Part 1: More Body Mechanics!?
Hello everyone and welcome back to my AM blog series where I share with you my journey as a student at Animation Mentor! Last time we left off, I had just finished the Body Mechanics course and shared with you the ups and downs, along with the lessons I learned during those 3 short months.
Now I’m half-way through my third semester at AM, knee deep into some Advanced Body Mechanics and boy has it been a ride so far! The challenges keep getting greater, but my skills and appreciation for animation continue to grow and become an important part of my life!
This semester I’m only animating two shots for six weeks each. I know I can’t imagine working on a project for that long either.
I just completed my first shot and can’t believe I ever finished it. It was a great project, but after week 5 I started to feel like I'd poured everything I had into my shot and wanted to move onto the next big thing.
I was also worried like crazy during those final days leading up to my shot’s deadline that after all that time and dedication I’ve invested into this scene of mine that it was going to turn out to be crappy.
One of the problems that comes with working on a shot for a long time and going into crunch time to meet deadlines, is that you have trouble figuring out if your shot is getting any better or not.
That final week I was going back and forth telling myself my shot was garbage one moment and then saying it was looking alright the next. It wasn’t until after I submitted it in and took a day away from it where I realized that my shot didn’t look half bad at all!
It certainly wasn't perfect, but I think after those 6 weeks of hard work I was actually able to pull something off! My confidence level in my animation has been taking a nosedive since I started AM because I’ve always felt like my stuff was never good enough.
But, as I continue to animate more and more, I’m realizing my confidence is slowly starting to come up. At least to the point where I’m not feeling like a worthless animator anymore.
It’s just above the line now guys, so yay! Progress!
But in all seriousness, the more time I’m putting into my craft, the more I see it improving, even if it’s just a little bit.
So, a little advice for those of you who are suffering with the ol’ self-esteem like me, just keep going at it. Give yourself positive feedback and continue to show your work to others to see where you can improve. Trust me, it does get better.
Alright, now onto the part where I tell you guys where I screwed up so far this semester and how to not follow in my footsteps to save yourselves some much unneeded stress in your assignments!
1.) K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid!)
If you’ve been at AM for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard of K.I.S.S before, but for those of you who may not know, K.I.S.S stands for Keep It Simple Stupid with an emphasis on the stupid part.
Nothing will throw your animation off the rails than adding some unnecessary, complex actions to your scene to make it more “interesting”. I know what you’re thinking. You have a really cool idea in your head that you really want to make come alive on screen.
You don’t want to do something too simple, because you feel like it won’t be interesting enough. So, you think of this really cool and complex shot and start getting to work on it, but you’re so caught up in your amazing idea that you add more actions to it and before you know it you have this meaty scene with a bunch of crazy movements that you now have to somehow pull together in just a few weeks.
What typically happens is that you turn in something that’s unfinished, which is no bueno, or you pour in hours and hours of extra time staying up into the wee hours of the night to get something in that you can call done before your deadline.
I was the latter and let me tell you it was not a fun time. I got so caught up in my own imagination about my idea that I ended up causing myself to do a lot more work than I needed for my assignment.
I probably only need 3 or 4 main actions for my scene to work and I ended up doing over 10 in the end. It really burned me out in the end because I had to polish all these different actions and make them flow together in such a short amount of time.
It ended up working out for me in the end this time (barely), but I could’ve easily made it easier on myself if I just made it simple. So, if you’re a student or if you’re trying to break into animation for the first time and are trying to create the next new Spider-verse or Pixar shot, stop it and Keep it Simple Stupid! Trust me, there will be plenty of time for the more complicated stuff later on in your career once you get those basics down.
2.) Planning
Proper planning is what’s going to determine how well you’re shot turns out. If you just jump into Maya with a half-baked idea and a positive attitude, you’re not going to get very far.
You need to at least lock down what your character is going to do, your key poses, and a rough assumption of the timing of your shot before you can even think about touching your computer or else you’ll pretty much just be setting yourself up for failure.
Think of it as if you were building a house. You wouldn’t just draw some crude doodles or have a good vision of what you think the house should look like in your mind and then get right into building the thing. That would be insane!
The house would turn out to be this weird, inhabitable place with the bathroom in the middle of the kitchen and the beds out on the deck. No one wants that!
You need to have a solid foundation, with a clear plan of action before you can build anything. Most of the animation process is spent in the planning stages because an animation is only as good as the clarity, and detailed construction of your planning.
When I did my most recent shot, I did some planning, but the idea kept evolving, so I filmed some reference and drew a few poses and then when I was pretty much done with that noise, I got into Maya quickly so I could see my idea come to life.
Of course, I had to redo a bunch of my poses because I didn’t have a clear enough plan going in. I would have to reshoot reference halfway through the project and try to piece together what I was missing in between while I was animating.
This took a huge chunk out of my time and made me feel like I was constantly behind and it was all because I didn’t sit down and plan the entire shot out.
If I learned anything through this experience, it’s that planning is the crux of animation and shouldn’t be neglected or half-assed because that’s just going to reflect on your animations in the long run.
I know that was probably a lot of stuff, but it’s important stuff! My animations get better as I learn and apply these lessons and I’m sure they will do the same to you as well! That’s all I got for now though. I’ll check back with you guys near the end of the semester, but until then, Happy Animating
P.S. This is the shot I was talking about before, so give it a looksee!
Part 2: Getting Better One Keyframe at a Time
Hello again fellow readers! It’s time for Part 2 of this AM Memoirs series, Going Through the Motions. It’s been awhile since we talked, so let’s do some catching up shall we?
