"Hey! I thought you'd be animating different animation scenes! Take action scenes like Kung Fu Panda! Can not wait to see!"
Sometimes we think that is how it starts. But no. Many people underestimate the power of the bouncing ball! And believe me ... It has power. The power of learning! It's the best way for you to see and understand what is happening, after all, it uses different principles to make a jump ball from here to there or anything else!

Timing is basically the number of drawings that you have in your animations. The use of math here is simple. How much more frames, longer the duration of your scene.  This principle walks hand in hand with Spacing.
Depending on the number of frames that you have a pose between A and B a pose, there are different ways of placing drawings between A and B. This will depend on how you space them. Norman McLaren once said "It's not important what goes on each frame of film, it's the spaces between the frames. That are important."

Richard Williams shows in his book a visual example of how this might look like:
 
Simply put: The "Boink" is the timing with the rhythm. And the rest is the spacing.

The path that the ball is also an Arc. In a ball is easy to see, but in real life, almost everything moves in arcs! such as the bouncing ball trajectory following an arc in the air.

Anyway, beyond the ball, also have more to do a pose. The trick is drawing is based on shapes. Most of the problems that are eating up when a character or a piece of that character moves enough so it can not be inbetweened. As the 3D animation here is not necessarily due to get the drawing. But we know that good planning is important (as Bobby Beck would say "50% planning, 50% now doing"). So make poses clear! Poses that you understand what happens when you hit with your eyes! 

Here is my assignment for week 3! See ya!

Principles?! There is such a thing in an animation?
Yes! And they are the key to a good animation. You can not escape these principles as you can not escape the summation and multiplication in mathematics, for example. They were created by nine old man, legendary animators who worked and made ​​several classic Disney films.
Most of this on recipes below should appear in all scenes, for the comprise the basis for full animation:

   
- Timing; 
- Solid Posing; 
- Slow In & Slow Out; 
- Arcs;
- Squash & Stretch;
- Anticipation;
- Follow Through & Overlapping Action;
- Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose;
- Exaggeration;
- Secondary Action;
- Appeal;
- Staging.

Take a look on this video created by Panop Koonwat presenting all the principles of animation.


In assignment this week we don't animate yet, but also discovered the importance of pose. Whether or not an animation is a set of extreme poses and their intermediary! Dan Graham called extreme poses as "a story-telling drawing". An animator must certainly be sensitive to poses and gestures that portray the various moods and emotions that story telling demands. 

It's also good to know about line of action. 
As described in the book by Preston Blair "The line of Action is the basis for simplicity rhythm, and in animation directness. Start your animation with a line of action. Then draw the Skeleton and the details."

Anyway ... Here is my assignment for week 2.
 ... See ya!

 

I was so busy and adapting to this new process in my life that I hadn't  time to organize my ideas in this blog where I want to keep works and learnings along the road of my life. Anyway I started!

In my first term (Basic Foundations), me and the other nine amazing classmates are being mentored by Mathew Rees! In addition to a very funny British and willing to teach, he is senior animator on Aardman! I feel very lucky and excited to be in his hands this first part of the Animation Mentor!

In the first week we getting familiar with people on campus and learned how to use and make use everything the site has AM. And aren't few things... Every week we have a lecture with a different goal recorded for funny founders: Bobby, Shawn, Carlos and guests. We have access to a library with a looot of material... Since the Maya tips until designing drafted to get the best use of our abilities! 

Here there is already a lot of emphasis on practicing a lot, draw all day and don't be afraid to fail... On the contrary, enjoy the mistakes! Because has no better way to learn than missing. And the mentors and colleagues on the campus are there to criticize and correct frame to frame everything you do!

In coming posts I will try to show my experiences learned by every week :).