Pandas animation tricks #20

Hey everyone. This video I talk about isolated movement which is a HUGE problem for animators who are just getting started. Not a whole lot more to say about this one. Until Next time guys!

Pandas animation tricks #19

Hey everyone! It has been a long time since I posted anything. I have to say that finishing up on Free Birds at Reel FX was really tough. We had a lot of long hours and a lot of stuff to accomplish. But we did it! Now I am back to regular hours on Reel FX's new film, Book of Life. That means I finally have some more time to get back into making videos and posting things up. Hopefully I will have a few months before we get into crazy town on this new film. As far as the video for this time around. I felt like I would talk about something I actually had trouble with when I was first learning animation. That problem is posing out a character that is both appealing in a 2d image plane but is also built on a solid foundation in cg. You will understand more as you watch the video. If you guys have any questions feel free to ask. I love hearing from all of you!

Pandas animation tricks #18

Hey guys, I am back with another video, this time I talk about a trick that will help you edit your graph editor curves more quickly and more accurately than scaling. In certain situations this is a far superior method and it is something everyone should have in their back pockets. Hope everyone enjoys!

Update on whats been going on with me. I moved down to Dallas and I have been at Reel FX for about 3 months now. It has been a really great adventure, starting out working on a movie is an amazing opportunity and the film is looking pretty funny. Everyone is really gonna enjoy it I think. Sorry I haven't made a new video in awhile, you know, new job, moving, getting settled, it all takes awhile. But yeah, things are going good, and hopefully I can get back into the swing of things as far as making videos goes again. Now that I am used to my new schedule.

Pandas animation tricks #17

Hey guys, sorry again for missing last months video.  I had a lot of stuff going on which got in the way of me making a video.  I am back now and I have a new video for you, this time about opposite actions.  I hope you guys enjoy it and learn something.  As always if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions leave me a comment below!

Pandas animation tricks #16

In this video I talk about Timing and Spacing. I know that this is a little out of the ordinary for me. I have avoided trying to do basic principles based videos up until now but I figured it was worth it just to clear up the confusion that a lot of people seem to have about the topic. I know I talk about spacing a lot in this video but I really beleive it is one of the most powerful tools an animator has to work with. As far as getting better at spacing it is a matter of practice and looking at professional work to get a feeling for what your work should look like. If you guys have any questions feel free to leave a comment and ask.

Pandas animation tricks #15

In this video is about dealing with floaty-ness in animation. Specifically floaty-ness caused by going from stepped to spline too early. To expand upon what I said in the video. The goal is to have a key roughly every 4-6 frames. If you have that before you go to spline then you should be in solid shape. You only really get in trouble when you have really long stretches where there are no keys to help sell the movement. In some cases if a move is complex you may end up having keys every 2 frame or if a move demands frame by frame changes then having a key on every frame in blocking is fine. Anyway guys thank you for watching my video, following my blog, my twitter, and supporting my endeavor to help the world animate just a little bit better.

Pandas Animation Tricks #14

This time the topic is cliches in animation. I cover a couple key cliches to avoid and talk about ways to avoid cliches you don't even know are cliches. I hope this is helpful to you guys as always. As far as the video this time I was planning on doing a video based around a larger concept. I am going to do it but for now I didn't have enough time to get all the prep materials ready. This next one I got cooking is gonna require me to animate a shot as a demonstration. So you guys can look forward to seeing that sometime next month!

Pandas animation tricks #13

In this video I talk about pacing and rhythm and how they apply to animation. To help illustrate the ideas I show clips from films in an attempt to make things clear. To be honest this topic is kind of hard to explain quickly but I took my best shot at it. Also, sorry for the poor quality of the videos I showed they were pulled of the internet.

Pandas animation tricks #12

In this video I talk about using locked cameras. Basically I talk about the advantages of using locked cameras and how you lock your cameras so you don't accidentally mess up your camera set up. Pretty simple stuff. Hope you guys learn something. Oh and as always if you have any questions please feel free to ask. I always make sure to get back to you guys about any questions.

