Next Steps

So now that you've finished all of the lectures  of learning about the principles of animation  and you've used each assignment to put them into practice  and the mini projects  and the assignments that you've had, now it's time  to revisit the assignment of animating the line. I want you to get creative with it and use one or all,  or some of the principles that we've learned  to now animate a line  and see how creative you can get with it. Use any of the mediums of animation that we've used  so far in the course or any that you've found, um,  really go wild with it,  and I look forward to seeing what, what you make. Please share it with me. And I wanna see the progression of the first one  and now the one that you've completed the course. So I wanted to take a quick moment  to discuss some principles not covered in the nine Old Men  of Disney's, kind of coined principles, things I've learned  that has helped me,  and I just wanna kind of rattle them off here.

Uh, things to think about as you continue on your journey,  think about contrast, you know,  and think about rhythm in terms of contrast, the,  the scene as a whole of what you're animating. Because if you imagine your favorite song,  your favorite song doesn't have a consistent repetitive,  it's not a drum that you just bang over  and over, that's no one's favorite song. There's contrast, there's slow, there's fast,  there's loud, there's soft. And that type of texture  can be put into your animation as well. One thing I like to do when I kind of block out  and start my animation  or plan it out, I try to think,  are the main beats happening at even intervals in time? Is that too even not just in the spacing,  um, but also in the timing,  is everything happening on the same beat, if you will?

And so it's good to help vary that up  to just create visual interest  and also think in terms of the actual sound  of the animation as well. That'll help you time it out. And if you need to add sound effects, if there's music,  if there's dialogue, anything like  that will help you also figure out the timing  and how to add that contrast at an early stage. One thing that I enjoy about animation so much is  that you have to flex your skills of observation. Get curious, get curious about everything around you. And if, especially with things that interest you,  whether it's in film, tv, people playing in the park,  whatever it is, when you see something interesting,  don't just let that opportunity pass you by.

Stop to evaluate what is it that you like about that? What is it that caught your attention? Because you can start to build a mental library of things  that you can start to put into your animations. Little quirks, little characteristics, things  that make something feel authentic  and get curious about the world around you and get out there  and observe life and live your own life. Because one other term I wanted to impart upon you  is proprioception. That's basically having the embodiment idea of motion  and having that experience yourself.

So I grew up being a bit of an athlete, so I used my body  so I could understand once I got into animation, how  my own body moved and the timing and the expectations. And so when I began animating,  I could easily spot when things were too slow or too fast. And that's also something to watch out in the next stage  of your development is either animation is so hard  and sometimes beginners will want to speed right  through their animation, so they won't spend as much time  as they should on the actual frames. They won't have enough time for something to play out,  so things move too fast. Um, the converse of that is, is once you start  to really enjoy these concepts,  you might actually over animate something  and spend way too long on, uh, a portion of the animation,  not just in your time, uh, of effort,  but in the time of it playing back. So be careful of those two extremes  and always think about what's best for the scene  and not necessarily, um, you know,  what you enjoy doing for the effort,  because the result is gonna be what the audience sees.

And so that's what we're always striving for,  is the best appeal for the audience. And so, you know, if you watch movies like, um,  hotel Transylvania for example,  or cloud, a Chance of Meatballs they have  for comedic effects, sometimes just very limited animation,  they're not over animating things. And so you always wanna make sure you're doing what's  appropriate for the scene that you're in  or that you're trying to accomplish. So always look out for those two extremes  of over animating something  or animating too quickly through something just  because you know it's too hard, um,  and you're trying to just get through it. So look out for those two kind of barriers  to progressing to the next level. So the last bit of information we need  to cover are next steps on your journey as you develop  as an animator, because it's a never ending journey  of learning, and I'm constantly learning and relearning, um,  because that's why I was interested in the, in this  as a craft, because it's never ending.

You can always be better and learn something  and put into practice what you've learned over and over,  and always learn something else. So the next steps for you  after learning these principles are just the beginning  to continue honing your 2D animation  skills and After Effects. There are After Effects courses from Dan on  Bring Your Own Laptop. So definitely check those out. I also have After Effects courses off  of Bring your own laptop. Those are linked in the comments,  but check out Dan's, he knows what he is talking about.

Thanks for having me on. Bring your own Laptop. I look forward to seeing your assignments.