 Squeaky share, welcome back to another Q&A. And this time I'm gonna do it like this. I'm gonna take out my trusty phone here and look at all the questions. So I'm gonna read them out loud as I always do, just in case you're listening just to the Q&A and the questions will be on screen just in case. And I'm gonna start at the top for no reason just because I can scroll down I guess. So we have, I don't really need reading glasses, actually almost worse, these are for driving, but I thought it just gives you kind of a bit of a reading environment. Maybe I should have like a fireplace in the background. Anyway, by the way, if you're wondering, who the hell am I? I'm JD and I have a channel about animation where I do animation lectures and animation analysis clips and acting analysis clips, rib reviews, all kinds of things, feel free to browse around and subscribe if you want to. So you don't miss any of the uploads. That is the usual spiel at the beginning so you know what this channel is. But let's go to the questions, there are a lot of them. So let's go. That's the usual thing with the Q&As. I have a hard time pronouncing all the names, but anyway, what do you think about schools like Anim Squad? I heard that they don't teach how to animate but help you improve your animations. I highly doubt that any online school is not teaching how to animate, looking at their work. Anim Squad work is really good. I'm obviously biased towards animation mentor because I teach there, but you can easily see at the showreels of all the online schools. They're really good. And I highly doubt that it's just, I mean, if you, if they help you improve your animation, they're gonna also teach you how to animate. It's manual. I think that's not true and I think they teach you and as all schools do, that's my subjective answer there. Shiladito Gupto. How are you balancing work and life in this pandemic? Are you working from home? Have you gone through the burnout during this time period? If yes, then how did you overcame it in this situation? By the way, I really love your channel and love the content. It really helps a lot of us who are already in this industry. Thank you for making this channel. Well, first, thank you. Thank you for those kind words. That's very encouraging. And to go through all of your questions, how are you balancing work and life in this pandemic? Well, besides the pandemic being horrible and a lot of people being affected, I feel like I'm on the luckier side because my home setup was already set up. I can, because of the channel and everything and I teach a lot from home. So mentors from home in Academy of Art, they have onsite and online classes. So I already had online classes. Everything for me is already set up to work from home. So that was not really a big adjustment. The work-life balance, personally, I actually like it just because I don't have to commute anymore. So I have about an hour to drive to work and an hour to come back. So I'm already saving two hours a day just seeing my family more like this. So ultimately, I'm working the same. It can actually work more if I wanted to. And I see my family all the time and I have my kid sit here for his classes. Got a bit too much with meetings in his microphone, my microphone, so he's now in his own room and he has his own little classroom thing. But it was cute seeing him more, my wife more, my older kid more, it's just, I see people more. So personally, it's not been crazy. Are you working from home? I am working from home. Have you gone through the burnout during this time period? No, because I have, I feel like I have a better work-life balance because I see life more than work. I do the same amount of work, but I am home, I can do things, I can help out and I can, I don't know, it feels better. So actually it's been very positive in that aspect. All right. Kenny Goh is asking, hi, JD, may I know how you would set up the character rig before you start animating it? Should I set the head to zero next space all the time or it depends on the situation? Thanks. That's an interesting question. Usually, depending on how the default rig is, I turn off the head IK, head align, any type of thing where you move the chest and the head stays kind of put straight where it's kind of not getting out of frame here, but you move your chest and the head doesn't go with it where it stays level. I'm not a fan of that because then you might argue then you just have to add a little bit of adjustment so it feels better versus if you have it almost FK like following the chest or the root, it's almost like you have to counter more. But to me, that introduces more organic offsets and dirt in terms of imperfections because if you don't pay attention, it's very gimbly where the head always stays level. Same thing with IK hands where if you have a full IK arm and the arm moves around that hand is kind of in frame, sticky and then stays put as the hand moves around. The arm moves around and the hand stays put. I'm not a fan of that. So in terms of a setup, that would be for me the head. I put the eye box where if I'm looking like this and that's the eye box there and if I look away, the eyes stay put. They always look there. I don't do a thing where if the head moves around the eyes follow the head. That's something I change. Other than that, I mean, that's kind of it. I don't do massive changes. Just depends on what the rig has. Obviously work related rigs I can't talk about. And if anything that's online for free or paid, I will probably set something up or make sure that the chest has the smallest or the lowest amount of controls. Meaning I'm