I can’t say that I’m the best artist out there, but I can certainly draw better than when I started this sketch blog. I’ve read a lot of advice about getting better at drawing over the years. Some advice has been very helpful and some advice just hasn’t worked for me. I want to share just a couple of tips that have helped me improve, particularly over the last four or five years.

1. Draw a lot. How much is a lot ? Its takes about 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert at it. (I recently did a back-of-the-napkin calculation with my father and we figured he had done over 80,000 hours of surgery!) So the more you do every day, the faster you’ll get good. In 2004, I attended my first San Diego Comic Con, where I nervously showed around my sketchbook to artists I admired.fill up sketchbook

 I did just that, several months over, and was amazed at how quickly I progressed over that time. I also recommend that if you have the means,  It’s much easier to get in a lot of hours of practice when 8 or more of them are guaranteed everyday.

This is your best friend

2. Slow and Steady. Especially when learning to do cleanup, whether it be with pencil, brush or crow quill, go slowly. It’s just like practicing a musical instrument. You start as slowly as you can without making mistakes, then you speed up. Go as slowly as necessary to have control over what you’re doing on the page. This is particularly important when trying to ink ellipses and other curves freehand. While it’s best to sketch an ellipse in a single quick stroke, I’ve never seen an artist I admire ink an ellipse that way. Most will carefully and deliberately chunk out the ellipse with smaller controlled ink strokes.

3. Learn from the best. Another musical analogy. I met a guy once who played the violin in high school. His music teacher gave him this piece of advice: If you want to be first chair, don’t set your sights on first chair, set your sights on the best violinists in the world. Particularly with the ubiquity of information on artists available on the internet, there’s no reason you can’t learn from the best. Find the artists you admire through google or twitter. Start a correspondence with them. Ask them questions. You’ll find many are generous and willing to help. Read what they have to say on their blogs, and watch their video tutorials. The recently is a great place to do this. If you can’t get in touch with an artist you like, then copy their work. Download, or buy high resolution images of their art and practice making exact replicas. When I started learning how to ink, I would download hi-res images of  convert it to blue-line, print it out on Bristol and ink over it trying to copy his line quality. The same can apply to any artist you want to replicate. Look at their art, study it closely and figure out how to replicate it. Just one caution: make sure and give the original artist credit if you show your studies to anyone else.

4. Fix it until it’s right. When working on a difficult piece, redraw it until you get it right. Especially if you’re starting out, I recommend using mechanical pencils with a good eraser. They erase easily, and you can re-work and readjust a drawing until you get it right. Set a high standard f0r yourself and work to achieve that with every piece. Look at your drawing in front of a mirror, or flip it around and hold it up to the light. Seeing it in reverse will reveal problems in the drawing. Don’t take this suggestion too far. If you’re really hitting a wall, abandon the drawing, or start over. It’s more important to draw a lot than get stuck on one drawing.

5. Study the Fundamentals. Study the best books and videos on perspective, construction, anatomy, rendering and color theory. I highly recommend the resources found at Workshops (Some of the best stuff I found on  tutorials  and on how to draw a straight line freehand.) Go to live figure drawing classes, weekly, if possible. Go to the zoo every week, or more, if you want to learn to draw animals. I  will teach you everything you need to know about perspective. Preston Blair’s  is the best place to get started with construction.  I’m still really searching for is a good book on anatomy. I own several books on anatomy, but none that really satisfies me. If anyone has any recommendations.

6. Repeat until you die. This is probably the most important step. There’s always something new to learn. Thank God! One of the greatest joys of drawing is having those break-through moments that come from constantly challenging yourself. Keep at it. The fun is in the process, not in the prize.

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Is drawing important for CG Animators? This is a frequently asked question by students pursuing a career in 3D Animation. Mostly, we get generic answers to this question. But I would like to provide a skill-specific answer. I would twist the question a little to cover a broader aspect, “Is it required to be an artist to become a successful animation professional?”

To start with, we need to understand the 3D animation production pipeline. In a studio working on 3D animation production, we have separate departments for pre-production, modeling, texturing, animation, rigging, lighting, rendering, FX animation, compositing, and editing.

