Pixeled my plant monster from yesterday, I figured it was a good chance to try Helm's cluster exercise so I did that as well.

Quote from: Azuyre on January 18, 2014, 06:08:14 pm

Thanks for the info so far! It looks like those spoiler tags are getting put to good use already.

Regarding that: is anybody else having display issues caused by AdBlock?

I've got adblock but I haven't noticed any issues yet.

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I've been trying to see what I can do with pencil/paper but I had a bit of trouble at first, mostly with getting things to line up correctly. It turns out my roommate has a light board (I think that's the name?) so I plan to try and use that and see if it helps out.

In school we did everything with ColErase pencils on paper and a peg board light table. ----> There are much less expensive designs that also work fine.
Then we would shoot each page using a down facing camera onto a computer.
The camera would send the frame to a very simple animation program, called FlipBook I think, which we used to build the animation.
It had very simple features like sorting frame order, delays, layers, etc.
Altho it only supported Multiply layering so drawings would overlap onto each other.
You had to erase out the lines that would be occluded by another object on a layer above.
I'm not suggesting you do your exercises on paper.
In fact all the animations above I did in GraphicsGale.
Just something fun to try.

Almost done writing the next one.

I guess the one I'm using is an Artograph Light Box, it looks like it's probably pretty old. I figured it might be interesting to try it out though.

I really need to get used to drawing with my tablet, that would probably simplify things a lot. I've always had trouble with them since I'm too used to looking at what I'm drawing on, I guess the best way to get used to it is probably to just use it a lot more though.

Yo.

I've also been wanting to do animation exercises.
A few weeks ago I did some balls and have been trying to keep up on doing more every few days.

Cool, I guess I caught at a good time!

Like I PMed you, still working on typing something up that's organized and explains the point of each test and things you might try.
There are a few exercises before the bouncing ball and flour sack.
But go ahead and just draw stuff, it's not a bad place to start.

I'm looking forward to your post, I've seen a lot of your tips around the forums and they always help when I'm trying to figure something out.

Yah the flour sack exercise does not have to be about acting and emotion.
Alot of times people will bring it to life and make it do something funny.
But don't feel like you need to start there.
Really you should do each exercise multiple times, and a few simple animations with a character are good steps for putting them into something more complicated.
You'll notice that the motion design I did for my sack is really simple and stupid. 
He just leans over and then stomps.

Yeah, I can see how animating the flour sack can help a lot with weight, most of the ones I had seen were like yours with one being alive and doing something so I wasn't sure if there was more to it.

I tried a character animation a while back but its kinda basic and doesn't really have a lot of actual "character" to it.


I basically followed along with a tutorial on simple walk cycles, though it took me a lot longer then I expected. I really like the types of walk cycles that tell you about a character and have a lot of emotion and weight so I'm looking forward to working towards that eventually. But before that I need to focus on the basics so I'm hoping that doing these exercises can help.

Edit:
I tried doing a simple pixel version of the bouncing ball to see how it would come out:

So, I'm looking for some ways to practice animation, I have some experience but my animations tend to end up looking a little stiff and I want to try and improve.

What I'm wondering is if anyone happens to know of any good animation exercises, maybe something from school or something online, or even just a random idea you might have. When I'm trying to learn something I do better when I have guidelines to follow, I've been trying to just come up with random small animations for practice but since I don't really have any specific goal in mind I always end up over thinking things and not making a decision on what to do.

When I was in school my teachers didn't touch on 2D animation a whole lot since my degree focused on 3D, I've since moved on to 2D and while some things carry over it hasn't been enough to help me get started. I've seen a lot of professional animators talk about animating a sack of flour since its simple and you can have it display a lot of emotion through it's movement. I think if I just had some simple exercises that say "animate this object" with a few guidelines it would help me get started.

I'm referring to 2D animation in general by the way, from what I've heard it seems like I should try to just learn animation in general before focusing on the pixel art aspect of it.

Besides just exercises and things like that maybe some of you could tell me what you did to learn and how you practice animation? Any help would be appreciated.