not a fan of five or six spine controls where you end up twisting potentially. The spine too much if you're not careful. So I prefer a simpler setup where ideally it's just one ginormous box where I can translate and has a nice deformation in the spine but it's basically a box for the rib cage. Yes, the rib cage can compress but there's not crazy amount of rotation at the top. So for me, I like to do that. That's kind of it. I don't use that many controls from the very beginning on. So it's more simple to tweak things. So I don't use secondary controls or gimbal things just for a nicer line of action or pose. So that comes at the end. So off the top of my head, that's kind of the setup that I have. How would you set up the character rig? Yeah, so that's what I would do. I would keep it simple. A lot of it in, and not that this is better or right. It's just what I'm used to what works for me in my workflow for speed. But that's kind of it. He's not Abraham, Abraham, the Sheenie, the Sheen. Abraham, the Sheen, sorry, I don't know. Do you know the Bancroft brothers from Space Jam? I do not. Yes, it would never work out schedule-wise but it'd be cool to see JD Bancroft bros, Pratt bros, Sir Wade epic crossover, Pina. Yes, they would. I don't know some of these but Sir Wade is awesome. We're trying to get a collaboration going but my schedule is bananas. He's super patient. But I gotta get that going. Why not? Anybody who wants to collaborate, there's an email description for free to email. That would be awesome to do something. So a lot of answers in these questions are no for the beginning. And then yes, let's do it for the second one. Dairea VJ, Dairea, Dairea, Dairea, VJ, Vi. It's horrible. Those names, not the names are horrible but me with the names. What are best websites to find animation job? That's a good question. There's a Twitter handle that is I think all about animation jobs. You can follow me on Twitter. I retweet whatever job postings that I find. One of the things you can do is follow the companies. So either on LinkedIn or Twitter, whatever they have. Sometimes they have a recruiting specific Twitter handle. Definitely LinkedIn. They will post. So following, it's a lot to where you have at each company, you know, you would follow. It'd be good to have one long message board about jobs. There is a Google document which I don't know by heart the link to it but there's a document that lists jobs. And I can't remember if it's specifically for games or for the whole industry involving TV and feature and everything and VFX. But I know that exists and someone is updating this and I will check and I'll put that in the description once I find it. If someone knows and watches this, put that in the comments if you know that would be super helpful as well. Sean Harper. Hey JD, what's just wondering if you had any tips on posing and animating the spine? Ooh, back to the spine. Especially when it comes to overlap and splining. Interesting. Any tips on posing and animating the spine? Well, the tip for me, which is, again, it's a subjective workflow thing, but I will keep it as simple as possible so you don't have too many keys and too many controls ending up in weirdly kind of unnatural twists and moves. So to me, I keep things very simple in terms of how many controls I use. And in terms of animating, especially when it comes to overlap, I do overlap in the posing. So for me, my overlap tip is, not a tip, it's just my workflow preference, is that I do whatever offsets I have and overlaps in the pose and not going into the curves and the graphite to offset it. I do that if it's a really simple rig or very light and I can do it quickly. But a lot of times you just get, I wanna keep my graphite and my keys as organized as possible. So I know you'll end up not having keys on every controller on the same frame. Once you go into detail, it's gonna be messy in the timeline, but I try to keep it as clean as possible. So for me, by having offsets and overlap and all that built into the pose, but you can still key all controls on that same frame, gives me a bit more control in terms of organization and being able to make tweaks to the shop based on client notes or whatever notes I get. So that would be, again, I'm gonna show you that's a tip, but that's how I would approach it. But in terms of the posing, just make sure that there's always a good line of action from the head through the spine into the hips where you don't have sharp edges and just things that feel unnatural in terms of the twist of your spine, but then hips look this way and something is weird with the neck. So I would still look as the whole body as one unit that it flows nicely and just keep it simple. For me, at least in the rib cage, I keep it simple. Yoga yasardya, yasardya, yasahardya, I know. I know. Hi, GD, keep making great content. I love it. Well, thank you, thank you very much. I am from Asian country. I often found people really good at animation, but still hard to get into big company or move to studio in big animation country, example, US, Canada and Europe, because these people often don't have privileges working visa, student visa, passport, nationality. How much do these things differ each people chance from many countries? I'm just reading what I'm seeing here. I also believe there are these privileged things beyond skills to get a job at those countries and it's annoying. C-M-I-I-W, I'm old. I don't know what that means. This question may be for recruiters, but I wanna know your perspective. Please include it in your content. Thanks. Again, thank you for the kind words. And going back here, what