Out of these above mentioned departments, rendering, editing, and FX animation department generally don’t need any direct art medium expertise. Barring these departments, others are linked, directly or indirectly, with artistic forms like drawing, painting, photography, etc.

If you want to build a career as a pre-production artist, then a sound drawing skill is a must. You should be able to put your thoughts and your visualization on paper or on to the computer screen through a digital tablet or mouse. As a character designer in the pre-production department, you may be asked to design characters, props, BG Layouts. Or as a storyboard artist, you may be asked to make storyboards, for which you need to have good drawing skills. As a concept artist you may be required to do inspirational sketches and paintings. As an art or creative director, you may have to create the colour palette with the director for the final look of the film.

Modelers need to be well-versed in anatomy studies, which would help them to maintain mesh flow and proportion.

Texturing and lighting artists should have a good light and shadow, and colour sense. Experiences in painting or photography help to enhance these skills.

In the present industry scenario, lighting improvisations are done at the compositing stage too. Thus, it is essential that the artist has some inclination towards photography or painting.

A character animator must have a sound knowledge of posing and facial expressions. Gesture drawing is the stepping-stone for a good character animator.

A rigger applies joints and controls to the characters, thus he/she should be knowledgeable about the workings of how the anatomical mechanism works.

Animation, as an industry, provides enthusiasts various options to explore their creativity and project their ideas to the world. Not knowing how to draw is not a major roadblock. The key to this industry is a creative and imaginative mind.

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One of the most asked question I get on a daily basis is “I want to be an animator/do animation. Where do I start?”

Instead of directing you to our Making an Animated Movie series, our awesome Resources page, or even our YouTube channel, I decided to write this guide to cover (almost) everything you might need to know when trying to get into the animation biz.

In this post I’ll cover some of the basic concepts and options for people who want to make animation, but are overwhelmed with the task. I’ll go over what is animation, what it takes to make animated videos (2D or 3D), and even where to start looking for a job in animation.

Easy to Start, Hard to Master

Today it is easier than ever to get into animation. There are plenty of software available, some of them are quite cheap, and most modern computer can handle the simpler animation tasks (mostly 2D).

The catch is that although anyone can start animating right now, the art of animation is not easy to learn and very hard to master.

The good news is…

That you don’t need to be a Disney quality animator to create really cool animations.You can start small and simple and slowly develop your skills and unique style. You don’t even need to know how to draw well.

Software

The two programs I would suggest you start with are Flash or Photoshop. The reason for that is that they are cheap and accessible. You can get either for $19 a month, including a free trial month – so you have nothing to lose. For more detailed information check out our animation software list.

• Flash: The most used animation software by hobbyists/YouTubers out there. There are so many free tutorials out there so you can learn it quickly and start animating right now. It’s a fun software to play with, and you can make silly animations with it without spending days and days working on them.
• Photoshop: For the more traditional oriented aspiring animators, the Timeline feature in Photoshop allows you to animate frame by frame, and since it’s Photoshop you’re getting one of the best drawing/painting capabilities out there. It has onion skinning settings and could be an awesome tool to start experimenting in 2D animation with.

Hardware

• Computer: The good thing about using Flash or Photoshop is that you don’t need some crazy monster computer to use them, any modern machine should be able to do the trick.

• Tablet: I’ve written about the merits of animating with a tablet, and for 2D animation I can’t imagine doing it with a mouse. The price of the Intuos Pro (our tablet of choice) might scare you, but for about $70 you can get the Intuos Pen which is great for beginners.

Books

I recommend getting these books if you are interested in learning animation seriously:

