choices that get the point across as clearly as possible and still bring out the personality of the character you are going to animate.
Try to work within the pose as much as you can. New animators tend to
overact and move the character too much. Hitting a few strong
storytelling poses and working within them results in much clearer and
more appealing acting.
Try to work within the pose as much as you can. New animators tend to
overact and move the character too much. Hitting a few strong
storytelling poses and working within them results in much clearer and
more appealing acting.
Reason#4: Nuances
Sometimes while shooting reference, our body subconsciously brings out movements that we never plan. Maybe it’s subtle breathing, a certain way of moving hand, a micro eye-movement, or a subconscious gesture during one of the pauses: all these small actions bring the 3D rig into life. They make the whole shot seem very natural and effortless. Without reference, you’re not likely to get these moments no matter how good you are at animating characters.
Reason #5: Time saving
Having a deadline often makes the idea of ditching reference shooting plausible, but the truth is that this 2-3 hours of video shooting saves you from spending hours later in your shot. It is far better to open Maya with everything mapped out than “planning as you go”. Never underestimate the power of pre-planning your shots. Experiment and have fun.
So next time, don’t skip the video reference step. There is no reason why it can’t be fun. AnimSchool instructor and Disney Animator Tony Bonilla must have been having fun when he shot this video reference for one of his students. Enjoy!
Join us at www.animschool.com to make great animation shots.
“The role of the storyteller is to awaken the storyteller in others.”
– Jack Zipes
“No amount of great animation will save a bad story.”
-John Lasseter
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| AnimSchool student Sarah Crepeau |
“Stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.”
-Hayao Miyazaki
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”
– Brandon Sanderson
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| AnimSchool student Louie Rupinsky |
“The universe is not made of atoms. It’s made of TINY STORIES.”
-Joseph Gordon-Levitt
“Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.”
-Maggie Stiefvater
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| AnimSchool student Jason Chan |
“Stories help us imagine the future differently. Telling stories is our best hope of reflecting the kind of world we want to live in and, therefore, gives us a hope of creating it.”
-Peter Forbes
“Stories tell us of what we already knew and forgot, and remind us of what we haven’t yet imagined.”
– Anne L. Watson
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| AnimSchool student Roy Manor |
“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world”
-Robert McKee
“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”
-Ernest Hemingway
To come and learn at one of the best online animation schools, please visit animschool.com