Tips and Tricks

Okay so you wanna know some tips and tricks on animation? Well I can tell you there are tips but no tricks. The best was to grow as an animator is to practice. Study all of the principles and know them inside and out. When you are animating you don't want to bog your mind down with principles. You want them to become second nature. The main focus should be to deliver a good performance. You want to make sure that the scene is clear and delivering the best possible way to the audience. Start with the basics and work you way up. If you are new to animation, the worst possible thing would be to jump into acting scenes. You must start with a solid foundation and apply what you have learned as you get more experienced. It's like putting a third grader into college and expecting them to do well. You need to go through all of the education and experience before you can handle something on a more advanced level. The same applies to animation. You must start by crawling then you can learn to walk then you will just run with it. Animation is a learning experience that will never end. But if you know the basics and keep practicing, you will get better. I by no means claim that I'm a good animator. what I can tell you is that I'm a million times better then I was 5 years ago. I did what I just said not to. I began with acting excercises and didn't know squat about the principles. I heard of them but I never knew how to apply it to my work. This is when I decided to take a step back and begin over. I learned the huge importance of planning. I was that kid in elementry school who would draw all the time. Kids would come up and say "what are you drawing" and I used to say "I don't know yet." I took this same approach to animation for a long time. I would jump on the evil box and begin animating. Now, I don't even turn on the machine until I'm 100% clear of my idea and performance. Sometimes, I do admit I will run into a problem with how my scene will play out. This is when I stop sitting at the computer and either act it out, draw or both. Don't touch the box until you know what you are about to do. I promise you that if you are to compare someones work who planned it out well verses someone who just winged it, the planner will come out on top. So with all of this being said, my "Tip" is to start with the basics and plan out your scenes. The reason most begining animators are not so good at animation is because they either didn't learn the basics or didn't plan out the scene good enough.