user wrote:

people tell me "IT LACKS FUNDAMENTALS", i wish i could see that guy in person, man.

Ahh oh dear. I checked out a few of your animations to see what you were talking about, and I came across the talking monkey one - remembering that I'd voted and commented on it. And it turns out, im one those guys that told you you lacked fundamentals! Lol sorry man
But its true. You just need more practice and more education, from books and from observation.

Edit: Well just been reading through the replies a little. It seems like youre a bit arrogant if im honest. No, not many of us here are masters of animation. We're all learning just like you. Comments like "lacks fundamentals" are not pointless. You should think about what these comments mean. Use these comments as pointers to get your animation on track. You can't just brush off comments and say, "from now on i'm not gonna worry about who thinks what, where, and why".

Also you have to remember that voters go through dozens of the 11second videos at a time; they have to make a comment with each vote and they don't always have the time to go into detail about the pros and cons of each video.

Edit again:
Well, I read a few more of your replies and you seemed to turn a new leaf

Last edited by Inazuma (05-11-2011 8:00 pm)

riffraff wrote:

@ User,

I can feel the frustration you get. But if you really like animation you can to take in as much criticism as possible, now matter how harsh it is. I got some really harsh critics on my animation in the past (not in my 11 sec club work), at first i was a irritated but in the end I understand what they say.

And you'll be surprise how much the "bouncing ball test" will teach you; it pretty much has all the fundamentals that some comments on your work say you lack.

thanks man, i'm thinking of trying one particular book's exercises, i'm not too crazy about the bouncing ball, there are tons of good animation exercises, bouncing ball is just one of them.

Last edited by user (05-13-2011 12:59 am)

I would really really like to see you post a bouncing ball here so we can help you. Also how long have you been studying animation?

Rico Boy wrote:

I would really really like to see you post a bouncing ball here so we can help you. Also how long have you been studying animation?

i will.

user wrote:

JKR wrote:

Rico Boy wrote:

I would really really like to see you post a bouncing ball here so we can help you. Also how long have you been studying animation?

Agreed. That would be the easiest way for us to help! You should seriously consider it.

thank you all for trying to help, I will post a bouncing something fo sho, i wanna be creative, i'll do a bouncing house.

I really don't think your getting this.

I read something a few weeks ago about a teacher handing out an assignment to get to grips with a principle. Instead, some students were looked for the exception to the principle and completely missed the point of what he/she was trying to teach.

We're asking you to produce a bouncing ball for a reason. Its the one exercise, everything else is built upon. It will help you!!!

In Illusion of Life, there's a series of frames showing Shere Khan taking a few steps. Milt Kahl used no reference. Other people thought 'if Milt Kahl doesn't use reference, maybe that's the way forward'. Those animators struggled like mad and made little progress. Kahl only got away with it because of his 30 years of animation experience. Plus he's held as the greatest animator of all time.

The advice of producing a bouncing ball is to help you. Stop trying to think forty five steps ahead. By returning to a few basic exercise and cementing your understanding, its going to progress your animation quicker than you imagine.

Last edited by thelittlepenguin84 (05-14-2011 9:36 pm)

pleased to hear, we now expect your next post to be a bouncing ball

restrictions breed creativity, it's how there are hundreds of different variations of the sound clip on the 11secondclub every month. The sound clip provides you with a direction of where to go and what to do. I've been reading your posts and I'm not sure if you are trolling or not. If you are then good job, if not then you need to listen to what some of these people here have to say. Go back to the basics and do a bouncing ball, not a bouncing house. I would also suggest that you learn more about story telling, animators need to do a lot more than just move the characters around. To produce good animation you need to essentially become the character and figure out all aspects and motives of the character. I believe that an animator is a combination of an artist and actor.

why on earth do you want to do a bouncing house so bad?Having a house bounce across screen then settle into a stopped position is going to have completely different mechanics compared to a ball. Just show us that you can at least do a ball so you can go on and experiment with a house later if you want to. If you don’t have the basics to do a ball your just shooting yourself in the foot and wasting your time. there is a reason why they picked a ball, can you please just stick to the basics so we can help you.

I'll say go ahead and do a bouncing house.

When I was in my body mechanics semester and our assignment was to make a character jump (shouldn't have been more than 10 secs long), I took the liberty of stretching it to 30 secs. I even threw in a run, a personality walk and some acting in there. I almost killed myself doing it since I had only 2 weeks to finish it. Here's the shot if you wanna see it.

