Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Hmm....To learn or not to learn???



Alright so I need to know what people think of this topic because it's always been a confusing one for me. Should character animators worry about learning other aspects of the Animation process?? What I mean is should animators focus solely on mastering character animation or should they also make it a priority to learn how to render, model, rig, etc.??

I ask this because I think I might a different opinion on it then what I have been taught and I believe there is a big confusion out there especially for the newly incoming animators. When I first started Animationmentor.com I was the biggest rookie in my class. Not only did I have no experience in animation before, I also didn't have ANY major education in the Arts in general. So my creativity was very much at the highest level at that time(sarcasm). Anyway, one of the first things I learned in class one was "not to spend too much time on rendering/lighting your scene and focus more on the animation/posing itself."

First time I heard this I agreed completely with it and was determined to follow the advice as best as I could. But as time passed in class 1 I was slowly becoming depressed seeing my character poses, although posed fairly well, were not as "appealing"(keyword today) as other peoples. So slowly but surely I began wasting more time trying to render/light the scene better so I can make it look as nice as others. Was I wrong to do that? Did it affect my work in a bad way?
Well I'm glad you asked my son. Honestly, no matter how good I could of posed the character or did an animation, without a decent rendering pass it always looked just awful. Additionally, it made animating a bit frustrating and sometimes stole the motivation away. So as soon as I figured this problem out I began to learn a few tricks to make it look more "appealing", and surprisingly I started to have more fun with the homework/assignments.

So my point of this post is that although I don't recommend spending a ton of time learning all the other good stuff that come along with animation, I do however recommend learning ENOUGH in order to keep yourself motivated and add excitement to your work. On a last note, one of the principals of animation is "appeal," so this can only help push the animation a bit further in the right direction.

Let me know what you guys think.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

hey fawzi how are you??
so i understand your indecision and i can give you my opinion...
if you work in a big company like animator... you don't care about the other stuff like modeling..rigging ecc ecc...because you have to do only the animation...
but if you work in a small company maybe they pretend from you also knowledge from morel..unwrap..render ecc ecc..
btw my best advice is also to know a little bit more about the software...in general...because more you know and more you will be able to solve some tecnical problem that you can have with maya... so maybe i suggest you to try to do other stuff in the free time...not too mutch .just one hour for each day..
this is my best tip for you

Fawzi said...

Sup Alessandro,

I completely agree with you on everything you said. It is very important to understand how the industry works in order for one to be able to make the right decision on what goal to reach. But don't you think the way you described your decision "limits" your ambition?? I mean if we really want to master every single aspect of animation, is that really too big of a risk to take? What if it's one of our goals in life?

I guess the main problem with how I see things is that I'm not worried about getting a job but more of not reaching that goal. Socrates sacrificed a wealthy life for knowledge and I don't mind living in a box so I can reach that level :).

Thanks man