Top 5 Animation Tips

Animation is debatably one of the most difficult skills in film to master. Ahead of our Animation workshop on January 14th, we have compiled our top five tips to have you reaching Pixar-like levels of success in no time!

1. Plan out everything

Your storyboard matters in an animated film, perhaps even more so than in conventional film. You will not have a physical person to record and act out spontaneous movements – all movement will come from your ideas on paper! Even the smallest details will need their own sections on a storyboard.

2. Immediately grab your audience’s attention

As beginning animators typically produce content in short-film formats, the first few seconds are crucial. Although not quite as relevant for full-length movies, in short videos, the first couple of seconds will either win over your viewers or lose them.

3. Avoid over-animating a scene

According to Aaron Blaise, an animator who has worked on projects including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, and Mulan, one of the biggest issues he noticed is the over animation of certain scenes. Animation doesn’t necessarily mean moving something around; it means bringing something to life. Young animators think that the more they move assets around, the more animated their scene will look. Next time you are animating a scene, take a step back and think “what needs to go into this, to make it a breathable character?” Rather than how am I going to move this character from A to B in the scene. Get into your character’s head and try to act it out. You will find that you don’t actually need too much movement.

4. Don’t wedge too much information into a scene

Dana Boadway-Masson, a senior mentor at AnimationMentor.com, states that one of the most common things she sees is animators trying to wedge too much information in one shot. Dana says that in almost every situation, it ends up affecting the realism of the performance and can end up confusing the scene.

5. When in doubt, throw it out

Many animators argue that one of the most common errors amongst animators is over complex scenes. When they feel that a scene is becoming too confusing or complicated, they save their work, and then proceed to start again from scratch.

When working on your animation, try use as fewer controls so that you can move from pose to pose as efficiently as possible. Keep things simple!

Taken from: “12 VIdeo Animation Tips from the Industry Experts.” https://www.moovly.com/blog/video-animations-tips-from-experts