Free Animation Mentor Webinar with Eric Goldberg

The time has come for another Animation Mentor free webinar!! This time CEO/Founder Bobby Beck will interview the brilliant veteran animator Eric Goldberg about his new book. Along the way I'm sure that he will add some great animation tips and it should be a great webinar. Also if you haven't picked up his book, Character Animation Crash Course...I highly recommend it. It is probably one of my favorite educational tools. If you have not hit up Animation Podcast either Eric did a podcast there a while back that was great! You can check that out here.




Enjoy!

Website Highlight

I thought I would try something new here once in a while. I know under the Animator's Website section, there is a ton of sites and it's hard to explore them all. Soo I figured that I would highlight one every couple of weeks or once a month. I think that some of these sites are great references for us animators out there. Really to see some great work and possibly always something to strive for and appreciate good animation.

The first site I chose to highlight comes to us from Ron Zorman. It seems from his recent updates that he still and has been at Pixar for a while. He has a ton of his shots listed on there in Quick Time format which I enjoy greatly because you can actually frame-by-frame things. I really do prefer that to the alternates of YouTube and Vimeo just for the simple fact that you can't frame-by-frame and really appreciate the animation.





It seems that he is still in the process of uploading his stuff from Ren & Stimpy and his personal work but the stuff from his Pixar films is def a good ref. So take a look, frame-by-frame and enjoy some good bits of animation.

Workflow Highlights

So you probably have seen these posts by David Anthony Gibson about his workflow and process on some of the shots he worked on for Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs BUT....I thought it was worth highlighting here just in case you missed them. So check out the links below.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Eyeballs

Cloudy Animation…now with more Meatballs

Enjoy!

Quick Lighting Tutorial

Hey Everyone

I ran across this quick and easy lighting tutorial and thought I would share it. Lots of times I know that I am not the best lighter and if I do go to light and render my shots out it takes me a bit longer than I would've like because of the fact that I am an animator :) So this quick tutorial by Stephen Melagrano goes step by step on how he lit and rendered one of his shots. It seems like a simple process and real easy to change depending on your scene. So check it out and see if it fits.





Enjoy!

More Animation Tools

A friend pointed me in the direction of this site the other day and WOW! There are more animation tools out there than I realized. I guess as more and more people enter our industry there will be more tools made for the various programs that we use. TradigiTools has made scripts for Maya that will make life that much easier and our workflow that much faster. It is equipped with various tools like, a tweener that actually highlights your breakdowns with green ticks and keep the normal red, Timing incrament tools so you can automatically select how many frames you want or need between Keys and a Redundant key remover. There are quite a few more options and they have it setup in all nice drop down menus. Have a look at there Promo Vides to see for yourself..click here. Animation Mentor has also gotten together with them in promoting their tools. I honestly feel more schools should invest in this and let their students enjoy some of the tools that will be available to them as they hit the industry. So check them out and enjoy.

Screen shot.

Keith Lango on YouTube

Keith Lango has put up a page on YouTube where he has uploaded some great short video tips & tricks. Check them out and enjoy! Thanks Keith!

Workflow Tips

Hey Everyone

I wanted to share a quick link some workflow tips. One of my co-workers Dave Vasquez post a bit ago with a tip about IK Arms and how to speed up some of your blocking. Now he talks about switching IK and FK Arms. Most if not all rigs in the industry have this switch and i believe that most free rigs are equipped with it to so just look into it. If not try to get a rigger into adding it for you, but I think it's pretty standard now. So if you get used to it in school or at home it will only help in the industry.



Check out Dave's site too, he has some great stuff up there.
Enjoy

Real Emotion Reference

Hey

This is getting past around work so I thought I would share it with the rest of you animators. What great reference this is. You cannot get more real than this.

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Enjoy

Quick Reminder

Just wanted to throw a quick reminder out there to let everyone know that doesn't already. The resources on this site are constantly being updated as I encounter more and more of them out there. I am always trying to find new content in the form of good animators, resources and shorts to upload. So each time you come back there could be something that you haven't seen before under one of the tabs. Any suggestions that you have or something that is not here that you know of please feel free to contact me or leave a comment. Thanks again!

Some More Helpful Tools for us Animators

This site has been on Animators Resource since the beginning...but a friend recently called my attention back to it. There are a few tools on this site that can be super helpful to animators so I thought I should highlight them. As animators we always have issues with parenting objects. Well Paolo Dominici's site offers some solutions. He has developed a ZV Parent Master. It allows you to parent and unparent at will. Parent multiple object and see all of this in your timeline. The best part is that its free! He gives a demo of it on his site too. You can also get it on Highend 3D here. He also has developed a ridicules GUI picker for characters. He has multiple demos of it on his site or click here. It will be a way to help speed up your animation and we all know anything helps. He has a list of other products as well. Check them out.





Enjoy

Animation Mentor Weinar on "Living the Dream!"

Just wanted to let everybody know that there is another FREE Animation Mentor Webinar coming up. It's a webinar of two animators in the industry working at Dreamworks and ILM about getting a great job after graduating hosted by Mentor Kenny Roy Founder of Arconyx Animation Studios. Should be a good one.



