Importance of having fun while animating

Went past Spungella, and noticed a really nice post about the Importance of having fun

Drawing... animation follows

On the blog, Art of Dave Pimentel came across some really nice posts on drawing for animation 

(for those who think that "drawing" skills is not important in 3D animation era, it trains your eyes to pick up better posing for your characters and also spacing, even if it is stick figures you can still capture emotion. Other than video reference it is one of the best tools in your arsenal when it comes to animating).

"the more that you have observed the easier time that you will have when you create" Dave Pimentel

Some of the posts are:
Artist in Animation vs. Animation Artist
Straight and Curves
Mr stickman vs.  contour approach
The drawing pivot point

Tropes vs. Women

I found this through Women in Games and brings up several questions that "why" are the screenwriters and just the popular culture still doing this? found this through Feminist Frequency as a 6 part series looking into female stereotypes. You can find the rest of the of the videos here.

Bravo! loved every second...

I know as animators how frustrated when things just don't seem to be working out... Thanks to the VNOG blog and Victor Navone, for posting this. We as animators... are not alone.

"Roger" Dailogue scene

Found a really nice laid out post about approaching a dailogue scene over at the Animation and Art School Goa

Here is the Dailogue scene


And here is step by step "making of" of the scene.... well worth the look

I wish that someone had told me this while I was studying

Learning to feel emotion, not just correcting body mechanics

Hi everyone,

I was thinking that I would post about this, as a animator I feel that the difference between a great animator and just a normal animator.

Is the whether when you are animating you are only at body mechanics (don't get me wrong, body mechanics is really important. Game animators that pretty much all that they might do and they might be lucky enough to animate a character shot, game animation is challenging in the way that you have to figure out how to get that movement in about 8 frames and making it believable.

 Worrying about the body mechanics, at most><....


The stage that I feel that the most experienced animators reach and this is the level that you need to animate on is the emotional level that we can see your character and it is feeling, it's not just waving it's arms around or walking properly and the weight is properly balanced. It's movement is governed by thought as humans we have to think before we do things, feel before we react to stimuli. Waving the the character's arms is not going to cut it, it needs to feel that it needs to react that way, that the path of action it is on, feels right.

A good example of emotional level...

Notice that the movement was dictated by thought and feelings...

I was thinking that one of the barriers that you need to overcome and that I have found that Animation is Communication, you are telling the audience that it is a "real" person. Explaining "why" they feel that way and react to it is normal and they need to feel empathy for this "character". I found in myself that if you can't communicate clearly yourself to others in this wide world that it means that you can't understand "why" you haven't cleared this huge boulder that is on your path. AS ANIMATORS.... believe it or not we have to be like guest speakers on a stage but instead of us getting up there our characters get up there and deliver the speech. Communication is very important and as animators we need to understand that we need to communicate ourselves clearly and effectively to others in the effort to be able to communicate our animation to our audience.