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Frame by frame, is making a simple storyboard then straight diving in into making frames a bad habit? Talk me out of it, should I really make keyframes then fill in the in-betweens?
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Sep 8, 2014 17:49
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Mike Maddux posted:Frame by frame, is making a simple storyboard then straight diving in into making frames a bad habit? Talk me out of it, should I really make keyframes then fill in the in-betweens? I'm pretty sure, maybe 80% sure, that you should be doing key-frames before in-betweens. It's much easier to make sense of tweens by having a clear start and end pose.
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Sep 8, 2014 23:26
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Dr Solway Garr posted:Its gonna take longer than you think. I'd focus on rapid iteration. Storyboard it aggressively and as many times as you can, then throw it away and storyboard it all again from scratch. Draw your characters as much as you possibly can, you want to know them inside out before you start animating. All very good advice. The more pre-production, the less nasty surprises as you're making it. Mike Maddux posted:Frame by frame, is making a simple storyboard then straight diving in into making frames a bad habit? Talk me out of it, should I really make keyframes then fill in the in-betweens? Yes. Yes. Pick your storytelling frames, do your extremes, put in the breakdowns and inbetween.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:21
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You can describe most actions in five major drawings. Extreme - Ease Out - Breakdown - Ease In - Extreme. Start with Golden Poses, then Extremes, then Breakdown, then Ease In/Ease Out if applicable, and after that the inbetweens. Stuff like hair and cloth can be added as a separate straight-ahead pass afterward.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:39
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scarycave posted:I'm pretty sure, maybe 80% sure, that you should be doing key-frames before in-betweens. It's much easier to make sense of tweens by having a clear start and end pose. Wouldn't it be harder to get a grip of the animation flow if you were to make detailed keyframes, though? Like if you wanted to change the flow you're gonna wipe an entire new pose you drew and these take time. I've been thinking of applying the keyframes as rough sketches then draw them properly if they looked the way you wanted, I assume that's what people normally do?
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Sep 9, 2014 13:36
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Mike Maddux posted:Wouldn't it be harder to get a grip of the animation flow if you were to make detailed keyframes, though? Like if you wanted to change the flow you're gonna wipe an entire new pose you drew and these take time. I've been thinking of applying the keyframes as rough sketches then draw them properly if they looked the way you wanted, I assume that's what people normally do? I honestly believe getting good at animation is learning how to get in and out of a pose effectively.
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Sep 9, 2014 13:58
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The point of the keys is to the extremes, the attitude of the actions. You can do this mostly through just conveying the angles and basic shapes, and maybe sketching in an expression. It doesn't need to be super cleaned up. Add the breakdowns in the same way. Once you're satisfied with your poses and timing, then you can go into cleanup and add the inbetweens.
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Sep 9, 2014 14:05
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Mike Maddux posted:Wouldn't it be harder to get a grip of the animation flow if you were to make detailed keyframes, though? Like if you wanted to change the flow you're gonna wipe an entire new pose you drew and these take time. I've been thinking of applying the keyframes as rough sketches then draw them properly if they looked the way you wanted, I assume that's what people normally do? This is a good question. The answer is if your inbetweens aren't flowing right and your keyframes look great, then it's obviously your tweening that needs some work. As Ccs pointed out, the idea of keyframes is to know your extremes, to know where you have to take the animation so it looks dynamic and flowing and not stiff and janky. If you do it the other way you might run into really weird timing issues with your movements. And yeah, rough keyframes first. Go look at some Futurama [or insert whatever cartoon here] animatics. Sometimes studios will use basic Loomis drawings for dynamic poses and then add the character later for finals. What helped me get timing down for flowing animation was to lay down a temp audio track. That probably won't help with most people because I'm both the voice guy and animator for my project and not all animations are voiced, but once I had a voiced animatic it was easy to see where my inbetweens failed and where I needed to tighten up my work flow. e: also bitmap, I enjoyed the childhood loop animation. I didn't do the smoke and hide thing but you got me with the nervous dial up porn loader. 
An Ounce of Gold fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 14:35
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SymfonyMan posted:e: also bitmap, I enjoyed the childhood loop animation. I didn't do the smoke and hide thing but you got me with the nervous dial up porn loader. I used to put a blanket over the tower to muffle the modem speaker because I didn't know I could turn it off
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Sep 9, 2014 14:53
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bitmap posted:I used to put a blanket over the tower to muffle the modem speaker because I didn't know I could turn it off I turned the monitor away from the entry way but then it would have been reflecting off of the window behind me! I never actually thought of it until I saw your animation and then I thought, "drat, I bet my dad saw boobs on the window." Nostalgia mission complete I'd say. e: I also didn't know you could turn that off. As matter of fact; I just learned it!
