Bad Animation Advice - DON'T Listen to These 6 Tips!

I've been looking forward to this video for a while now some of this advice I'm about to talk about is gonna be something that you guys are like oh good that's a relief to hear thank you for that and other stuff I'm gonna say well you may be a little bit more controversial we'll see but I want to just get this out of the way and to say that all advice well not all advice most advice comes from a good place and may be applicable in some cases but you need to question things there's a lot of stuff that I've heard advice that has been given to people some of it's just plain wrong and other stuff is more that it depends right you have to think about who gave the advice when did they give it is it so relevant does it work for you specifically why did they give that advice and are you interpreting it properly we're gonna get into some of that but let's just jump in by the way hi I'm sir wait and they do a ton of animation stuff here on the channel so if you haven't already subscribe down below and bring that notification bell so you don't miss new uploads twice a week now any gonna hang out live asking any questions about this kind of stuff watch me do animation in Maya or blender or whatever we end up doing link below to twitch and animation tutoring on patreon and so on all the links down below but let's talk about some animation advice that I have heard people been given that I do not agree with and of course these are my opinion so if you disagree that's okay we can have a nice discussion in the comments on discord wherever you want what does keep instructive alright piece of advice number one comes from milk call one of the nine Disney animators the nine old men someone that you probably wouldn't think that I'd be disagreeing with and normally I wouldn't however I do think there's a little bit more information to this piece of advice the advice comes to us through Richard Williams as the animators survival kit the book that many of you know about link below in case you're looking for animation books the advice is to unplug to not listen to music while animating and if you have not heard this clip before if you've not familiar with this particular piece of advice here's a great little animation that kind of sums it up excuse me know you ever listen to classical music when you're working I'm not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time the advice is found between pages 41 and 45 of the animators survival kit and it basically explains that your animation will improve if you work in silence if you completely focus and concentrate on your work now I don't want to just come out and say like this is wrong shouldn't but there is something I think to think about here we all learned differently we all work differently workflows can be totally varied from artists artists and while some people really focus in well when there's quiet others find the silence almost more distracting than the noise as far as my interpretation I think the part of the advice that is important is that there are parts of the animation process that you need to concentrate and really focus and not get distracted if you have any amount of your brain resources being taken up by that then it's taking away from what you're putting into your work that I understand it I think it makes some sense however I think just like I said everyone a little bit different I personally can't really listen to a lot of music while I'm working sometimes I like to but I do find myself getting distracted by the music in terms of like I don't like the song skip the song go to this other playlist that it I to antsy when playing music so I actually listen to audiobooks some people listen to podcast I know a lot of really great professional animators who animate the podcast every single day and it doesn't distract them I know other artists who work while the office is on in the second screen and they watch TV while they work on their shots that I just don't understand because I absolutely cannot do that I will turn I will watch it I will not do any work but the point is that everybody's a little bit different and what kind of works for you may not work for somebody else so if you are someone who having some instrumental music helps you focus and helps you tune in then it's okay to listen to music you don't have to like go away from that if someone told you so and it also depends on the part of your animation that you're working in if you're just blocking stuff out for me that's when I find it's the most helpful to have something to listen to because my brain can passively listen to that and just absorb a story or something as I work on stuff that doesn't require a whole lot of brainpower for me to figure out the mechanics or something but once I start getting to the policy stuff face any kind of dialogue I have to turn off my sound and I do work in a lot of times silence or at least instrumental music because the lyrics will distract me or having a podcast or anything with words I can't I can't do it and that's just me so figure out what works best for you but don't just blindly say okay no music allowed especially if it doesn't help you focus in the first place if it's something that you have to maintain a playlist you've got to change a TV show you've got to keep saying yes I'm watching or something like that then it may not be that helpful because you are gonna get pulled back and forth from your work get into your zone get in your flow state and move forward with no distractions that's the point bad advice number two I call this bad advice because this one is bad advice I just I'll say it and if you disagree that's fine but I'll say this bad advice someone once told me and I hear this from a ton of students especially in the live streams I get this question all the time do you need to be responsible for everything visually in your demo reel no let me say it again no you don't have to be responsible for everything on screen now obviously if you are applying for say an animation job and it's your animation demo reel then yeah you should only be really showing your work however that doesn't mean you have to model and texture and rig all the characters that doesn't mean you have to light and render the environment if you go to a school or if you work in a place or if you're just doing it on your own or whatever if you know anybody who can do those things better than you let them do what they're good at so that you can do what you're good at you can do a lot more with a good rig that somebody else made that you can actually push and get all the character in the performance and personality out of that if you have to try and like stick a rig together and try to animate that your animation abilities may be judged more because ah you know that's not really very good and you're like oh that's just because the rig I don't know how to rig it so I couldn't figure out how to do it like you don't want to run into that situation it's not a bad thing to download rigs from the internet to use them in your in your shots there are so many free rigs there are so many very inexpensive rigs that you can grab and just use for your demerol that's the point that's what they're there for they're there for you to use them subdue it and that doesn't mean it's not helpful to have so those skills if you can model some props if you can texture some