And here is the latest one:
06 August 2009
04 March 2009
Drawing for Animation
I know some beginning 3d animators are not comfortable with drawing so I have decided to put this link, in case it helps anyone:
Ten Minute Drawing
Of course it does not include everything about drawing for animation planning but it may give you a very good starting point.
I have been drawing caricatures and stuff since my childhood, but because I didn't have any formal training and didn't know anything about the concepts like posing, shapes, line-o-action, force, appeal, loose and simple drawing etc during that time, my drawings weren't effective and eye pleasing as they were meant to be. So I strongly encourage anyone who is starting animation, to check out these videos or lots of materials you can find on the web, to go through the books I gave link to (I carefully selected those), to attend some drawing lectures etc. Also, for an extensive learning resource, you may visit Jason Ryan's website:
Jason Ryan's website
You may think it is unnecessary since you are going to be 3d animator but what I've observed during my animation learning is, the better you are at drawing (remember even a stick figure can work if it is thoughtfully drawn) and the more you put those concepts into your planning drawings, the better, original and creative your animations will be. Otherwise, it will probably lead to live action like (rotoscope) animation, cliche animation or bad animation unless you are a 3d animation pro for lots of years, which is probably the hardest route to become an animator.
27 February 2009
Double Fine
Ok, let's keep this thing going and alive! I have recently visited Stephen Gregory's blog . He has some nice tutorials and stuff, check it out. He is a former pixar animator, now working at Double Fine Studio with Tim Schafer. And who is Tim Schafer? Double Fine's head and one of the makers of superb old adventure titles like Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle. Double Fine is also the producer of Psychonauts, a great adventure/rpg game! I didn't have the time to finish the game but it was one of the games that you genuinely feel that you are in a different world. There are very few titles that have this kind of effect on me. Anyways, I visited their site:
Double Fine
and that led me to a good laugh (amazing posts) and this:
Images
where you can download very high-res images of the titles I mentioned above so that you can have them on your wall as posters.
06 May 2008
Gobelins
The work that comes from this school usually fascinates me. I think it is clearly one of the best animation schools in the world. (Besides animationmentor of course) And it is not just the animation. Graphics, composition, sound design and stories are usually pretty well handled. My favourite of 2007 is "Blind spot" and here is a link to the all shorts of 2007:
http://www.gobelins.fr/galerie/animation/index2007.htm
05 April 2008
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.
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