are you saying here? So it's hard to get into big companies. Yes, it absolutely is. And there are things, yes, like working visas, passport, nationality and how does that, it's really tricky. I only have experience with basically one company. I mean, I interviewed other companies, but I've only worked at one, which is ILM for almost 17 years. So I have a very narrow perspective on that. But yes, there is gonna be, there will be issues in terms of countries because of visas. Again, I'm not super experienced, especially nowadays what's going on. But you would probably think that there's a different timeline for each country. One might get a visa issued faster than others. There might be some additional qualifications that come into play. So do you have a degree or not a degree or do you have a ward? So for me, I came to the academy for bachelor's degree because you needed the bachelor for an H1B visa back then, which you still do and a master's would be better, but I didn't have anything. So I started with a bachelor's. I didn't continue, but I don't have a master's. So for me, that degree was the thing to get a visa and to apply it and then the company would sponsor that and so on and so on. So that to me was why I did that. Now you're saying there are other things beyond skills to get a job and it's annoying. Totally understand and it is. And there's not something, I don't really have a fix for that because it's all a matter. There's so many factors that are out of your control. You can have a fantastic reel, but if you only upload it to the company when they look for a job, maybe they get to that too late and they already found someone else, right? So you have to kind of put your reel online as well, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, where you have to self promote more. Then there might be something where you might be great, but maybe you have previous experience and now your salary is too high. Maybe you don't have the budget to pay you. I mean, there are so many things that are out of your control. They also, you might be great, send it everywhere, but then if the company's not looking, they're still not gonna hire you. There might be internal referral. So if someone knows someone really well and they know how to work and they're really good, that might be the first referral for the job applicant versus let's go outside and look at people who are just applying. I don't know, there are many factors that I'm not aware of, but I know that it's not gonna be as simple as, you're awesome, you're applying, you get a job. There's a lot of stuff that you're not in control of. What I would look at, there was a great one with, a great one meaning a great kind of a talk, discussion thing with a rise up animation and they had all the recruiters from Pixar, Disney, Blue Sky, ILM, like lots of people and they gave a lot of tips. So I would look out for stuff like this, check recruiters online or LinkedIn or Twitter, wherever they are, they might give you tips. And if there are any conferences or meetings or Zoom calls where recruiters talk about things, make sure you follow these and you watch those to get more up to date tips. Because again, I'm not a recruiter and whatever I'm gonna say is gonna be outdated or probably wrong, so that would be my tip. Diarrhea, VJ, VIE, I really wish I could pronounce these like right off the bat, the best way. What are main animation exercises I should do to learn body mechanics and acting in animation? Well, these are for me, well, these are separate. I'm sure you mean it as separate as well. So body mechanics, the classic stuff to me is the sit down and the standing up. Just because with the sit down, this is great and I put it in the description, there's great character, like different characters coming into a room and sitting down, which is from Big Hero 6. And you can see how they open the door is different depending on who the character is, how they walk in, how they sit down. So you can make it very complex and very character driven and also with a lot of acting in there. But at the same time, the sit down can also just be standing and just sitting down where you don't even have a leg shuffle or a step or anything where it changes. You basically just sit down and then it's just a body mechanics thing where you have the weight and the drop and the plop and you have the compression, you have the overlap on the head. You can make it very body mechanics focused and same thing with the standing up. But at the same time, there's room for those exercises to expand and make it much more complex and just add more stuff to it, including acting. And for acting stuff, what I would do, like there's one thing to do lip sync, where you're just kind of you're being given the rhythm of the lip sync and everything. And I would start when it comes to acting pieces with pantomime thought process stuff where there's no audio. You wanna show on the face of the character that they are looking at things, processing things, receiving information, thinking about it and then making a choice. That to me is more interesting than just straight up lip sync where you just kinda do blah, blah, blah, blah and you follow the timing and again, everything that the lip sync tells you to do. So for me, non audio pantomime acting I think is interesting and challenges you in terms of keeping the face alive and showing that there's a thought process behind that. So that would be, or those be my quick answers to that. Other than that for exercises, I mean, walks are hard. So it's very common to do like a basic, I don't know, like a head turn or something super