[fragamite]

Hello. I want to learn/get better at animating characters. I'm much more interested in learning the skill animation than learning different computer programs. (I allready got maya and max with manuals in school)

so anyone got any tips? I've been trying to get my hands on the book "Illusion of life: disney animation" for over a year but it is impossible.. (anyone want to sell a copy to me?)
also websites with ifo would be appreciated

and lastly: what is a good program for doing 2d animations? I have done lots of stick figures in flash but I still like deluxe paint 4 for the amiga better, anything similar for the pc available?

phew

[napalm]

Hey! Well having taken classes in 2d animated drawing, stop-motion and 3d animation i can safely say that if you are going to do 3D animation that you should definitely take a stop-motion course or just try some out yourself. It really helped me learn how things should move - if you mess up one frame doing that, there's no UNDO in life If you try to learn animation right on the computer then you will tend to think that the keyframe interpolated defaults are OK, but they arent! Too many people just accept what the software give them, when they really should get in there and spend a few hours tweaking the animation curves to get realistic and interesting motion.

doing 2d on the computer still isnt easy, with the exception of drawing everything in flash, which i personally hate Most studios still hand-draw the work, scan and then use the computer for ink, paint and sequencing. One such program is Softimage's Toonz, rather pricey but maybe you can get a demo copy (ahem).

Looking for that disney book, try ebay!@# ALSO, a definite must have for character animators: Eadweard Muybridge's series of photographic sequences, there are small books with selected works which are good to start - i own a mother of a book that cost about $75, with hundreds of studys. The smaller paperbacks will probably do you just fine. Check on amazon or bn.com. If you cant find the disney book you want I have a book here called "Cartoon Animation" by Preston Blair which i picked up at a local barnes and noble, also quite informative and helpful with many many examples of hand-drawn animation.

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napalm (cia productions)
http://www.creators.org

[fragamite]

thanx! very helpfull

[Joachim]

Hey Fragamite,

It's nice to hear that someone else on this board finds animation interesting.
Why is there a problem to find the book Illusion of life ?!? Disney released a new version of this book with 250 pages less than the original, but these pages are just not-so-interesting information on how Disney started and what kind of a man Walt himself was, which means not that very important.

You can order the book at amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786860707/o/qid%3D944862306/sr%3D2-1/1 02-9787937-7865605
best book ever made !

Oh! I didn't notice that the book wasn't available anymore....Maybe you should find some place on internet where people sell used stuff and search for it. I bought the original red big lovely book for a very cheap prize.

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DonBarrum
web: http://home.sol.no/~jbarrum/

[This message has been edited by Joachim (edited February 28, 2000).]

[Danny]

The Illusion of Life is probably the best one you can buy indeed. I've got the First Hyperion Edition here which is 575 pages PACKED with cool info. For those who don't know, it's written by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, arguably the most famous Disney animators ever. Maybe you could try searching for it by it's ISBN which is 0-7868-6070-7
Another good book is Timing for Animation written by Harold Whitaker & John Halas. It's by *far* not as extensive as Illusion of life, but it can be very helpfull. ISBN for that one is 0-240-51310-X

Happy hunting..

Danny

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[email protected]

[akh]

Indeed, it is nice to hear that someone here likes animtion... I love it; its what I want to do. I think one of the well known books on computer animation is Digital Character Animation 2 by George Maestri. However, its aimed more toward the beginer, but its still a good read that has all the fundamentals. Right now, I'm a junior in high school learning Maya (I'm actually the only one in the class doing this) A book came out for it called Maya Character Animation 2... This is the best book I've ever seen! Even if you dont have Maya, I think this is a must read. The first four chapters are devoted to making story boards and creating characers. Its also in full color with great illustrations.
In the summer, I went to visit an animation studio called Calabash, which is located in Chicago (they do stuff for all the general mills cereal cartoons and a bunch of other well known stuff)
Anywho, I asked an animator there what books are good. This is what she told me:
Cartoon Color
Timing for Animation, by Harold Wittcker
Cartoon Animation, by Preston Blair
Also, the Illusion of Life is an excellent book

Sorry if this is a little long, but if you take this advice to heart, I think it'll help you a lot... I know it has for me!

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mmmmm...doughnuts

[This message has been edited by akh (edited February 28, 2000).]

[fragamite]

great! thanx guys

now that we have our own little animation tread started; do you have any absolute favorites in animation? some special styles you like?

here's some stuff I love:
*:Aeon Flux (especially the short liquid television thingies)

*:Ninja Scroll

*:Ghost in the shell (of course)
*:Guano (short films they showed on swedish tv4 some years ago. poo humor, totally brilliant stuff. if anyone know if they are awailable on video or something please tell me. I have vague feeling they were french)

*:Alice in plasmaland (swedish psycho claystuff)

err.. cant think of anything at the moment.
if anyone could recommend some dvds that would be cool :P

ps. joachim, ninja 3(d)? pleease?!
(ps2: joachim's ninja 2 animation: ftp://au.hornet.org/pub/demos/demos/1996/n/ninja2.zip )

[napalm]

Well.. Perhaps standard not worth mentioning, but Katsuhiro Otomo's famous AKIRA is one of my fav's still, mostly for the amazing visuals, detail, movement and special effects. It still blows me away.

Also one of my favorites is an out-of-print collection of 3 short animations called "Neo Tokyo" - you may have seen one segment called "running man" on Liquid Television a while back about a future race car (pod, whatever) driver. Amazing!

last year's Iron Giant is surprisingly good, make sure you check it out, it got sold short in the marketing department. In the same sort of mainstream realm, Prince of Egypt has some great visuals in it.

For some emotional animation, or to see how to make people cry with a whole bunch of drawings.. check out "Grave of the Fireflys", its a WWII story from Japan.

For stop-motion stuff, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb is quite interesting, and Tim Burtons work on the Nightmare before Christmas and James & The Giant peach is amazing.


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napalm (cia productions)
http://www.creators.org

[SightX]

Before any of you start doing 2d-animations on computers, I would get a camera, a video capture card, and Adobe Premiere....you can get a "demo" pretty *cheep* It is the only program that lets you do a manual capture frame by frame(if anyone knows of other programs PLEASE..please please! let me know)Use paper cutouts(or draw if you are good enough to be consistent) Start with a bouncing ball, If you can get a ball to convey emotion then you have really got something. Another tip. The EYES are the most important Secondary motion there is, never let the eye stay still, it will make your animation look dead(this is for animating people and faces of course). I hope some of this helped a little.

Your Local X.


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-NSM - SightX