objects if you can you know boost your skills a little bit to just help you get your work done that's great but don't feel like you have to do this whole like amazing project all on your own cuz you don't you need to showcase what it is you're trying to get hired for you know the top principles of animation you know how appeal is one of them well if your rig is just not appealing because you had to just kind of make it yourself and hope for the best you're already fighting an uphill battle because you've already lost the appeal you already don't have one of the twelve principles so you know give yourself the advantage and just use what's out there as far as giving credit to those other artists you may be working with if this person made an environment that's your background if this person rigged the model this person made the prop there's nothing wrong obviously with putting their names somewhere in there's credit to say hey thanks for your contribution and then you kind of all get visibility everybody sees who did what so it's your demo reel just put your name at the front to the recruiter knows who to call there's no confusion for you know the part that you did at the end you can say oh you know this character this asset this thing made by these people now if you get lucky and the studio is looking for all those different roles and they like everything they saw maybe more than one person gets the job advice number three you need to pick a style you need to pick a genre and you need to just go forward with that only and usually how that advice is given is that you either need to a pick between cartoony realistic you know a visual style of motion or option B you got to pick TV you gotta pick film you got pick games you got to go just stick with one of those that's not true that's true there's nothing saying you can't try a bunch of different things and see what you like in fact you should do that you should try as much as you can because why not now there is something to be said about when you're preparing a demo reel shirt if you're going to apply to Industrial Light and Magic ILM what a digital you know somewhere where the focus is usually more realistic animation you need to show that you can do that versus if you apply to blue sky it's gonna be more pushed to more graphic the shapes can be much more cartoony you do want to tailor your work that you're presenting to a studio to say hey I can do what you need me to do well there's nothing wrong with also including something nearly passionate about if you really enjoy game mechanics but you wanted to work at this studio doesn't mean you have to take that completely off you can include your best piece and be like also I really like this stuff recruiters want to see who you are through your work so don't feel like you have to just do everything the way that you think they want to see it because they also want to know that you're gonna enjoy this job and that should be part of it for you too you want to make sure you show what it is you like doing so that you get a job with the expectation that they know you like doing those things and so try film try to be tried games try all the different styles and mediums and things you want to do it's not like you can't switch plenty of people have worked in games and film and TV and all kinds of places it's like choosing a favorite food no one says you can't change your favorite food and in order to pick a good one you've got to taste a few things and as you taste more stuff you may change your mind and that's fine careers are long life is long you'll figure it out even people who are older I know I get that question a lot too and this isn't really a Q&A video but I get that question too of like does it matter if I'm younger if I'm older no there's plenty of people in the animation industry who start super young who start older than you would expect and it's fine so it's definitely not an issue try all the things see what you like and just do that and of course yes tailor your stuff when you're presenting and so on but you know the overall advice bad advice number four this is one that I got told when I was in school and then I got told immediately after how bad the advice was so lucky for me I didn't go very long before learning the mistake that I had been shared don't use your reference too heavily that's cheating if you use reference you're not an animator you need to be able to do it on your own without the reference run don't listen to that now the part that goes in a positive direction is sure if you can do some stuff on your own without like needing reference you're not crippled by not having it obviously that's a benefit however there's nothing wrong with using reference and it just depends on the style of animation if you're doing a really really realistic piece pretty much going to need to have reference because you're gonna miss out on all the organic stuff that you know who knows and if you're doing a more cartoony shot it might be really hard to actually get reference for what you're doing because your characters jumping in the air and fly them their legs and like doing all kinds of stuff that we can't physically do sure but there's nothing wrong with using reference especially if you're learning and we're always learning so there's really never a time where like you're not allowed to use reference anymore reference is used in a lot of professional animators workflows and it doesn't necessarily mean everybody I've even heard of movies for example rise of the guardians at DreamWorks really good movie if you haven't seen it this one the director required the use of reference and I don't know exactly how that played into things cuz I wasn't working on this movie I wasn't there at the time but that realistic style was so desired that reference was crucial and they really wanted every artist to use it in some capacity in the planning process and things like that but as a student I did reference for a shot and then my mentor told me okay cool you got that here's you know get the ideas from it and then go without it and I really struggled that was like the worst worst moment for me learning animation I struggled the most right then and there because I had an established a workflow I didn't fully understand the mechanics I had a hard really really hard time trying to get that shot done and it never really went all that well showed my next mentor what I had accomplished they were just kind of like your reference is actually really good what happened here and I just I thought I'm not allowed to use who told you that so you know then I was allowed to use at that time like no like here's how you would use reference in this particular case and I learned like ah I see you know some people will tell you like don't trace your reference into automation it's rotoscoping and like the bottom line is if someone tells you that using reference is cheating and that you shouldn't do it and that you should not use reference that is incorrect there are times where you will want to use it and times where you'll want to use it less or maybe not at all that's fine but just blanket statements say that you should use reference it's cheating that's not true and any professional animator at least most professional animators will agree with that statement number five this one's gonna get a little bit rocky stay with me here the idea or the advice that when you're