basic in terms of the body and then move on to a walk. Walks are really hard. I would put walks fairly later in the process but walks are good. A jump is good because it's kind of like a bouncing ball but then you're adding mechanics of arms and legs and the spine and the full extension and compression. So to me, a sit down, a jump, but also just a side step, a weight shift or turnaround and getting into simpler mechanics where it's just the way I'm framed here, maybe a bit further, maybe a bit further back, something like this, I'm leaning back with my chair here you gotta be careful. So something where you have just a head turn or an arm gesture or like something where you move this way, where you look at separate body parts and pieces where you just focus, like to me, I would look at separate pieces basically. That's what I'm rambling about. Head turns, arm moves, maybe a side step, look at the relationship with the hips and the spine. Then you get into maybe a sit down and then a jump and then maybe a walk. So I would build on separate pieces to understand the relationship between all those things and then build on top of that into bigger full body mechanics. Hope that makes sense. And then acting wise, the same thing. I would look at a lot of reference, I would look at what the actors are doing, what their choices are, I would act out things for yourself a lot and definitely go from, like I said, pantomime, face only, and then lip sync as well. But one thing I would always do is, and you don't have to be obviously, right? And it really depends on what the direction is of the shot, what you're given to do, if it's your own choice. I'm a big fan of conflict, basically giving your character a problem because then the character has to make a choice to fix that problem. And those choices will reveal character. So there's many times on the channel, it's just, that's what I like. So when a character is just going through the motion of things, it's just movement, it's just not as interesting. But if they have to make a choice or decide something or react to something, that to me is more interesting. So when it comes to acting, kind of the acting is reacting to everything. That to me is a bit more interesting. And then later on, you can get into lip sync or more emotional things, or again, reacting to things where this is a longer range, a longer, a wider range of emotional changes. I think all of that will be helpful. Kashyap Vias. This is really not the Q and A of easy names. Apologize. Kashyap, Kashyap, Kashyap Vias, Vias. How do you come up with ideas for shots? Particularly body mechanic shots, as a student, this is the hardest thing for me. I would love your thoughts. Thank you. I would highly recommend my acting analysis for animators and the tips and just acting for animation clips that I have on Thursdays. For some reason, you can't really go into numbers, but that sounds like an excuse to make up for low numbers. But the acting analysis clips are very low in terms of viewing or the viewership, whatever you're gonna call this, on my channel. Which is really surprising to me because it's really important. Out of everything, obviously the F&A is important in terms of lectures and learning, whatever topics they explain about. It also helps me in terms of researching and learning these. But the Thursday acting analysis clips should be subjectively on top of every list of an animator just because you need to have the reference point of what other people are doing in terms of the acting choices. Same thing with animation analysis clips. But in terms of the acting, if you're doing feature stuff, being in TV, you're gonna deal with the characters surrounded by other characters, by a set, dealing with props, dealing with outside environment influences, be it sound, weather, a car. I mean, like other objects that come into the scene. And it's just important to see what the actors are doing and what their creative choices are in that moment. And it's not there for you to copy. It's there to look at, oh, that's a cool idea to approach that situation. Let me build on top of that and do something else. And when I have the students, and that's exactly that question here, how do you come up with ideas for shots? It's, I watch a lot of movies. I watch a lot of TV shows and I'm always studying. Like I'm always looking around if I'm somewhere in a mall, in a park, at DMV, at the airport. Not as a bit trickier. But as you see people, I can't really turn that brain part off. I just always look and, oh, that was an interesting way of picking up the glass. That was an interesting way of eating. That's an interesting way of sitting and adjusting your body. I'm always kind of studying and observing that and writing it down. So I write that down on my phone. That goes, I can email myself to a blog, which is private. That just has a long list of notes of things that I observe, audio that I hear, photos that I like in terms of composition or animation ideas or like modifications of rigs. I have all that, excuse me. I have all that on a specific reference site or you can use it wherever you want. As a place where I can always go back to any these ideas for later. But me watching movies and analyzing things and analyzing people and observing things all the time just builds a mental library of things. So for me, I would subjectively, very selfishly, recommend that you watch the Thursday and not acting analysis clips and watch them all. I know it's a lot of work, but after a while it becomes almost like this massive information that you can access where it's not like, oh, I remember this movie and