6 weeks ago, I finished up the first of my two shots I needed to complete for this semester’s course. I was a little over my head a bit when I animated that shot because there was a lot going on in a very short amount of time.
I struggled with issues on figuring out proper timing and nailing down a lot of body mechanic actions. I made it even harder on myself by animating two characters on top of that as well.
While I managed to get the shot done, it required a hell of a lot of time to get it there. I learned some good lessons along the way though, such as the K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid) method and proper planning.
Well, I took those lessons to heart for my next shot and let me tell you guys, it made the whole process sooooo much easier. For my most recent shot, I decided to animate my character rage quitting at a game.
I had a lot of ideas on how to approach this shot. I loved the concept of the shot and wanted to take it as far as it could go, so my imagination was running wild with ideas.
What if he threw the controller and started wreaking havoc across the room, turning tables and stomping on the game? What if he threw the controller, picked up the game case, stormed out of the house, furiously walked down the road, slammed the door into a game store and threw the game case at the cashier in anger?
But after a while, I had to pull myself back and remind myself of what happened last time I let my imagination get out of hand. Originally, my last shot was just a guy kicking a squirrel, but as you can see it became so much more, way more than it needed to be.
I find that planning a shot is one of the hardest stages of animation because I want to create something that’s gonna give me a challenge, but also something I can realistically complete.
Oftentimes, I find myself so invested in my idea that I want to push it as far as I can. That, and I want to create an awesome masterpiece that’s going to impress potential employers.
But, this time I showed some restraint and I gotta say, I think I was able to achieve that nice balance of simplicity and challenge and came out with a nice looking shot.
This time around, I saved myself some unnecessary headache and was able to fully focus on implementing the animation principles to flesh out my shot, rather than scrambling to make the shot work before my impending deadline.
Plus, I was able to learn some more lessons along the way that I think will help not only me, but also you animators out there reading this, to create some great shots in the future!
Clarity
This right here, I’ve learned is a big one to creating a compelling and interesting shot. Whatever your animation is whether it’s something as simple as throwing an object or doing crazy acrobatic action sequences, clarity is key to keep your audience engaged and on track from the beginning of the shot to the end. Your actions need to be clear and concise. If not, your audience is going to get lost and that’s the last thing you want.
1.) Weak Poses:
Lack of clarity can be caused by not having strong poses with poor silhouette. I’ve learned that poses are everything to a shot, especially your storytelling poses. As animators, we use the poses of our character’s to tell a story, much like writers use words to tell stories.
If our poses aren’t clear, say the silhouette has the hand hidden behind a character’s body or the pose itself doesn’t have a strong line of action, the audience is either going to get lost or, worse, lose interest.
It’s like if writers only wrote in partial sentences, their readers wouldn’t know what to make of their writing. We need strong, concise words if we’re going to be telling our stories.
2. Overcomplicating your shot:
Another way you can lose clarity in a shot is by having too many actions going on. Trust me, in my experience, this can make creating a compelling shot that much harder. As I mentioned before, my last shot I did this semester had too much going on in a short amount of time.
If I break the shot down, I have my character stretching, the squirrel is looking at the nuts and doing a take, my character is then preparing to launch into a run, the squirrel then jumps over to the nuts and knocks the football away. Next, my character bursts into a run, while the squirrel prepares too munch down on the nuts in front of him. The character then kicks the squirrel, reacts, pulls a cross out from his invisible pocket, kneels down, plants the cross where the squirrel once was, and then slides back in remorse.
That’s 12 main actions in a shot that’s less than 10 seconds. If you have more actions than the amount of time you have to animate a shot, that’s a red flag that you’re putting too much into your animation. Just reading all the actions I just listed just sounds like a lot.
If I had shortened it down to say 5 main actions, I think my animation would have turned out a lot better. I packed a whole bunch in there and it looks like everything is rushed a bit to be under 10 seconds and unless the timing is rushed intentionally, that’s going to be noticeable when people watch your animation.
Now, I’m not saying all this stuff to beat down on my shot and make it seem like I think I’m a crappy animator. Overall, I like my shot. It definitely works, but I can see where I messed up and how I could’ve made it better.
I think it’s important to be able to critique your own work because it shows that you're becoming a better animator by seeing what you need to work on to make your animation better.
You don’t want to become arrogant and think your animation is the best out there, but at the same time you don’t want to consistently beat yourself down and focus on all your flaws, destroying your self-confidence as an animator. Neither one of these attitudes are going to get you to where you want to be, both in your career and your life.
You want to be able to note on your successes and your failures in your shot to move forward as an animator. That kind of mentality is what’s going to get you far in life.
Before I end this post, I just wanted to give you guys some quick updates. I finished up my third semester at AM (and passed!), which marks the halfway point in my journey at AM. It’s crazy how fast my time at AM has been. It doesn’t seem that long ago I was struggling to animate a bouncing ball and now I’m creating full bodied animated shots!
My time at AM has been great, but man could I use a breather. Being a student, working full-time, and keeping up with this blog can take a lot out of ya. So, I’m going to be taking a semester off from Animation Mentor and relax for a bit, which means my AM Memoir’s series is gonna have to be placed on hold. I know it sucks. I’m gonna miss writing this series, but luckily it won’t be forever.
During my time off, I’m going to continue practicing my animation and getting some nice demo reel pieces together. I’m also planning on being a peer buddy when the winter semester rolls around in January, so I’ll still be a part of the AM community. Who knows? You might have me as your peer buddy next semester.
I hope this series has been helpful to you guys, or it’s at least been an interesting read. Good luck to all of you pursuing a career in animation and I’ll see you all soon!
P.S Here's my AM Progress Reel to see how far I've come!
Dean Willms
Gamer. Designer. Friend.
