Really cool and useful posts all collected by Carlos Baena ! Check em out 🙂
Animation Tips
Posing Character For Animation
Very useful and important notes, tips and tricks on animation by Ian Lacey. Click the image above for the link !
Animator’s Important Milestone …
Studio Etiquette: Keep your Ego in check
By: Jamy Wheless, Mentor, AnimationMentor.com
What makes a good animator? Is it getting great poses? Understanding timing? Paying attention to arcs? How about being a good actor? Actually, it’s all of this and more. But one of the key ingredients not discussed often enough is having a positive attitude and being able to work with others.
I’ve worked with very talented animators whose egos have hurt their careers. The mindset of, “I deserve this or that” or “I don’t need to work with a team – I can do it on my own” will eventually lead to no job. Lou Holtz once said, “All life is — whether it’s in a job or a home or on a football team — is getting other people what they need.” Plain and simple.
The Director needs an Animation Supervisor to listen and get him what he wants in a shot. The Animation Supervisor needs the animator to deliver a great performance that helps tell the story. The animator needs to collaborate with other animators and be open to suggestions to do his best work. The animator needs to be able to take constructive criticism from others. The animator needs technical support to help him animate faster and get the job done on time.
It takes a team of people to get each other what they need.
In order to improve and become a better animator one needs to set the ego aside and be open to learning something new every day. My friend and I have a saying at work, “Is it about you or is it about the work?” In other words, are you giving your all for a bigger cause or are you more concerned about yourself and what you get out of it.
So how do we keep our egos in check and become better animators each day? It all begins with the right attitude. My own work began to improve when I made a decision years ago to have a positive attitude regardless of the circumstances. I made a conscious decision to keep a positive attitude and to influence others every day. Over time, my work habits improved and I looked forward to going to work and serving others. It takes a daily commitment to keep my attitude right through the course of a week. When my attitude turns negative, which can easily happen, I have to check myself and ask the question, “Is it about YOU or the work?” Usually when this happens, it’s more about my ego and what I want rather than what the team needs.
Another rule to live by is to treat others the way you want to be treated. Living by this rule helps me focus in on each person and then as I imagine if I were them I ask myself, “What can I do that would help them get what they need to be successful?” Since animation is a team effort, by applying this rule to your daily routine you not only inspire others but you’ll find yourself more inspired as you do your work. It becomes contagious and before long everyone’s work has improved.
In summary, I’ve realized that the right attitude is more important than all the talent in the world. My personal belief is 20% talent and 80% attitude will take you far in life. You have a choice everyday regarding your attitude and how you conduct yourself. Believe you can improve yourself and become that person you desire to be. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Change your mindset and have the right attitude and great things will come.
This article was brought to you by AnimationMentor.com, The Online Animation SchoolTM .
What Makes a Good and Honest Animator
Critiques & Opinions
Often in animation we are subjected to critiques — most likely daily. I try to impress on my students the importance of learning all the principals of animation, but temper it with a bit of realism. It’s a simple fact that everyone has an opinion, and no matter how good you are or how long you’ve been working there is always something new to learn. So seek out criticism, or take any thrown your way. Take what everyone says… Weigh it against what you’ve learned up to that point, and if a particular problem, or complement keeps cropping up, there must be some truth too it.
I’m sure we’ve all met someone who isn’t crazy about our work for one reason or another…. but that doesn’t mean you can’t get something from their opinion. It’s kinda like learning to fight… The more you mess up, the more you learn what not to do.
Animation is an art form, and as artists we all have our own sense of aesthetics. Don’t take criticism as a punch to the gut — most likely it isn’t personal. Strive to do your best work, and remember it isn’t your show/game. You are providing a service. If a director wants something, and you think it’s a bad decision or a problem, make it known to your supervisor or animation director, but don’t fight it. If they elect to follow your opinion great, you’re a hero for pointing it out. If not don’t latch on like a pit bull, leave it at that and do the best you can given the constraints. I think that makes a good honest animator: you are showing that you recognize issues, care about your work, and confront them head on, but are still a team player.
Technique
As a student learning animation, which most of us are until the day we kick the big one, we meet lots of other people doing the same work…yet everyone seems to have their own flavor of “How to do it?” What I like to do personally, and also tell my students is, whomever is currently teaching you is who you listen too.
In other words, if you are in school do what any given teacher tells you at that time — learn what they have to give. When you move on from them, do the same with the next teacher. “But everyone does it differently, won’t it get confusing?” Ahhh …no, what you are doing is focusing on what you have to learn…not looking down the road.
Before you know it, you will have picked up a ton of knowledge and techniques, the next step is deciding what works for you and what doesn’t.
