Animation is fun and entertaining to watch, but it is not easy to produce a good quality animation. If you are keen to become an animator, learn to animate with the following pointers:
1. Be passionate in your animation.
Animation is a form of art and you have to be passionate about what you animate. You have to love what you do and treat all your animation like your baby. At times you might feel that the animation process is tough, this is when you need to have your passion to keep you going. Think of how you can improve it, think of how you can make it more realistic and finally, think of how your audience will be proud of you when they see your animation.
2. Learn to be meticulous in your work.
Be observant when you are looking at all the details of your animation. If you are unsure of what went wrong in your animation, search for references on YouTube and compare the references with your animation. Most animators practice video recording of their own action and use it as their reference. Every small detail counts in your animation. If you put in effort to make each small detail looks good, the final animation outcome will look convincing and of good quality.
3. Be objective when you are receiving critics from audiences.
Most of the time you will be hearing negative comments on your animation, specially when you just started learning animation. However, do not take these comments personally. Your friends or family who give you these feedbacks are the ones who are able to point out your errors or mistakes. In fact, you should be asking more specific questions to verify where the problems are. For example, when someone tells you that the animation is weird, you should ask more precise questions such as, "Are the errors coming from legs movement? Are the hands movement not swinging smoothly?"
4. Always set a goal or target to your animation.
Before you even start to animate, you should have already planned what you want to achieve at the end of the day. The goal serves as a check point during your animation process. You will consistently check to make sure your animation is looking closer and closer to what you had in mind. You might not be a good artist to draw storyboards or sketches, but you must find references to serve as a check point. A couple of relevant videos you had found on YouTube can be very useful because you can view the video repeatedly as comparison.
Tip #1:
Which player should I use to view video?
Quicktime movie player is a great playback software to view video. It allows you to playback the video frame by frame using the left and right arrow key so that you can observe actions and motions in detail.
Tip #2:
How do I view YouTube video with Quicktime player?
You can use www.keepvid.com to download video on YouTube for your own reference. It allows you to download the video at various format and most importantly, you can download the video at MP4 format which allows Quicktime movie player to play it.
Nash Lin is an expert in multimedia and animation industry. He has 7 years of creating animation for games and 3D video trailers. To find out more about animation, visit http://ilearntoanimate.com/
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