How It's Gonna Be

Just in case you forget this exists.

websites:

Animation World Network

Animation Backgrounds

Animation Magazine

Animation & CGI

Animator Island

Anime News Network

Cartoon Brew

Character Design References

On Animation

Reference! Reference! (free database for animation)

11 Second Club (monthly character animation competition)

tumblr blogs:

animationart

animationforce

animationtidbits

aspiretoanimate

calartscharacteranimation

disney-moments-sketches (Allen Ostergar’s blog, animator at Walt Disney)

drawingforsuckas

fuckyeahconceptart

storyboardresources

theanimationarchive

theartofanimation

wannabeanimator

resources/tips:

Animation schools: 1 / 2 (Top 50 USA) / 3 (Top 100 international)

Which animation school is right for you? (Ringling vs. CalArts)

Don’t want to/ can’t afford art school? you’ve got other options.

Animation Mentor: The online animation school

Art school exercises!!

51 Great Animation exercises

20 things you can expect as a traditional (2D) animation student that they never tell you

A Survivor’s Guide to Life Inside an Animation Studio

Animation basics: The art of timing and spacing

Animation Notes From Ollie Johnston

Animated chart of the basic principles of animation

10 Second tip: Always Anticipate

book: Animation: Learn How to Draw Animated Cartoons by Preston Blair

book: A System for Planning and Timing Animation by Glen Keane

book: Timing for animation by Harold Whitaker and John Halas

book: Gesture Drawing for animation by Walt Stanchfield

Basic 3D Animation Terminology

Digital pencil test!!

Keys to Emotion in Animation

Lessons from Disney’s Zootopia

Model Sheets central

The importance of Acting in Animation by Segio Pablos

Printable exposure/dope sheet

Phoneme Chart

Recommended reading for animation students and enthusiasts

The 5 Types of Animation

The Know-How of Cartooning 

The Unofficial Truth about The Animation Industry

Why Disney Sends Its Animators To Life Drawing Classes

Walk/Run Cycles reference

What is Pixar looking for in Animators? (scroll down)

Portfolio Advice for The Disney Animation Internship

What is Rigging?

3D Rigging Terminology

3D Modeling Terminology

tutorials:

Animation for Beginners: Where do I start

Animation Physics (Video tutorials on physics for animation artists)

Animation tutorial part. 1 AKA “the secret of animation”

Appealing Poses in Animation

Background & Movement in TV

Blinking tips

Breakdown tutorial (middle frame between to keys)

Drawing & Composition for visual storytelling

Drawing for Animation

Drawing a Likeness

Animation fundamentals + tutorials

Filmmaking: Composition and Framing

Getting Shape Change

How to animate using photoshop

How to animate Characters in Perspective

How to Animate Head Turns

How to Draw Gesture

OpeenToonz tutorials masterpost

Overlapping Action and Drag

Portfolio tips / Making A Successful Portfolio

Lyp Sync tutorial

Line of action

Basics of good cartooning 1-12 by Sherm Cohen

Squash & Stretch tutorial

Squash and Stretch 2

Storyboarding tutorials by Sherm Cohen

The Illusion of Life: 12 Principles of Animation

Tilt, Flow & Rhythm

Underlying Structure When Animating Expressions

TVPaint tutorial: Uploading and Coloring Scanned Animation

supplies (traditional animation):

10 Essential Art Supplies for the Traditional Animator

How to Use a Light Table for Animation

Making a Simple Animation Lightbox

Peg bars, Animation Disk & Desk

softwares:

free

Blender (3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline: modeling, rigging, animation,etc)

Emofuri (animate using .psd files)

Google Sketchup (

Live2D ( animation/drawing software

OpenToonz (Studio Ghibli’s open source animation software)

Pencil2D (create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics)

Renderman (Pixar’s free 3D rendering software)

Sculptris (Free digital sculpting tool by the makers of Zbrush

SculptGL (Online modelling program)

Synfig (2d animation using a vector and bitmap artwork)

paid

Zbrush (digital sculpting sw by Pixologic)

Mudbox (digital sculpting sw by Autodesk)

Cinema 4D (digital sculpting sw by Maxon)

TVPaint  (2d animation)

animation studios:

Aardman (Bristol, UK)

Blue Sky Studios (Greenwich, USA)

Dreamworks (Glendale, USA)

Fox Animation (USA)

Imagination Studios/CN (Burbank, USA)

Industrial Light & Magic (San Francisco, USA)

Laika (Hillsboro, USA)

Luma Pictures (USA / Melbourne, Australia)

Nickelodeon Animation (Burbank, USA)

Pixar (Emeryville, CA)

