Animation is not a big secret: it is a skill, however.
It is a skill by itself; it does not just involve knowledge of any 2- or 3D program; computer programs are just fancy pencils: every 3D animator I know still produces about ten keyframes per second of animation, or often even more.

And it is NOT just a bag of tricks, or anything that you can master by reading about the twelve principles of animation.

Consider the twelve principles to be the grammar of animation: you need grammar to be able to write a story, but there's more to writing stories than applying correct grammar.

I can tell you the big secret of animation, though.

It does not involve secret societies.

The magic word is 'practice'.

Character animation involves knowledge of gravity and weight, body language, basic human psychology, acting skills, story telling skills, basic visual communication skills, phonetics, choreography, image composition, anatomy, design, entertainment, motion, and you're not going to be able to put this all into enjoyable scenes by just reading theory.

I have been a professional traditional animator for well over a decade and a half, and have learned that the only way to achieve any level of animation skills is simply practice, practice, practice, and accept the fact that it is a slow learning process; prepare to produce a whole lot of rubbish along the way: I sure as hell did.
It seems that most aspiring beginners want to produce masterpieces from day one, but usually first scenes are so bad that you don't even want to show your mother. Learning to animate is learning by mistakes, and learning from mistakes.

If you want to study by reading: please do: get yourself the Animation book by Preston Blair as a basic introduction, Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit for the mechanics of animation, and Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston for the communication and entertainment aspects, and Acting For Animators by Ed Hooks: these are reference works used by 3D animators as well as traditional animators.

But even learning these books by heart isn't going to get anybody anywhere unless you use them as a guide to practice, practice, practice.

I have been told when I started as an animator that it will take about seven years of experience to achieve a decent professional level: I did TV commercial work for eight years before I first tried my hand at feature film animation.

Stick figures, like Nemric suggests, are a good starting point, or simple 3D characters without a lot of daunting morph possibilities or other distracting details. Stick to the basics first; learn to do a convincing bouncing ball first (squash, stretch, timing, spacing: bouncing ball timing is used for a lot of things including walks: the hip section is timed and spaced like a bouncing ball, as are the shoulders and head that are a couple of frames delayed; overlapping action)
Learn to suggest weight and mass in a ball by changing the timing and spacing. Learn about the line of action and the wave principle, and try sketching for practicing good poses: a lot of 3D animators I know start by doing thumbnail scetches for their main poses before going into Maya.
Learn to work from big to small: do general body poses first, make test renders until they work and communicate the basic idea of the scene, then go into details like fingers or facial expressions, one at a time. Do lots of test renders, tweak and fine-tune until you achieve what you wanted to get. Don't expect to produce more than a couple of seconds of character animation per week, especially at first.

I hope I didn't scare you off - it's a lot of work but it is fun.

Message edited on: 06/08/2005 02:46