 Welcome back to NF&A and today I want to talk about 10 lessons from students on how to become a better animator. Now, why are those lessons from students and not from me or other quote-unquote professionals? It's just because at the Academy there was a module that we had, it was two weeks ago I think, where students had to write down their lessons. What have they learned so far or something that happened to them previously? Anything that stands out in terms of this is what I learned and this is what I want to mention to my other students that they should pay attention to them. And then I think a pretty cool list. So then I was going through the post and realized that we can do a summary of this. I can take like a sentence out of this and then add my own two cents and kind of make like a summary of all the student posts or like 17 students we have in this class. I made a list of these are the main takeaways from this whole module. And in a weird click baity YouTube fashion that ended up being 10 tips. So it's kind of like why not package this into a clip. And that's what I'm going to talk about today. And just in case you're new to this channel, hi my name is JD and I do animation lectures like these. I do animation analysis clips. So I do acting analysis clips. I do a bunch of stuff. You will see the thumbnails flashing by the channel is all about animation and in all kind of different forms. So if you like this, subscribe if you don't want to miss any of those uploads and maybe you don't want to and that's fine too. Maybe just listen and maybe do it later. Whatever works best for you. So let's start with lesson number one. Less is more. Now this might come more from me pushing the students to keep things short like an audio clip that's short just generally the shot that's short so that they have enough time to actually finish the shot. So if you take on a 10 to 20 second shot, just you won't have time to go to full polish within two three weeks. It's just going to be too much work. But the general tip is less is more. You can finish that and really polish it. And if you still have time and the energy, you can still add more at the beginning and at the end to make the shot long either within the same camera or different camera angles. You can always add more, but it's better to have a short shot. That's awesome than a long shot. That's kind of mediocre lesson number two. Don't skip good planning and clear blocking. If you've been watching this channel, you might think that's another one that I kind of pushed through there. I'm really big on blocking. And of course, I have a series about blocking where you really have to pay attention to how you present things. And actually last week's clip about step mode kind of figures into that. But generally, the main lesson is that you want to plan and know what you want to do and start with the founding blocks of the shot and then go into details. Because the main problem that I see is that students go straight into details. They go into lip sync, they go into fingers, maybe not fingers, but it's a lot of times they're rushed through the basics into performance and acting in lip sync ends up being where the mechanics really don't work and the lip sync is poppy. It's too much too soon. You really got to go back and okay, what do I need to do in terms of what's clear staging? What are the main poses? Because it doesn't matter if, you know, maybe even the lip sync is okay or your blinks are okay if the story is not clear. So really start at the beginning and have a clear plan. You really know what you want to do and then present that in a really clear way and then afterwards add the details or if you have to add the details, there really have to be the ones that are necessary to tell the story. Lesson number three, even if you have short shots, you can still break up the shots into smaller sections. Now why? It's because that way if even if you have to say seven seconds, five to seven seconds, it might still be a lot for you to work on if you do everything at the same time, it could be overwhelming. So focus on either 50 frames at a time or maybe 100 frames at a time, but that's something short or just beats. Well, sometimes you have 50 frames, but it lands right in the middle of a move, a gesture, a bottom mechanics action, whatever it is, and that might not work as well. So a lot of times it ends up being beats. But that way you can say this specific head turn, focus on this, the sit down, focus on that, that gesture, focus on that. And really that way you can focus on clarity for your posing and your acting and your storytelling moments. Lesson number four, find or film reference. Definitely talk a lot about reference, link in the description. I have a bunch of clips about reference. It's there. And as someone was noting, it was really interesting. It's there to get rid of the fluff because if you don't plan out, you don't shoot reference, you go straight into the shot, you might add a bunch of things and you shock it's long and it's really unfocused. If you film reference and you plan things out, you can go, I want to try this and that. That doesn't quite work. And you keep acting things out until you get rid of the things that don't work. And even then, if you have all your reference takes, you can still copy, paste certain elements into one main take that has taken out all the things you