Rise FX (Berlin, Germany)

Studio Ghibli (Tokyo, Japan)

Sony Picture Imageworks (Vancouver, Canada)

Sony Pictures Animation (Culver City, CA)

Walt Disney Animation (Burbank, CA)

Weta Digital (Wellington, New Zealand)

inspiration: worth watching short films

Coda by and maps and plans

Contre Temps by the Contre Temps Team

Duet by Glen Keane

DOG ENVY by Olivia Huynh

Fallin Floyd by  il Luster

French Roast

Gravity by Ailin Liu

In Between by Gobelins

Jinxy Jenkins and Lucky Lou by Michael Bidinger and Michelle Kwon

My Big Brother by Jason Rayner

Night Light by Qing Han

Nephtali by Glen Keane

Nocturne by Kari Casady

Historia de un Oso by Gabriel Osorio

Home Sweet Home  by home sweet home the film

One Bright Dot by  Clément Morin

Stickboy by Giant Ant

SOAR by Alyce Tzue

Tsunami by The Animation Workshop

Thought of You by Ryan Woodward

Vagabond by  The Animation Workshop

ok so if everythings normal, your phone camera should have a manual mode (sometimes called pro mode). in it, change the settings of the shutter lag to 20 seconds, then put the phone down on some stable, plane surface and press the photo button (usually when using your camera, the volume buttons can be used as photo button) and let the phone still for the whole 20 seconds. 

Additionally, adjust your ISO to the highest number (mimics the film used for very low light and low speed images)

And set your shutter speed to the longest time possible (on my phone it’s 10 seconds).

Leave your focus settings on Auto, and if your phone camera has a timer option, turn that on (five seconds is generally enough).

Plan your shot first, then find a place to set your phone down so you can get the image you want. The less light pollution, the better; you’ll pick up FAR more stars in your picture.

Once you know what you want to shoot, tap your screen to “focus” it, then hit the button to take the picture, set your phone down, and back away from the “tripod”. Don’t touch your phone for a good 15 seconds, just to be sure.

You will not be disappointed in the results, let me assure you.

Not even a little bit.

https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx

But TBH I prefer the MIT Open Coursewear approach. Feel like taking a class on the policy and economics of nuclear engineering? MIT’s got you covered:

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/#cat=engineering&subcat=nuclearengineering&spec=nuclearsystemspolicyandeconomics

In fact they’ve got  you covered with A LOT of their courses, everything from fine arts to immunology.

We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of, but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of using it.

Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:

How do you populate your backgrounds?

Well, here’s the answer:

If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to that environment.

The examples above are great because they show how to use the software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their environment.

How do you fix this?

Well, here’s the simplest solution:

This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background and an environment.

From Blacksad (artist: Juanjo Guarnido)

From Hellboy (Mike Mignola)

Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine), people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.

I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!

Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!

Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)

The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this - Manga Studio, Design Doll - but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.

By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!

Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.

We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!

Every website uses a language called JavaScript; long story short it’s a website language that allows developers to do the crazy shit you see on websites. Now the easiest thing to do is to disable JavaScript to stop them from knowing you have an adblocker:

Oh no! I’m blocked from viewing the website. It would be a terrible shame if I were able to right click and select the “inspect” feature

Click the three dots in the top right and open the “Settings” Menu

And then scrolled down to “Debugger” and checked the “Disable Javascript Option”

And then just refreshed the page

Short story: I didn’t want to be a bank teller anymore, was always starry-eyed over tall ships, and didn’t really expect to be hired in the first place.

Slightly longer story: I’d quit everything, jumped over to Europe with a backpack and fuck-all else, worked in hostels for room and board, and panicked when my visa came close to running out. I was coming from a pretty dark time in my life, had no idea what I’d do next, and really had nothing to lose by trying for this thing that I’d have talked myself out of if I’d been feeling more sensible. I didn’t know anything about sailing, didn’t know if I’d even enjoy it, but I figured it would make a good story and feed me for the summer, and that would put me a step above where I was at the moment.

So - I emailed literally every single tall ship captain between Maine and Connecticut, and got lucky on the Mary Day, which took me on as messmate (cook’s assistant/dishwasher/assistant deckhand). Didn’t need any previous sailing experience, just people skills, work ethic, and being able to live on board a schooner - something hostels had more than prepared me for. 

And I fell in love with it, honestly. I got moved up to deckhand halfway through the first season, have been working as a deckhand since, and down the road I’d like to look more into bosunry and a captain’s license. I could honestly write pages about how much I love it and why, particularly historic wooden boats. It was such a spur of the moment thing, and there are days when I still can’t believe this is What I Do Now.