Animation Advice from Legendary Artists

so I'm James Baxter oh hi I'm for Norman hi my name is Sean Kelly what's up everyone welcome back to how to become an animator I'm serrate and today I am here at that's totally blown out c10 animation Expo I'm doing a video with Adobe they're actually sponsoring this one which I'm super stoked about because you guys already know that I use Adobe for literally everything basically they're here to talk about some of the new tools and stuff that they're doing to like re-energize their commitment to animation and animator so anyway I'm going to show you what they have going on and I'm actually making a video with them for their channel so I'm gonna put the link down below I'd appreciate if you go check that out because I'm gonna make the video for them so show it some love hopefully it's good fingers crossed the thing that you're probably here for I'm going to try an interview as many animators as I can different people artists from around the industry from feature film TV VR games everything anyone I can find I'm gonna try and get you guys some professional tips and tricks and just advice so with that let's take a look at CPM [Music] okay so I'm in expo hall that's where all the booths are I'm heading over to Pixar to show them my real Pixar I'm here now and I'm gonna go show them my stuff get some notes I need to know what to work on when I do my real so so we work together these aspiring artist one day they say you spend your time and good clothes looking on great animation it comes down to them it's really the secret sauce if you will so spend your time in crafting the best pose best seller web you can end up with a much better animation planet better you know you can sit there and start anime you you're excited you want to actually so far learning about a ton of new tools meeting a bunch of cool people single friends and now I'm going into a panel on polishing animation my name is Pierre Derek tots DreamWorks Animation and I think it's something that maybe didn't follow well enough but my my tip would be to be patient and explore what's around what's out there so just make sure you explore and try different things piece of animation advice go alright so I would say every time before it's tough in a shot always ask yourself why why are you gonna waste the time people watching five second text 30 second test like what is here in the acting that is going to grab them because then I think that's gonna make you really think about the choices what is that and the wife for me Juna generally it's just it's always entertaining it's just making something sort of people want to watch it again and again so don't do an animation exercise make sure that entertaining alright so just left the animation mentor yearly thing where we all hang out together I'm holding a light so this is but yeah a lot of fun a lot of people got some good tips in there so hope it was helpful alright day two here we go good morning we're here at CTN oh don't you bright uh Larry okay all right they Tennessee TN hopefully get some good tips for you guys today we are headed right now to a animation talk on the incredible student all right so I'm here for another panel this is the winding paths of animation basically there's a bunch of panels going on at the event and I've just been hitting as many as I can with different friends that I know or people that I know that I want to be friends with giving cool talks and lectures on different things this one we have JP which if you haven't already seen the subjects video you should F interpret an amazin acting lesson for your animation shots and he's gonna be here giving a panel there was also one with Michael Baqarah wits of the animation collaborative he's a Pixar animator who's got a school that I think I've mentioned before maybe I should definitely check out the animation collaborative I'll put the links in the description but he's here talking about his shots on Incredibles 2 and his processed and blocking and all that kind of stuff it's super super in-depth really really awesome check out the school because he does a bunch of cool workshops and stuff especially if you've already done animation mentor or if you have some training and you want to get more in depth and they were there just completely open arms come we'll give you a review and I was so intimidated that I didn't do it and I never showed my stuff I had never shown anybody which is don't do that if you're here today show as many people as you can because you never know what's gonna happen you're gonna create contacts we're gonna get feedback the best thing you can do ask as many people as you can but that was my big regret I never show else's to it to me so here work shows Madrid all as possible get their reactions are they laughing at the jokes aleinu I'm tech designer looking at Pixar be like I think you've got to be like cherish all your life experience even though if it's not carbonated it's all gonna help you later when you know understanding people's personalities and thank you alright so yeah there's there's something that I always love to give advice on and one of the things is hard work beats talent when Talent fails to work hard which is you'll have a lot of people that are very talented but the people that are just have that perseverance and will keep working hard will get that talent I would just will become better at it and they will highlight themselves to the public so if you have the talent that's fantastic you already have one step ahead of you and if you don't think you're a sound to the next person next to you just work hard just keep working don't take no for an answer if you are story artist just keep drawing if you're an animator keep animating keep asking questions keep asking for help don't take no for an answer I guarantee you you'll get where I am heading over to the Adobe booth hangout and time for the Meetup I'm hanging out some of you guys who are here let's go do that now [Applause] 30 seconds of advice before you go to supply and make sure you've at least got your thing probably down to at least pours you know elaborate take them in don't know that I mean oh lab right oh so you get your blocking it's a really cool poses your characters doing the thing they're doing thing and then you go to supply and it starts getting blocky take it back into step mode and then maybe add a couple in-betweens make those in between just crazy as big as you can get it and then just keep going back in I'll go back in between spine and stuff like that working the hips and then again oh you dear I know I work at weight forward and I do animation all day so here is the Adobe booth they're here this year the first time is TPN showing off After Effects character animator animate CC and Photoshop the pipeline with all of them working together for animation so super stoked to see them here demoing new products and just helping people figure out what it is they can do with all their awesome tools what you guys already know I use like everything the product that I spend most of my time with is character animator and UI designer for the team and glasses I want to drink same out of straw I could do that how'd it become so these are just parts of the Photoshop file so I say when I press the 1 key show this play this hide this you know get to do a video game controller all sorts of stuff and now I have a rapid-fire zero gravity chick blaster so within just a couple of minutes I got my character who used to be just a flat static Photoshop file walking and moving so I would say definitely you know check us out again if you have creative pug RDF character animator and we're really interested in continuing this work flow of animate after effects character animator Photoshop Illustrator everything working together in harmony to allow you to have you know one great animation package and if there's things that you feel are not working we want to hear your feedback and brutally honest feedback because that's what's gonna make us better okay so I'm editing the video right now and I need a good transition from this point of the video to the next thing so I'm going to show you the weird thing that happened at this CTN and this person's here every year they never understand why see for yourself there you go another something completely different hi my name is Sean Kelly my animator and Industrial Light and Magic and the co-founder of animation mentor and I'm supposed to give you a piece of advice a piece of advice that I like to tell my students is to be bold and not be afraid to fail that embrace failure fail big fail spectacularly just try something mess up learn from that try another thing mess up run for that trying to think fail trying to think fail and all those failures are learning experiences where you're getting better each time better each time better each time and you fail fail fail fail fail pretty soon you're doing really good animation so embrace failure go hey I'm active I'm afraid our carrot time later a tip I'd recommend using is animation layers I fell if you need to add to the animation and you're not sure it will impact animation you can always delete this layer you can also change your pasty of the animation there so guys we left the convention center for a little bit we are over here with Adobe getting dinner so excited to eat hang out with one of the presenters that'll be fun then we're gonna go back to to CTN and watch Carlos Diana's film La Noria which is a horror short an animated horror short that we've been waiting for for years ever since it was a Kickstarter and it's finally done and winning awards everywhere let's go eat my name is Peter I am being an animator the booster kinematics to the last ten years and my animation tip is if you're afraid to show your animation don't worry everybody experiencing impostor syndrome at one point and period periodically it comes back so it's relaxed show your work and get some feedback well you know as an animator from feeding the beast The Lion King Hunchback of Newton Dom Prince of Egypt spirits oh he worked the dreamers to How to Train Your Dragon and enchanted yes I'm talking about James the person behind the proud family space Jim Tarzan Emperor's New Groove and many others [Applause] you're in stop-motion boxtrolls who though and the two strings come on Missy link here she is Rochelle and incredible one and two cards wanted to brave ratatouille finding dory up and inside out Michael I am fried Norman and I've been in the animation business for a long long time mainly at the Walt Disney Studios as this 83 year old have some long advice to young aspiring animators and artists and storytellers my word of advice is love what you do I mean truly love it as we did when we started out back in mid-century Disney love what you do and work hard really hard if you do those two simple things you will make it in this business that's my advice to all of you [Laughter] Jesse carbonara I'm director fruity acquisition and we're here to give you a few just helpful tips or what we hope is helpful tips looking to gather your resume and reel so the first thing we're gonna say is for you real make sure or your portfolio this advice goes for both make sure you put only your favorite and best work less is more don't worry about you need 20 pieces or whatever else it's about the work you're proud of quality over quantity M and always be able to walk through your work and talk about what you like and what you would have done differently if you had more time that's a lot of what interview is about is the choices and understanding what you can improve on and understanding your own limitations and own strengths for resumes we put all your information on there we want to know who you are what you've done what your skills are put your phone number your website your email let us know how we can get in contact with you another thing LinkedIn we love it recruiters look at it all the time be on it if you have web sites like Instagram social media make sure you just have a separate one for all your artwork so we know where to look and what we're looking at and if you worked on you know projects that you are concerned about that either had maybe you know if you're an animator and complex' rigs or something make sure you write how long it took you to do a particular project because if you did something really quickly and like a day the guys can understand as they're reviewing their portfolio that that was actually what you actually accomplished in that time and so knowing how long it took you is actually really good context and especially if you have you know tools that maybe are does complex's some of the studios it gives them some context so hopefully this helps you guys I'm Dave Warner I am a senior experience designer lead whatever that means for the Adobe character animator team