that move, we've got to be careful. I don't want to copy and steal it. But you've seen so many things that it becomes a mix and whatever you come up with and modify will be original and different enough. Because again, you will have your own rig. That means it's a different character, different scale, your own environment. It's already going to be different and force you to think about different things. So it's going to make it original already. But that would be my biggest thing. So how do you come up with ideas for shots? Particularly body-mechanic shots. Again, that's what I do. I look at definitely online, what are other people animating, right? So it's kind of like also not to do, because you don't want to copy that. But I act things out a lot, but I just look at a lot of outside reference. So that would be my biggest tip. Watch the acting analysis clips and if anybody watches this Q&A, I highly recommend it not to get the views higher. I'm just surprised that not more people are, is that English, are watching this, just because to me it's the biggest thing that has helped me in terms of getting and coming up with ideas and improving my animation in terms of, again, acting choices or movements or just creative ways of doing something. Because you always have to find a new creative way and always comes from either your imagination or something you observe that you didn't tweak and then implement. And to me, that playlist of all those things analyzed is just a massive amount of information that you could use. So that would be my tip. I was going to read Piggy, but it's not Piggy. It's Piggy, P-G, P-J, Iggy, crazy. Again, not the names, but I guess I can't, I can't figure this out. It's a long one, let me read this whole thing. Hi Jean, I just want to hear you say my name's not Jean. I find it amusing, simple pleasures. Well, it's not Jean. Jean Denis, technically, JD, is easier, Jean Jean. Can you please discuss when it's okay to ignore the rule about twinning or when it is okay to ignore the rule about silhouettes? Twinning is a natural part of life, human's twin. And every frame of a video clip is not a perfectly clean silhouette. How can it be possible to achieve a certain vision or the thing you have in your head if every frame has to have a perfect silhouette and twinning cannot exist anywhere near your animation? Doesn't that make creation very restrictive? Or am I just new and experienced and have no idea what I'm talking about? You are not inexperienced and you know what you're talking about and you're totally right. You can't have every frame be not twins and in a fantastic silhouette. I personally prefer, this is a very subjective, but I personally prefer a messier approach to silhouette and twinning. Now, put my phone down here, let me move back. So the thing about twinning is that it's very common in animation and I see this with the students and you can see this in my workshop clips that I post is that a lot of arm, there are a lot of arm movements that people do. It's one of the first things if you do an acting, if you see an acting piece, the gestures, the double arm gestures and stuff like that. And if you're not careful, you're gonna start and stop at the same time, giving it very post to post feel, but you're also just gonna, I don't know, you're just gonna twin it automatically. But the thing is once you have twinning on the CG object, it just becomes very robotic, mechanical and too perfect in terms of how mirrored it is. Yes, human twins, human twins, they do twinning motions, but it will end up being still, if I look at my screen here, still somewhat offset, it's not gonna be perfect unless you're really trying to do it. But in CG, it just lends itself more to unnatural, computerly, mirrored posing. And that's why a lot of people me included, when I talk to my students, I harp on the twinning thing. I'd be careful and just add offsets. It just makes it more appealing, it's just a bit more, you can get a nicer line and mirrored stuff. At the same time, you can't really avoid it, like you said, on every frame. So it's the same thing with silhouette. I'm not a huge fan of every pose being super clear, just because then it becomes very staged and presentational to camera. I think what I would concentrate on is the major storytelling poses. Anything that the audience really needs to understand, where it's a change in something, or something that's just really important in terms of information of your silhouette and the pose, that to me needs to be clear. Same thing with the twinning where, if you really wanna do a twinning thing and on purpose, then you make that really nice and clean and appealing and clear silhouette. But anytime you have a breakdown or in between, there are moments where it's not gonna be perfect. I still try to make it as appealing as possible in every frame, but there will be moments where you just can't. But the thing is, if I'm moving around a lot, right, then it can be messy, fine. But if you stop on a moment, and I'm gonna look at my screen here like this, right, and I go, ah, like a Harrison Ford finger point, and you hold on this, it's a moving hold, it's a very specific moment where you do wanna point, then I wanna make sure that this hand or this finger is really nicely silhouetted and clear. Like that moment to me, it needs to have a clean silhouette. If it's an important moment and that is an important part, and you do it like this, like whatever, something like that, that's just weird. It's covering the mouth, covering the face, it's not a clean silhouette. It's like, what does that mean? Am I trying to touch my face or am