Best Anim Blogs

As the new year of study is kicking off around the world I thought it might be handy to post a list of my all time favourite educational Animation Blogs. There is soooo much good info here you are mad if you don't gobble it all up. :) Listed in no particular order.

http://www.navone.org/blogger/



http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/



http://spungella.blogspot.com/



http://splinedoctors.com/



http://animationtipsandtricks.com/



http://fliponline.blogspot.com/



http://keithlango.blogspot.com/



http://www.carlosbaena.com/



All of these blogs should be on your favourites list, or even better subscribe to them using an aggregator like Google Reader or something.

Feel free to leave a link to any you think I have missed in the comments.

8 comments:

ang said...

Thanks Ian, really appreciate this whole blog and the generosity of all contributors and in the animation community at large. As a student all of this IS such a great gift in the hand. I like the emphasis on hardwork, polishing, getting advice from teachers, peers, people outside your usual audience etc. Hey who was that animator I saw today on "YO Gabba Gabba"? I'm sure I've seen him on the links here somewhere. They run the credits too fast now.

frank said...

I subscribe and straight away I get a post from Keith Lango that shows me how he solves some gimbal problems in Maya. It's a good video tutorial to watch as it describes using the graph editor while watching the animation in Maya to see what happens as you adjust in the GE. Keith also uses the draw on screen software that was mentioned in Ian's post. GOLD! Or as soccer players like to say it, GOAL!

Ian said...

Frank did you see the tip about adding or subtracting 360 to a whole bunch of frames at once in the Graph Editor. What a great tip.

frank said...

Hi Ian yes I saw that. It took a bit of thinking time but I can understand it. I saw it highlighted in the comment you left.

It's good to know that you can select that whole bunch of keys on the other side of the 'gimbal cliff' in the graph editor, and just type in -=360 (or multiple) into the value window to correct a whole lot of keys at once in that particular curve.

I'm also interested in the Euler submenu selection that Keith quickly showed that apparently can fix a lot of gimbal concerns. Have you ever used that method?

I think it's great the visual way Keith Lango explained it as that leads us into the mathematics (the area we mid-brain creatives love).

I was a bit dubious on it being an exact multiple of a 360' rotation but, with a bit more thinking music, I can see the logic in it.

I can't wait to skip around the 3D class doing something that looks, to students, that I have super awesome magic 3D powers.

Wo betide the day that animation students start reading great tips like that and understanding them from blogs created by masters of the craft. ;)

frank said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kristi said...

I'm not quite sure if the graph editor Euler Filter is what you're talking about, Frank, since I didn't have time to watch the video properly. I find that very handy though, particularly when I've been baking out constraints, which always leaves a mess.
The thing to remember, is that the solver has to recalculate ALL of the rotations at once. If you don't select all three, then it doesn't do anything.
I use the +=360 trick a lot also.

frank said...

Hi Kristi. Yes I was talking about the Graph Editor Euler Filter. I'll have to go back to the KL video and see the path.

Apparently Maya 2008 needs a service pack to get it working properly?

I know about baking biscuits but that's the 2nd time I've heard 'baking' in relation to curves or constraints in Maya and I have no idea what people mean by that.

Kristi said...

Baking (Edit>Keys>Bake Simulation) refers to the software adding a key on every frame. If you have something constrained, and you bake it, then you can remove the constraint afterwards and the motion remains (because now it's keyed). Results in dense, hard-to-edit curves though.