• The Animator’s Survival Kit / Richard Williams:  This book is an animator’s bible. It thoroughly covers the basics of spacing, timing, walks, runs, weight, anticipation, overlapping action, takes, stagger, dialogue, animal animation and much more. It’s not called a “survival kit” for nothing. This book will teach you EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW to start your training as an animator.
• Cartoon Animation / Preston Blair: Originally released in 1994, Cartoon Animation (also known as “The Preston Blair Book”), has been an amazing reference source for creating cartoon-style animation. With this book you’ll learn how to develop a cartoon character, create dynamic movement, and animate dialogue with action.
• The Illusions of Life / Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston:  This book has started as an animation guide and turned into a detailed survey on the progression of animation, both within the Disney studios and in the world of animation in general. Written by two of the nine old men who defined the Disney animation style, this book takes the reader through all the steps it took them to discover and research the best methods of animation
• Animation For Beginners / Morr Meroz: Bloop Animation’s own guide to newcomers interested in getting into the world of animation. Including a survey of the different types of animation and what does it mean to be an animator for each of them, a detailed list of the best animation schools with all the information you’ll need, a complete animation dictionary and more.
• Setting Up Your Shots / Jeremy Vineyard: A great book for getting your basic understanding of shot composition and camera movement for your film.

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MAAC has his very own 6 tips to keep you on your journey in becoming an animator. Hear it from Ray on how you can stay motivated, inspired, and how it’s the struggle to get you to the TOP! Read, believe, and go animate

Have you decided to pursue a career in animation? Here is a list of things that will help you during your animation journey.

Motivation

So you’ve made the decision to either start your education in animation or to refine the concepts that you’ve learned in the past. That’s just the first step in a life long process of an animator. Motivation is going to be key in keeping you moving forward and pushing through any difficult times that might arise.
Ira Glass said it best “It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.”

Think of motivation like a bank. You scour the internet for inspiring work, watch movies that get you jazzed and talk to friends that pump you up about animating a shot. Your motivation bank is full and you are inspired to do tons of work. As you begin to put in many sleepless nights animating, you find that maybe your work isn’t where you want it to be. Your motivation bank may start to deplete and you might find it hard to stay inspired. You must remember that this is something that EVERY animator goes through. This just means you are learning!
Knowing that something isn’t working is a big part of the this process. The only way to get better work is to do a lot of it. I like to think of animation as a roller coaster ride of emotions. You will experience days where you are understanding the concepts and things are going smoothly. Your motivation level is high and you will be excited to plan your next test. The next day, you try to animate a shot and you find that you can’t get it to look right.
You must keep yourself motivated! Ask others for help and be proactive in finding a solution. Find things that inspire you and fill that motivation bank. Putting in countless hours studying can become tiring. Everyone needs a break so go outside, observe life and recharge those batteries.

Fundamental Understanding of Maya

Many of the big studios will either use Autodesk®’s Maya or something very similar to it. It’s important that if you don’t know Maya that you take a course to get familiar with the basics. You can take an introduction to Maac Animation that will get you on right track on becoming a 3D animator. Animation is something that isn’t software specific, once you understand the principles, you can transfer those skills to any software that a studio is using.


Richard Williams “Animator’s Survival Kit”

If you haven’t done so already, you should pick up a copy of Richard Williams “Animator’s Survival Kit.” This book will cover everything you will need to know about animation. Every animator that I know has read this book many times and pairing this book with your education at AM will help reinforce the concepts you will learn each week. Purchase a sketchbook and use it to take notes and plan out your work. Write down the concepts you learn and reference back to it if you get stuck.



Patience

Animation is hard. It takes time to understand the principles and most importantly, you need to have patience. As we mentioned in motivation, you have have to stay inspired and understand that not everyone will grasp the concepts right away. You must stay patient in your journey and realize that learning animation isn’t a race to some finish line. Take it one step at a time, keep things simple and the concepts will start to make sense.


Time

Time is a huge part in becoming an animator. You must put in the time to grasp the concepts and push your work to the next level. I can’t tell you how many hours I put in as a student but what I can say is that it was a lot! Every free moment I had, I would dedicate it to understanding how animation works. A few hours a week just isn’t enough and you need to put in the effort to learn it. This applies to any discipline you study. If you want to get better at it, you have to put in the time. Do a lot of work, it’s the only way you will make mistakes and learn from them. Manage your time wisely and write down a schedule you can realistically dedicate towards practicing animation and try to stick to it.


Be Part of a Community

Animation Mentor has the best online animation community in the world! Make friends and help each other out. I find that having friends and mentors to help you with your animation is the fastest way to understand the concepts. Bounce problems off one another and give each other feedback. You are all in it together and having a strong, supportive community makes your journey an easier ride.