This is where each animator, like some home brew from Grannies barn, picks their ingredients and heads off into the world. The only difference in animation is as we work with new director, supervisors, and animators…. we are constantly show different ways of the force. Take that ever-growing list and give it a fair tryout and see if you can incorporate it into your working method. Maybe it speeds you up, maybe it slows you down, maybe your work jumps to that next plateau. It’s a simple fact that you will grow, and improve as an animator always but it won’t be a simple strait shot to the goal.
File Referencing in Maya
File Referencing in Maya is invaluable for any animation pipeline, especially projects involving characters. To get the most out of reference, following a few key steps can save a lot of head ache later on down the line.
First off, what is file referencing and why is it so valuable?
Referencing allows you work on temporary assets that can be updated in your existing file throughout the project pipeline. This process can blur the point where one artist’s work is done and the next can start, as in the model is finished and is now ready to rig. In this write up, I’ll be referring to Character Rigs being the file that’s referenced, however you can also reference environments, light setups and many other files.
How referencing applies to an animation pipeline.
You’ve just received a new character rig and are assigned a new animation shot. So you open the rig file, start setting keys and crafting your animation. A few hours pass when you realize that neck control doesn’t work,the right fingers are not bound to the joints, and the UVs are all goofed. So now, to save your animation, you’ll have to fix a rig that has been animated and manipulated out of base pose in order to move forward. Not to mention, you’ll need to redo these changes or strip out the animation to set the rig back to default, to prevent having to redo these changes on the next animation. A cleaner way of working in this situation is to use File Referencing. With the rig referenced into the animation file, you can save your existing animation, go fix the rig in its own file, reopen your animation and the changes apply themselves.
How referencing can save time.
Once a character model is approved or even their proportions are approved, an Animation rig can be created using that base mesh. This will not be the final rig with all the bells and whisles but will be enough to allow the animator to start previs or blocking in animations. Now you have three different facets of the pipeline working at the same time, instead of “one ends, the other begins”. While the model is being finalized, textured, and so on, the rig can be updated accordingly with secondary elements, all while the animation is being created. Once the model is updated in the rig, the next time the animator opens their animation, the latest rig and model will already be there. This sort of overlap can last all the way through a project. Facial animation, mesh swapping on existing rigs, spot fixes on the bind, and other updates can be seen on existing animations all with out transferring the animation to a new rig or having to go in and fix individual files. All and all, this gives the modeler more time to work on the model and see how it’s being used, allows the setup artist to build to the animator’s need and work within a clean, non animated rig file, and lastly gets rigs to the animators faster to produce initial work and test the setups the technical artists are creating. Along with allowing more artists to work sooner, referencing saves time by creating smaller file sizes, thus reducing save/load times. Since the rig file is not actually in the animation file, the size of the animation file is very small. You are no longer saving the rig in each file over and over, even more beneficial if the scene has more then one character. This same process is great for a heavy environment. Since the animator will probably only need to know the ground plane and the objects the character interacts with, having tons of buildings and set dressing will only slow down the playback and bloat the file size.
The importance of a clean Rig file that’s being referenced.
Before you start referencing, it’s best to have a clean file that’s brought into the animation scenes. Here are some general guide lines to touch up a rig file to make it as solid as possible to prevent errors and breaking.
Making updates seemless in the pipeline.
Now that you have a clean Rig file that’s ready to be referenced, it’s time to make sure that any updates you do will allows go to the animator’s file. The easiest way to make this possible is by only having a single Rig file per character, named accordingly. The rig file, “Ogre_Character_Rig.ma” should be your master rig file naming scheme. Though it may be tempting to start putting version numbers on the rig’s file name as its been updated, this will actually cause more headache then its worth. Heres why:
How to setup a File Reference.
As your about to start an animation, you should have a character rig file as a seperate file, for this write we’ll call the rig file “Ogre_Character_Rig.ma”. So, to create a reference:
So what have we done and why.
By resetting the options, this clears any custom settings that might have been set. Once you get familiar with this process you will no longer need to do this. However, for this example this makes sure we’re all using the same settings. Next we resolved all conflicting nodes with a string instead of the file name. There are a number of reasons for this, such as:
The Reference is Set, let Animation begin.
At this point, animation can start and whatever changes are made to the asset in the mean time will be seen as the rig is updated. Some more details to keep in mind:
Some final notes and work arounds for Referencing.
Rig File > Animation File > Lighting File
Having the files get deeper then this, errors start occuring with the sheer number of prefixes and layers of edit seen in each file. In this case, less is more, so try to work as clean and optimal as possible.
Closing thoughts.
As seen above, referencing can seem to be a daunting task, but I assure you, it will make your life easier. Having a smooth pipeline and allowing artists longer to work and adjust as the project calls is worth the time spent at the beginning. A stitch in time, so to speak.
Source … Kiel Figgins !
Click here for his post
EYEBROWS
Here are some eye brow shape snaps that I have collected after looking at Carlos Baena’s post and
VNOG’s blog…
Animation Tips & Tricks
Good blog for some great animation tips and tricks that I found could be useful !