أحد الأسئلة الأكثر شيوعًا التي أحصل عليها (بشكل يومي تقريبًا) هو:

“أريد الدخول في عالم الرسوم المتحركة. من أين أبدأ؟”

في هذا الدليل الهائل ، أحاول تغطية (تقريبًا) كل ما قد تحتاج لمعرفته حول الرسوم المتحركة إذا كنت تحاول الدخول في صناعة الرسوم المتحركة.

سأغطي بعض المفاهيم الأساسية للرسوم المتحركة ، والمفردات ، والمبادئ ، والبرمجيات ، والأجهزة ، والكتب ، والدورات التدريبية بالإضافة إلى بعض الخيارات للأشخاص الذين يرغبون في الدخول في صناعة الرسوم المتحركة ولكنهم مرهقون أو خائفون.

سوف أتطرق إلى ماهية الرسوم المتحركة ، وما يتطلبه الأمر لصنع أفلام الرسوم المتحركة (ثنائية أو ثلاثية الأبعاد) ، وحتى كيفية البدء في البحث عن وظيفة في الصناعة.

من السهل تعلم، من الصعب السيطرة

أصبح الانخراط في الرسوم المتحركة اليوم أسهل من أي وقت مضى.

أصبحت البرامج أرخص (أو حتى مجانية) ، ويمكن لمعظم أجهزة الكمبيوتر الحديثة التعامل مع مهام الرسوم المتحركة الأكثر بساطة (غالبًا ثنائية الأبعاد).

المهم هو أنه على الرغم من أن أي شخص يمكنه البدء في الرسوم المتحركة الآن ، فإن فن الرسوم المتحركة لا يزال يستغرق وقتًا لإتقانه.

الخبر السار هو …

لست بحاجة إلى أن تكون رسامًا متحركًا من فئة ديزني لإنشاء رسوم متحركة رائعة حقًا.

يمكنك أن تبدأ صغيرًا وبسيطًا وتطور مهاراتك وأسلوبك الفريد ببطء. لا تحتاج حتى إلى معرفة كيفية الرسم بشكل جيد

So what does being an animator mean?

Before we jump it, you can watch this video where I explain the differences between animating in 2D and 3D. This will give you an idea of what an animator actually does.

It might also give you a clue about what direction you might want to pursue.

 

 

Now that we covered the basic idea of what animation is, it’s important to understand the vocabulary and specialized terms used in the animation and filmmaking industry.

These terms will come up often, so let’s take a few minutes to go over them:

Timeline

The timeline is the part of the animation software that represents the animation’s progress over time.

Depending on the software, we might use the timeline to make changes to the timing of the animation, as well as the position of the elements.

Frame Rate

The frame rate of an animation is the number of individual images (or frames) that are being displayed over the span of one second. It is a setting you can adjust in the animation software.

Animation is usually done in 24 frames per second (FPS).

Working on One’s & Two’s

Working on One’s or Two’s is a term used in hand drawn animation.

Working on one’s would mean doing a new drawing over every single frame of the animation.

Working on twos means holding each drawing for two frames, so one second of animation at 24 frames per second would only be 12 drawings, not 24.

In 2D animation working on two’s looks fine in most instances, and there are even cases where drawings can be held longer. In 3D, though, working on one’s is the standard.

Shots & Scenes

Normally in live action filmmaking, the term ‘shot‘ refers to the images between camera edits, while a scene is all the shots and dialogue that take place at a particular location for a continuous block of time.

In animation, however, we often use the term ‘scene’ and ‘shot’ interchangeably. When we talk about a scene/shot, we often refer to one specific continuous piece of animation in between camera cuts.

Keyframes | Breakdowns | Inbetweens

Key frames, breakdowns and in-betweens are important terms, but they mean slightly different things depending on the type of animation.

In hand drawn animation, keyframes (or just keys) are the major important poses that define the scene. Breakdowns come between keys and define what the motion from key to key will be. In-betweens are all the frames that come in between to smooth out the motion.

In 3D, a keyframe is any position on the timeline where the animator has defined the position of the character. In-betweens are all the frames that the computer interprets or automatically generates to move the character from key to key.

Images taken from The Animator’s Survival Kit / Richard Williams

Timing | Spacing | Easing

Timing, spacing and easing are closely related terms.

Timing means the total number of frames that will be used for a movement. Spacing is the amount of change that comes between each frame. Decreasing the spacing, makes an object slower, while increasing the spacing makes it look faster.

In digital animation, easing is how spacing is controlled, usually through a motion graph on the timeline.

Onion Skinning

When animating, it’s very useful to be able to see more than one frame at a time.

In paper animation this is done by having multiple drawings on a light table, but in modern animation programs there’s often a feature called onion skinning. It lets you see semi-transparent representations of the frames behind or ahead of the current frame you’re working on.

Compositing

Compositing is the process of putting all the individual pieces of a scene together to create the final visual output.

You might have a background, multiple characters, and some scenery all being developed separately. Compositing is how all those pieces get put together into a single scene.

The foundation of any animation education is the 12 principles of animation.

