Sunday, August 29, 2004

Arcs Tutorial

Hey, now! We're on a roll. thanks to some kind work by "Eagle Eye" Justin Barrett I've fixed the typos on my last tutorial titled The Zen of Lead & Follow. So that should be up to my 10th Grade English teacher's grammar standards now. Seems folks are digging the info there, so that's cool. Check it out for yourself if you haven't yet.

In addition to the Lead & Follow forces tutorial, I've just put the wraps on another quickie tutorial entitled Arc D' Triumph! Naturally it's a short treatise on the value of arcs in your animation, giving explanation as to what an arc is, what should be arced,
what to look for in arcs and most importantly of all- the arcing animator's mindset. They're a fairly simple little fundamental thing, arcs, but you'd be
astonished how many animation tests and samples I am asked to look at and critique that don't use arcs effectively. It's gotten to be such a pat answer in my critiques that I decided to just write a short tooty on the topic so I can just point people to it. I know, I'm a lazy sod. Ain't it great?!

Still more to come as I find time. 'Til next time, Enjoy and God bless!


-k

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

New Tutorial on Forces

Holy cow!
Two updates in one week?!! OK, enough hyperbole. It's late and I've just put the finishing touches on a new Animation Tutorial! Yay! This one is about Animating Forces and I call it
The Zen of Lead & Follow
. Follow along as I try to explain in my convoluted fashion one interpretation of the meaning behind Mr. Donald Graham's age old adage that we ought to be animating forces and not forms. In case you don't know what that means, it's about understanding how to make stuff move with weight, believable motion, showing the effects of inertia, momentum, blah, blah, blah. Pretty cool stuff! I hope it's helpful, anyhow.

I hope to have another nifty animation tutorial up on the site by next week. Of course that depends a lot on my sleep patterns between now and then. That one will deal with achieving good motion arcs and why such silly things should be important to us animators. And I have another one on how to quickly and easily block in walk and run cycles in 4 easy steps (Yes, I know. The last thing the internet needs is yet another walk cycle tutorial, but I promise this one will be different, but still useful! So stay tuned.). And after that another one that's a sort of potpourri of tips on good posing and why it's such a bright idea to have good poses. All in good time, though. For now, this new Lead & Follow one will suffice.

'Til next time, Enjoy and God bless!

-k