Here's some of the exercises I was given in Ani 101.
Keep in mind these are coming from a class designed to teach pencil film animation.
But they are still completely relevant for learning animation.
Feel free to alter them if you like.
No you don't have to use pencil and paper. ---> altho it is quite a nice medium, I'd say at least try it someday
I've tried to put them in order as they were given to me.
But you could also jump around a bit.
Here is all the exercises I will try to cover --------> list may change
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- 12 Principles
- Inbetween
- Bouncing Ball
- Flour Sack
- Walk Cycle, Side, Front, Back
- Eccentric Walk Cycle
- Run Cycle
- Jump
- Fall
- Lift
- Fire
- Water Splash
- Facial Expressions
- Dialog Hands / Eyes
- Dialog Mouth / Phonemes
- Bar Drink
- Flaming Objects
- Falling Objects
- Perspective Loop
- 2 tone lighting
The 12 Principles of Animation
The starting point for understanding animation.
Altho I don't really agree.
Read thru each one and give it some thought, maybe do a few drawings.
But treat this as an overview of stuff you will use in the future.
There's no need to memorize it.
You will come back to this list over and over later.
What you should learn:A list of 12 combined theories that will help you with animation.
Links:Exercise:Read the information.
Think about stuff.
Draw stuff.
Things you might tryDo some sketches to help you understand each principle.
After doing some of the other exercises come back to these and do animations to study each one.
OtherThis was the first day/week of class.
We didn't draw or do any exercises on the light table.
Just lectures, notes, and sketches.
It seems like everywhere I look there are slight/drastic variations on the definitions of these.
Here's an example.
1."Follow through means that separate parts of a body will continue moving after the character has stopped."
2."Follow through: When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action)."
3."Follow-through refers to the reactive animation that occurs after an action is completed, telling the audience how the character feels about that action. (Think of Donald Duck throwing a football, watching it for a moment, and then lowering his arm in disappointment.)"It's not that they are wrong, altho to me some not so good, misleading, or about a completely separate topic, there are just different ways of explaining and defining animation theories.
Animation terms and thoughts are flexible and I think that when you learn them you end up describing them as you understand them on a personal level.
And for some reason some of the principles differ much more than the others.
Also there are many places that explain them well but then have very few, odd, or no examples.
Because of this I recommend that you read MANY different sources of the 12 principles and give them some thought.
At some point I will do my own version of the 12.
Also I find the list of 12 to be very incomplete.
I would probly add about 40 more, but then I guess it wouldn't be a very pretty list.
But the list itself is a nice introduction to animation theory and a good reference for later.
It's also important to understand that you do not need to use every principle in every animation that you do.
Each one is a combination of theories that will help you improve an animation that can be used together or isolation.
I need to break the exercise down into multiple posts.
Will add more later.