How To Train Your Dragon! March 26th

Hi Mahesh, Thanks for posting!

I checked out your blog…really great posts. It looks like you’ve found a lot of great information online so far!

Mahesh:

You know it would be really cool , after a year or two it will become Character Animation Course for students mentored by Professional Animators …

Right now we don’t have any plans on starting an animation program…we’re pretty busy as it is with our day jobs and keeping up the blog..haha.

We will totally post anything that we think is inspirational or helpful to animators, from beginners to professional. I’ve always thought that you never know who you’re going to learn the most from. Its helped me to keep an open mind and to see that great advice can come from anybody, even people just starting out. We all see things in a different ways and the more angles you can get on a topic the better. So keep checking the site and I’m sure that we’ll post something that will really speak to you.

Mahesh:

In animation I want to know that for learning specific principles which are the good exercises that emphasize on particular principles more , like lifting weight or jump .. but can you tell us that which principles are emphasized in that good exercises , like may be weight shift , reversals , arcs , overlapping

1. will you please suggest 10 specific exercises and their specific outcomes (which principles they exhibit)

I don’t have 10 exercises to recommend but here is one great one and why.

Ball Bounce….It is one of the most important exercises that we have as animators. There are so many principals at play and you can animate one with any medium. It strengthens your eye for timing and spacing. It helps you be creative with rhythm and accents. You learn about squash and stretch. You can apply different attributes to the ball like is it heavy or light. You can even get into character animation by giving the ball thoughts and a personality. This exercise is so important that it’s probably the first thing you’ll animate at any animation school. A ball bounce was the first assignment that I did at my Pixar internship. It is so simple that it can easily point out any flaws you have as an animator. It’s also a simple way to help improve your skills and to experiment with different timing, whether you’re going for something super realistic or very cartoony. All of these principals; timing, spacing, weight, squash and stretch, anticipation, ect. you will take with you and apply to all of your animation.

So Mahesh I hope this helps. It looks like you’re on the right course by finding all the information you can online. Just remember one important thing…It doesn’t always make sense right away, you could read something and not understand it, and that’s alright. It takes time to really wrap your head around all these concepts. I remember reading things in the Illusion of life and the Animators Survival Kit and thinking, “yeah, I get it” but now I realize that I didn’t fully understand it and the advice gets more insightful every time I reread it!!

So keep up the great work and keep animating, the more you do the better you’ll get. And Show your work. Post it on threads like the 11 second club. Forums like that will get more eyes on your work and will help you get used to feedback and adjusting your work. It will also help you see your work with new eyes.

Keep animating!!
-Stephen