How do I improve my animations?!

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

No matter how I put it I cant find a tutorial to teach me how to make better,smoother and professional looking animations. Mine are ALWAYS sloppy and every movement is robotic and I can never get them to look like how I imagined it. It's always the opposite then in my head. I imagine it being a good animation with a decent story and entertaining. When i'm done it comes out sloppy,poorly made like made by a 12 year old and looks unentertaining. I want to make something decent. Almost like the winglet. I know I'll never be THAT good but I want to be able to make smooth animations,good facial expressions and decent body movement. But my models move like robots,slow and unrealistic. Is there ANY tutorials that'll help me improve?

[surfer171]

The thing is, item all about learning your timings and pacing of your animation. Practice is key and you should have learn some fundamentals especially the most important movements in animation before you go to the more complex and timing dependant movements. Realism while it's good, but nothing can be made super fluid or realistic to the real life, animation is art and they've their own interpretation of surrealism.

Put it simple, sloppy work means that you might be rushing to reach the goal, robotic movements means you didn't practice much and you didn't have any references with you, lip syncing is already on YouTube and it seemed you didn't search for it properly.

Jumping straight to animation without any fundamentals is a mistake, practice man, 3000+ hours should know that by now.

[Qdude]

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

No matter how I put it I cant find a tutorial to teach me how to make better,smoother and professional looking animations. Mine are ALWAYS sloppy and every movement is robotic and I can never get them to look like how I imagined it. It's always the opposite then in my head. I imagine it being a good animation with a decent story and entertaining. When i'm done it comes out sloppy,poorly made like made by a 12 year old and looks unentertaining. I want to make something decent. Almost like the winglet. I know I'll never be THAT good but I want to be able to make smooth animations,good facial expressions and decent body movement. But my models move like robots,slow and unrealistic. Is there ANY tutorials that'll help me improve?

Use a technique called "blocking." Blocking is the most simple and effective way to making very lifelike animation without even trying really.

Search up tutorials on YouTube. They can help out a lot.

Watch these videos in order if you don't understand what blocking actually is. (Don't worry, they are only 30 seconds long each.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7kfp_agpnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWEVo8fmnMc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_-dS3nSbM8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l92zhUcsXjk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0rm0DDbjS8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw6A_N6gcwQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlKvjF9VeLU

[episoder]

how are you animating? motion ed or graph ed? you gotta get good curves. acceleration and deceleration. the momentum of the movement. muscle it. that may be important. in the graph you can drag and move splines as curves. the motion ed got the falloffs that you can alt-drag. that can create those momentum shifts too. both depend on how good you keyframe or block it as the previous poster calls it.

and don't forget secondary motion. gravity or plain physical forces. all that's 'loose' should move.

squash and stretch can be used too, but it's a toonish style. not sure if that's your goal.

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

Originally posted by episoder:

how are you animating? motion ed or graph ed? you gotta get good curves. acceleration and deceleration. the momentum of the movement. muscle it. that may be important. in the graph you can drag and move splines as curves. the motion ed got the falloffs that you can alt-drag. that can create those momentum shifts too. both depend on how good you keyframe or block it as the previous poster calls it.

and don't forget secondary motion. gravity or plain physical forces. all that's 'loose' should move.

squash and stretch can be used too, but it's a toonish style. not sure if that's your goal.

I used to do motion editor but it wasnt giving me what I wanted. It still was robotic. But a few years ago someone on here told me graph editor is better and its widely used. Ive used it since and just recent I kinda got it figured out but im still sloppy. I'm just SO bad at animating.

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

Originally posted by surfer171:

The thing is, item all about learning your timings and pacing of your animation. Practice is key and you should have learn some fundamentals especially the most important movements in animation before you go to the more complex and timing dependant movements. Realism while it's good, but nothing can be made super fluid or realistic to the real life, animation is art and they've their own interpretation of surrealism.

Put it simple, sloppy work means that you might be rushing to reach the goal, robotic movements means you didn't practice much and you didn't have any references with you, lip syncing is already on YouTube and it seemed you didn't search for it properly.