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Digital Media training is a big and important investment. You’re seeking the best animation school, or the best visual effects school you can afford. If you are seeking a career in the industry there is no better way to get in, provided you find the school that is right for you; the one that can meet your training goals. No matter where you go you are looking at a significant expenditure, not only for your animation training but for living expenses during your training time. It is important that you find the school that is right for you and not waste money and time on introductory, inappropriate or incomplete training. Here are some tips that might help you make up your mind:

1. Be skeptical! Don’t believe what a professional recruiter tells you. Be deliberate about searching for reasons an animation or vfx school is NOT for you. Most people fall in love with the hype and marketing from a school then search for reasons to support the emotional decision they have already made. Unfortunately this often blinds candidates from the reality that most digital media programs can not provide the skills needed to get a job. You are investing a huge amount of money. Make sure you will get real training, not just software classes. Make them prove it to you.

2. Don’t pay attention to advertising including this document. It’s all propaganda. Do your own research, make your OWN decisions. It’s important! Every school is going to show you what they think will impress you. They’ll tell you some statistics, show you some glossy brochures and probably show you a carefully selected edit of student work. The only way to discover the real quality of the school is to find out what their real professional job placement numbers are and to view the work from ALL of their students. Schools that only show selected student work are not giving you the whole story. When they give you official placement numbers, ask how many of those are now or have been teaching assistants or other (janitorial, security) employees at their school. Many schools hire their own graduates to improve their placement numbers, which is pretty cheeky, we think.

3. Don’t listen to claims of “Best School In The World” or “School of the Year”. In order for a school to legitimately make this claim, they will have had to compete against every other school in the world and been judged by an impartial, professional judging panel. This has never happened. Claims like this actually come from small competitions against a handful of other schools/students which means the results are valid only within the context of competition with those specific schools/students, not relative to all the other schools in the world. One of the bigger private schools in Vancouver constantly claims to be best school in the world, even though they competed against only 0.2% of the other schools in the world. The claim may sound impressive, but it really isn’t. In fact, they know they are bending the truth into a pretzel to attract you. What expectations do you have of a school that begins a training relationship in this way?

4. Just because it’s a fancy University doesn’t mean it provides better (or even good) training. In fact, most universities provide some of the least useful animation and vfx training on the planet. Very few degree holders find employment. As industry professionals, we have found that academic education, while great for exploring ideas, concepts and philosophy, is a very poor method for delivering professional skills. Universities are so buried in academic process and bureaucracy that they have difficulty seeing the needs of the world beyond the ivory towers. Universities are all about the credential, not skills. The fact is that a potential employer couldn’t care less if you have a Ph.D. if you can’t do the job.

5. See if you can speak directly to a current student or recent graduate to hear first-hand what the training is like. Speak to more than one if possible. Many would be ideal. See if the school will let you sit in on a class where you can observe the training and speak privately with whichever students you wish. If the school will not voluntarily permit you to speak with students and grads or attend a class, it is reason to become cautious.

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Exaggeration can be one of the most enjoyable principles to put into your work because with it you can push your character rigs to the limit and create animations that are more appealing. You can put in a lot of exaggeration into an animation to create more stylized cartoony work or use it sparingly to breathe just a little more life into a realistic style of animation. As an animator it’s up to you to determine how far you want to push your animations.

Exaggeration is one of the 12 principles of animation which was created by the pioneers of animation in the early 80’s. While the other 11 principles are equally as important this article is going to focus specifically on the principle of exaggeration so you can learn how to implement it into your animations to create more appealing work.

Why is Exaggeration Important?

Animation is the art of bringing things to life; almost all animations are grounded in at least a bit of realism. The 12 principles were created to help other animators understand the basic laws of physics and how to create animations that followed these laws. However, what you see in real life doesn’t always translate well to animation, and that is where the principle of exaggeration plays a key role, without exaggeration an animation can feel boring and lifeless.

As an animator you’ll work with video reference in most of your shots and you’ll quickly find out video reference can be your best friend when trying to find interesting posing and timing that is grounded in realism. What you see in your video reference doesn’t always work well in your animations.

