7 Animation Mistakes I Wish I knew About

sometimes the difference between a great animation and a not so great one is just a couple of small mistakes and so in this video we're going to cover the most common mistakes beginners make and how to fix them the goal in animation is to make your movement cartoony yet believable and there are a couple of rules of physics you need to follow in order to be successful your character needs to build up energy for their movement which they do through anticipation anticipation is moving in the opposite direction first for example swinging your arm back and bending your knees before a jump or swinging your leg back before kicking a ball the fast movement then creates momentum which makes your character want to continue going in that direction so when you want them to stop they need some time for all the parts to settle and the best way to show this is through follow through and overlap an example of this is if a ball with a tail was swinging left and right the tail would have to follow through once the ball changes Direction because it needs to continue the momentum that the ball had it would feel unnatural if the ball stopped and then the tail stopped at the same time not using references beginners think it's cheating and that is not the case at all it actually helps you understand movement and body mechanic it also helps you understand timing you will find golden nuggets that you wouldn't have thought of before a little imperfection in the movement that you probably wouldn't have thought of adding into your animation unless you studied the reference made a reference and then study their reference as humans we're not perfect we make mistakes we have hesitations but when you're animating a character you just animate the action if you're not thinking about all those little imperfections and other things that a human body might go through shooting a reference is actually a fast way to speed up your workflow and it's required in most professional settings when when you're working in a studio in most cases you record your reference and then you send it over to the director to be approved so that the director knows what your planning for your shot and then you can take that reference and animate your character to it in the style of that show so really reference isn't cheating it's a requirement for you to be an animator splining too early now beginners don't usually stay long enough in the initial blocking stage and they move on to spline right away but blocking is absolutely crucial to get right maybe it's because they're impatient but most likely it's because they don't know how breakdowns work if you spline and your shot starts looking floaty it's probably because you don't have enough keys in the blocking stage and you need to go back add more information before moving on to spline things like timing spacing arcs overshoots settles leading action and drag should all be in there before you go into spline the spline stage is for tightening your existing work and making things look a little bit better it's not for you to start new ideas and make major changes that's for the blocking stage thinking too big now I get it we all want to do cool stuff make cool shots but you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you jump right into the big stuff before tackling some of the more simpler exercises if you skip those simple exercises you're going to make your life a lot harder for the rest of your career you can easily get demotivated and overwhelmed if your shot is too long or above your skill level there's a reason why every animation student goes through the same simple exercises first because they teach you the principles such as timing spacing squash and stretch overshoot and so on plus they don't take too long so you can get more practice in as opposed to spending weeks on one shot which won't really teach you much you need to understand all of the principles and be able to give yourself a strong Foundation an understanding of Animation before tackling big shots to help you here's a list of exercises that you absolutely must Master if you want to move on to more complicated shots ball bounce in place ball bounce across the screen ball falling off of a shelf pendulum hand slapping a table animating objects made of different materials and weights a character weight shift a walk cycle a run cycle and a head turn once you have all of these exercises done multiple times and you feel very comfortable animating them then you can start mixing and creating a bigger shot that requires all the skills needed to master those exercises not having the right resources and good assets Shameless to anime plug but when you're starting out and learning on your own you might find it hard to find the right resources and ask the right questions learning animation is kind of like building a house you need to go in a logical stepbystep order for your learning process so you need to go from one skill you learn that and then you add to it with another exercise with another exercise and you keep adding on top of the previous exercises and the previous bits of knowledge that you have this way you make yourself from very basic exercises all the way to more advanced ones and in the process you learn the 12 principles and how to apply them we have spent 3 years crafting the perfect curriculum to learn animation based on our experience studying at top animation colleges in Canada and working in the industry and we can say with confidence you'll learn more doing our course than you would learning animation in college plus we have really high quality assets that are hard to find online especially at an affordable price robotic movement almost every beginner animation I see suffers from this common mistake which is linear and unnatural movement and here are the three things that cause that missing arcs beginners usually move their characters in linear lines but any natural movement the human body can do moves in arcs doesn't matter if I'm moving my shoulder up and down moving my elbow or moving my wrist I don't move in a linear line I move in an arc everything moving at the same time when you analyze any movement you will see that a certain part of the body always moves first and other parts follow for example with a step the hips move first first for the weight to shift over one foot which affects the chest and head dragging and leaning in the opposite direction the foot then lifts and changes the rotation of the hip this is why studying references is crucial to understanding motion twinning twinning happens when both arms or legs perform the same action at the same time for example a character jumps and both legs leave the ground and land at the same time or both arms swing at the exact same time you want to break up this movement and have one arm lead and the other one have a bit of a delay also you want movement to be a bit different on each limb even if it's just by a little bit you want it to look more human and less robotic more appealing and more professional looking well now if you're saying that's all great Brian but this is all about body and body mechanics what if I struggle with the face well I've made this video to cover that for you so go check it out

Channel: BrianKouhi

Views: 6,452

Keywords: animation mistakes, animation tips and tricks, animation tips for beginners, animation tips, how to make your animation better, how to get better at animation, beginner animation tips, avoid these animation mistakes, how to animate like a pro, common animation mistakes, most common animation mistakes

Id: 63dqnnGb4_U

Length: 7min 27sec (447 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023