AM Memoirs: Now We’re Moving!

Part 1: Chapter 2 Begins!

Round 2 of my journey at Animation Mentor is well underway and I’m going in hard already! That’s right, no bouncing balls and pendulums for this guy this semester. Instead, I’m putting on my big boy animator’s pants and working on the good ol' Body Mechanics.

I’m really looking forward to this semester because animating basic body mechanics is where I start animating full fledged characters, While these assignments are pretty simple, such as walking across a screen or getting up from a chair, it’s still exciting to start giving a little bit more life and characterization to my animations. Plus, it gets me one step closer to learning how to film awesome and dynamic Spider-verse scenes!

It is, however, starting to become more challenging than last semester’s Basics course (surprise, surprise!). The one thing that threw me off about this semester is that instead of doing an exercise every week or two, we only have 3 major assignments to complete for the next 3 months. Yep, so these assignments gotta be primo grade which is a little bit more intimidating, but at the same time all the more exciting to see what I can pull off!

I’m realizing more and more that animating characters is a difficult thing to do and there’s so much that goes into our everyday movements. Take walks for example. While most of us walk to and from places everyday of our lives and don’t think twice about it, if you look at the anatomical functions of the body, walking is one of the most complex things we can do as human beings.

From the curvature of the spine and ball rotation of the hips to the rolling of the foot. Our bodies are intricately and uniquely designed to give us bipedal movement that no other living creature in this world can replicate. Learning and observing these functions are absolutely essential to reference and exaggerate movements like walking and picking objects up in the animation world.

After just one hour of lectures on the subject, my head was spinning on just how much goes into movement and how animator's are expected to understand and push these boundaries to the next level .

I just find it astounding how much can go into movement as a whole and my appreciation for it is just growing the more I learn from my time at Animation Mentor. My hope is that the more I study movement and practice applying that movement to my animations, I’ll be able to make some really neat stuff that I can be proud of.

However, in the beginning it’s a bit of a slow process to train your animator’s eyes, so patience is key! I have a lot more I’d like to talk about, but I’ll save that for Part 2 of this series, so you’ll just have to wait! Remember, patience is key! But here’s a little taste of what I’ve animated so far to keep you on your toes for the next post! Until next time!

P.S. I'm open to feedback on this walk from my fellow animators out there! Comment below!

Part 2: Knowing your Animator’s Toolbelt

Hello fellow animators and blog followers! It’s time for the second act of this AM Memoirs series! Last time I explained how excited I was to start animating characters instead of bouncing balls. I also expressed how challenging that was going to be and now, that I’m past week 8 of this semester, I realized I was right on the money.

Recently, I’ve been learning about weight, force, and balance and how all those affect our everyday movements. Again, I was faced with an eye opening realization that what seem like easy and straightforward movements are very difficult to animate straight outta the gate.

For instance, if I’m animating a character getting out of a chair, I have to consider where the weight is shifting and how that transfer of weight affects the entire body. If I shift the hip over to the right, the body has to readjust itself to counter that weight change and retain a sense of equilibrium despite any minor changes in movement.

It’s not as simple as moving a character's hip a little bit to the right and back again because if I do that it won’t look right at all. My animation will just look like I’m dragging the character around rather than given it a sense of life and realistic and entertaining action.

I’m learning that animation is more than just simply learning the technical aspect of moving characters around. It’s really a study of motion and movement. If you study the movement that happens around you everyday you’ll start to see how things move and react to the forces around them.

I'm realizing the trick to animation is to learn how and why people, creatures,and objects in the world move in the way they do. Because if you do, then you’ll be able to translate that information in a digital space and give your animation life that your audience can visually understand and be engaged with.

However, this is a lot easier said than done. We’re not typically taught how different movements like walking or picking up objects work. We know we have to put one foot in front of the other to move and that we need to use some force to pick up a heavy object, but those things are very on the surface level.

And while we do these types of actions everyday, we have to break these movements down to their core to be able to understand and apply those principles in our animations and that my friends takes a lot, and I do mean a lot, of practice.

So what are some ways to help understand motion and create those swanky animations that inspire us to be animators? Well after a ton of trial and error from yours truly, I picked up on a couple helpful tips.

1.) Study, Study, Study Reference!:

If you're an animator, you’ve probably heard this about a million times by now and you will most likely hear it at least million more times in your career.

Reference, whether shot by yourself or found on the internet, is your best friend when animating anything. It serves as the foundation for your shot and studying it will make your animation process so much smoother.

When you study reference, you’re breaking down the what, how, when, and why’s of the motion you're trying to replicate. If you don’t properly study and analyze your reference, you won’t know where the weight is supposed to hit or how your character is supposed to react to different forces like gravity acting against them.

This will cause your animation to look floaty, uninspiring, and unfinished. I didn’t study my reference as much as I should have and it made some of my earlier shots much more complicated and frustrating to finish.

So take my word on this, STUDY. THE. REFERENCE!

2.) Learn your Rig:

Even if you've studied the crap of your reference, if you don’t take the time to learn how to use your rig, you’re gonna have a hard time getting your shot to work the way you want it to.

Again, I had to learn this through some more trial and error on my part. Whenever I had the idea for my shot down, I would just jump right on into Maya and start animating without thinking about how I want my character to move and what controls would be the best way to achieve the action that I’m going for.

Each rig is different and some controls are good for some movements and others can just make your animation needlessly complicated. If you’re having to counter your controls with other controls too much to achieve your poses and get the flow of the animation down then you might need to take a step back and figure out how your character works.

