Hello. After downloading Blender, I immediately started rigging a stickman figure and creating movements. I did this to expand my library of actions. What I want to become is an animator specialized in action.
Someone advised me that practicing with a stickman figure without understanding the basics of animation does not really help improve your skills. Is this really true?
If so, what should I be doing? How can I build a solid foundation? What exactly do people mean by “the basics”?
I’m really confused.
It took me about twelve seconds to find this link, and I happen to think that it is a very good one. (“Happy happenstance …”)
Title: 12 Principles of Animation Explained [With Examples].
Probably the definitive book on the subject would be Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, which I bought first-edition in hardcover the moment it came out. (Because I knew that it was too expensive to last long on the retail shelves, and it didn’t.) The webpage cited, which is well-produced and quite thorough, is obviously based on it and should be an excellent place to start.
Now, I would also point out that you should also study cinematography and film editing, because the things that you animate, and what is subsequently done with them to make a movie, are going to follow these principles of movie-making. Yes, there’s a lot to learn, but the Internet today is an excellent source. (No, you can’t buy my book from me …)
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Then what is the best way to practice these principles?
Here is a link to some rigs used in training the basics:
And the animation training series:
Not sure if you have to join or not.
But it would be worth it.
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You practice them by animating, just like you have been doing. Just don’t expect your early work to be usable as a bank of animations, because you will outgrow your early skill level. By the time you have a bank of animations, your early work will seem really outdated. Animation is a part of 3D graphics that’s really challenging and needs practice before you have a decent level.
Not all the traditional principles of animation will apply to 3D. You should identify the ones that do, then figure out what is missing from your animations, then focus on that.
From your other posts, I would say you should practice the “arcs” principle, especially for your character’s hands. Use the motion paths tool and try to make your character’s arms follow smooth arcs surrounding the silhouette of the character, making sure the hands don’t move in straight lines, have sudden starts and stops or change direction with sudden angles.
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Thank you for the advice. I think I’ve realized that I should use motion paths and practice having the character move in arcs. May I ask what you consider to be the basics of animation?
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I will take a closer look. Thank you.
In 3D animation specifically, the most basic aspect is understanding the tools. You need to be comfortable with the curve editor and keyframes before you can even think about getting a good character animation.
The very minimum is to be able to understand curves enough to complete the bouncing ball exercise. It’s very basic, but you need to understand acceleration, deceleration, how to manipulate the tangents of animation curves and how it all relates to the final result.
Basically, can you re-create this file yourself and do you understand why those specific animation curves result in this animation?
bounce.blend (526.0 KB)
Here is a tutorial about this topic. It goes a bit further, as it uses a ball rig that allows for stretch and squash.
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Well, I think the question is misleading therefore the answer is misleading too !
You’re talking about the basic tools, which if we transfer to digital painting is to know about layers , brush , eraser, selection…
Every digital painter know about those tools but knowing those tools clearly doesn’t make you a digital painter …
The question, I think isn’t about the basics, but rather the fundamentals … Which if we transfer to drawing is about shape simplification, perspective, light, color, image composition, thinking in 3D …
This is my answer about what are the fundamentals in animation, it might sound a bit criptic but I’m sure it will become much more clear once you start to dig into the subject…
First we might need to ask ourselves what is animation, what is the goal of animation ?
The goal is to take a drawing or a 3D character, and recreate the illusion of life, that is make that character moves in a way that we think it’s alive.
Meaning, that when a drawing is in motion, we create an illusion that the character got some thoughts, some goal, and it reacts to the laws of physics to some extents.
Basically, when we watch some anime, or animated movie, we saw pixel moving on screen, but we can relate to the characters, they feel alive, they think, they act therefore the animator successfully created the illusion of life !
Now we should consider the history of animation, and some folks at Disney in the early days tried to theorize animation, and what general principles are at play in a successful animation. Eventually they came up with 12 principles that we can find in any animation, it’s like the basic ingredients of any animation.
Those principles are easy to understand , hard to master, but we can say that it’s the fundamentals of animation.
Here is a video about it :
Obviously, now time has passed, and while those principles are still highly relevant, it’s not the one and only way to theorize animation, but… it’s still a good start …
Ok cool ! At first you might find those principles a bit disconnected to what you’re after, but since those principles apply to any kind of motion eventually knowing them will allow to understand any type of motion.
