 Welcome back to yet another FNA Friday and today we're going to talk about animation exercise Moving forward in my step-by-step hopeful useful guideline of what to do when you're new to animation today We're going to tackle animation exercises and what you should be doing what you could be doing or what might be helpful in your Animation endeavors so far we've gone through the initial chapter of don't do it meaning it's hard animation If you decide to move forward what would be your goals? Which should be lofty so that you have something that pushes you forward But at the same time realistic and not too crazy so you don't get discouraged and in order for it to be not Demotivating I would advise you to do something short so that you don't spend too many hours on something that you might abandon So as the title said on the FNA way back keep it short But also do it more than once so you don't just do one exercise and then leave it You got to go through the repetition and then as you continue you have to make a choice if you're going to do something That's purely an exercise or something That's for a demo reel because how you approach the shot and how it's going to look like at the end are going to be Two very different things but as you go forward do not under estimate a bouncing ball Which was the title of a previous FNA because the bouncing ball really is the foundation and there's so much you can do There's so much to learn from it It's just a very valuable piece of exercise now that you move forward and go beyond the bouncing ball You're going to do potentially human type animation So you have to look at specific reference and how do you shoot reference? What are good preparations for it and what should you pay attention to it? That was the previous FNA and then today we're going to talk about Exercises so you're deciding to go the exercise route and not yet demo reel So what could you do and as it turns out there's a lot that it can do There are a lot of tips online and I'm going to go through a couple websites that have really really good exercises So let's get right to it So the first one on the list is the animator island 51 great animation exercises to master list It's a classic list that as you go down you can see there is so much to do The variety is fantastic. It's broken up into different levels With tips and tricks and guidelines. It's absolutely fantastic And as with everything there will be all the links in the description below Next up is this list from the thinking animation So you have video examples You have inanimate objects and so on it goes through all kinds of levels beginner and intermediate And advanced look at that. There's a ton of stuff Holy moly if you go through the first two websites already Even if it's somewhat repetitive potentially that's okay because you want to repeat the exercises Don't just do them once there's a lot to do but there's another site I want to show you the 11 second club a classic I'm going to link this page in the description as well There's so much to go through there But in general if you just go to the main page There you have every month a provided sound clip And it's a really good choice for an exercise just because I mean it's long It's you know, it's not your short two to three seconds that I would suggest But it has a firm deadline So one of the pitfalls and one of the tricky things to go through when you do exercises at home Or wherever you are you don't have a deadline you just start an exercise And then you might try something and take a break and go back And you might take too long and then maybe you might abandon the shop The good thing about the 11 second club is that there is always a deadline That might force you to actually get through it finish it and then submit it I know I have problems that when I work from home and I do my own personal shots Which have been a long time ago. I think I have five years by now I start something and it's a way too long I tell everybody to keep it short but I do bad make the mistakes And then it takes me a while and also I have an idea and I really like it But then within you know blocking I go this is kind of boring And then I feel like I want to abandon the shot So I'm really used to deadlines given that I have deadlines at work So I like that 30 day or whatever you know deadline you might find Maximum and and submission pressure and that helps me a lot Maybe if you don't have something like the 11 second club Maybe you need to put yourself on the pressure and say I only have 10 days for this Or two weeks or three weeks or something like that But a deadline is definitely going to be helpful Apart from those sites I'm going to put some more links in the description below With articles that I wrote for my Spangela blog And if you find that you want to go beyond the exercise where you still do exercises But they're not just a character in an empty room Maybe you want to do something where maybe a character is walking along the beach Or going down a hillside or sliding down like an icy mountain I don't know maybe you want to take an exercise But just bring it up a bit in terms of complexity Maybe those websites that I listed are not providing enough One thing that I do in terms of inspiration is that I have a blog that is private And I post all kinds of stuff on it And that's going to be part of a different FNA or a separate post But just quick it's on here with timestamps And I have all kinds of things on there in terms of artwork And sets and dialogue pieces There's all kinds of stuff on there That is going to help me stay inspired And if you go all the way back up here So take for instance this one Unfortunately I did not write down who provided this piece of artwork But to me this would be an interesting thing where you can do either a sit down Or a specific move or a gesture But because it is on this hillside Things could roll down or the way they sit down It slides a bit after we adjust There's just something about this set that might add specific acting choices Or force a character into specific acting choices Which could be really cool to kind of expand your animation exercises So it goes beyond a head turn or gesture or a pickup of an object So I will look at certain photos or drawings Or whatever inspirations you can find in terms of Maybe it's this set that inspires you to do a certain exercise So you might go set first, environment first And then think about what the character is going to do in that environment But go through that list, there's a ton to do But you might find something where you go This is really cool but it might be 10 seconds, 15 seconds So maybe you can just take the essence of this shot Or this exercise and the idea and maybe keep it to 3 seconds I want to try to do something where it's 2 to 3 to 4 Maybe 5 seconds Because by keeping it short you're just not going to be overwhelmed You have enough time and you can finish it You can polish it and then move on Take what you learned and put that into the next shot If you have any other science or any specific exercises That you came across and tried that you want to mention to other people Put that in the comments, that would be awesome If you find any of this helpful, a like would be highly appreciated And as always, subscribe and hit that bell button If you want to get all the updates for all the uploads And if you have watched until the very end Thank you for sticking with it And I will see you next time