Believe me, it will make a ton of difference if you just take the time to sit down, explore your rig, and plan ahead on how you want to approach your shot.

Really, it all comes down to understanding the resources available to you and intentionally planning your shot. A big part of animation is all within the planning stages, so if you can nail the planning down, your animation is going to be a lot easier for your character and also on your sanity.

Well that’s all I got for today. What are some things that you’re learning on your animation journey? Be sure to comment below and I’ll see you guys again for Part 3!

Another progress shot! Feel free to leave any constructive feedback below!

Part 3: Animation is a Feeling

Another day, another semester at Animation Mentor completed by yours truly (...somehow xD). I’m telling you guys, the more time I spend learning at AM the more I grow to love (and sometimes hate) animation! I’m continuously gaining a great admiration for movement and motion not just in the animation medium, but also in the everyday movements of life.

They say in order to understand motion and bring it into the animation world, you have to study the real world first by observing and analyzing the way things, people, and creatures move. However, I’ve realized that I’m a little different. I still observe movement when I’m out and about, but I’ve found that I like to act out different actions and feel the motions going through my body.

Ever since I started AM, I’ll go around and try out different movements just to get a feel of the weight, energy, and even personality of my actions. Sometimes, I’ll do simple actions like getting up from a couch or trying to open a finicky door. Other times, I’ll try out flamboyant walks and dances to get down the beats and attitudes of my movements keeping a mental note on how I can translate these actions into animation.

Of course, I do all of these walks and dances in private, so no one thinks I’m a crazy person. But what’s really crazy is that when I’m moving around like an idiot, I can feel the fundamentals of animation flowing throughout my body.

I can feel the drag in my hands when I’m doing an exaggerated walk. I can feel the change in spacing as I’m picking up a heavy object. By acting all this stuff out and taking note of how my body is reacting, I gain a better understanding of movement and animation.

That’s the awesome thing about art, the more you hone your craft, the more you see the art that you love in the real world, which then inspires you and hones your craft even more. This is just another thing that Animation Mentor has taught me as I continue to develop my animator’s eye.

But enough of that tangent. Let me share some quick lessons I learned as I wrap up this semester.

1.) Time Management is Key:

The more you put into your work the more you’re gonna get out of it. My mentor would always tell my class that if we could be full time students at AM we should because it’s going to speed up our workflow and make us better animators.

That being said, not many of us have the opportunity to work on animation 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Some of us struggle to find an hour in the day to work on our projects. That’s where time management comes in!

I think one of the keys in succeeding at Animation Mentor is to understand what your schedule is like and what you can realistically accomplish before you're ambushed by an impending deadline.

Once you figure that out, you’re gonna have to be diligent and devote a certain amount of time each day to work on your shot. Whether that amount of time is just 10 minutes or 2 hours, as long as you’re putting the time in you’ll be that much closer to finishing an awesome shot.

I had to really lean into my time management this semester because I became a full time worker halfway through my final shot. I was working on a complicated shot where my character is walking across a balancing beam. There’s a ton of weight change happening in my shot, which takes awhile to animate.

When I took on a full-time job again, I had to really commit to putting in a certain amount of time each day to animate my shot or else it just wasn’t going to get done. I found time in-between my work schedule and made the most out of my weekend to get myself in front of my computer and work, work, work.

I wanted to pour everything I had into my project and it was a good thing too because I think the shot turned out great. Is it gonna get me a fancy animation gig, probably not, but I completed it which is what matters.

You’re not going to get the most out of your time at AM unless you’re able to finish your shots because it’s the finished shots that make you a better animator not the half finished, sloppy ones. So, time management is key!

2.) You’re work is not going to be that great and that’s ok:

One of the struggles I had this semester is that I always felt like my shots were never good enough. Despite how much I studied body mechanics or how much time I put into my projects, I felt they were always a hot pile of garbage.

I guess I wanted to make some amazing shots that professionals create in feature films and game cinematics, but I can’t really do that in 2 semesters of animation school.

Animation requires practice and lots of it. So, if you’re starting AM and think that your animations are kinda crappy that’s because they are.

Odds are you’re new to this whole animation thing, so you can’t expect to make amazing, award winning shots in just a few weeks, semesters, or years even. What’s most important is that you’re learning and the more you learn and practice, the more improvements you’re going to see in your shots.

That is what helps me push forward a lot in my animation journey. I try not to compare myself to the pros or even my fellow classmates and instead focus on my own progression and see how much better I’ve gotten from the start of the semester to now.

Go look at all the playblasts you have at one of your shots and see how much better your animation got from blocking all the way to polish.

Sometimes we animators can be so in the thick of our craft we lose track if we’re actually getting anywhere. But if you look back on your earlier work every now and again you’ll see that your crappy shots get less and less crappy as you go on and then one day you’ll realize “Oh crap, this is actually pretty good!”

If you hold onto that mindset, I guarantee you that your path to becoming an animator is going to be a lot easier!

Well that’s it for me. Another AM Memoirs chapter for the books. I hope this series was helpful to you and you enjoyed reading about my journey!

Feel free to read my last series on the Animation Basics course or peruse some of my other animation articles. Until then, I’ll see you next semester for Advanced Body Mechanics.

Happy Animating! :)

P.S. Here’s my demo reel for this semester if you want to take a gander!

Dean Willms

Gamer. Designer. Friend.