Forum posts by ruthiew

As someone that paid to go to a top-tier school for animation, I recommend learning as much as you can beforehand, trying to get some job experience beforehand, and then re-evaluating whether you really need school to advance yourself. A degree does not get you a job as much as your portfolio and reel will. Additionally, having tuition debt and working in an industry that you may not get paid very well to start is very stressful.

All that being said, for 3D it can be really helpful to be at a good school if you need access to expensive software, and learning how to use it quickly is hard without a little help from an actual teacher. In picking schools, make sure you go to one where the teachers have significant and somewhat recent industry experience.

For 2D, I had a teacher that had worked at Disney for over 15 years and all he really did was teach us this book: The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. If you master all the concepts in that book, you will be an outstanding 2D animator.

Gesture drawing is important and you should keep going with it, not just because it will help you learn form and movement, but it will actually make you faster at drawing. And you need to be fast because you will be drawing a lot! It will also help you do a first pass at what you're animating quickly and get your ideas about the motion into it before getting into the nitty-gritty of adding detail or secondary animation like fabric or hair moving. Also having those expressive poses in your head gives you a library of reference when you are trying to make your characters act/show emotion/tell a story.

Everything you learn with 2D animation will make you a better 3D animator. I learned 2D first and it made 3D easier for me because I could focus on learning how to use the software and not worry about learning arcs and eases and basic aspects of motion at the same time.

I wish you the best of luck! Just keep practicing! :)

Lo siento con anticipación porque el español no es mi primer idioma.

Yo lucho con el diseño de personajes yo mismo. Realmente puede ayudar mirar las hojas de diseño de personajes para un artista que te gusta y observar las posturas que usa el artista para expresar ciertos tipos de personajes: villanos, bonitos comics, confiados y extrovertidos versus tímidos, y así sucesivamente.

También puede ayudar a ver a los actores interpretar personajes en una escena, hacer una pausa y hacer un gesto cada vez que se establecen en una nueva postura o pose. Las películas animadas y las viejas películas mudas son un buen lugar para mirar porque tienen una actuación y postulación más exageradas.

¡Espero que algo de esto sea útil y tenga sentido!