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Sep 9, 2014 15:10
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SymfonyMan posted:I turned the monitor away from the entry way but then it would have been reflecting off of the window behind me! I never actually thought of it until I saw your animation and then I thought, "drat, I bet my dad saw boobs on the window." Nostalgia mission complete I'd say. I wouldn't worry about him seeing it to much, chances are he would have been to busy jacking off to it too.
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Sep 9, 2014 15:57
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SymfonyMan posted:This is a good question. The answer is if your inbetweens aren't flowing right and your keyframes look great, then it's obviously your tweening that needs some work. As Ccs pointed out, the idea of keyframes is to know your extremes, to know where you have to take the animation so it looks dynamic and flowing and not stiff and janky. If you do it the other way you might run into really weird timing issues with your movements. Well, you guys perfectly talked me out of rushing into making frames. This thread has not disappointed me one bit, thanks a lot everybody!
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Sep 9, 2014 15:58
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Study of a dog running. Gotta make the last and first frames of the cycle match up better.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:48
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That's so nice. It's so clearly a life study because it doesn't have that animationy sameness/monotony.
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Sep 14, 2014 15:06
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Thanks! It's also super rough though. With a little bit of clean up I'm sure I could get the sameness and monotony back in there haha. Also did a study of a Yoshiyuki Sadamoto-style run. He was the character designer for Evangelion but before that he did animation. 
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Sep 15, 2014 05:31
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After not being an active animator since I was about 16, its been quite the ride getting back into it the last week. I'm in my second year of community college now and looking to transfer into an animation program. I was so blown away at how despite not animating for so long I was able to jump right into it and better than when I stopped. I know exactly what it was too, figure drawing. That poo poo gave me so much understanding behind animation that I totally lacked when I was younger. Anyways, just wanted to share some small things I've been doing to get back into the groove of things. Possibly see if any of y'all had any advice on applying to animation programs. http://www.fastswf.com/dr2mnPU http://www.fastswf.com/l9RQCtg http://www.fastswf.com/AiyOgfY
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Sep 15, 2014 13:50
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Communist Toast posted:advice on applying to animation programs. DON'T. There is a glut of animators right now. There are too many schools, too many graduates, too many qualified people, and not enough jobs. You don't need to go to a program. You can teach yourself, there are sufficient online resources.
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Sep 15, 2014 14:20
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I started doing figure drawing practice with Quick-Poses a few days ago. Mainly plan to try and get at least 30 min. or so a day with it (so far its been maybe 10-20 not counting days where I don't do it). Also, animation wise, I made a flipping fish a few days ago on paper - it's nothing special though, maybe I'll color it in PS and post it, maybe not. I really do want to try to at least make something like that once a day too. I haven't really done anything else animation wise after those few days though.
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Sep 15, 2014 14:27
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Whoop, well I just wrapped up casting for my short! Now I get to begin the long process of making it a reality If you want to read a rough storyboard of it, here's a link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43568612/cl%20date.pdf I have a few things I plan on changing, namely removing a "joke" I added in at the last minute and adding in a scene near the beginning to give better context to something that happens later + a better division of screen time between the two main characters.
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Sep 15, 2014 15:03
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neonnoodle posted:DON'T. I'm aware it's not a necessity to go into a program to be in the field later, but I feel like its a great foot in the door and it would be valuable to be in that sort of learning environment. Also is the field really that saturated with people? I thought it was a really expansive industry considering there's so many applications for it. I don't think I want to brush off transferring just yet, especially with the prospect of full ride scholarships.
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Sep 15, 2014 15:19
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If you can get a full ride, maybe. Also if you can get into Gobelins, Sheridan, or Cal Arts, then maybe you have a future in the industry. Any other school though will probably not be worth the time investment. And whereas the connections at those schools will actually be useful, connections at other schools don't help much. It doesn't help if none of the people you went to class with can get into the industry. If you tour schools, make sure to ask the hard questions. Ask how many people they placed in the industry last year. Find out the qualifications of the teachers. Look at student work and see if it's good enough. It can't just have won awards. It has to have been good enough to get those graduates jobs. If they try to deflect, press them on it. If they try to side-step the question, or deny to show you the stats, tell them you will seek education elsewhere. Also, Full Sail and The Art Institutes are scams. They're for-profit colleges owned by Wall Street hedge funds. Avoid them at all costs. And finally, take some Mandarin classes while you're in school. Edit: If I were to recommend one school above others, it would be Sheridan, which is my alma mater. Cheaper than Cal Arts, even if you're American, and lots of animation work is going to Canada right now. If you do 4 years at Sheridan you can get a 3 year work permit in Canada and then become a Permanent Resident. Though learning Mandarin is good because if the film subsides stop, that's where the work will go. Just keep working on your portfolio. If you don't get in one year, work on your portfolio and apply the next year. And prepare for 16 hour work days. Ccs fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 18:41
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Ccs posted:Also, Full Sail and The Art Institutes are scams. They're for-profit colleges owned by Wall Street hedge funds. Avoid them at all costs.
