I think the best tip for a beginner is to not bite off more than you can chew. Last thing you need is to be a discouraged beginner because your ambitious fight animation feels flat and janky. It takes an incredible amount of fundamental practice to get animation you're happy with.
This is a HUGE point I hope a lot of people get to read. I’m a beginner and I’ve attempted animation and gotten extremely discouraged several times due to this exact thing- I’d pour days into a simple animation expecting more frames to create the smooth effect I wanted, or find it too difficult to animate characters because I didn’t understand using motion guideline layers/etc. and I would get immediately discouraged. Picked it up again recently out of passion to start working on something and I’m forcing myself to get very used to the basics before doing anything too complicated, and I’m already noticing huge progress and my understanding has improved so much. I really hope people take this to heart
Same. I always look at anyone putting out new ways to approaching the basics. There might be a new way of approaching certain things or practicing. Especially if you have fallen out a bit.
@abcde7515 sorry the ones i use are "paid" software (pirated) and ever since my original harddrive crashed, i haven't been able to find Adobe Flash CS6 (the one i grew up one) but i think there are free online animator tools similar to Flash other than that i hear Toon Boom and Maya are good but idk if they're free or paid
@abcde7515i assume you’ve heard of it, but flipaclip is pretty good. i paid for premium after using it for like two or three years (it went on sale right sfter) and its even better now
Something I would recommend instead of a fly is a magic dot. Basically the dot is magical and can move and your goal is to add as much energy and convey to the viewer the dot’s feelings or what it is trying to do. You can even add multiple dots to make it more challenging and maybe make them interact with each other somehow. This exercise helped my improve ALOT.
I really liked seeing your approaches for handling smoke and fire. I'm one of those people that draw out the FX as well as I can from the very beginning and animate from there. But just using gestures and simple shapes to refine on the next pass, especially in the context of adhering to a specific design of FX, is something I definitely wanna try!
I just restarted teaching myself animation. I got bored with a bouncing/rolling ball, and started playing with a little inchworm moving around the scene. Before long, I was giving the critter emotions and things to do. It rolled the ball around and hit the ball to make it move. I even added comedy when the ball bounced back and pushed the worm off screen. I learned so much from that. So, yeah. These exercises make sense to me. Thanks!
As a absolute beginner in the animation field, my FAVORITE ways of learning new techniques have to be a seaweed or tail sway, smear frames, smoke clouds or learning to make fluid movement on 2's instead of 1's, yes it's ideal to learn 1s for a more professional look, but as a one man team it's overwhelming to draw more frames so suggesting twos or even 3s to hold the climax of a motion could Definitely help! Anticipation is a personal favorite of mine when actually drawing out each frame
That tip on Smoke 2 is genius and honestly so freeing to see you go through. Like, of course it makes sense to separate the movement from the design, we do it with character all the time - but for some reason it never occurred to me to do the same with FX. Thanks so much! 🙏🏻
Alex Grigg has a vid on some very basic tutorials, and none of them are a bouncing ball lol! Some of his techniques are more about shape and flow, like moving dots(like one of them you did here). Great to see this style of animating here again!!
This semester my animation course started and ive also had the itch to revisit tv paint for some personal work. This vid has perfect timing! Youre work is super inspiring and unique - keep up the great work ❤
I'm an absolute begginer at animation but I have a kinda pro level at illustrating (lol) and I'm applying for an animation college next year so this is very helpful. I'm going to start now, whish me luck
This is such an interesting approach, but it makes so much sense! I think beginners struggle alot with context, I know I did when I first started! So using the principles in more organic ways definitely resonates more with me. And to an extent, can be better translated to other organic characters.
