How to Animate: Making an Animated Movie (#9) Video Lecture | A Guide to Making an Animated Movie - Professional Skills

hey guys and this part of the how to
make an animated movie series I'm going
to go over the animation process so this
is kind of a big step to cover in just
one video I'm not going to go over the
entire art of animation instead I'm
going to just show you how I approach
animating a shot where it belongs and
I'm actually going to animate a shot
from beginning to end this is the shot
I'm going to animate this is the shot of
the little cube looking at the ball and
like sign like ah alright so we're going
to do that first let's take a look at
the structure again of where our
animation shots are I've gone into more
depth more details about that in my
pipeline tutorial but just a recap in my
shots folder I have an animation and a
lighting folder in the animation folder
is where I keep all the Maya files we're
working on shot 13 I have three versions
here and then later on we're going to
reference that into the lighting shot
folders over here I have all the shots
we're going to reference the animation
shots that way if we change something in
the animation we can just change the
animation file on the lighting file will
be changed accordingly just if you're
curious I'm animating with a Wacom table
that's the Intuos 5 Pro you find a lot
easier that and faster to animate this
way and I actually wrote an article
about how to switch to animating with a
Wacom tablet if you want to check it out
and now let's jump into Maya alright so
I have the shot over here all set up
I've already placed my character in the
right position that's my little cube I
have the camera movement all set up so
we have a slow push in the camera let's
look at how I set that up I'll show the
camera
so in this case I just created a regular
Maya camera and had a very very slow
push animated alright so I guess let's
start animating this is just going to be
me working in my regular pace so it
might be a little long but if that's
something you're interested on but if
that's something you're interested in
you're welcome to stay and watch alright
so you want him to have a little Bullock
over here at the beginning just to give
some kind of life to the character
whilst it's standing still since we're
animating on twos I mean not on to
random again 12 frames per second so
it's 1/2 of the amount of the regular 24
frames per second
I only take one frame to close the eyes
instead of my usual two frames and then
two more frames to open them alright I'm
going to make a little in-between frame
here alright that's a nice little blank
the way I approach animating this film
is I'm kind of working in a
straight-ahead way which means that I
just animate one frame at a time one
after another
instead of doing post pose which is
blocking up blocking all of your poses
in advance and then creating break
breakdowns the reason I do that is
because I wanted this film to have kind
of a 2d animation feel to it that's why
I'm animating on 12 frames per second
instead of 24 so it's okay if it looks a
little not perfect alright so right
about here you want him to do that
little sigh so I'm going to create a
keyframe this is what I'm going to use
to control this is the main head control
that I'm going to use to do the side
so let's create a keyframe and then I'm
just going to go 2 frames at a time and
making you pose I use the the arrow keys
to navigate between keyframes it's
really important to do that it's like
it's kind of like flipping the pages
when you're animating on paper see it's
also a very fast way to animate kind of
just blocking the movement see I do it
really quickly just to get the movement
in there and then I can go and refine
each keyframe later once I get the
general motion in place all right let's
see it so it also
it's kind of silly but it helps to make
the sound effects as your enemy so I
like to get the feeling so like
sometimes a lot of the times I would
actually do the voices or the sounds of
the character as I scrub through it to
get to see if it feels right all right
it's kind of slow I think and the eyes
also I want the I used to look down
after he does it like he's a little sad
and we want to blink too because there's
a big big movement here all right
you
let's see how I want to move the eyes
you think this is low enough yeah it
seems like he's sad let's see maybe even
moving to this to the right or to the
left a little bit you'll look better
once we spline it so don't worry if it
looks L oh well blocky all right now
let's spline the head right now is
working on blocked mode so there was no
interpolation between keyframes let's
just select it and supply it
you can even go over the curve and just
clean it up but we don't need these
keyframes you don't have to delete every
unnecessary keyframe but sometimes I
like to clean up the curves like this
one doesn't look good because this
controls the front and back I don't know
if we need all these actually I mean
actually it looks fine maybe still a
little slow let's find the eyes so the
movement wallah look a little smoother
also I want the eyes to start moving
from here once it closes them up until
the moment they open so I'm going to
shift it a little bit
and it seems like the motion is a little
too grandiose I feel like he's over
overacting a little bit let's play
blaster see what it looks like
yeah I think the the first motion of
going up is a little a little too much
it's like he's taking way too much too
much inertia inertia before for going
down so let's fix it this is a translate
y this is this is what controls how high
his head goes and also the rotation
probably needs to be dialed back a
little bit yeah you don't need to go up
so much no I think this is much better
but smaller right you test again I like
to play last a lot now some people don't
but it helps me see it in real time yeah
I think it falls a feels pretty good it
looks sad
yeah I think that that works fine that's
pretty close to what I had at the end
all right guys if you want to see a
little bit more about animation you can
check out our video of the six steps of
animation where I go a little deeper on
how to approach animation and visit our
website bloop animation calm
you