Random Update: So I am officially going to CTN. If you guys are going to CTN let me know I would love to meet some of you guys. In related news I am trying to get my reel ready for CTN so I am going to be pretty busy for the next month or so. Which means there may not be any videos for a little while.

Pandas animation tricks #11

In this video I talk about animating weight shifts and the general thought process that goes into shifting the weight of the body. Sorry about the audio quality guys, it isn't nearly as good as it has been recently. Anyway I will try to have another one as soon as I can. I have actually generated a list of ideas now so I can start going through those as I find the time. A couple of the ideas I have are fairly large in scope so those should be interesting to tackle. Anyway guys I hope this helps a few of you out. Until next time!

If you are interested in using Lt Dan you can get it here.

Pandas animation tricks #10

On this edition of Pandas animation tricks I am talking about tracking spheres. A quick little trick that can help refine the spacing of an animation in the later stages of spline and polish. Not much to say about this one other than, I hope you find it useful.

In other news I am about to wrap up workshop 5 of ianimate. It has been a great workshop thus far and I have really been enjoying myself. One more workshop to go and I am ready to jump back into the fray.

Pandas animation tricks #9

Hey everyone. In this Pandas animation tricks segment I am showing how I use the free application screen marker which is a nifty little tool that lets you draw over any application. In the video I cover how I use screen marker when I animate and what I feel that it is good for. I hope you guys enjoy this one. You can download screen marker here...

http://www.screenmarker.com/

Pandas animation tricks #8

Hey guys, in this edition of pandas animation tricks I talk about my method for finding my characters when I start an acting shot. It is a pretty simple video and concept, nothing to crazy going on here. So please enjoy. I am as always hoping to hear some suggestions about videos you guys might want me to do. So until next time guys.

Pandas animation tricks #7

This series of videos is about lip sync. I have noticed that there aren't that many free resources on doing lip sync in cg and felt I could do something about that. The sad fact is that if you follow the sync examples in books they mostly don't work in cg. I am honestly not sure why that is, but in cg we have our own method. Now I will tell you I am not amazing at sync but these videos will give you an idea of what you should be shooting for and how you might go about doing sync in the first place. A big thing to remember is that reference is king. Get reference of either yourself or someone else doing the sync and use that as your base. Also in sync a good idea is try to use as few controls as possible. Using fewer controls means you have less to fight with and can concentrate on doing good sync. I really hope you guys enjoy these videos, it took me a long while to record them and then upload them. I know its been awhile since the last video but I hope this makes up for it. As always if there are any questions feel free to ask. Oh and sadly I don't have anything to show from ianimate yet. But I promise that soon I will be able to share my new shots with you guys.

EDIT: DJ Nicke has a great post on his blog on doing sync in cg. Has roughly the same idea but is has a few other tips and such that will be usefull.

Pandas animation tricks #6

In this edition of Pandas animation tricks I talk about eye movements and just share some general ideas and notes about eyes and eye movements.

IMPORTANT. A note I forgot to mention in the video which is very very important is the idea of the 8 frame hold. Whenever we look at something it takes 8 frames for us to register what we are seeing. So when you dart or move the eyes you cant move them again for 8 frames. You can hold as long as you want but that is the minimum time. Granted there is always sway. If you can only manage to find 7 frames it will be OK just don't do it too often.

Anyway I hope you guys find this useful and as always if you have any questions for me about this or anything else just put them in the comments section. If it is a good enough question I may even make a whole segment of panda's animation tricks just to answer your question. Anyway have a good one guys.

PS. I was just linked to this which is a breakdown created by animation mentors tips and tricks section about animating eyes. It also has some good information in it.

Pandas animation tricks #5

I got a couple of questions from someone who actually watches these videos and made this edition of pandas animation tricks all about the questions that were asked of me. Sorry it took me so long to get this video up for you! Been very busy. Just quickly this is a video mostly about which kinds of curve tangents I use and why I use them the way I do. this was touched upon in an earlier video I did but I go into greater depth here.