I've always found it hard for me to just go from a bouncing ball and other exersies to more complex stuff like walking so this is the perfect middle ground! thank you for this valuable information, I will definitly try these out
I am planning to get into vfx with animation anyways and recently started learning animation fully but more on the 3d side. It’s cool to see a lot of the same principles apply 3d vs 2d
Thanks, been looking for advice on some first things to animate to help learn. I mean the Animators survival kit is great and all, but Richard Williams shows a bouncing ball and pendulum and then is like "Walks! Do walks now, do lots and lots of walks" and it's like.... walks are HARD! I feel like I need some middle ground there XD. But now the one thing I really need to learn is how people draw with vector tools... Been animating mostly in photoshop just cause I really struggle to draw with vectors >
Walks are hard! And then he goes from walks and run and hops to 4 legged!! It’s a bit overwhelming for sure but we gotta stick at it. What are you learning vector animation on? I had been using vectors on clip studio but it wasn’t going great for me, but now I’m learning to do vector cleanup on toonboom and it’s going much better
@@SsjLuxray-rs1jn I'm not saying we shouldn't learn walks, they are important, I just wish he suggested some more gradual flow into it. As for program I'm talking Animate obviously, I'm an Adobe user, but vector drawing always feels really weird to me, especially in the roughing stage, as I tend to be a very sketchy light handed artist at that phase adding pressure and darkening areas as the form takes shape. and it seems almost every animation tool I see out there works exclusively in vectors, aside Sketchbook pro, which is decent I guess for me to do that planning phase, and krita, which for me just feels like a mess to use do to me being so used to photoshop.
@@FuzzyImages yeah I get where you’re coming from and I agree- I like the idea of introducing fx and just different exercises earlier on, and having fun while learning! Oh yeah I forgot about adobe animate, I also tend to be light handed and I hate not being able to be as free with adjusting line weight and form as I would draw when I’m roughing in raster cels. What about tvpaint? I don’t use it but I think it’s a pretty well regarded software that doesn’t use vectors
for vectors , i usually do a fully animated rough lineart that's raster, then trace over with vector like inking a sketch, though adobe only has vectors ...
I actually really really liked this video! I have ADHD and one of the hardest thiings for me is not making my art and what I wanna create so overwhelming. I think too much about the final look and making it all in one go that it really disinterests me from doing it. But the way you simplified a fly to just a dot literally SOOTHED my brain. I keep forgetting to start small so it doesn't feel as scary as I go along, but this video made me feel a lot better :) Thank you
i agree!! I remember learning how to animate thin/wavy smoke when I was first starting out. practicing how the lines move and change form and stretch really helped me learn a lot of principles!
As from someone in asia, how did your parents react when you wanted to become an animator? I'm from asia as well and would like some outlook and the struggle you had to face
Trust me when i say 50% chance they either support you or telling you to get a "job". In VN the animation job market in my country is just poor, they arent as popular as IT or other career path
Something I noticed from the speedlapse of you animating is how often you play through the frames. In the few animations that I’ve made as a beginner, I would only use the onion skin or keyframes as a reference to the motion happening. Constantly flipping through the flames to check the motion isn’t something that occurred to me
When it comes to effects animation do you also animate what it's effecting? Like a destroyed building you would have to animate the pieces and any debris left during and after It's been damaged? Or when a character uses a weapon you also animate blood or parts?
I'm rather surprised to find this video as I have been practicing art for a few years now and when I was getting into animation I tried the ball, chain, squash and stretch, and etc stuff. But whenever I would get stuck on that study, or bored, I would try to animate water, smoke, fire, debris, and so on. So I'm rather happy that in my own way I discovered this and seeing a professional share my own experience is rather incredible. I really do enjoy effect animation it can make any minor thing seem way more fun and I hope to improve in my animation skills as time goes on. Thank you for the great video
I think the best tip for a beginner is to not bite off more than you can chew.
Last thing you need is to be a discouraged beginner because your ambitious fight animation feels flat and janky. It takes an incredible amount of fundamental practice to get animation you're happy with.
This is a HUGE point I hope a lot of people get to read. I’m a beginner and I’ve attempted animation and gotten extremely discouraged several times due to this exact thing- I’d pour days into a simple animation expecting more frames to create the smooth effect I wanted, or find it too difficult to animate characters because I didn’t understand using motion guideline layers/etc. and I would get immediately discouraged. Picked it up again recently out of passion to start working on something and I’m forcing myself to get very used to the basics before doing anything too complicated, and I’m already noticing huge progress and my understanding has improved so much. I really hope people take this to heart
i'm not a beginner, but it's always important to relearn the basics every now and then
Same. I always look at anyone putting out new ways to approaching the basics. There might be a new way of approaching certain things or practicing. Especially if you have fallen out a bit.
@abcde7515 sorry the ones i use are "paid" software (pirated) and ever since my original harddrive crashed, i haven't been able to find Adobe Flash CS6 (the one i grew up one) but i think there are free online animator tools similar to Flash
other than that i hear Toon Boom and Maya are good but idk if they're free or paid
@abcde7515 Try Krita
@abcde7515 opentoonz
@abcde7515i assume you’ve heard of it, but flipaclip is pretty good. i paid for premium after using it for like two or three years (it went on sale right sfter) and its even better now
I have too mich free time. Its time to be productive. Right now!😐
Production! Hurrah!
