animation tips

Craig wilkinson shares his animation advice

1. plan early

know what you’re trying to achieve creatively before you start. sounds obvious but it’s all to easy to jump in too early. a clear idea of the style you’re going for before you start is invaluable. the technical stuff is hard enough, you don’t want the creative messing with things too.

2. Work efficiently

as for the technical aspects of the job, abraham lincoln said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and i will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Prepare well with lots of r&d and establish a clean workflow.

3. think creatively

don’t expect to get everything in one beauty pass out of maya. sometimes it’s far quicker to do things in post. motion blur for example, or depth of field. Use render passes to help you with this. a depth pass will give you the data required to do depth of field effects, matte passes will help isolate objects in order to add effects to them in post, too.

4. Work the story

writing is rewriting. if you’re working for a client, then make sure they are completely on board with the script before you go to Cg. do plenty of animatics too, so there’s no surprises for them. and make sure you’re clear with them about what to expect. managing expectations is such an important part of the job.

5. study others Work

You’ll benefit massively from building a mental repository of great animation/cg/vfx when the time comes to do your own projects. there’s nothing new under the sun, but the more eclectic the reference you have floating around in your head, the more unique your work will be when you channel it.