Steve Roberts - Character Animation Fundamentals - Developing Skills for 2D and 3D Character Animation(pdf)

Year: 2011

Author: Steve Roberts

Publishing: Focal Press

ISBN: 978-0-240-52227-2

Pages: 457

This book is the culmination of nearly 20 years of teaching drawn animation techniques to 3D

computer animators.

You may think, ?why on earth does a 3D computer animator need to learn how to do drawn animation??

The answer to this question is that the basics of animation are the same regardless of the

medium and often you can get an idea of the movement far more quickly using pencil and paper.

A computer can take a lot of the drudgery out of animating, but you can end up doing a piece of

animation without quite understanding how it happened and whether it works or not.

One of the most valuable things I have learnt over the past 25 years of animating is to keep

things simple. The main value of an animation teacher is to cut to the chase and tell you the

fundamental things that you need to know. You can then elaborate on them in your own way.

I have kept the examples and the animation exercises in this book as simple as possible so

that you are able to build a firm foundation of skills on which you can develop your animation

further.

The form of the book is as follows. In each chapter I will go through the fundamentals of a given

topic, following them with a drawn animation exercise to complete. Then and only then can an

identical animation exercise be attempted using the software package of your choice.

The fundamentals, the drawn animation exercises and guidance on how to do the same

exercises in 3D are in the book. Have a look at the website that accompanies the book:

. It includes .pdf files with bigger images and also movies showing

how to do the exercises or how to build models as well as movies of the animations, plus

lots of models, all fully rigged and ready for you to load onto your computer to do the exercises.

There are also lots of tip and tricks about animation and film making. I also have a YouTube

channel () called charactermation, where I will be uploading tutorials on a

regular basis.

The most important thing to do when animating is to do your research. If you need to animate

an elephant, go and look at an elephant moving. If you need to animate somebody playing basketball,

go and look at somebody playing basketball (or, better still, play it yourself!). If you find

out how it feels to do a certain movement, you will always animate it better. The web is great for

research but nothing beats experiencing the real thing. This is one of the things that I love about

animation: it makes you find out about the world around you.

I have been in love with animation since the age of seven when my mother took me to see

Disney?s Sleeping Beauty at the cinema. Compared to the little Murphy black and white television

we had at home, I found the colors, the huge size of the screen and the wonderful sound almost

overwhelming. I still always think of an animated film as something special.

I became obsessed with becoming an animator at the age of 10 when I saw a television show

called The Do-It-Yourself Film Animation Show presented by Bob Godfrey. If there is anybody

to thank (or blame) for my being involved with animation it is Bob. It is wonderful to have

worked with him and to be regarded by him as a friend. Other great inspirations to me have been

PREFACE

PREFACE

xviii

Tex Avery and Chuck Jones: my favorite cartoon characters as a kid were Screwy Squirrel and

Droopy (both Tex Avery creations), closely followed by Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny (generally the

incarnations of these characters in Chuck Jones? films).

The list of animators I?m in awe of is almost endless: Brad Bird, John Lasseter, Hayao Miyazaki,

Nick Park, Joanna Quinn, Jan Svankmajer ? I could go on and on. Hopefully this book will inspire you.