don't need. So besides being good for studying body mechanics and understanding complicated moves, reference is also that just get rid of bad ideas and keep working on things and acting things out. So, you know, oh, this is the essence. That's what I need for my shot. Lesson number five, don't overthink it and don't add too much detail, which might go back into the previous points. But the main thing is that a lot of times people get also lost in thinking too hard by the moment. Oh, how can I mean, I'm the first one to say kind of maybe think ID number two, ID number three is you get away from the cliche ideas, but there's also a danger to overthink it and just go way too far in terms of what could I do, what should I add this, just think in terms of clarity, focus on that. Yes, iterate on this to make it more original, but don't get lost into too many details. So focus on what the essence is and sell that really well. Lesson number six, practice editing your animation. This is about being bold in terms of deleting keys, just taking chunks out, rearranging things and just not being precious about your keys that you're setting because you might do something like this is the best thing we've ever done. I want to hold on to this, but is that really serving your shot, the story, whatever you need for your demo reel? Maybe not. You got to get rid of it. You still learn about it. You can still keep it for reference maybe later, but don't hang on to things that don't really make the shot better. So you got to get into the habit as well of even though this was really cool, delete, redo, or tweak big chunks. It will also help you down the line in a professional environment where you don't resist notes because you're like, ah, if I implement this notes, it's going to destroy my shop. Well, that's just how it is. It's you working for someone. So you got to take those notes, implement them and move forward. But if you hold on to your work, that's not going to be good. And people don't want to work with you if you're that resisting to notes and you're not just not a collaborative environment when you hang on to stuff like this. So it's great for you as a student and also long term. Lesson number seven, you don't have to use all the controllers on your rig. That's a really good one because if you open up a rig and that the more complex they are, you got so many controls. It can't be really overwhelming, but you really don't need any of these. Just like you have to focus on the essence of the storytelling in your ideas for your shot and clear blocking and everything where you don't have too much fluff. The fluff is also on the rig. You're just going to use your roots. I mean, with the cog, the scent of gravity, we're going to use this, the main controller, the chest control, the head, arms and legs. And I will do some basic poses on hands and the face just to tell the stories. It's not like robot acting. Other than that, that's all you need. Don't go into bambos. Don't go into crazy details just yet. This is going to take way too long to edit down the line. So if you rent this to your teacher and, you know, media teacher like me has a bunch of notes, it's going to take a long time to implement these. And again, it goes back in the other one where you're going to be afraid of deleting things and taking chunks out because it's just so complicated and it's a mess with so many controllers. So keep it simple, not just the ideas, but keep it simple on the controller usage. And that way you can just select the handful, delete and restart, reblock. It's going to be much easier, less headaches for sure. Lesson number eight, if you really have to do a longer shot for whatever reason, at least consider breaking up the shot into separate shots. So you might have something why that's an establishing shot. You see a full body mechanic, and then you can go into maybe a medium or a closeup. I mean, if you have multiple characters, then you can switch between the characters. It will break up the monotony of the shot. That's maybe 10, 20 seconds. I have one static camera, unless the action is super interesting, but also gives you kind of a plan B. So maybe you have three shots within 10 seconds. And you can say, well, I want to work on all three that then you run out of time like wow, those three, this is the best version of all the three. And this is what I like. Maybe this could be for my demo reel. And then you can fall back on that and then work on the other two if you still have time. And it can also help you kind of get into this demo reel mindset of showing off different things in different shots. So if you have 10 seconds, you break that up into three shots, you don't want to show the same things in each shot. Then it's kind of redundant. So like I said, first shot could be full body. And then the second shot is all about facial thought process. And then maybe the third shot could be half body in terms of interactions. You can see what the fingers are doing. So each shot could be specific focus in terms of showcasing your skillset. And on top of that, we have three shots. Let's say you work on the first two, and you submit that for review. And then you wait for the feedback instead of wasting time doing nothing, even though rest is important, you can get to the third shot and then start blocking that out, working on that. And then when the feedback for