ZookaLoad34

I have a friend who's an awesome artist and is trying to animate his own idea for a 90's cartoon style series. He's never animated anything though, and I helped get him started out with programs and a computer build but it seems he has no idea what he's getting into with wanting to animate several episodes of his show. I think he's biting off more than he can chew starting out. Do you have any advice for my friend?

I’d definitely say that he’d have to take it a little easy at first. It’s great that he’s ambitious and that there’s some plan set in motion for what he wants to do. Though considering that he’s never animated anything, everything will just be a lot more difficult than it should be. 

In regards to animating, it’s obviously tedious and time consuming, but not really having an idea where to start or how to go about the animation will ramp that that level of frustration up by ten. 

Like everything else involved with drawing, the basics will save anyone’s life. If anything, it all comes down to two things that simplify movement down to its most basic form: The bouncing ball, and the pendulum. 

Although extremely simple, these define timing and spacing, two of the most valuable elements in animation. Timing and spacing is defined by the amount of time it takes for an event to happen in an animation, depending on how they are drawn. Not only that, but it gives the object the illusion of weight. So for example, if the pendulum had less drawings than you see in the image above, that would mean it would go a lot faster, and would imply that the pendulum was lighter. 

The ball gauges timing and spacing as well, but it’s there to show another thing: squash & stretch. The purpose of that is to define the illusion of weight even more. Many objects usually have a squash & stretch element to it, and it occurs at an extreme point in the movement. 

Let’s say we’re animating a walking man. 

The “recoil” is the point where the squash takes place. Bear in mind that “squashing” doesn’t necessarily mean that an object or person will be flattened, it just means that either the effects of gravity or some other force is taking effect for maybe a second or so. 

Moving on from that, there are a few other factors to take consideration of when animating. Or rather, 12 of them. The 12 Principles of Animation. These are what give the animation personality. They make it more lifelike. Explaining each of them is a chore in itself, so I’ll link something that explains it pretty clearly in my opinion. (Sorry for being a bit lazy)

12 Principles

Now when it comes to animation, you’re taking from life. You’re looking at how people, animals, machines, and other aspects of life move. It’s great when one uses their imagination to make an animation, but a lot of research is needed to make it look authentic and believable, and that includes observing from life as much as possible. That way your imagination could be better with integrating lifelike features in an animation. Speaking of research, when your friend said they wanted to do a series based on a 90s style, have them watch a lot of animation coming from that time period. Anamaniacs, Dexter’s Lab, Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, whatever he could get his hands on. He just needs it so that he could understand that, because (at least) most of what they used during that time was more complicated (traditional paper animation), there is a certain look they had that not a lot many mainstream cartoons have nowadays. 

And one last thing: always practice! Keep drawing, keep doing messy, quick, sketches for animations if it means retaining that kind of knowledge. Because trust me, if you learned something as difficult as this, it’s very easy to forget about it overtime.