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2D Animation Help!

I will be attending university in September to study Animation, I will be starting on a foundation year as I have no previous experience with the subject.
I was wondering if anyone can recommend any books or videos etc for beginners that I can start learning from? My drawing skills also need a lot of work so any advice would be really gratefully appreciated!
My dream would be to work for a company such as Nickelodeon as that style is what I'm passionate about.

Reply 1

assassinjeev22

I don't study animation but here's some advice/info:

For 2D animation i'd suggest getting a grasp of basic physics. For example the most popular entry-level exercises I believe is trying to do an animation of a bouncing ball as it introduces a lot of the basics such as using onion skin, deformation of bodies and how to bring some sort of life into it (this being the bounciness). Another exercise is a falling sack which again helps to visualise the object and forsee what motion the object would do. Another is animating a character and making it seem that they are pushing a heavy object. Practice makes perfect. I'd suggest getting this FlipaClip which is a free animation software on IOS and Android.

About videos and stuff, one series that has really helped me is Alan Becker's tutorial on youtube on the 12 principles of animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4

I don't really have anything else other than that!

With drawing, again it's just practice, practice every day. The best way to practice for a complete beginner is to start with paper and pencil and start to draw simple shapes like a circle until you can do the perfect circle. Then practice how to do straight lines, etc. From there start to draw 3D shapes like a cube and pyramid and experiment with different perspectives, then maybe stack them up.

Then add lighting to those drawings. Imagine the light is coming from the side where would the shade be? what if one of the blocks was illuminated, what would the shadows look like?

Try adding colour!

These are just the basics though for drawing (i wouldn't focus too much on lighting for animation though as animation mostly include simple shadows to decrease complexity so animations take less time) but for animation, you need to master character poses and anatomy of basic bodies and animals. Then you would want to go ahead and start drawing a full body and possibly even designing new characters in the Nickelodeon style.

Once the foundation is laid you can focus on walk cycles, expressions, lip syncing, jumping and really bringing life into the characters!

Sorry if this isn't what you're looking for but I do hope it helps!

Reply 2

moid

The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is the best introduction to animation and worth every penny. It's known in the industry as the bible of animation. You'll probably be able to find some of Richard Williams' lectures on Youtube if you look hard enough.

Successful Drawing by Andrew Loomis is a fantastic book on how to draw pretty much everything. It's probably hard to get hold of as a paper copy, but if you search the web you *might* find a PDF... His book Figure Drawing is also totally worth acquiring if you find it... they have been out of print for a very long time, but animators tend to consider them the two best books on how to draw. OOOPS a quick check shows they have indeed been reprinted.

When you get more advanced you can look at Walt Stanchfield's Drawn to Life vol 1 and 2.

Good luck :smile: