I am not very experienced with blender but i always seem to have the same problem. I can model it but once i get into the animation stage i always seem to loose interest into the animation. Is this normal, how can i pass this problem?
No clue. But I can’t even get to the modeling stage most times!(I can’t find inspiration.)
I find that inspiration is something that comes while you do that something a lot.
If you never animate, you’ll never get inspiration and won’t get better at it either, thus getting even less inspiration.
If you’re having problems doing actual work, try to break up the work into smaller parts. Don’t say “ah, I’ll be done with this model in three days”, but rather “ah, I’ll be done with this great texturing job in three days”, and move on to the next part, which is a completely “new” project on its own, but expands on the work of the previous project.
nothing motivates you more than finishing stuff…If you’ve done the model and are unmotivated to animate why not just light and render it, then you have a finished piece to put in the gallery or whatever…
another approach:
rather than starting a projcect and building loads of assets for it why not start with a simple block model and dive right in to animation whilst you’re still excited about it and fresh… build the models afterwards…
I never ‘finish’ anything, just get bored with it for the time being and start something else. Then go back to whatever I was doing before weeks, moths, or sometimes years later.
I can model well, but am poor at texturing. so that’s usaly when i get bored with a project
me too - i just open blender, press the space bar and pretty much loose any desire to continue from that point on … there’s one more thing to say but i’m not even motivated to type any further …
…how depressing
sad to hear
This is a very interesting topic… I will share my personal opinion, is very subjective.
I think results are something motivating (as Michael W said with other words). Modelling produces significant results quicker than animation or rigging… and there is something about texturing too that makes it less attractive than modelling, maybe that’s why we see much more “red wax” models from Z-brush than finished ones (?).
When you model you constantly see new stuff being done and that’s exciting. Rigging is a process that doesn’t have much visual impact while you do it, so it can be less exciting than modelling. And I’m not a specialist in animation, but I know is a slow process, thus visual results take longer than modelling, so again could be less exciting than modelling.
But it all differs from one person to another, I don’t think there is something that could be “normal” and something “not normal”, everyone is different. Some people is more interested in animation, they can see the interesting parts of it: bring a character to life, express ideas/feelings the way they like to be expressed, tell stories that are relevant to them, they may have a particular attraction for beauty in motion, etc.
Maybe you are not an animation person… if you feel hurt by this thought, maybe you are an animation person, and some things stop you from enjoying it. I think that as more proficient you become in something the more you’ll enjoy doing it… results appear quicker and feel easier to achieve, and that motivates.
Also this work has its tedious parts, those that need patience, and the work feels harder… for those parts, it could help to take them as your job: you just do them. But thinking on how good you felt the last time you finished something that was unpleacent to go through.
If you can decide what your animation will be about, you can choose subjects that are relevant enough for you, enough to make the work worth the effort.
If you feel overwhelmed by one aspect of the project you can change for a while to other part: modelling?, texturing?, rigging?, clear your head, and recharge energies and enthusiasm, but if when you go back to that aspect you always feel demotivated, I would try the “as a job” approach to avoid eternal procrastination. That way you get things done and enjoy when they are done, and feel proud of yourself instead of feeling down.
I searched, but no tutorial for this… they say 2.5 will have a “motivation” feature, but that’s for another thread…
Cheers! … hope it helps.
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I think it would be easier for you to move forward if you already have an objective set. Plan a short animation. It can be just 5s long. It doesn’t even have to be original. You can copy a scene or a certain effect from a movie. Or make a still render with a theme, very much like the ones recently featured in the BWC contest. Start with something very simple, so simple in fact that you’ll feel disgusted with yourself if you don’t finish it hehe And most important of all is don’t start anything new until you’ve FINISHED IT. And hopefully your success in finishing this one project will boost you to move on to something more advanced, which will lead you to dive in deeper into blender to achieve more complicated stuff, and then the cycle of blender addiction will spin on its own 
Anyway that’s how it works for me.
Eclectiel and Michael W’s post are spot on.
It depends what you want to get out of it. I never finish projects, but I always learn something from each. I have no interest in texturing, but I enjoy modelling, animating, and to some extent rigging (but the details bore me).
I want to get to know a bit more before I start ‘finishing’ projects, but at the moment I start them all with a goal in mind - learn how to UV texture, learn how to model a face, learn how to rig a hand, learn how to use the procedural textures, learn how to animate something. Once I’ve achieved that I lose interest.
