Animation Tips & Tricks, Volume I - Animation Mentor

RECHARGE YOUR ANIMATION BATTERIESToday's topic is about your Animation Batteries. You know the ones. That bank of Double-A (for AnimationAnimation, of course!)batteries that sit in your heart, and power your animation passion.Guess what? Those batteries don't last forever. I don't care if they are Super Ultra-Ninja Double-Mega-Strength batteries, eventuallythey are going to run down. Hopefully, they'll never die completely, but they darn sure get low sometimes.Animators are passionate people. We're artists, and we love our art dearly. We care about it. We study it, find ways to improve it, togrow ourselves as artists. We have the passion, and our batteries are so maxed out when we start down this animation journey thatthey're practically exploding with energy! We're bringing stuff to life! What could be more fun, right?Well - eventually, no matter who you are, and no matter how much passion you have, your animation batteries are going to needsome help. Which brings us (finally!) to today's tip:Tip #22: Recharge Your Animation Batteries!Here's the deal - you might be the most passionate animator in the world, and your batteries might be firing away at 100% for a fewyears even, but eventually, we all hit that moment where it becomes a grind. If you're working, it suddenly becomes a Job, with acapital J. Something we're required to do, but man, we'd rather be doing almost anything else under the sun. We've made a millionchanges to the shot over and over for the client, or just can't get this certain acting beat to read properly, or we've spent more hoursanimating in a week than we thought actually EXISTED in a week, or the project is just so far removed from the high hopes you feltat the beginning, and our hearts are just suddenly NOT in it anymore.Whatever the reason, we just don't care anymore. Well, that isn't quite right - we don't care about the thing that MATTERS anymore.We care about keeping our jobs, or we care about getting the assignment done, or whatever, but when it comes to the ART of whatwe're doing, forget it. We don't care. We're done. We go into "Animation Roboto" mode and just push keys around and scale curvesand do whatever little iterations we can do to keep the shot moving forward, but we put zero creativity or art into it.This, my friends, is when our batteries are toast. Maybe they aren't dead yet, but they're old and tired and starting to leak acid allover our passion.At this point, you have two choices. You can either pull those Animation Batteries out, throw them away, and wander aroundlooking for some new kind of batteries (may I recommend Fried-Chicken Batteries? The world can always use more Fried ChickenInnovation! Why haven't I ever seen Coconut Fried-Chicken? Or Fried-Chicken-flavored toothpaste? Come on, people, get on it!), or80Copyright 2008 by AnimationMentor.com. All rights reserved. This ebook may not be reprinted or distributed in electronic, print, web, or other format withoutexpress written permission.