I am beggining to believe that some people are just not cut out for animation! Me in particular, I really suck at animation and think I should stick to still images. Every tutorial I have done didn’t help at all, I can’t even pull off simple rigging. Do you think that some people should stick to still images?
You can search the animation forum here. You should be able to find some of our rigs to play with. Animation is hard that’s why it’s so fun to learn. Take it slow. You have to learn how to make a character walk before you can keyframe a character’s run cycle.
And before you even touch character animation, learn how to make a ball bounce :D.
You made 80 posts and 14 of them are threads… You could be doing animation instead of wasting your time here kansas15… ehm I mean jackj.
Kansas15?
Please don’t do that, lets leave kansas15 behind us already
And before you even touch character animation, learn how to make a ball bounce :D.[/quote]
And before you know how to make a ball bounce, you must know how to make a ball.
P
I’ve tried and failed many times. How do you align all those planes to make a sphere?! I don’t get it… ( 
)
It’s quite difficult actually.
You have to make use of the spin feature and turn your object the exact amount of degrees and do it all over again.
Oh, and in the end don’t forget to recalculate normals :]
P
IE. not very difficult.
Removing doubles might also be useful.
As for animating being a learned skill or a natural gift, it’s both of them, just like pretty much every other ability. Even if you are a natural talent, you have to work hard to get better. If you aren’t a netural talent, you can still learn a lot by working hard.
I’m always a bit “offended” when people refer to my hard-earned skills as “talents” (I’m not referring to my Blender skills here by the way). I think some people, although being genuinely complimentary, use “talent” as a way of almost dismissing their own lack of skills despite the fact that in many cases they’ve never really put in the hard work required to gain those skills. Instead of accepting their own failings, they attribute others’ successes to “talent” or “gift”.
In my opinion a lot of it comes down to personal interest. Someone who’s interested in golf from an early age will probalby end up with a reasonable golf game. Someone, like me, who ignores golf until one day in adulthood has little chance of being great the first time on the green.
Blender’s no different. Were you fascinated by animation as a kid? Did you have cartooning and animation books? Did you make flip book, stick figure animations? Maybe a clay or Lego animation on Super-8 film (if you’re old enough) or video cam or even with a still digital camera and a video compositor? Did you watch all those Disney “behind the scenes” shows and the various “making of” documentaries for a host of major movies? Has animation always been there in the back of your mind, even before you knew about Blender?
If this doesn’t describe your life so far then you start a little behind some other people in these forums and you’ll have to work that little bit harder to catch up. Add to this the almost geeky nature of working with 3D software and you realise some solid computing experience comes in handy too.
Good animation requires effort and while some people might seem to pick it up more easily, this probably has a lot to do with past experiences that paved the way - even if they don’t realise it themselves. Sure, there’ll be various levels of skill and people will have different strengths but it’s possible to become skilled through effort, assuming a normal learning ability.
Amen to that AndyD. Amen.
I have to disagree. Not only from y own learning experience but also from my teaching experience efford is not the only key.
Animation is nothing else than drawing, and we all should know that drawing is not a talent but a skill learned through practise and analysing. but one need also to understand. and that is where many just fail. animation is one the one side a lot of labor work, but only labor work will not provide good results, no matter how long you work. as long as you dont understand it, which is what some people declare as gift, you will not make much progress.
animation as rendering is for some degree nothing else than reproducing what is around us in a less or more complex abstraction. as long as you cannot understand what is around you you cannot reproduce it.
Some people tell themselves they have talent because it makes them feel good. In reality unbeknown to them, many others are trained with these same talents or “special abilities.”
Those with skill just keep layering on more skill so that they can master more tasks. This way even the most talented can not even match to their depth of knowledge and practical application in their field.
Talent may come on us almost out of nowhere. Skill is not a mystery. A skilled person puts in the hours and days to learn to get it right. No surprises or mysteries needed. A skilled person has talents or special abilities too, they just know how to use them right. And they can direct these talents to handle the right job when needed.
It’s like and old Kung Fu (Gung Fu-proper) Film. A student displays a remarkable “talent” in one mighty kicking technique. They show their master this talent. The master tells him that he is a fool because this kicking technique can easily be defeated. With on block and an a blow the master sends the student sailing through the air. The student ask how he was defeated so easily. The master tells him that he should have been watching his eyes to see his attack move. The student laughs and nods with a goofy facial expression. The master rolls this eyes and shakes his head.
Sometimes it’s more in the way the eyes see a task than in the actual physical application. To know this takes years of practice and earned skills.
This often the difference between those who create companies and businesses out their cg skills. Those who’s “talents” are employed at these companies can often see where their skills can take them eventually.
So, what you’re all saying is that when you work your butt off, even though you have talent, you will still get a resonable gift?
When it comes to “skill” and “talent” or “gift”, it just seems natural because some learn at a young age on how these specific things work, wich gets embeded in your brain cause you use it so much.
When it comes to learning something new people do the 80% work (the stuff they know and love.) but only get 20% out of it. The thing to do is do 20% of the stuff you dont know and you get 80% out of it.
Do that through life and you might become rich. 
No garuntee tho
This is where knowing the right people and being at the right place at the right time come in.
Hey, because of this forum we know who to read about and what we should learn to get ahead. It’s 2006 and Blender and the cg world has never had as many opportunities as of now.
And don’t do it just for the gifts, do for the love of it.
Skills can be learned some are just harder to grasped.
Animation means you have to be good as seeing things in motion and pay attention to detail. It, as well as 3D in general is the art of revision, if you dont have the patients and will or ability to learn to use resources, you are f*$& beyound the human compasity.
Again animation is probably the one skill I dont mind not having for me it worst then programming. Because atleast if I get stuck at a part in code, as for help, while in animation, the only help you’ll get is “that doesn’t look right” too stiff, make it loosers… and so on. SO again learning to use resources is all you need to succeed in gaining a new skill.
Thank you all (Except bigbad who couldn’t resist insulting me) I think you all have inspired me to continue learning Animation. I thank you for that.
I will now search the forums for GOOD tutorials on animation, thanks again.
I have to disagree. Not only from y own learning experience but also from my teaching experience efford is not the only key.
No way! How could anyone disagree after I put that much effort into explaining my position?!?!
Animation is nothing else than drawing, and we all should know that drawing is not a talent but a skill learned through practise and analysing. but one need also to understand
Agreed. Understanding is a major factor in any genuine learning exercise. Without understanding you only have memorising, not learning but that’s where I believe past experience and interests come into play.
Understanding can also come through dedicated trial and error or sometimes in a blinding flash of brilliance just before falling asleep or, often, by seeing or reading an explanation or tutorial that just happens to make sense to you more than any previous explanations (this is an interesting phenomena too because some people learn more easily from words or numbers and others, like me, from images. Is this a “gift” though?).
True, some people may never quite “get it” but this probably has more to do with interest and previous experience than talent. In my opinion.