Animation Practice! (Patreon)

So I've decided this is the year I figure out 2D animation!Its a slow unattractive process learning the fundamentals... But I'm realizing they are an important stepping stone for a reason.Heres the journey so far!I started this week with a quick test by animating some blobby balls. The blue one I decided to give some ears after animating it to give it some personality with a secondary motion. There was something really charming about it and I was feeling things click inside my brain.

I thought I could speed through the basics and get to characters quickly because I'm a skilled illustrator, but I learnt quickly that being a skilled illustrator does not make you a good animator! This attempt to make Sarah jumping was a bit too over zealous too soon. It was a teaching moment to be sure! Thankfully one of the lessons I learnt in illustration carried over well here: - Don't fall in love with any one idea, especially if it isn't working, fail fast and move on!

So I drank some humble tea and decided I was not indeed better than everyone else who learns animation at any stage, (late or early), and I'm going to go through the boot camp, the training mode, the tutorial level and work my way through the fundamentals!I started with the small bouncy ball at the bottom. Its definitely not perfect. Its a little "jerky" on the bounces. But I was playing with timing and squash and stretch.I then did the swinging pendulum, and decided after to add a tail to practice follow through and secondary actions. This concept to me is the most confusing, so I need to practice it a lot. (especially because Sarah will have 3 of these on her head alone T_T).... She was not designed with animators in mind.... (cries & kills self)After that, I couldn't help myself. I wanted to animate a "character"this little bite animation taught me ALOT about animation, because there's one frame in it where the head is just massive, and I pushed it bigger and bigger in the process like 3 times and it didn't break the effect, instead it kept making it better! I always understood intellectually that the individual frames don't matter in animation, its the whole that really counts, but now I understand it practically. So I'm gonna keep pushing that!

I think my illustration and drawing skills are serving as the much needed spoonful of sugar to make this medicine go down, but I'm learning that drawing pretty pictures doesn't equate great animation.Illustration is about a beautiful still image. Animation is about movement and life. There's a temptation to make every frame beautiful as an illustrator, and that's a trap I fell into with the rough Sarah jumping animation I attempted.The last one is about weight and again, I couldn't help myself I had to do more than just make a heavy ball bounce.(oops I just realised I lost one of the balls... one of the frames got dropped and I didn't notice till right this moment in uploading)Anyway, this one was to attempt to communicate weight, but also some anticipation.There's also a bit of character work as each ball behaves differently when hitting the ground. I realize that "subtle" maybe isn't always the way to go in animation. (I could be wrong about this its still early days) I shook the stage when the big ball lands, but not NEARLY enough to create that "feeling" that I want to feel when I look at it.But what I did learn is something like weight, doesn't rely totally on the heavy object itself, (in this case the ball) The context also matters. So making the environment shake, and the impact "break" the floor is what helps sell the ball as heavy and hard, not JUST the way the ball itself behaves. (Though that is important!)

Thats all for now!I'm jumping through the hoops right now so one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) I can create some fun animations with my characters! ;)I hope you guys will stick around with me on this journey!-TDM