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Sep 15, 2014 19:04
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Yeah, the debt is really the issue at those schools. So much money, with vulture-like administrators trying to milk the students and the government. A friend of mine went to the AI in Philadelphia and now is 80K in debt and delivers pizza. :/
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Sep 15, 2014 20:17
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Ccs posted:Truths But beyond all the above, consider what the industry trends are really indicating. Studios are either squeezing animators on wages (or outright wage-fixing), using nonunion labor (thus lower wages and longer hours), or pulling up stakes and moving the whole business to China/India. Canada is great for now mostly AFAIK because of federal/province subsidies to encourage studios to employ Canadian labor, but it's widely viewed to be unsustainable. The message behind all of this is, NOBODY VALUES THIS WORK. The studios want whatever they can get as cheaply as possible. They don't care about anything else. They are being very transparent about their intentions. And now young artists are just fighting each other for the few crumbs left on the tablecloth.
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Sep 15, 2014 20:52
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On the bright side, the artists who made Rick and Morty just got unionized. So...there's still a few rays of light. Now is also an interesting time at TV studios. Many are trying to develop their own projects so that they can reap merchandising profits and develop hit shows that can't be sent overseas. So you might end up being able to work on an in-house project at a studio, and even have some creative input into what kind of work gets done. The pitching process is grueling though, so a lot of work never makes it. But yeah, on the whole outlook is not so rosy. Though if you look into animation history, this was always the case. The friends you make and the short films people develop on the side are the only real reason to stay in it. Ccs fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 22:57
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I'd love to make money animating stuff for people when I get better. Still eons away from that happening though.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:22
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Well! My post may come at a bad time, but I'm in a position to animate some stuff for pay and I was wondering what a reasonable rate would be. The work is for a university-affiliated media group, they make feature length documentaries for PBS/NPR and do other educational/outreach type things, like really interactive websites and such. They're making an 8 part web-series documentary about a project at the university to build a robotic probe to land on the moon. I've done some animation/graphical work for the project itself (so I'm familiar with the team, mission, craft design etc), but any extra funding there obviously goes to engineering needs. Anyway, they've approached me about making new CG animations of the spacecraft and some motion-graphics style infographics for this documentary. I estimate they'll probably want about two minutes worth of finished material from me (for the first episode). I'll be working alone on this, doing the storyboards, modeling (illustrating), texturing, animating, rendering, compositing, and other post production. If this was you, what would you quote? Right now I'm thinking in terms of a per-episode cost and an hourly rate. Any insight would be helpful!
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Sep 15, 2014 23:53
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Are things really that grim in the states? I know there are a lot of schools with a lot of graduates and going to university costs you the price of a house in the suburbs but, I mean, that grim? I'm not bragging when I say things are just unfairly excellent here in Australia if you're good enough and you hustle a little. It's pretty surprising to see such a negative reaction to someone asking if they should get into the scene.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:30
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Well, it's basically like this, which applies to Vancouver but is also true in the US (except there's less work and less healthcare): http://vancouveranimationindustry.tumblr.com/ Anyway enough of that sad stuff. I watched the Making of Frozen thing and while it didn't have much about animation, it did have a cool bit about how they added breathing to their characters. I figure I can add that to Maya rigs I do from now on using the Flare deformer. I took notes on the shape change:  Also here's some sketchy keyframes for a person bellydancing: 
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Sep 16, 2014 02:22
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I've found a decent amount of success sort of working in my field - I actually work for a security education company, where I don't get to do traditional cartoon stuff but I get to do a lot of motion graphics, design, and courseware animation. I also got to make a bunch of short videos which were really fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juygjl3rVes Actually getting into animation studios around me is incredibly hard, and according to my friends who work at them they're grueling environments with bad pay and tons of work. I do all my cartoony stuff (that I actually went to college for) on the side for fun.
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Sep 16, 2014 02:29
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Bad time to ask, but are there any games/activities for shriveled up animators you guys turn to when you're in the mood for quick prototype animations, but completely out of ideas?
