Moving

I am moving to yen3d.animationblogspot.com.
Point your browsers please.

Ricardo Silva

My Take on The Animation Principles

I am not a super duper experienced animator and I don't feel very comfortable talking about this subject nor defying what the old masters have said in the golden days as I am, myself still trying to understand the principals of animation.
However, in my short experience I have developed some thoughts about this subject.
What follows may sound a bit like rubbish as they are just thoughts of a young guy... but what the heck?!

I remember the first time I saw a list of the Principles with a detailed explanation of each one and I though : "This is complicated!", and even now I still think they are a bit complicated.
Everyone as his or her take on the Principles.
If you open "The Illusion of Life" you'll find a list of 12 to 14 Principles.
The other day I found a guy who had list of more than 20...
They were all good points but, my problem is that if I think of all those things at the same time and try to fit them all at once in my work, I'll probably go crazy.
The funny thing is that one of the Principles is SIMPLIFY.
If animators simplify their work so that the audience can understand it, why can't they just simplify their Principles?
That is what I'll try to do here with my own simplified version of the Principles!

I'm not going to say: "Forget the animation Principles that you red before!" That would be just stupid.
However, what I am trying to say is this: "Think about The 3 Kings and use the rest to support them."
"The 3 Kings? What the heck is that?"

The 3 Kings:

Poses
Timing
Spacing

For me this is the core of good animation. It's what I think about when I'm animating.
How I get there is when all of the other principles come into play.
You see, I'm not really throwing away the squash and stretch, the silhouette, the staging, ease in ease out, etc.
I fit all of that inside these 3 kings.
I'm just build a core so that every thing I learn works to straighten it.
It is a structure to keep things organized in my head so that I don't have to think about a million things at once.

Maybe this is just nonsense...words of a not very experienced animator trying to understand the craft.

later :)

Ricardo Silva

The Vulture

Not really any animation here but, I modelled this guy last year and now found him lost in a dusty Windows folder.
I'm going to dig up in some of my bedroom's drawers and see if I can find his model sheets.

Ricardo Silva

Mocap!

Happy Feet won an Oscar for best motion capture film... oops! I mean best animated film.
I too use mo-cap for my animation...err...I mean my motion?! The above picture clearly proves that I have mo-cap technology.

I think if mo-cap films are going to win Oscars (competing with animated films) they should at least avoid calling it Best ANIMATED Picture but instead call it Best CG Picture. That sounds fairer to me.

later

Ricardo Silva