and so adobe character animator allows you to take your face and voice and as you move your head and talk naturally and press some triggers it animates a character so it's making you know allows you to do live animation which is kind of a weird concept if you're just getting started out with animation I would definitely give Cara tomato a try I think there's one of the easiest ways to get into animation name's ryan physic animator at DreamWorks advice to video records it's good learn how to copy some of it but then don't look at anymore and make it your own you know so you don't make it to video preference eat be prepared to move if you want any animation because you're probably going to have to and the contracts aren't always going to be what you want them to be but how you get started and look for unique ideas even if your animations that great your ideas will take you further than the animation you know always work on being a good storyteller and good ideas it's kind of hard to know what that means sometimes but I'm just wandering around the VR area and I'm gonna check out the oculus quest demo which is the wireless oculus headset Dizzy's here they have their short cycles and there's a bunch of other companies here just showing off their cool tech and their programs they can help you animate NVR which is super super awesome as you've been checking out all these different artists all these trim people who are selling their work selling prints giving real reviews critiques all the studios are here doing it there's different companies showing off their tablets like welcome they're here doing that mm 19 September times 19 next year and we're finishing up a wrapping up and my advice to you know the new new story r2d2 [Music] we clear with your ideas trying to plan a way of more tea without needing to read the dialogue and that way you can have people understand what your few are trying to say without having to spin trying to figure out what yours right sick so be clear and a lot of times experiences to make them alive is to make make them a part of you a little bit that's it good luck and and good work morning is reborn gonna reward a lot that job it's just a lot of rewarding so I'm James Baxter I have been animating and directing animation for about thirty years and I want to say as far as being an animator and getting to become an animator the most important thing I think is to learn the craft of animation not from a software point of view you can use whatever software you want you can hand draw it you can do it in CG you can do it with puppets you can do whatever you want to do but the most important things to learn how to communicate with an audience so all those lessons about like how to do clear posing how to like understand weight and balance how animation works as far as squash and stretch and anticipation and all this animation thing things apply to any type of animation whether it's stop-motion on hand drawn on computer learn those things because you can pick up a computer piece of software and learn it in a week that's not the difficult part the difficult part is learning how to be a performer with a puppet or with a drawing or with the computer model that's the part that's the hardest to learn and the part you should concentrate on learning so I would concentrate on if you're doing drawings be able to do clear drawings that communicate what you intend for them to communicate if you're doing animation concentrate on mechanics of it and where the weight is and the timing and the spacing and those things and if you're interviewing like storyboards or visual development and stuff like that yeah present things which are clear and for audience those very brief things I would say about just becoming an animator and the other ingredient is to be a friend of mine said this the other day which I thought was great be brave and cheeky so when you're trying to get a job be brave and cheeky put your foot in the door get to know people I hand out your card send people your work use any opportunity you can to like get yourself as an artist in front of the people that might want to employ you and also to do it in such a way that you become the perfect thing that they're looking for if you're actually applying for a job at Cartoon Network tailor your portfolio to what they do and create portfolios for different kinds of people for different kinds of applications and put that stuff up front you want to open someone's portfolio and the very first thing you see is like oh I want that in my show and then maybe put one like halfway through and then one at the end but you want to like tailor make yourself to fit whoever you're wanting to work with as far as being an artist and then you have your regular portfolio which covers everything and you work online but applying for a job is different applying for a job is becoming the perfect person for them and being cheeky and brave that's what I would say all right so that's the end of day 3 at CTN it's been wild I am exhausted but it's been a great time talking to lots of cool people running around trying to get as many interview cooks for you guys as possible and also a lot of the guys that you've seen and a lot of people that you haven't seen have offered to do future interviews on the channel a lot of really talented artists who are going to be sharing their advice and their experience with you guys on here so stay tuned for more great interviews and tech tips and Tekken come Adobe there's a lot of companies here at CTN and it's exciting to see Adobe here because that means they're listening and they care and they want us to do better and have more stuff to make what we want to make and that's always good so thanks Adobe awesome thank you alright that's it for this video I'll see you guys in the next one you

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 36,566

Keywords: advice for artists, advice for animators, animation advice, james baxter, floyd norman, legendary animators, animation tips, adobe character animator, after effects animation, photoshop animation, adobe animate, character design, 3d animation, 2d animation, ctnx, animation mentor, animation collaborative, michal makarewicz, animation interview, story artist, animation portfolio, demo reel tips, demo reel advice, animation recruiter, vr animation, animation apps, animation

Id: 6UsxsZvsioE

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 23 2018