Jumping straight to animation without any fundamentals is a mistake, practice man, 3000+ hours should know that by now.

Well the 3000 hours was from me pathetically attempting with a bad laptop (before I got my smexy pc),making comic pages (yes sfm can do that it's a launch command) and from it just sitting there as I stared off into space imaging the animation, planning or just leaving it running to eat or something. I dunno how I got 3000 hours really. But I did use it for some time. Back then I never learned alot. I just tried and failed and failed. Now im actually looking into getting better. But I guess those 3000 were from it sitting there. I dunno

[fis]

i can't remember how many of these threads i've seen with people simply replying "practice man! use blocking!"

yet not one of these people remember to mention the listed techniques which universally make animation look good.

https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

[surfer171]

Originally posted by fis:

i can't remember how many of these threads i've seen with people simply replying "practice man! use blocking!"

yet not one of these people remember to mention the listed techniques which universally make animation look good.

https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

There's a thing call a search engine… typing how to get started in animation in said search engine should by right lead them to it.

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

Originally posted by surfer171:

Originally posted by fis:

i can't remember how many of these threads i've seen with people simply replying "practice man! use blocking!"

yet not one of these people remember to mention the listed techniques which universally make animation look good.

https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

There's a thing call a search engine… typing how to get started in animation in said search engine should by right lead them to it.

The ones I find are either not very useful or jokes

[surfer171]

Either that or you're just ain't studying them right

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

Originally posted by surfer171:

Either that or you're just ain't studying them right

I dont get what im looking for. I know the basics but I want to know the keyframe placing, the advanced animation. Im sick of making sloppy animations when I want to entertain people.

[fis]

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

Originally posted by surfer171:

Either that or you're just ain't studying them right

I dont get what im looking for. I know the basics but I want to know the keyframe placing, the advanced animation. Im sick of making sloppy animations when I want to entertain people.

ur answer is right here https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

[Sir donks alot (rip my grandpa)]

Originally posted by fis:

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

I dont get what im looking for. I know the basics but I want to know the keyframe placing, the advanced animation. Im sick of making sloppy animations when I want to entertain people.

ur answer is right here https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

Um...this is for a different kind of animation.... sfm isnt even capable of some of these things. This is for drawing animation. Not 3d

[fis]

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

Originally posted by fis:

ur answer is right here https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

Um...this is for a different kind of animation.... sfm isnt even capable of some of these things. This is for drawing animation. Not 3d

these laws are universal and this is exactly how you make quality animation in any dimension. ignoring the existence of the 12 principles leaves no mystery as to why you're as bad as you are after all your hours

[surfer171]

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

Originally posted by surfer171:

Either that or you're just ain't studying them right

I dont get what im looking for. I know the basics but I want to know the keyframe placing, the advanced animation. Im sick of making sloppy animations when I want to entertain people.

If you know the basics, you should by right know your timing in your graph editor.

[episoder]

Originally posted by Uber Gaming:

Originally posted by fis:

ur answer is right here https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4

Um...this is for a different kind of animation.... sfm isnt even capable of some of these things. This is for drawing animation. Not 3d

no it's not different. most of those are for toon animation and character stylisation and toonish expression, sure, BUT... you got... number 3. thirds. very important. and... you sure gotta use keyframes and poses. and use the 5-6 cores for animation. 2, 5, 6, 7, 9. anticipation, overlapping, slow in out, arcs, timing. curves and physics. muscling and secondary motion. all the believable momentum. do it. just do it. it's what you need against robots. ;)

squash and stretch affects motion too. it's like ball impact physics. it is a thing. you just don't always need to use it for characters. you can do it where it fits. or you gotta use the secondary motion or animate impact physics in another way. motion blur is a substitute for stretching. both meant to delay motion to the point that it visually gives you the impression of movement even in a still frame. it's a matter of taste or perception if you gotta have it in motion. naturally your eyes and brain can create this smear effect too.

all of those make it look good.