My institute believed in this: If you wanna push yourself, you had better be able to pull it off.

So go ahead and do a bouncing house. But if it doesn't come out right, please do the bouncing ball.

Last edited by dapOOn (05-16-2011 3:33 pm)

ricekrispyninja wrote:

- when looking at your 2D pieces; seems the shakyness comes from the drawings not being in correct PROPORTIONS or due to the lack of LINING up your papers better OR making sure your darkened lines on your characters MATCH with the next and previous sheet? (or I could be wrong completely... I'm definitely no expert when it comes to 2D, but I'm just trying to figure out why you're getting the shakyness when you're DRAWING on paper... it's not like you're dealing with GIMBLE or anything like that... LOL)

- the animating part; you definitely have something there... as in I see the passion and motivation for what you do! (mostly because... well...geez... look at all your entries, I don't have one yet!! LOL)  But you definitely gotta start from the beginning and make all those pieces look GREAT!  It seems you're trying to get into PIXAR when you should be in school or at home MASTERING the BASICS first.  Funny thing is, you might have more FUN with the basics and trying to make them look good.  Then eventually GREAT!   

[Basics -> Body Mechanics -> Acting -> Stylizing = this is DEFINITELY the way your path should look like.  And until you get great feed back from BASICS and BODY MECHANICS, I don't think you should do anymore ACTING pieces...]

Yeah I think he has a point. You might have more fun with the basics, and I think you have the potential to turn the basics into fun stuff. I've seen plenty of reels were someone turns a basic bouncing ball into a fun piece. It doesn't have to be just bouncing in place. Put a story to it. Have it bounce for a purpose.

OR if you do continue with just doing more advance acting and such, why not post your progress so we all can help out and critique your wip? It'd be a lot less stressful to get critiqued during a wip rather than posting when you think you're finish then suddenly get like a storm of critiques

Still waiting for your bouncing house?
cheers

Wolfi

Thats great that you had fun with this house but right now I don't think you have an understanding of what this animation exc. is trying to teach you. I think you should go back and try to learn the basics a little more, really study it. Right now i'm just seeing a house sqaush and stretch....thats it. Maybe just stick with a ball.

Also if you want to show off your personal work maybe try and make a new topic.

Just because your animating a bouncing house and not a bouncing ball doesn’t mean you throw all knowledge of the basics of animation out the window. No one knows how any inanimate object would move if it was really alive, but it is our job as animators to give it some kind of believable movements. Right now you’re showing you don’t understand weight, timing, spacing, proper slow-ins/ slow-outs and also the house is squashing and stretch in weird positions. Take the Pixar lamp for example. Do you know a lamp that’s a live?…..I highly doubt it. Yet using basic animation principals they were able to animate a lamp in a believable way that was pleasing to the eye. That’s great that you want to be “creative† but that doesn’t mean you can give the animation principles the finger and till it to kiss your ass. Anyone can jump on the computer, start moving around an object and say “hey look at me I’m being creative†. Hell, I could sit my 3 year old niece down and show her how to set key frames in Maya but would people consider her an animator?... I’m guessing not. Don’t get me wrong being creative is great but you need the tools first to be able to do that. Your skipping everything and going straight into creative. Learn the basics and move up from there because right now its clear you just don’t understand it. If you want people to give you praise over your animation then go show your stuff to mommy and daddy. If you want to become a better animator then post your stuff here and listen to what people have to say. If people believe animation is not working they will tell you, and also help you fix it…. But don’t for one second think saying “hey guys lets be creative† is going to trick people into seeing something that isn’t there. I’m sorry if I sound rude but I think you might need a bit of a reality check. If animation was easy then every person that thought they were creative would make it in this industry. It makes me really upset when people think animators have an easy job and its just moving stuff around on screen. You have to study and practice animation just like any other job if you want to get good enough at it to get paid. The world is filled with people working at Starbucks thinking to themselves “why didn’t I make it as animator, I’m creative†….but sorry to say…creative isn’t enough. The people that make a career out of this are the people that are willing to sit down , learn the basics, really understand the basics, then are able to be creative with them. If you want to just be creative, go finger paint….if you want to be an animator, then learn the basics.