The 12 principles were a set of core concepts that were developed in the 1930’s by animators at Walt Disney Studios as they were transitioning from doing shorts to feature films. It was a gradual process of discovery and refinement as the animators tried to push their work to a new higher standard.

These 12 principles were first compiled by the legendary animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in 1981 in their book The Illusion of Life.

Creating the illusion of life is what the principles are all about. They help us create characters that look like they have weight, personality, and exist in a real world with real physics at work.

Even though they were developed by 2D animators, they still apply to 3D and any other type of animation.

Now that we understand the basic concepts of what animation is, lets go over the workflow of creating animation.

First, I’ll go cover the basic steps of the animation filmmaking pipeline (all the moving parts it takes to create an animated movie), and then I’ll breakdown the process of actually animating a shot from start to finish.

So what are the steps of making an animated film?

1. Story

The first (and probably the most important) part of making any film is a good story.

If you don’t get your story right from the start, then no matter how great your film looks, people will not enjoy watching it. Story comes first. make sure it’s good and that it works before you move on.

In animation, the story often evolves and changes during production, since you’re not restricted to whatever shots you got on set, so the more work you put into developing your story, the more you reduce wasted time during production.

2. Script

Once the idea for the story is ready to put into words, the next step is writing the script.

It’s important to transfer the idea into words as soon as you can, so that we can spot any issues with the story before getting into production.

3. Concept Art

Once the script is ready, concept art is often created to establish the visual style of the film.

That’s a really fun step, and is the first chance we get to see parts of the film come to life on paper. It’s all about exploring and trying things out.

4. Storyboard

Next is creating a storyboard, which is probably one of the most important steps in figuring out the film.

Storyboarding allows you to look at your film as a whole and spot story and pacing issues. Making one also provides you with something you can show other people for feedback. Most people react better to a storyboard than a script.

Once we’re happy with the boards, we move on to creating an animatic.

5. Animatic

An animatic is the movie version of your storyboard.

If storyboard is like a comic book, then an animatic is like a movie.

We bring all the boards into an editing program and edit them with the correct timing, add some temporary music and sound effects (just enough to convey the different story beats), and when we’re done we have the first version of our film ready to watch.

As great as a storyboard is, an animatic really gives us a first glimpse into what our film is going to be like.

6. Creating Assets

At this point, depending on your animation medium of choice, we’ll be creating the different assets for our film.

For 3D animation we’ll create the models for the characters, environments, sets, and the props. We’ll use the concept art and model sheets as our reference. These models will then have to be rigged with a 3D skeleton with controls, so that we can animate them in our scene.

For 2D animation we’ll draw the background, finalize the character design sheets, and if necessary – rig the characters in our 2D animation software.

For stop-motion animation we’ll build our sets, our puppets, the props and different pieces of clothing needed for the film.

7. Previs

Before we get into animating our scenes, there’s another important step in making sure the story works, and that is creating a previs (or pre-visualization).

A previs is the next incarnation of the animatic, this time using 3D models.

We set up our shots in the 3D program, with the final camera angles and motion, and create very basic animation for the characters, just enough to convey the action they’re suppose to be doing.

We then bring all of these shots to the editing program, just like we did with the animatic, and we now have a previz version of our film, with the correct 3D models and camera motion.

because animation takes a very long time, this is the last chance we can have to make any serious story changes in our film. It will be a huge waste if we had to make story changes after the animation phase.

8. Animation

We’re finally ready for animation!

This is where we finally bring life into the film. The characters start to move, and we can see the soul of the film come to life in front of us.

It’s an amazing thing to see, but it also takes a long time. Done incorrectly, it can ruin our movie. Bad animation is like bad acting: Even if the writing and story are solid, people won’t notice if the delivery is all wrong.

We’ll go deeper into the 6 steps of animation later on in this section.

9. Texturing | Lighting | Rendering

This step applies mostly to 3D animation, though 2D animation goes through similar post-production steps similar to this, and stop-motion animation spends a long time doing compositing and miscellaneous effects on top of their shots as well.

In 3D, models need to be textured, which means creating different materials assigned to the different parts of the models. Some simulate metal, some plastic and even a few for skin and hair.

We then light the shots with virtual lights, replicating as closely as we can how light works in real life.

Then when our shots are textured and lit, we start the rendering process, which is the computer calculating all of the data in our scenes, and creating still images from it.

We then take these images to a compositing program, like Nuke or After Effects, extract the necessary data from the images, and combine them to create our final images.

10: Editing | Color correction

Once our images are composited and ready, we bring them back into our editing program and replace our previs shots with our new composited shots, just like we replaced the animatic shots with the previz.

We are now able to see our finished film on the editing timeline for the first time, but, it’s not really finished yet. We need to do some color correction and grading.

Color correction is the process of manipulating the colors of each individual shot so that it matches the one the comes before / after it. We also make sure each shot doesn’t have parts that are too white or too black, basically working so that we get a consistent and correct color all throughout the film.

Then we grade our film, which is the more fun and creative part, in which we try to create a visual style for the whole film, and give it a distinct look.

