Moho Forum

Some short clips of animation done while following the animation course in Brian Lemay's book Basic Principles Of Animation. I've not finished the book yet but will post the rest when I've done. Hope you like them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4VSAgGGLkQ

Perhaps this thread should be moved to Share Your Work.

I'm missing an essential part of character animation here: personality. There is no story, not even a joke, or something that is a bit out of the ordinary.

Well, you may have followed the book. But tell me one thing: what does not look right in your examples?

Give him a break guys?!

The animations are not about personality or story... just raw animation exercises.

As animation exercises I think you have done pretty good.

Although I reckon extend your scene lengths so you can give yourself more time to explore - slow in and outs, overlap and spacing. I assume that's what the exercises where all about... the most important things in animation ... overlap and spacing. Yeah, I think your animations are so fast you don't get enough time to explore stuff...eg the big ball swinging the little one... give it more time to settle and for you to see what is going on.

Once you master those things you can tackle the life long battle of drawing/design and acting.

Good start

(and yeah this all should go in share your work)

Yes, I know, my bad.

I was a bit frustrated by those people telling they can't draw and can't act, and want a program to do that for them. I used to be like that as well, but I have learned through experience that both knowing how to draw and how to express your inner emotions externally with precision are essential skills to have as an animator. Without that, it will always be an uphill battle to create character animation.

My former art teacher used to say that you'll need to know how to draw life (objects, landscapes, people, in that order) before you try to draw cartoons. He was right, so right.

You can't learn how to animate just from a book. You also need to create your own, be tutored and get criticized by peers. And watch a lot of animation to get to know the culture. You want your audience to like your animation, but also to be a little confused after watching the movie, so they have to think about it, and discuss among each other wtf it all meant.

Thanks angrymonster for your reply. I must say I tried to use Ease in and Ease out in anime studio but without much success. By the way lucky I'm thick skinned otherwise might have taken the comments to heart.

Yeah I think you and your art teacher are spot on.

To me... animation (2d or 3d or 4d) is broken into 3 things

Physics - which can be learned and mastered.
Drawing/Design - which you can improve on... but you will probably feel as though your stuff is never quite good enough... which is good cause it will make you improve more.
Acting - Same as Drawing/Design... with learning and observing you can definitely get good at this, but you will probably always want to be better... from Disney to south park... it all requires clarity.

The good thing about mastering physics is it will make the other 2 easier to deal with. It will (sadly) take the 'magic' out of animation and it will make your decisions much easier to make.

Back in me pencil paper days, physics helped my drawing. If I was struggling with a drawing, I would check my arcs and spacing and it would tell me where everything would have to be on the next frame... woh la! much better looking drawing.

sheesh... blah blah blah

ianc wrote:Thanks angrymonster for your reply. I must say I tried to use Ease in and Ease out in anime studio but without much success. By the way lucky I'm thick skinned otherwise might have taken the comments to heart.

yep... I reckon its pretty lame ... it would be good to have a proper graph editor so you can tweak the spacing.

Another way is to keyframe the cushions ...

Frame 1 keyframe a ball to the left of screen - on frame 30 keyframe it to the right - on frame 26 set a keyframe (where ever it is) - on frame 4 set a keyframe (where ever it is) then slide 26 keyframe to about 19 - slide 4 to about 12. So you end up manually setting the spacing. The problem is you end up with is heaps of keys. But you get used to it.

When I say set a keyframe I mean right click in the timeline at that frame and select 'add keyframe'

Angrymonster that's something I hadn't tried I'll give it a go next animation I make. Looks like it might take some organising though.

Don't worry I'll leave soon

Here is an anime file that will explain the above.

spacing.anme

(right click and save)

Making your spacing work for you is really important. It will make you animation more dynamic and clear. A lot of animation suffers from 'swimmy' timing/spacing - where everything is at a constant speed. Utilising your spacing will add texture to you animation.[/url]

Thanks for the example angrymonster but I'm still not 100% clear.Did you create a keyframe at 18 and push to 12 and another at 20 and push to 30. This sounds like your earlier example. or is it set at 12 and push to 18 and set at 30 and push to 20

nup

before anything...

keyframe ball at 1 to left of screen
keyframe ball at 30 to right

then

keyframe at 26 and push to 19
keyframe at 4 and push to 12

you don't have to use the above numbers exactly... just the principle

hope thats clear??

I think I've got it now. Push from low keyframe to higher keyframe and from high keyframe to a lower one. Is that right? You have to have set
your original keyframes first then add the extra ones for slow in slow out.

EXACTLY!...

its a bit cumbersome ... but a good working replacement for a lame graph thingy.

Thanks angry monster! It must be midday in Australia now. I'll let you get on. Many thanks again and I'll use that soon. P.S. I might have put my post in the wrong place but I've learnt 100% more by doing so.