My plan is to set myself a few goals as they are the best way progress. Once i have been using blender for 6 months, I will consider myself experienced enough that I can’t keep doing little learning projects only - I’ll do some actual things and then set myself sub-goals, e.g.
10 second animation - complete in 1 week/fortnight/month dpeending on complexity
1/4 time to model and texture
1/4 time to rig and make background
1/2 time to animate
leave a little bit at the end to do any fine-tuning.
The important thing (I think) is to set deadlines - if the model isn’t finished by the deadline, work on it stops. Otherwise you end up fine-tuning the mesh for the whole time and lose interest. Allot more time to the things that interest you. Find someone who like doing the things you don’t like and share the project (e.g. someone who likes texturing).
As long as you enjoy what you are doing… keep on doing it. Finished projects or not. You might get more enjoyment out of finishing though.
Considering the nature of 3D animation I wouldn’t worry too much. If you don’t want to animate, don’t! Focus on what you like doing the best, modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, and make a reel out of that. If you have ideas for projects, make the characters and sets and release them for someone else to animate.
Well I can not anymore than what everyone else has added. Therefore, I suggest you take a look at the student reels from a great school
http://www.animationmentor.com/
And a free ebook of theirs
http://www.animationmentor.com/tipsandtricks/signup.html
And their blog that was featured on the blendernation site
http://animationtipsandtricks.com/
I mention these things so that you can see hw the students that go to this school start out their animating sequences.
Most of the time they start with a bouncing ball. Basic, but once you get the idea of how balance and physics affect something as simple as a bouncing ball, then you will probably get the motivation to move onto something a little more complex, a ball with legs
Once you get the walk cycle down pat everything else will be the exciting next challenge.
All too often, people just try to create a blockbuster movie before even knowing the basics of animation.
I hope this helps. Good luck!:eyebrowlift:
any good ways to get inspiration?(I once opened blender and forgot what I was going to do, then sat there staring at the monkey!)
planning is pretty important, its usually a pretty good idea to start off on paper with sketches, ideas, etc. Like, if you are doing a building, say a church. Now, draw up a few churches, then ask yourself, why does a church have to look like this? Maybe draw the opposite of what one would expect. Go off on tagents, combine elements that you like, draw up a front and a side view, slam it into blender and off you go.
I think artists fall into 4 genres- landscapes, still lifes, figures, and abstracts. When you see something, do you ever want to capture it somehow? Or do you like to play and be random? or both? Don’t worry about doing what other people want, do what YOU want. This is bad advice if you want to make money!
If you are a doodler like me, you may want to check out the program alchemy, it makes kind of uncontrolled doodles, you may find inspiration in one of those.
And don’t be afraid of screwing up or making something crappy, because you will, but thanks to your brain you will learn from it for next time. Screwing up is a good way to get better.
landscapes, figures, and abstracts. Landscapes are hard to do in Blender and then abstracts I can’t get inspiration for.
I think it helps to fully qualify what “finished” really means before starting a project. If you’re only really interested in modeling something, then the project is finished when you’re done modeling.
So, just be sure to create a reasonable point called “finished”. Otherwise, it will be very hard for you to feel the satisfaction of having completed the project.
Haha, man, this scene is great for an animation! And quite easy to do it too! Animate yourself and make the most boring animation in the world!
Andy Warhol made his famous 8 hours long move about unknown sleeping man! Haha, because Elizabeth Taylor rejected the main role in his movie!
You can even make infinity long animation, this is one of my such short/long projects:
I love loops! 24 hours long and boring movie can be actually a good inspiration! 
I also get bored of everything I start. I have been drawing the same picture for over a year. I will finish it eventually though. I always do my stuff (playing videogames, watching TV DVD series, reading) in as few sittings as possible, usually a day or 2. In videogames though I usually quit at the last level after I die a few times, and then end up finishing months later.
I am thinking it would be a good idea for me to make a very detailed check list.
example:
week 1-3: model leg
…
week 70-76 rig leg
…
week 233-237 animate walk cycle
(exaggerated time frame a bit)
Giving myself lots of time, that I would take anyways to do simple things, I believe could be key. For me I think doing 1/2 an hour a week would be good, to keep me going for a longer time.