1. The buzzing fly 2:10
2. Debris/GunShot 4:37
3. Ripples and nipples X) 6:52
4. The spark 9:25
5. Smoke 1 10:31
6. Smoke 2 11:42
7. Fire 12:59
Something I would recommend instead of a fly is a magic dot. Basically the dot is magical and can move and your goal is to add as much energy and convey to the viewer the dot’s feelings or what it is trying to do. You can even add multiple dots to make it more challenging and maybe make them interact with each other somehow. This exercise helped my improve ALOT.
I really liked seeing your approaches for handling smoke and fire. I'm one of those people that draw out the FX as well as I can from the very beginning and animate from there. But just using gestures and simple shapes to refine on the next pass, especially in the context of adhering to a specific design of FX, is something I definitely wanna try!
I just restarted teaching myself animation. I got bored with a bouncing/rolling ball, and started playing with a little inchworm moving around the scene. Before long, I was giving the critter emotions and things to do. It rolled the ball around and hit the ball to make it move. I even added comedy when the ball bounced back and pushed the worm off screen. I learned so much from that. So, yeah. These exercises make sense to me. Thanks!
As a absolute beginner in the animation field, my FAVORITE ways of learning new techniques have to be a seaweed or tail sway, smear frames, smoke clouds or learning to make fluid movement on 2's instead of 1's, yes it's ideal to learn 1s for a more professional look, but as a one man team it's overwhelming to draw more frames so suggesting twos or even 3s to hold the climax of a motion could Definitely help! Anticipation is a personal favorite of mine when actually drawing out each frame
That tip on Smoke 2 is genius and honestly so freeing to see you go through. Like, of course it makes sense to separate the movement from the design, we do it with character all the time - but for some reason it never occurred to me to do the same with FX. Thanks so much! 🙏🏻
Alex Grigg has a vid on some very basic tutorials, and none of them are a bouncing ball lol! Some of his techniques are more about shape and flow, like moving dots(like one of them you did here). Great to see this style of animating here again!!
I've just started relearning animation yesterday then you uploaded this video, you're a wizard!
This semester my animation course started and ive also had the itch to revisit tv paint for some personal work. This vid has perfect timing! Youre work is super inspiring and unique - keep up the great work ❤
You are literally my animation teacher at this point lol.
when you started talking about using instincts for problem solving, i just started wiggling cuz that's how i learn!!
I'm an absolute begginer at animation but I have a kinda pro level at illustrating (lol) and I'm applying for an animation college next year so this is very helpful. I'm going to start now, whish me luck
This is such an interesting approach, but it makes so much sense! I think beginners struggle alot with context, I know I did when I first started! So using the principles in more organic ways definitely resonates more with me. And to an extent, can be better translated to other organic characters.
I've always found it hard for me to just go from a bouncing ball and other exersies to more complex stuff like walking so this is the perfect middle ground! thank you for this valuable information, I will definitly try these out
I am planning to get into vfx with animation anyways and recently started learning animation fully but more on the 3d side. It’s cool to see a lot of the same principles apply 3d vs 2d
Thanks, been looking for advice on some first things to animate to help learn. I mean the Animators survival kit is great and all, but Richard Williams shows a bouncing ball and pendulum and then is like "Walks! Do walks now, do lots and lots of walks" and it's like.... walks are HARD! I feel like I need some middle ground there XD.
But now the one thing I really need to learn is how people draw with vector tools... Been animating mostly in photoshop just cause I really struggle to draw with vectors >
Walks are hard! And then he goes from walks and run and hops to 4 legged!! It’s a bit overwhelming for sure but we gotta stick at it.
What are you learning vector animation on? I had been using vectors on clip studio but it wasn’t going great for me, but now I’m learning to do vector cleanup on toonboom and it’s going much better
@@SsjLuxray-rs1jn I'm not saying we shouldn't learn walks, they are important, I just wish he suggested some more gradual flow into it. As for program I'm talking Animate obviously, I'm an Adobe user, but vector drawing always feels really weird to me, especially in the roughing stage, as I tend to be a very sketchy light handed artist at that phase adding pressure and darkening areas as the form takes shape. and it seems almost every animation tool I see out there works exclusively in vectors, aside Sketchbook pro, which is decent I guess for me to do that planning phase, and krita, which for me just feels like a mess to use do to me being so used to photoshop.