I trying to make a literal point there? So for me, there are specific storytelling poses into specific moments that need to be super clear and that's when I would really focus on silhouettes. So that would be my answer to that. Yes, like you said, you can't always have it. To me, that's fine. I'm also more in the more naturalistic acting side where things can be somewhat off-screen. I can gesture and you can just see how this part is moving and that's fine for me. It doesn't have to be, oh, this is the framing that I gotta put in my finger so you can see it. No, this happened to be the framing. I can still point into this, but I will still animate that, you will still understand that I'm pointing, but the focus is here. So that's kind of my approach to posing and acting to camera. So yes, I agree with you, but there are moments or ends, there are moments where I would still look at a very clear silhouette for storytelling purposes. Deepu Vijayan, Vijayan, Deepu Vijayan. Is it possible to get an animation internship without being a recent graduate? For example, a self-taught animator with no production experience can apply for an intern position, thanks. My immediate answer would be no, just because of the word internship. Usually internships are linked to schools. So you are still enrolled somewhere and through that you go do an internship once that internship is done, you go back to that school. So I remember posting a while back, my shots for episode three, that was my, what I call the internship at ILM. Again, I'm not super paying attention to those words. I just said internship, it was corrected where that's probably not an internship because you graduated, it was probably an apprenticeship. I can't remember what it was called to be honest, back then. To me, it's always, it's my internship. And to me, I also posted these are all the shots that I did during the internship, which is also not true. Technically, my apprenticeship lasted, can't remember, six months maybe. Like after six months, I was promoted to an animator. So is that whole section of six months in apprenticeship and definitely not an internship or not, I wasn't in school anymore. So I don't know, I threw that quickly around, internship, blah, blah, blah, but what I showed was everything that I worked on on the movie, which was a year. So technically I would have to take some shots out. So again, apprenticeship, internship, if I look at this question specifically and you're saying internship, I would say internships are tied to schools. So you would have to look at maybe there could be something where you graduate or you graduated and you can do an internship afterwards as one last thing. I don't know, to be honest, it depends on the school. I would say my initial answer is it has to be something while you're still enrolled and not when you haven't graduated yet. As always, I might not probably don't know anything. If you know anything and you're watching this post comment there and explain things in a better way, I'm sure I'm butchering all kinds of things, but that is my thought there. If you know anything better and more accurate, feel free to comment. All right, anime forever. Well, the thing is that I'm currently a animation student in a animation school in my country, but the thing is that to be honest, they are SHIT and teachers themselves only have around one to two year experience as best, and they still teach animation, okay? That's fine, but they teach something like this. First class acting, second class, body-mechanism, third class, again acting in no principles, classes were given and everything is all over the place and also our teachers sometimes just play a YouTube video and just left the room I mean like WTF. I paid thousands of dollars to here and I am already in debt and I know I should have researched before joining here, but a relative of mine recommended this so I joined so what will be my best course of action? That's a long question there. Should I look for teachers to teach me or try to learn online since I don't think I can afford another animation tuition fees right now since I already paid full amount to the school and it took me so long to realize it's SHIT so any advice would be great for me. I see that I already responded to that, but in case anybody has a similar situation, that is definitely a tricky thing. And it's silly for me to say, yeah, you should have researched, but if anybody is at that step where you haven't gone to the school yet, please research, look at maybe contact people graduated there, ask them how the school was and how the teachers were. Maybe you see a roster of the teachers to see are they teaching, are they teaching and still working? Do they have any kind of practical experience right now or is it just from years ago? So I would do that type of experience and in terms of what you need to do, that's really very personal and subjective to you. And that's I think what I wrote there, I'm not gonna go through the replies there, but that would be my thing. It's you have to look at your own situation. Can you just quit? Can you go out there and go online? Can you be self-taught at this point? Can you do an online school? Do you need to finish? Do you need to degree? I mean, there are a lot of factors that I can't really comment about or on and it's very personal to you. All I can say that is, that sucks. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. And I hope things have, it was a month ago. Things have changed a bit for the better. I don't know, for free to comment again to update me on your situation, but it's definitely a risk at any point to go somewhere. You don't know who's gonna teach you. I think the best thing you can do, I mean, like you said, is research, look at who are the teachers and look at their resume and see if they're still teaching what the portfolio is like and if it's gonna be a good thing to do. Generally, you really don't wanna go into a classroom. Me as a teacher, I wouldn't go into a classroom and put up whatever YouTube tutorial and walk out. I mean, that is WTF, that is really silly. So I would also complain to the school. I mean, that's just not the way to teach there. There's a huge waste of money for the students who are paying all this. So besides researching and hopefully finding other ways, also let the school know that that is not an acceptable way of teaching by a teacher. All right, 3D AV of my way. I don't know if that's a username that's mixed together or a name. Dave actually says, hey, JD Dave here. Hi Dave. So here's my question. What is your experience with teaching the students who are not too self-confident? Like that kind of people who react to your feedback, saying something like, yeah, oh my God, you're right. I'm so lame. I absolutely need to get this right even if it's the death of me. This is also the kind of people who are scared to address a certain retake will often end up either pushing it back over and over or getting it wrong time after time for over again or getting it wrong time after time. I try to be positive, encouraging, and most importantly, I try to remind them how far they've come and how much stuff they got right so far, but it doesn't really seem to work. Any suggestion? Thank you so much in advance. That's a tricky one. And every now and then I have students like that as well. It is tricky because it's not, you can't force confidence onto a student. My piece of advice, what I recommend to the students is, and it's really hard because they have to do the work, but it's always just practice and keep going with it, keep animating and keep things small. And the reason I'm saying all this is that as you, like when you pick a shorter shot, you can actually finish it. You can get to the whole polish aspect, learn that whole process and see the end result. Is this good enough or not? And then as you do your second shot, you take what you learned from that and put that into the new shot. And if it's always small, you get to always finish it and it gets better because it will get better through practice. You will, even if it takes a long time, you will gradually get better. And as you see your work improve and as you will get positive feedback from that, your confidence will grow, will get better. You will be more confident and that builds on top of each other. If you take on a shot and it's 20 seconds long, it's going to be a so much work, you can't finish it. So you won't be able to deliver something that's really good that you're proud of. And you will feel like, man, I didn't get this. And your confidence will always be stumped. You'll always feel like, I can't do this. I'm not good enough. So that's one aspect of that. And in terms of how they react, I mean, you're mentioning here that people saying, I'm so lame. I need to get this right. Again, that's hard. That's a mindset and a perspective from of that person. So again, a personal thing, you can't force out. I mean, there's always something that they're going to do well. Even if it's absolutely horrendous, there's going to be something. And let's pretend it is 100% horrendous. What's positive is that they did it. They started. They did the first step of animating and doing something new they have no experience with. And that's not easy either. So if it's something you're doing for the first time, this is a big chance it's going to look like crap. My first step looked like crap, but continue and it's going to get better. And again, if they have their positive view of themselves distorted, it's again, you can't force that onto someone. So I would just continue with positive encouragement, reinforcement and there is always something positive to find and to see in someone's work. Even if it's not the work, it's their attitude or how many times they worked on a revision. There's always something where you can tell that person did the job. And if they talk like that to themselves, again, that's a personal image thing they have to change for themselves, but positive encouragement and show them what they did well. Now, if someone is lazy, doesn't do anything and has a crappy attitude towards that, then you got to also point that out, right? I mean, that's not what you're asking here, but sometimes people when they don't improve, you have to look at, well, are they actually really working hard to work towards that improvement or are they kind of slumming it and not really doing what they're supposed to do? And then that needs to be pointed out. Like, I know you're handing this in, but if you tell me your goal, okay, I heard your goal. If you want to get to this, you got to do more than we're doing right now. It's just not realistic to get to that goal with the amount of time and work you put in. But it's a totally, I don't know, a tangent that was not really your question there. Speaking of question, let's do one more and then we'll continue the rest in part two. This is from ever six errors, yeah. Oh, I have new question. It's regarding rigging and animation. Do you think it's very important for animators to understand rigging? I see you review lots of rigs and I'm starting to think they wouldn't hurt to take a rigging for animators course. So that way, if any issues come up, I can better address any