Do you have any tips for aspiring artists? I think that your mlp animations are the most awesome thing and I kinda want to be, ya know, exactly like you.
Okay, it took me a while to figure that out, but it’s about replacing “I wish I could do it” by “How can I do it?”
Now, why not “I can do it” instead of “How can I do it?”. It sounds more inspiring sure, and it doesn’t resolve to doubts, but it doesn’t get work done in the long run. You want to ask yourself the right questions before starting a project because otherwise you’re starting with no actual clue of how to do things.
Asking yourself the question will force you to answer it.Â
“So how do I make the pony rig? How about making sourcing a lot of screencaps from the show, make a turntable out of them to scale, then vector them.”
“So how do I get to cast parallel godrays out of a pony? Wait, how about rotating my pony by X°, apply a vertical Minimax with alpha, then rotate back by -X°”
“So how do I get volumetric lights out of parallel lights in Arnold? Do I generate a ton of tiny particles to catch the light, then I average the thing? What about generating them out of a renderer that supports it then I composite it with the rest? Wait, I got it, Maya has smoke simulation that doesn’t involve the same type of volumes, can I try that for volumetrics instead?”
And there, a big part of the problem is figured out, now you got to see if it will work. You start small, you do a test with a bit of geometry or something you already made, and once you figure it out, you’ve got a lot more far with that.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t go ask for advice and guidance as well. I got a lot of advice from other animators like Pikapetey, Duo Cartoonist and Tiarawhy.
Animation is about learning how to learn. There’s no guide on how to animate good, there’s tutorials on techniques and softwares, but you have to learn how to learn, and learn from experience and observation. Look at real life, how people move, how they react to things, how light affects surfaces and volumes. It might feel odd with something cartoony, but we base cartoons out of a stylisation of real life, so if you learn better how real life works, you learn better how to make cartoons feel better.