@@FuzzyImages yeah I get where you’re coming from and I agree- I like the idea of introducing fx and just different exercises earlier on, and having fun while learning! Oh yeah I forgot about adobe animate, I also tend to be light handed and I hate not being able to be as free with adjusting line weight and form as I would draw when I’m roughing in raster cels. What about tvpaint? I don’t use it but I think it’s a pretty well regarded software that doesn’t use vectors
for vectors , i usually do a fully animated rough lineart that's raster, then trace over with vector like inking a sketch, though adobe only has vectors ...
I actually really really liked this video! I have ADHD and one of the hardest thiings for me is not making my art and what I wanna create so overwhelming. I think too much about the final look and making it all in one go that it really disinterests me from doing it. But the way you simplified a fly to just a dot literally SOOTHED my brain. I keep forgetting to start small so it doesn't feel as scary as I go along, but this video made me feel a lot better :) Thank you
i agree!! I remember learning how to animate thin/wavy smoke when I was first starting out. practicing how the lines move and change form and stretch really helped me learn a lot of principles!
Wait, I'm supposed to draw on the frames!?!
WAIT WHAT
As from someone in asia, how did your parents react when you wanted to become an animator? I'm from asia as well and would like some outlook and the struggle you had to face
Trust me when i say 50% chance they either support you or telling you to get a "job". In VN the animation job market in my country is just poor, they arent as popular as IT or other career path
being able to animating the coolest looking fire gotta be the most freeing thing in the universe
Step 1.
Cocaine
Step 2.
More cocaine
Step 3.
Death Metal and Crack laced Coffee
Real
These look so much more fun than what we have.
Just started animating yesterday and I can't wait to try these! This was super helpful~
If I could, I would give you one thousand likes for this amazing video. I have been saying this for years!
Great video.
Thank you so much.
YEAH!!! NEW VIDEO LETS GOOO 🗣🗣🗣💖💖💖💖
Ah, I needed this. They shoehorned 2d animation in the game art course I'm doing and I have no idea what to do.
You just saved me a TON of brain power trying to animate waves! I completely didn't even consider shifting a top down view 😅😮💨🫠😆🤣
im start from effect animation too it help me with timing and many more
FX animation is fun, can be fast and requires the user to experiment. A very good option for beginners like myself.
Man you are a good teacher
Something I noticed from the speedlapse of you animating is how often you play through the frames. In the few animations that I’ve made as a beginner, I would only use the onion skin or keyframes as a reference to the motion happening. Constantly flipping through the flames to check the motion isn’t something that occurred to me
Thank you for this ❤
This is so useful! Thank you!!!!
I learned so much, thank you
I've been waiting for this video 😍
this was a great video wow
Thanks my guy
Thank you so much for this video.
Thanks. This really helped me.
Hello what’s the name of the software on the screen that you guys use to practice these?
Thank you!!
When it comes to effects animation do you also animate what it's effecting? Like a destroyed building you would have to animate the pieces and any debris left during and after It's been damaged? Or when a character uses a weapon you also animate blood or parts?
What version of tvpaint you use?
Good Video, very interesting ;)
Dope!
We’re all the effects animated on 1s
Pretty sure they were
This would be so useful if I could actually draw lol
So helpful.. 😊
Where is the whole dusks flightbpls
I want to be like you bro
Fire is hardest for me to do.
Bro which software brother this one can anybody tel me
I'm rather surprised to find this video as I have been practicing art for a few years now and when I was getting into animation I tried the ball, chain, squash and stretch, and etc stuff. But whenever I would get stuck on that study, or bored, I would try to animate water, smoke, fire, debris, and so on. So I'm rather happy that in my own way I discovered this and seeing a professional share my own experience is rather incredible. I really do enjoy effect animation it can make any minor thing seem way more fun and I hope to improve in my animation skills as time goes on. Thank you for the great video
❤🎉🌻
Romans 10:9 ❤
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
What are your thoughts on Procreate Dream?
1. The buzzing fly 2:10
2. Debris/GunShot 4:37
3. Ripples and nipples X) 6:52
4. The spark 9:25
5. Smoke 1 10:31
6. Smoke 2 11:42
7. Fire 12:59