issues. Plus it'll probably give an artist a better understanding of how things work with any particular rig. That's a good question. It's a tricky question, mainly because is it important for animators to understand rigging? Let me put this down since it's the last question. Yes and no. So basically, you can have zero understanding of rigging and animate something really, really well. And it's okay. Now, if you are working with a rig and you want to animate something and there's a certain limitation that you can't get to a certain pose or you can't do something very specific because the rig won't let you. So I'm gonna cut off here and go back. So if you understand rigging, then you can modify the rig, break things, change attributes, just do something with the rig to get you to that pose and to whatever animation you want it to be. So there, the rigging knowledge will help you. Now, I'm not a rigger. I can still get things done, but sometimes I wish I would know more. So to answer your question, I wish I could, I wish I knew more about rigging to do my own stuff or help out or maybe help out the team or do things like that. The tricky thing about that, the reason why I said tricky is because rigging is really hard. It's really difficult. And when we talk to the riggers at work, there's so much work that goes into that to make everybody happy, but address all the things. But also while you can't just implement all the features people want because the rig still has to be built well and work fast, right? The scene has to be fast. The rig can't be slow. It can't break. There's so much that goes into it. So the tricky thing is in order to know rigging, you gotta spend a lot of time learning and practicing and building rigs. And all that time is time taken away from animation. So do you wanna learn rigging? Sure, but then that's learn, that's time taken away from learning animation. So if animation is your focus, personally I would focus on that. And you can always do like 80% that and then 20% something else. But that's very personal. Again, maybe you're like 50-50. Maybe you have all kinds of time. Maybe you have a day job and you animate and then you have all kinds of time in the evening and on weekends to learn something else like rigging. So will, does it help? I say yes. Just the question is do you have time to devote yourself to rigging and is that time spent on rigging, taking up time from animation? If so, is that something you can do or not? It's almost like I'm answering your question with a lot of other questions. I don't know, that's my thing. Obviously I would love to know modeling and rigging and lining and everything so I can do my own thing so I can help out with things and maybe fix my own problems. They don't have to delegate to someone else. But to me it just comes down to time. Do I have the time to learn this? I would really like to learn unreal and blender. But I have a lot to do. I got my work, I got all the classes that I teach, I got something else going on and it's just, it always the family and everything and I just don't have time to get there. And I wish I would have the time, you can always take the time and make time, right? I'm just, this is just excuses. But the time that I have outside of work and family is limited and there are certain things I want to focus on like teaching. That's still a big chunk that I enjoy a lot and that I want to put my priority in the focus on, put priority on in English. But if I would not teach at all then I would definitely learn, if I can, it sounds so easy, but learn unreal and blender and get that to expand my portfolio. So it's a long-winded answer to your question. And again, the answer is yes, it helps. Should you learn it? Can you? That's my counter question, can you? In terms of do you have the time to do this and would that be time better spent learning animation? So I don't know, that's a personal thing. And I think that's that. What I'm seeing here at 17 minutes plus it's a second recording, plus the other half an hour. So it's a longer clip. I'm gonna stop it here and say thank you for watching. There will be a part two, I'm gonna address all of these. And I'm not sure yet when I'm gonna post these. I chose Friday today, but I'm probably gonna post these probably during the week because I wanna continue with the acting analysis. Acting analysis, that's still in my mind with the facial acting and lip sync FNA series and camera series, I do wanna continue with that. So probably the next Q and A part two is gonna be between Monday and Thursday, one of these days. Probably either Thursday or Monday, I would say one of these. So that's that. If anything I said was confusing, which I'm sure was, comment. Let me know if you need clarification or if you want me to follow up. Now I'm not saying comment more questions because I do wanna get to this. But yeah, if you have questions for what I just said and then I can clarify in the next part, that's okay. If I addressed your question and it was confusing, absolutely, comment to clarify and ask a, or tell me what I did wrong. Apologies to all the butchered names. And I think that's that. As always, thanks and hit subscribe so you don't miss any of those things because I upload a lot just in case you're interested in this channel. I do have daily uploads, so if you wanna miss this and it's just in your inbox and your subscription feed, that's that, you don't have to subscribe at all. I'm just saying this is kinda like the usual spiel that's automatically at the end that I say. And that's that. I wanna stop rambling and say thank you and I'll see you in my next upload.