Vital Tip for Animation Graduates

What's the single most important thing that animation graduates need to do when applying for work? Of course, the main thing a professional animator needs is a great demo reel, which is why we spend so much time at BNU focusing on helping our students to prepare a great demo reel. But that reel is no good unless a future employer can find it quickly. To make sure the person doing the hiring can find your work easily, make sure to embed your demo reel at the top of your CV or resume. And, it goes without saying, check that the embedded link actually works. 

Stanislavski's Questions for Actors & Animators

Constantin Stanislavski

Constantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theatre director who was one of the first to set down in writing the principles of great acting.

Many actors credit him with inventing "the Method" - the means by which actors immerse themselves in a character. 

Animators are actors with a pencil or a mouse, and we need to give a performance that is just as credible as anything that a stage or screen actor will create.

So, what can animators learn from Stanislavski's seven questions for actors?

Six Tips to Make Maya Run Faster

Tip Number 6 - stay low poly

One of the most common problems students encounter, especially when working from home, is their Maya scene slowing down so much that they can't animate anymore.

Or, not quite as drastic but almost as frustrating, their scene becomes so slow that animation becomes a burden. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to speed up your scene and make it run faster.  Below are our Six Tips to make Maya work at optimal speed.

How to Animate "Eye Darts"

Eyes - Window to the Soul

"Eye darts" are fast moving micro-changes of eye direction. Eyes are the window to the soul - it's the thing the audience will look at most, and one of the most common mistakes made by junior animators is fail to pay enough attention to their character's eyes.

Our eyes are very expressive, and the eyes are what we look at when we watch a character on the screen.  When we talk, we seek signals for how another person is thinking and feeling - we watch their eyes, and we often dart from one eye to another.  So, how does an animator animate eye darts?

Why Animators Need Rhinoceros Hide

Animators need rhino hide

Why should animators be like a rhinoceros? Because rhinos have thick hides, and animators need thick hides too.

Applying for work in the animation industry requires persistence and the ability to shrug off the inevitable early failures that newly graduating animators will most likely experience.

Twelve Top Tips for Animating in Maya

Part of the secret of having a successful career as an animator is learning how to be good and fast at the same time.

Directors want quality, Producers want speed. To survive in the industry for long, you must please both.  Animation producers like animators who do the job well, finish on time, and are nice to work with. If you have all three of these qualities then you will have a long and successful career in the industry.

Below are our Twelve Top Tips for animating in Maya, to help you be both good, fast and reliable. Most of the principles below are things that I learned from the lead animators on "Robots"; the film where I first learned 3D animation in Maya.

Foxy Tail Rig - Great for Learning Animation

"Ultimate" Tail

Here at Bucks we're recommending this free "Ultimate Tail" Rig for all our students, available for download from CGMeetUp.

The "Ultimate" series are all well-tested rigs, which are specifically designed for learning animation.

We especially like the foxy "ultimate tail" rig, great for learning overlapping action. The rig has relatively few controls, and it's an excellent platform on which to learn the basics of animation locomotion.

This Rig Goes to Eleven

Here at Bucks New Uni we are recommending the Eleven Rig to all our student animators. "Eleven" is available for free download at the Resources page of the Eleven Second Club (the clue is in the name).
 
Eleven is one of the most popular rigs used by our students, and can be used for some great character animation. It's also a very good rig for lipsync, body poses, and facial expressions, and is dependable and easy to learn.

Eleven does, however, have a few quirks. So, what are they and how can we navigate around them?

50 Ways to Sit by Kevin Parry

50 Ways to Sit by Kevin Parry follows on from 100 Ways to Walk, an inventive and clever imagining on the many different ways in which people move, and what this tells us about their character and personality. 50 Ways to Sit takes the same idea, and shows how much variation there in the way that different people might carry out a normal, simple action, like sitting down. It also shows how important it is for animators to get used to acting out their shots, filming themselves, and then using the footage as reference for their work. It's one of the most important, and least well understood, parts of the animation process.

Back Up Your Data!

Hard Drive - full of moving parts

There are few things more depressing than being told by a student that their hard drive has died, and they have lost all their work.

Losing your data means starting afresh, going back to the beginning to start again the long, slow slog of building up a demo reel.  It's hard to over-stress the importance of backing up your data. It's a pain in the neck, and it takes time, but never forget that a hard drive is a delicate piece of technology filled with vulnerable moving parts.

Hard drives don't last for ever and, like all tech, will (eventually) let you down. The secret is to back up your data. But how best to do this? We take a quick look at some of the options.