Just like perspective is relevant to any type of drawing being it environments drawing or figure drawing.
Obviously you can break the rules and draw without resorting to perspective too but to become really good you first need to learn the rules before breaking them…
As said in other posts, all that will become much more clear once you start to read a book about animation, or take a course…
Have fun !
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I do agree with what you said, but I brought it up because I actually see lots of people in Blender attempt to animate without understanding the technical aspect.
What you said can just as well be considered the first step (especially if you come from a 2D animation background), but you will get nowhere in 3D animation if you haven’t even been told what the tools are.
That might be why there is such a high barrier to 3D animation, you have to understand the technical and artistic aspects in parallel and you won’t get there unless you master both.
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Yes you’re right !
That said , for instance a good friend of mine came from a 2D background and managed to make a career in 3D animation without using the graph editor at all.
And it’s not the only person I know that manage to pull out very good animation using a fraction of the available tools.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, obviously you loose a lot of time by not using all the tools at your disposal, but knowing the fundamentals kind of supersede good knowledge of 3D tools. In the meantime, as said, knowing those tools by heard doesn’t guarantee that the animation is going to be good…
Just like with digital painting, someone good at drawing will manage to make good art with one layer and the default brush… And you might know a digital painting app by heart it’s not going to make you a good digital painter…
To me understanding the 3D tools is like 10% of the work. And you might get fooled by thinking that once you know them there is barely nothing more to know…
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I know what you mean. You might have seen how there are even some artists who manage to animate without a rig? You can’t get more traditional and basic.
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I knew this thread would be TLDR.
So forgive me to chime in with my summary regardless of what has been said.
- First and most important.
Animation of any kind follows the basic laws of physics and motion. These have been known and observed for centuries.
To study this origin would be helpful.
The “Grandfather” of this as far as understanding and translating this to a visual media was **Eadweard Muybridge**
His work predates everything and his motion libraries can be found through internet searches and studied.
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The principles from those studies and other observations were collated back in the early days of animation as the 12 Principles of animation.
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This is completely independent of any tools or methods.
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It is important ti study and practice these principles with the simplest of tools and methods first. Doesn’t matter if this is flipbook or a string of 4 bones in a chain.
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It is then vital that you build on this knowledge gradually and work your way through the human body, (if that is the goal) and similar to the links I shared, start a with simple bouncing ball then move to tail then legs and finally the full body.
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The final step is then to learn the tools of your trade with more precision. Graph editor etc.
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And finally workout a workflow of how you will progress through the process of animating.
How to block through the animation and then fill in details.
Or whatever method you choose. Some prefer pose to pose etc.
Whatever it is. Have a working method which is separate from the principles and the tools.
This is the “how” you approach the problem.
Then do it a lot!
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I have read everything. I am glad to have learned a lot.
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Here’s an entirely-different example. During the days of “film photography,” (ahem …) a master named Ansel Adams observed that “a photograph is captured in the camera, but it is made in the darkroom.”
The idea here is that there are many things “in a ‘final’ image” that you very simply do not recognize until they are pointed out to you. There are “intermediate steps” that you perceive nothing of, because they are imperceptible. (“As intended …”) You simply: “watch a movie.”
Yep … I would say the very same thing about almost any “craft.” 
Practicing with a stickman helps with timing and motion, but understanding fundamentals, like squash and stretch, weight, anticipation, and keyframes, is crucial. Study basic animation principles and apply them alongside your practice.
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I think you’re doing just fine by practicing. The more you do, the more you’ll learn.
Animating a stick figure is a good start to get you comfortable working with armatures. Later on you’ll want to start playing around with 3D characters (well, ‘non-stick’ characters), which will require learning about topology, weight painting, corrective shape keys, anger management, etc.
There is always more to learn. I know from experience that stagnating too long with something that is comfortable and familiar can make it unnecessarily difficult to start moving forward again, so my advice is of course keep practicing, but more importantly KEEP EXPERIMENTING.
I frequently have two different instances of Blender running - one for what I’m working on, and one where I am playing with new concepts. My ‘play’ session can be thrown completely out of whack or even crash without affecting my ‘work’ session, so I can take big risks and see what happens.
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