Register now.
Enjoy

New Animtion Mentor E-Book

I don't think That I've posted on this yet...but Animation Mentor puts out FREE EBooks every now and again. This one is on "How to become an Animator." It also follows with some bonus material Industry Report. They have put together a few in the past as well and are all available for download at animationmentor.com. Or you could just click here and go to their Resources Page, it has lots of good stuff for free.




Enjoy!

New Round of Jason Ryan Webinars

I wanted to write a quick note to let everybody know that there is a new round of Jason Ryan Webinars starting this month. I have participated in all of them for the last year and let me just say that it has been an amazing experience. It only cost 100 bucks and is probably one of the greatest investments that you will get throughout your animation career. The last year has been invaluable in terms of learning process and workflow. Jason Ryan's webinars have both taught and inspired me to keep animating and always strive to get better. If you are weary of spending the money he has plenty of resources online to help show you what he is about before you commit to it. First you can check out his tutorials. Then you can go to his webinar site and he has free Rampup downloads which will help you understand what he is about. You can also view the highlights of the entire year of this last round of webinars here. You might ask, "What if you can't make the webinar?", well I then would say that he makes all the webinars downloadable when you sign up. He also provides resources with the shots to help make it easy if you want to go ahead and try the shots yourself. Check his site out and even get some free goodies like wallpapers. It has been a great ride so far and I am truly excited to see what is in store for the next year.



Enjoy and I'll see ya there!
JP

Another Note on Posing

Just wanted to throw in another resource for ya. This book Simplified Drawing for Animation by Wayne Gilbert is another great resource for learning and really constructing poses for your animation. He breaks them down in really easy to follow ways that make sense and it seems to be an invaluable resource to add to your collection. Here are a few inserts from his book that you can find on the site. You may remember him from the free Animation Mentor webinar not to long ago. If you missed it here's the link.






So check it out...some of the best $$ you'll spend.
Enjoy

Posing in Animation

Today I'd like to talk a bit about posing. I recently was given a great lecture on posing. I know for me, when it came to my learning process in animation, not enough emphasis was placed on posing. I mean, really drawing and figuring out your poses before even getting into the computer. Also really pushing your poses. I always get feedback saying push those poses further.

I always seem to contain my posing. It seems that the best way is to push too much...because then you can always dial it back some more.In my experience it is to push the pose, step back, look again,then push more. It's like when they say, "It's always better to be overdressed than under-dressed". Never go with your 1st pose, ask yourself, "Can I push it further?" In the lecture I received he discussed 3 Main Principles of Posing.

1. Staging of the Shot
2. Line of Action
3. Pose Design

As animators we are exposed to staging all the time. Before we were animators it was planned out for you to see in all of the films that you watch. If you stop on a frame of animation, you can really study the staging in a shot. Where the characters are placed in the scene also in relation to the objects or even other characters. Most things in a shot as you might notice in many great photos do not lie perfectly center but are slightly offset. Take a look at this still frame from Foghorn, you can see the staging set up clearly and direct. All of the action and staging leads the audience directly where they want you to look.




This is discussed in John K's Blog as he takes this shot and breaks it down frame by frame. John's Blog is a great resource for this as he seems to do this type of stuff alot. He examines different shots of classic animation all the time and breaks them down. Check it out.

Now the Line of Action in a character is one of the most important aspects of posing. How you pose the character I believe will determine how much smoother your animation will flow from one extreme to the next. I never realized it early on but having really strong poses can actually make your animation easier when you go from your blocking to splining. It will also help your animation read clearly. You can convey just about every emotion with your posing. It also ties in with your framing of the shot in that many elements of the shot will follow your line of action. Think...if your character was just a line...Would it be clear?



These are a few poses of Louie from the Jungle Book drawn by Milt Kahl. I saw this post on Michael Sporn's Splog. There are many frames from this animation, so check it out cause they are amazing examples of how you can get good weight and character through Line of Action. Next time that you see a great piece of animation I encourage you to pause it on a single frame that best describes it. Then frame by frame it from pose to pose and see how clear the animation really is. This is all made possible by these types of poses.

There are a few elements within Pose Design that were covered in the lecture I received that I would like to bring up. Simple vs Complex and Straight vs Curve. They run hand and hand but you will see it. It is mainly all about balance in the pose when you are constructing it. Ask yourself what it is that you are trying to say. What emotion are you try to sell? Then you can start with your line of action and in that line of action will fall your attitude. Here are a couple of examples...one from animation and one from real life.





The 1st example is a Glenn Keane drawing for the prince of Rapunzel.
If you look at the left side of the Prince then you see Simple and Curved. The right side is Complex and more Straight up and down. Same with the pic of the the kick boxer his left side is Complex and the other side is Simple. In any good pose you can find these. Please check out Glen's site The Art of Glen Keane. There is always great examples of posing on there.

There are so many examples of great posing out there so do your research. I have put together a few more resources for everybody. So really take the time and think about your posing it will make a world of difference in your animation.



The ones above are from a great site called The Animation Art of Bobby Pontillas that has plenty of great examples.

This one comes from a Pose Tutorial I found on Deviant Art pretty sweet. Deviant Art is also a great resource for good posing.

And here is a few other links
Keith Lango's Life after Pose to Pose

Victor Navones Tutorial on Posing

to be continued...

Thanks
Enjoy
JP