All of the books i’ve read have pointed to one singular fact about my abilities: if i don’t learn how to draw properly, going on to make animated anything (even if it’s 3D) is going to suck for me. So i’m going to upskill my drawing for a bit.
Two useful links i’ve found:
- Figure and Gesture Drawing – choose session length, click Go, draw like a mad bastard
- So you want to be an animator? at Animation World Network. An amazing messageboard thread where an oldschooler speaks the truth about animation as a career.
One of the things mentioned in that thread is that the animators commentary on The Incredibles is awesome. I checked it out tonight. It is quite awesome. So much stuff in there it’s hard to summarise – best experienced for yourself.
A certain long shot of Mr Incredible running down a hillside, alas, is not. It’s sobering to see that kind of thing in a Pixar film and think “even the masters of CG animation don’t nail it in every shot. And i noticed other stuff like weird hair and mesh intersections. Still, if i wasn’t actually scrutinising what i was watching, i reckon i’d have missed it. And the bar’s been raised way higher now.
I’m tossing up whether to start making an animated short just to see where my strengths and weaknesses lie. There’s nothing quite like "learn as you go”, after all…
BTW, Naked Curtain Man is one of the models on that Figure and Gesture Drawing site. He’s naked. He drapes a curtain over himself. If you’ve used the site before, you’ll know him along with his fellow models Naked Redhead Lady and Oversized Axe Dude.