animating dialogue or lip sync that you need to precede the sound by two frames that you need to animate what you're going to hear two frames later and the things need to be offset a bit I don't know where this really came from I've never been told this advice myself I just hear a lot of people asking me about like I got told this I don't I don't know where this is coming from I don't really agree with it but I also have some ideas on why it may be still valuable to consider I don't know if this is still the case but I know that at one point 2d animation was animated at 12 frames per second and you know you just had a duplicate of each frame so that 12 frames became 24 24 frames per second I don't know if that's still the case or not I'm not sure and that's an area I can actually see why having that delay could kind of give you a safety buffer but when you can control everything digitally I don't think you need to be building that into your animation now there is something to be said I actually have a video that I'm gonna link down below it's called what exactly is the present by veritasium super cool video very interesting and it talks about how the idea that whether or not our brains can handle things being out of sync and exactly which direction they can be and why the big thing that we want to take away from it is that if the audio comes before what we see is almost always a problem if your audio you hear the sound and then you see it it feels very off feels very weird but if you see it and then there is a a slight delay up to a certain threshold usually we don't really even notice it now I actually have a video on lip sync if you haven't watched it highly recommend checking it out one of the things that I kind of talked about in there is the idea of having the the lip shape kind of get ready for whatever the moment is so if you had a sound at frame 10 and you had a that goes with that sound it may look weird if you just you know go from sound to sound a sound and that's not really what our face is do it we are constantly preparing with our lip sync we're always blending ours together i mumble all the time I talk really fast and shapes get kind of jumbled but the shapes that we're making you know our brain isn't figuring out one sound one word at a time we are coming up with sentences in our head whole paragraphs we have kind of speeches that we're preparing as we talk that mental process comes out in the form of us preparing groups of shapes that blend into other shapes so really all this boils down for me to maybe you're not you know offsetting all your animation and just taking the lip-sync and then shifting it because I don't think that makes sense what I do think makes sense is using those couple of frames before a certain frame before a certain moment of sound to prepare for that so that you can deliver properly does that make sense hopefully that makes sense so that's the way that I would want to adjust the way that that information is usually interpreted but those are kind of my thoughts on that particular piece of advice and if you have anything else that you know you want to add to that again you know jump in the discord comment below that's totally fine we can talk about these things we have one last piece of advice to go into and by the way if you are enjoying this video please make sure you are subscribers you don't miss new videos if you want to see a part two I might do another part two to this where you guys can submit piece of advice that you've heard bring to another version so if this video gets 2,000 thumbs up we'll do a part two advice number six is that you shouldn't use Twitter Instagram anything other than LinkedIn basically to connect in a professional manner with a recruiter with a studio to try and get your work seen in a way that's gonna get you hired into the industry and that's a perfect example of advice that's just plain wrong and misleading and not helpful because I have talked myself personally to recruiters who say yeah we get a ton of artists you know we go on Instagram and we look for the people through the hashtags we look at who's following who and we just we find people and we find cool work and we reach out and we DM we go on Twitter like that's a great way to get notice that's a great way to get jobs you should absolutely be using those platforms to your advantage so if anyone ever tells you like no no you can only use like dinner you can only use the job portals on their specific website now don't be annoying about it don't be like gross about it and try like I'm stylin dm's I'm gonna bug the person I'm gonna message them and they're gonna get back to me like don't be weird don't be annoying just use the platforms like they were intended you know use it as a portfolio piece if your Instagram is full of your creative work to be really easy you know as you post stuff and you share your work and you're just a part of the community and you're commenting yours you're being active with the industry and with the other artists there and you're being a good supportive person lifting other artists up sharing your stuff it's all good if you approach it in that way social media is a great networking tool you can absolutely get a job from Instagram DMS from your Twitter posts but for the sake of any recruiter who may see this video or that you may come in contact with I will also let you know that if you are trying to work at a major studio or any studio and they have an online job portal don't think that you're gonna like you know slide in through like the the LinkedIn DMS and like get to the recruiter and then that's gonna be your in if they have a way that's designed for you to apply they want you to go to their website and apply through the job portal do that because there's a process in place it makes their life easier they don't want to go through a bunch of other things over here usually they're looking for cool stuff they want to talk to people answer questions and you trying to send your resume into the DMS is just gonna get annoying it's cluttery and it's not professional so use social media in a good way and absolutely use it to get hired because you can and plenty of people do just you know don't be annoying anyway hope you enjoyed this video and if you've been told any bad advice yourself whether it was at school whether it was a job please feel free to share it in the comments on discord I would love to see it especially for a potential part two to this video and again if you want to talk about any of these things if you disagree with anything I've said or you wanna add your own perspective come hang out on Twitch live three days a week link below or come hang out on patreon where we do animation tutoring good stuff like that anyways thank you for watching and we'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 57,868

Keywords: animation advice, bad advice, animation, animation mentor, animation tutorial, animator advice, demo reel, animation demo reel, student showcase, advice for animators, beginner animators, animation tips, milt kahl animation, music while animating, richard williams music, milt kahl music, animation styles, video reference maya, dialogue animation, lip sync animation, dialogue 2 frames, animation networking, animation jobs, animation interview, animation students, animschool

Id: tRf3RxzJc70

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020