Welcome to the future - Class 3

Ok, I know this blog is going pretty dead. Hmm, maybe it is not my type of thing. I think I'm more of a visually oriented person than a textual(I don't know if this is the right word, but you get the idea:). So I am thinking about making this more of a sketch, video type blog about animation. (Ok you got me, I'm too lazy for writing somethin)

I said in my previous post that I will write about what I've learned during first class. Well, so much time has passed and I am now in class 3 so ask about class 2 please!:) Ok, the truth is, after a very hard, struggling class2 experience I see myself not at the level of teaching something. I am still working on my 3rd assign, animating a character with arms pushing some compactor/crusher walls. I finished working on the previous 2, so I hope it won't take too much time to post my reel2 here. Get to the point, What was wrong with those assigns? Ok, here is why:

-Moving everything around. I was using every control, putting torso rx here, hip ry there (to keep my character not dead, but it had to be done more subtlely) without much thinking about the physics or motivation behind that.
-I did not spare enough time to planning mostly for assign3. Can't say how crucial this is for animation. Without this you easily get lost inside the software, pulling pushing, tinkering with controls for hours. At the end, the result is headache, eyes turned into red and baaad animation.
-Not using video reference enough. Because I saw lots of examples around looking alike to their video reference, I thought it may be a good idea to find new movements, go more creative without video ref. Don't get me wrong, I am not against anyone doing that, during learning process this thing can get very helpful for understanding motion but you should pay attention to that when doing professional stuff. Because, as you know live action adaptation is boring to watch if it does not have a good story or very good acting to cover that. In summary, video ref. is essential when used for getting the basics, physics and then building your more exaggerated or cartoony, creative action or acting over it.
-Lastly I think I've complicated my shots a lot. All of my planned shots were over the frame limit and sometimes I could not let go off my ideas and tried to squeeze all of my action into that frame limit. Result; not readable&understandable pack of weird motions.
Even though I hate my mistakes, I feel that this is the best way to learn something. I think when you learn from your mistakes it always turns out to have more chance to be permanent in your brain.

Anyway, as you may have noticed there are lots of links at the right side. I transferred all of my browser favorites about animation to here. So if you want to learn animating on your own: I recommend reading these blogs & notes & books, watch videos (especially Keith Lango's and Jason Ryan’s), participate in 11secondclub contest, learn the tools and keep animating. Is there an easy way? Of course there is: Watch this guy’s movements and analyze them carefully. You will begin animating in seconds.



Ok bad joke but fun to watch anyway.