11. Music | Sound design

Ideally we’ve been working with a musician from day one of production, making sure the music fits what we were trying to do with the film, and making sure the film works with the music.

Music is not usually something we simply slap on at the end, and so I prefer to have it with me throughout the production so it becomes an integral part of the story.

The sound designer then finalizes all the film’s sound effects like folly, ambiance and voices, as well as mastering and mixing in the final audio of the film.

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If you want to know more about making animated shorts…

Check out the course bellow   

 

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The 6 steps of animation

We’ve talked about the workflow of the animation filmmaking pipeline, now lets go into the actual steps of character animation.

Here are the 6 steps of animation:

1. Shooting reference video
2. Key posing
3. Blocking
4. Splining
5. Smoothing
6. Adding life

Step 1: Shooting Reference video

This is a very important and overlooked step. It’s weird how people really think they know what certain actions look like, and how long they take, but end up getting it wrong.

Physical actions are something you need to analyze before animating, especially if you’re a beginner.

You have a shot of a guy throwing a baseball? Search YouTube for videos of pitchers throwing balls.

Don’t assume you know what an action looks like just because you’ve seen it before.

Looking at an action as an animator is completely different from looking at it as a viewer.

Step 2: Posing

After shooting a reference, it’s time to create the key poses of the shot.

These poses are called key poses because they are the most important poses of the shot. These are the poses that convey the story of the shot. We need to make sure we get those poses right, because we’re going to build on those for the rest of the process.

Step 3: Blocking

Once we’re happy with our key poses, we start breaking down the movement from each pose to the next by adding ‘in betweens’ (also known as breakdown poses or passing poses). These are the poses that connect the key poses.

We keep adding more poses until the movement looks as good as it could, while still staying in stepped mode (stepped mode is when you don’t allow interpolation between poses, which results in a very choppy/blocky motion).

Step 4: Splining

Splining is a 3D animation term. It’s the process in which you convert the interpolation of the keys from stepped to spline.

In other words – you make the computer connect the movement between each of your poses, and that makes the movement look smoother.

The problem is that the computer doesn’t do a very good job at interpolating. It only works with what it has. That’s why the better the blocking is – the better the splined version is going to look.

Step 5: Refining & offset

Now that all of our keys are in spline mode, we need to work on them. We refined the animation curves and make sure the movement looks smooth.

It’s also a good idea to offset some of the actions so it doesn’t look so ‘stop and start’, as if the character is doing all the motion at once.

By the end of this step your shot should look pretty solid and almost finished.

Step 6: Adding life

This step is the a lot of fun.

We’re already finished with the grunt work of animation, and it’s time to add small imperfections that bring life to the character.

Maybe an extra blink or a mouth twitch here and there. The difference between the last 2 steps is small but it could make the difference between good animation and great animation.

After “Where do I start”, the topic I’m asked about the most is probably software. Everyone wants to know about tools.

Is it Maya? After Effects? Flash?

Here is a break down our options when choosing an animation software based on the type of animation:

 

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So how do you take the next step? What if you want to make animation your career?

How do you get your foot in the door?

Animators generally need 3 things to get a job in the industry:

1. A resume.
2. A solid demo reel.
3. A portfolio website with your own domain. Non of that john.wordpress.com crap. Check out these great WordPress templates to make your life easier.

For many professions, having a good resume or cover letter is the most important factor in getting a job. For animators and visual effects people it’s all about the demo reel.

Over the years I have made many demo reels for myself, and watched dozens of other people’s reels. Before you start sending your reel to a bunch of studios, I beg of you, read our demo-reel guide. I have collected a ton of information about how to create an effective animation demo reel that actually gets you hired. Don’t skip it.

So I have a demo reel. Now what?

Since I don’t know you personally, I’ll give you the best advice I think would benefit most people: The best way to get noticed is to create things.

Having a BFA in animation or a diploma from an online school will definitely help, but it won’t guarantee a job after graduation.

You know what I did the day after graduation?

Continued animating for my reel. And that’s what I did everyday until I got my first freelance work. And then after work kept working on more shots so I’ll be ready for the time the freelance project was over.

You need to keep making. Always.

There’s always enough time to work on your reel, especially in the first year of your animation career. When you add stuff to your reel, make sure you follow our Demo Reel Guidelines so you don’t waste your time.

If you keep creating things and putting them out there, while constantly applying to studios, you will eventually get noticed, and hired.

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Getting Started with Animation

• The 5 Types of Animation: This guide breaks down the five different types of animation available to you, and what you’ll need to start animating. Best software, best schools, and more.
• Best Animation Schools: A curated list of the best animation schools in the world.
• Animation Studios: A detailed guide to the best animated film production studios
• Animation Software – Which One Should You Use: A break down of the options you have when choosing your animation software.
• Why You Don’t Need to Know How to Draw to Be a 3D Animator: You have no excuses anymore!
• Switching to a Wacom Tablet for 3D Animation: How to make the switch to animating in 3D using a tablet instead of a mouse.
• Start Animating Now with Less than a $100: In this article I show how you can start animating like a pro with less than a $100.