Pandas animation tricks #4

Hey guys this video is about my general maya set up. I also show how to set up your own selection buttons using a mel script and a quick run through of layers and how they can be helpful. In the video I talk about setting up maya to adjust all viewports at the same time but couldn't find the setting in the settings/preferences section. I found it though and to change that setting you go to settings/preferences - Timeline - update view- then select all instead of active. Anyway guys if you have any questions for me about this stuff let me know. Its pretty simple stuff but people were asking so I figured I would go ahead and throw this out there. I don't know what I am going to do for the next one but I am going to try to make it pretty cool. That is enough about this, onto general news.....

So to catch up with what I have been doing for the last couple weeks. I started Ianimate and have been animating my first shot which is really close to being done. I am working on the lip sync and having a horrible time trying to get it to look right. I have done it, started over, and done it again, multiple times. Part of the problem is my lack of skill with lip sync in general. The other problem is the design of the character I am using....giant chin. For you animation friends out there you can maybe see how that might be a problem. On the brighter side I have started planning on my second shot which should be a lot more fun than this last one since it isn't so stoic and strong and a bit more loose. Ianimate in general is pretty cool! I have met a lot of cool guys who are producing some great work. The couple of dreamworks guys I have talked to are super cool and my instructor Tal is a class act all the way and its been a treat to be in his class. Besides a number of tech problems that I have been dealing with, either with the site or the conferences its been a pretty cool experience so far. I have never been in a group of animators who are so skilled and into animation as myself. That change is so welcome I can hardly express it in words. The push to get better is so strong being around animators of that class that I have really started to probe at where my weaknesses are and thinking about how I am going to remedy those and push beyond my current level. That is awesome! Because I haven't had that drive since I worked on stuff for Tart at the Art Institute which was well over a year ago now. As for the job hunt there has been a bit of a dry spell as far as industry work is concerned. I keep seeing the same five jobs which I have already applied for popping up. As usual nothing at entry level and everyone is looking for at least 3 years of experience. I am not going to let it get me down, all I can do is keep working, pushing, and hoping that I will eventually get so good as an animator that people would be nuts to not give me a shot.

Pandas animation tricks #3

Ok, a 2 parter this time. I break down here how I go about doing a ball bounce. Now please note the important video is the first one, the good information is all in that video. The second video is all technical crap and me sort of just moving stuff around in maya. If you actually are new to animation and maya watch both videos. If you are more experienced you can skip the second video, but give the first video a watch, I think you might get something out of it. Oh I am also doing a bunch of these because I have a feeling once I get going with ianimate that I am not going to be able to make very many of these so that is my excuse for the excess of knowledge sharing.

NOTE::: This video is about a realistic representation of a bouncing ball, However you can adjust this work flow to do just about anything. Timing yourself doing actions is also a very good way of finding your timing. I know a lot of people like to work on Bouncing balls with "character". To those people I would tell you to act out whatever you want your ball to do and get your timing off of that. Take video reference of yourself, or just use a stopwatch but get solid character based reference for your character ball.

On a personal bullshit note I just spent two days searching for audio clips to use for my upcoming animation for IA. That was a bit of hell, trying to figure out how to rip audio off of a dvd, I finally managed it but I dont know why it had to be that hard. Another thing I noticed was the strange thing about AI and IA. what do I mean? Ok I am from Iowa which abbreviated is IA, I went to school at the Art Institute of Dallas or the art institute AI, and I am now going to ianimate, which of course is being called IA...strange, no?

Pandas animation tricks #2

Alright so on this segment of Pandas animation tricks I am talking about using the buffer curve snapshot and using that to adjust your curves. I hope this is helpful to some people, I don't really have an idea about the next thing I want to cover so if there are any requests for things to cover I would like to hear them.

Pandas animation tricks #1

Hey guys I am doing a new series of videos where I show you some of my animation tricks. Things I use in Maya a lot and how they are helpful to me. I figured I should put something on my blog that isn't just my work or me lamenting about my work so here you go. Giving back, its a good thing. Oh and per request I went through my blog and put labels on everything so now searching for old blog posts will be much easier for people now....Woot!