quote:Original post by Some Guy
Anyway, who here happens to live in California?

I do. Now draw me a horse that captures the essence of a horse, and make it with realistic shading and proportions.

As long as this is about 2D hand drawn and stop-motion (claymation) you are in luck, as I have a little professional experience doing such in TV commercials as well as some freelance stuff

(If any of you are from the St. Louis, MO area...you may recall a few Hoyt Ford (IIRC) car dealership TV commercials with a animated barber shop quartet that "morphed" into the dealership logo as they sang...my first break in the industry about a decade ago...did the animation, inked and painted the cells...some helpfull folks at Columbia college in Chicago photographed it...you always remember those virgin experiences )

Anyway, what do you want to know?

I should warn you that I''m self taught and had asperations to work for Disney (but my thing for anime kept me from applying with them...didn''t want to draw "cute singing animals" for the rest of my life)...I did apply with Don Bluth...but they were in Ireland at the time, and had just released "All Dogs go to Heaven" to dismal boxoffice returns...got a nice letter back saying that they liked my reel, but they wern''t able to hire on at the time (a shame, as I really wanted to work on a Dragons Lair, Space Ace game...which they were rumered to be considering at the time)

I''m sort of a "jack of all trades but master of none" when it comes to animation...I can mimic several animation styles fairly well (like the difference between Bluth and Disney for example...even anime)...even do some effects animation (water splashes, etc..) But most of the really good animators specialise...some are better suited at female characters, others male characters...some can really bring out character personality...others are better at minimalisam or even realisam.

Then of course there is stop-motion (my favorite kind) which has a different set of specialties...armature and puppet makeing, etc...sadly this style is slowly being forgotten

again, what did you want to know?

Opps...missed this part of your post:

quote:
How do you do it?

Thats a very difficult question to answer...but like playing a musical instrament...you gotta practice...

quote:
What''s your secret?

I''m selftaught and studied both animated and live action films with the slow-mo feature on my VCR...films are shown at 24 Frames Per Second...but when transfered to video tape they play back at 30 FPS...essentialy every 4th frame is duplicated to make up the difference...this is important as the timeing in the animation is directed by frame rate...you will very quickly realise that Disney usually shoots in "2s"...that is 2 frame per drawing for just about everything except action scenes (sometimes dipping into 3s and 4s...which is what much of anime uses)...My DVD player isn''t able to step through film like this so it is harder for me to tell how long a frame is held for.

In addition...I took what knowledge I could from studing film and applied it to Super 8 films and by turning every paperback book I could find into a flipbook

quote:
What''s your favorite books on the subject?

hands down Disney''s Illusion of Life...you can find it, and tons more at www.awn.com a website dedicated to animation...everything you could ever want to know...from jobs to reseach material is on that site

quote:
GIMME GIMME GIMME!!! I wanna know everything there is to know about animation, and I want to become a professional animator. If I don''t, I''ll never be satisfied, and I''ll live out my days with blocked ideas and a bleeding heart, screaming, "Why didn''t I take that chance? Why didn''t I do it when I could?"

whoa!...slow down...it takes lots of practice to get resonably good...and it takes mondo amounts of patience and concentration...it can take a day or more just to animate enough for a single second of screen time.

I get overly frustraited when I''ve tried 3D animation...without being able to physicaly touch the model, it''s hard for me to get a sense of control in keyframeing anything...so someone else should help you with that.

AHw! It's killing me!

This is the 3rd post just today that i ran into about animation question. I even got an e-mail asking us how we do it.


[sigh] Well for the betterment of this community, if your really that dedicated, I'll convince tha boys [and one girl] to create a tutorial for beginners on the Liquid Moon Site.

We'll put it under special features. We've been animating for some time now. Most of us attend CDIS's game art or character animation programs so we have plenty of content to share.

sound like a good idea?

Can't say how soon that will be though, it just seems like it's a need that hasn't been addressed or something.

peace

-Sage13

Liquid Moon Team

X2: Official Site






[edited by - Sage13 on November 14, 2002 6:08:03 AM]

Are we talking good old pencil and trusty lightbox kinda animation here, or just any kind of animation.

Listen up. If you want to learn, get the holy Bible of animation "Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Like I said, it is the holy bible of animation. You will read it a million times throughout your career, and every time you will learn something new and incredibly valuable. Run, don''t walk!

Richard Williams'' book "The Animator''s Survival Kit" is also a must. Both of these books are pure and simple essentials, no matter what your medium is or style.

Get your hand on some old school pencil and paper animation. Even if you swear you''ll animate 3D for the rest of your life, it will show in your stuff. I hear this everywhere, you can never do enough pencil and paper animation. Like I said, I will show in whatever else you do.

Thanks

Marque Pierre