the first two come in, you can submit the third shot. And it's this constant feedback loop. And it's really productive in terms of scheduling and time management. Lesson number nine, identify potential bottleneck problems. What is that? Well, this could be IK, FK switches, constraints, interaction between characters where it's like holding and pushing, just things where you go, this is going to be really difficult. It's going to take some time. It might have to do some research or practice a separate little thing before applying it to the main shot. Or can the rig actually do what I wanted to do? This could be an extreme pose on the body or especially the face. Can it hit those extreme facial poses? Because you don't want to start a shot thinking everything's going to be okay. And maybe two weeks into it, you go, Oh, well, I got to do this now. And A, the rig doesn't support it doesn't work. The rig breaks. I don't know what to do with it. And then you've shot falls apart, you're running out of time and the assignment is due and it ends up being just kind of a mess. So before you start, identify your bottleneck moments. And that means that before you block out the shot, maybe just do one or two poses with the most extreme poses of your face. And the same thing with the body. Just try to figure out if I stress test my rig and in terms of what I want to tell story wise, is there going to be able to do this? And if not, maybe you can put in some research, try things out and then you might have to switch the rig or you tested it out and everything is okay. And then you can attack the shot two or three weeks, you're done. It's going to be great. So there's no surprises along the way to the polish final version. And listen, number 10, stay focused on your animation task, but also allow for breaks. You have to be able to refresh your mind and especially refresh your eyes because after a while you work on your shot, you're going to get snowballed. You're going to get used to it. You don't know, is this the right way and you might not have enough feedback or you just, you know, you're alone on the weekend, someone working, you got to be able to take a break, step back, get back to the shot and realize, oh, this is not working. But if you work on something for too long, you'll get used to it and you can't identify those problems because you might think, I can always give feedback from my fellow students or from the teacher. What if you are in an environment where you can't? What if you are somewhere where you have to rely on your self critique? And as you move forward in your career, it is really important to be able to self critique. Can you work on the shot from beginning to the end, full polish without any help in terms of just, can you give yourself your own critical feedback where you don't sugarcoat things, you want to hang on to things. So that's really helpful. And yes, of course, you'll be in environment work where you will have feedback from other people, but it's important you can move forward on your own as well and really be harsh with yourself and go, this doesn't work. This works. I'm going to take this, rework this and so on. But this will only work if you are able to focus and then take a break. And this is not just in terms of identifying problems for your shot. It's also physically does. You can take a break for your eyes, your hands, your wrist, all that stuff. You got to be able to have that balance between work and recharging and then get back to work. There you go. 10 tips. And I'm looking at these. And to me, lessons from students, this is lessons from students for myself as well. I mean, these are great tips. I think they're completely applicable to professionals as not just students. And it was cool to see that they're already aware of these elements. And I think if you can see that and then take that list and implement it, you're going to be such a better animator. It's going to be, I don't say, you know, 200% easy to move forward. Animation is hard, generally from a technical point of view and finding active ideas and all that good stuff. But if you take that and implement that into your work discipline and work habits, I think that's going to be super helpful. Now, that was just what they came up with. And I'm sure you have your own ideas. So as always, comments are open. So if you have any additional points, let me know. Comment. Let me know. I do this. I do that. This helps me. This helps other people in my team, whatever you have. I would love to get a bit of a list in the comment section. It'd be great too. But there you go. Hopefully that list is helpful. And speaking of helpful, I can also take all of this and help you with your shots. And you know what that leads to? My workshops. So if you sign up for my workshops, we will talk about this. I will help you with other tips and tricks, whatever works for you in your situation, your shot, your schedule. That's what the workshop is there for. It's kind of a one on one helping you, not just animation technique wise, but also kind of how to move forward and to be just generally a better animator. So link in the description all the information you can sign up at any time. And speaking of time, if you're still watching this till the very end, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I'll sign off. That's it for me. Hopefully I'll see you in my next clip.