As an animator you have complete control over what the audience sees. One of the greatest things about animation is the ability to create animations that don’t have to obey the movements of real life and this can result in some very interesting animation that brings a whole new feeling to the viewer.

Let’s face it; a human’s movement is not always the most interesting thing to watch, and with animation you have the chance to take the foundation of real life physics and spice it up with exaggeration to make it something much more interesting and fun to watch, something you don’t see everyday.

Break the Rig

You might be wondering how can you exaggerate something when you must work within the limitations of the character rig, but you shouldn’t be afraid to push a rig beyond its limits. Rigs can be broken, and what looks strange for one frame of animation will often be unnoticeable when played back at full speed.

Test the rig you have, find the poses that are just on the cusp of breaking the rig, find the limitations you have and how you can work around them and see how you can break the rig to your advantage.

How Far Is Too Far?

As mentioned earlier, exaggeration can be a small amount. It can be something as little as pushing the timing of an action by a couple frames to as broad as your character becoming completely compressed just before a jump. It depends on the animation, if your shot is more on the realistic side you won’t want to exaggerate it to a point where it becomes cartoony.

That being said, there should be some type of exaggeration in any shot you do, even if it’s simple timing or spacing exaggeration. It’s important to point out that exaggeration doesn’t always mean you need to go for a Bugs Bunny type of animation.

You’ll know when you’ve gone too far, but a great rule of thumb is if you notice when playing back your animation that your rig is broken you’ve probably gone too far. A rig should only be broken for 1-2 frames, any more than that and it will become noticeable by the viewer. Similar to the principle of squash and stretch, you want to feel it rather than see it.

Depending on how cartoony you want your animation you may have your rig broken for more than 1-2 frames, as long as it fits the animation style you’re going for.

Exaggerating in Posing

Pushing your posing is one of the best ways to exaggerate your animations. This doesn’t mean you have to break your rig, but by pushing a pose even just a little further can create so much more appeal. Exaggerating your posing can help sell the weight of your character, the weight of an object, and overall will create something more interesting to look at.

Don’t feel like you need to follow exactly with the poses in your video reference. As mentioned before, what you see in real life isn’t the most interesting and doesn’t always translate well to animation. Sure, there are times when you’ve matched the pose exactly as you see it in your reference and it works, but most of the time you will want to find places where you can push your posing.

A good way to do this is first create the pose you see in your reference, and once you’re happy with it go back and figure out how you can push it to make it more interesting. This can be something as simple as extending the arms out further during a walk or more noticeable like in the images below.

Here is a great example of how pushing the poses can make your shot go to the next level. The point of the animation is to have the character pick up a heavy object. The poses are based off of what was in the reference. Sure, they work but they could be even better!

In this example the key poses have been pushed, look at how just changing these three poses makes the object feel heavier, and creates something more interesting to look at. Yes, the original poses from the reference worked, but as an animator you have the freedom to work outside of what happens in real life.

Exaggerating with Timing

Exaggerating timing is another way you can help sell the weight of your character and create something more appealing to watch. Typically when you’re animating you’re following closely with the video reference. It’s important to only use the timing in the reference as a guide. Of course, there are scenarios when the timing in the reference just works, but most often you’ll want to push the timing. A perfect imitation of reality can result in very floaty and dull animation.

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Complete CA's Creative Salary Survey 2015 to measure yourself against the rest of the industry...

Are you paid enough? And if not, what can you do about it? It's a thorny, complex issue, and one that will be explored in depth as part of Computer Arts' upcoming Money Special – on sale 20 August.

As part of our research, we are conducting an anonymous survey of wages in the global design industry – and are inviting Creative Bloq readers to take part.

How to get a pay rise

This isn't only about what you're currently paid, either. What's unique about this salary survey is that we're also investigating who has enjoyed a pay rise recently – and, crucially, why.

So please take a few minutes to complete the short survey below as accurately as you can, and see how your situation compares to your peers when we publish the results next month.

The results of the survey will be anonymous. The information you supply in connection with this survey will be used solely for the purpose of undertaking the survey, and shall not be used for marketing purposes.

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