How To Get The Classic Graph Editor Back

New look Graph Editor

Not everyone is a fan of the Maya 2017 interface. In particular, the new-look Graph Editor isn't necessarily as easy to use as the old version.

Fortunately, it isn't difficult to get the Classic Graph Editor back.

How Do You Stop The Feet Sliding When You Animate a Walk Cycle?

How do you stop the feet sliding when you animate a walk cycle? It's a question often asked by animation students and, since the answer is a little technical, here is a free video which explains how to tackle the problem. It runs about 10 minutes, and should help explain how to get it right first time, and stop those feet from slipping around.

Book Recommendation - Animation Methods by David Rodriguez

Animation Methods by David Rodriguez is a very, very good book on learning animation in Maya.  It's a book that focuses primarily on 3D Character Animation, a step-by-step guide for learning Maya, and the Maya animation tools. It also has useful sections on how to get into the industry, how to make a great demo reel, and how to get a job in animation. We think this is a very useful companion book to the animation and VFX course at Bucks.

It is also an unusual book in that it makes extensive use of QR codes - meaning you can use your smartphone to scan the codes and then view a 3D animated clip of the lesson. So, not only can you read the lesson, but you can also see and understand it through a video demonstration. 

How to Animate Lipsync

Above is an excellent video on how to animate lipsync, showing how to break the process down into easy sections. The idea is to make sure that your work starts off simple and gradually grows in complexity as you layer in the detail.  At its simplest, good lipsync is just about opening the character's mouth on the vowels, and closing it on the consonants. But, developing a system to keep it simple and at the same time get a sophisticated result, is all part of mastering the art and craft of animation.

How To Make a Batch Render of Your Frames in Maya, and Export a Movie File

How do we make beautiful renders in Maya? "Utah teapot" - Wikimedia Commons

How do you make a Batch Render of your frames in Maya?  Remember that computers will drive you crazy, and when it comes to technology, things rarely go to plan. Google is always your friend when it comes to troubleshooting technical problems. Someone out there will have the answer - if you can just ask the right question.  Below is a technical cheat sheet that should help you to create beautiful, final rendered images - and a movie file - without too many tears.

How to Use Live Action Reference to Create Believable Animation

Horse in Motion by Edward Muybridge

How can animators use live action reference to create believable animation?  Back in the old 2D days of hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping (as it was called) was a legitimate, if much debated, method of achieving a realistic look and feel to your animation.  Today, the technology has changed, but 3D animators can also benefit from using live action to help inform their animation, and this is especially the case when doing complex animal or creature animation. So how, in practice, does a MAYA animator use live action reference to get a great result? Below are some techniques for making it work.

Brad Bird Explains The Magic Circle

The Iron Giant

Many years ago I worked on The Iron Giant, a wonderful film and a priceless opportunity to work with one of the very best animation directors - the legendary Brad Bird.  I learned a great deal from him both as a director and an animator.  Brad's style of directing was always clear; he always knew what he wanted, and how to communicate it to the animators.  One of the cleanest and most useful concepts I learned from him was the importance of "The Magic Circle" - a simple rule of composition, and the animator's best friend in a tight spot. Here is how it works.

Maya Says You Can't Save Due to "Unknown Nodes" - What Should You Do?

Autodesk Maya is a big and complex piece of software, full of traps and pitfalls for the unwary. The "Unknown Nodes" error sometimes occurs when you are trying to save your work, but Maya won’t let you save. This can be frustrating, and the solution is not obvious. What is an unknown node anyway? And what should you do when this happens?

What is the Euler Filter in Maya? And When Should You Use It?

Dr Leonhard Euler by Jakob Emanuel Handmann.  Image: Wikipedia

Look under the Curves menu in the Graph Editor in Maya and you will see a button marked Euler Filter. Not knowing what it does (or even how to pronounce it), you have probably never used it - why would you? But don't be deceived by the odd name.

The Euler Filter is a very useful tool in Maya, one which can solve - almost magically - some of the most common problems we get in the rotations of curves, problems which can seriously mess up your character animation. If the rotations on your character's arms are going wild, and no amount of keyframing seems to help - you probably need a little help from Dr Euler.

Why Has Mental Ray Disappeared from Maya?

Mental Ray by Nvidia

Mental Ray is a renderer that comes free with Maya - but sometimes it goes missing. One of the most common questions new users have about Maya is this: "Where has Mental Ray gone?!"  Every Maya user faces this problem at least once, and the solution is not always obvious. You look in the Render Settings menu and - Mental Ray is gone. So, what to do to bring it back? And why does Mental Ray disappear so often?