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Sep 16, 2014 20:14
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neonnoodle posted:But beyond all the above, consider what the industry trends are really indicating. Studios are either squeezing animators on wages (or outright wage-fixing), using nonunion labor (thus lower wages and longer hours), or pulling up stakes and moving the whole business to China/India. Canada is great for now mostly AFAIK because of federal/province subsidies to encourage studios to employ Canadian labor, but it's widely viewed to be unsustainable. Going into animation I've always considered the likelihood that I wouldn't be working in my ideal job. I'd take anything related to motion design honestly. If I keep my net extremely wide is it still a near impossible to make a living? I'd also be open to freelance. I didn't know the industry was so tough, it's pretty discouraging honestly.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:56
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Communist Toast posted:Going into animation I've always considered the likelihood that I wouldn't be working in my ideal job. I'd take anything related to motion design honestly. If I keep my net extremely wide is it still a near impossible to make a living? I'd also be open to freelance.
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Sep 16, 2014 23:09
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SRM, do you use Cinema 4D? I've hear id works very well with After Effects. I think it can do cell visualizations as well. Also I animated (more like keyframed) another thing, a guy putting on his pants: 
Ccs fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 23:52
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Ccs posted:SRM, do you use Cinema 4D? I've hear id works very well with After Effects. I think it can do cell visualizations as well.
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Sep 16, 2014 23:54
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nikochansan posted:Whoop, well I just wrapped up casting for my short! Now I get to begin the long process of making it a reality I'm sorry for calling attention back to this but I could still use some input on this. Might find some stuff I never considered changing/ editing
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Sep 17, 2014 00:03
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I'm not sure what's going on in the first 2 storyboard panels. The pencil lines are very light and i don't have context for what i'm seeing. Maybe you want to start out with a stronger establishing shot? Also I find the handwriting a little hard to read. To get more instant feedback you could type out the words, so someone can skim through the panels really fast. The diner scene and gestures read pretty clearly. I like her flustered poses. I can't read the note that the smaller robot passes to the female robot. Own what kind of shirt? also the note is being passed from screen right, but in the next panel she's looking at it towards screen left. Where is the smaller robot hiding? Underneath the table cloth where the characters are sitting or under an adjacent table cloth? Anyway that's everything I noticed!
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Sep 17, 2014 01:59
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SRM posted:I've found a decent amount of success sort of working in my field - I actually work for a security education company, where I don't get to do traditional cartoon stuff but I get to do a lot of motion graphics, design, and courseware animation. I also got to make a bunch of short videos which were really fun: Honestly, I'd think I'd be okay doing stuff like this for a living.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:07
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Communist Toast posted:Going into animation I've always considered the likelihood that I wouldn't be working in my ideal job. I'd take anything related to motion design honestly. If I keep my net extremely wide is it still a near impossible to make a living? I'd also be open to freelance. If you want a structured environment, hit up your local community college. Some do offer illustration and animation classes, and even if they don't, they'll have lifedrawing and traditional drawing classes which are still helpful. They probably wont have people like Feng Zhu teaching classes or whatever, but you can hit those kinds of people up on online workshops and what not if you really want to be taught by an industry person. Better to pay 1000 for one workshop then go into debt you won't be able to pay off at some of the 4 year art schools. Lots of good books and stuff on the net too. You can also double major and have a back up plan if you go to a CC or reg 4year school so you have more options. Programming is actually a pretty good thing to double up with art cause Tech Artist jobs tend to pay more. There is quite a bit of money still in creating/maintaining art tools. Or if you have good designer skills and can program web stuff (HTML5, JScript) that could translate into well paying work too and you can prob work in your animation skills to boot. At the very worst doing this would let you support yourself while you build up your reputation as an artist/animator with independent work. If you manage to get a sweet art gig, then you can always transition to that full time later. There's multiple routes but you should probably look into at least one back up plan.
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Sep 17, 2014 04:15
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Ccs posted:I'm not sure what's going on in the first 2 storyboard panels. The pencil lines are very light and i don't have context for what i'm seeing. Maybe you want to start out with a stronger establishing shot? 1. Yeah that's something I had on my list of edits! I realized that I'd need to , like you said, give more context to the setting (their apartment) before I could just up and cut to a door shot. 2. Yeah, that's kinda why I switched to the text tool half-way through. It looks inconsistent, but I did realize that even though I was going over what I wrote in pen, that doesn't mean it's more legible 3. Another thing I was too lazy to edit because the board was mostly for my eyes, if I'm being honest. It was supposed to read "He sounds like he owns a game shirt." I'm definitely going to edit that to be less awkwardly worded, like "He sounds like he's wearing a game shirt" or maybe just something entirely different. 4. He's sitting underneath the table they're sitting at, to the right (our left) of Roland's legs. He sets it by her right side, so she glances to the bottom-right (our bottom-left) to read it. I can definitely swap around the order of shots so it's clearer, though, it should be as simple as adding in a) Chippr getting her attention and b) a shot of her glancing at the note instead of just directly cutting to the note. Thank you for your input!
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Sep 17, 2014 07:08
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