 Welcome back to the workflow clip and today I want to talk about what you can do to become a faster animator. Tip number one the first thing you got to do is have a plan. I know this sounds kind of boring maybe you're waiting for like a specific this is the tool and you're going to be a hundred percent faster but the thing is nothing matters the tools don't matter the rigs don't matter obviously they do but in a different way but if you don't have a plan if you don't know what you want to do then your animation is going to suffer are you going to meander and you're going to waste a bunch of time and since this is about speed and workflow you need to find ways to animate faster and you will always be a faster animator when you know what you want to do case in point let's say you animate something you're softer crashes and you gotta start over you're going to be faster why because you've done it already you know what you want to do and you're just going through the list so before you do anything before you do anything that I mentioned in this clip you have to have a plan think about your shop film reference act things out draw thumbnails whatever your process is but you gotta have a clear idea of what you're going to do otherwise you're just going to try things out and get lost and noodle things around and that's a waste of time and don't feel bad if your schedule is 50% planning and 50% animating you're just going to be faster if you have a solid plan tip number two test your rig to avoid surprises there's nothing more frustrating when you do have a plan and you start and in halfway through realize the rig can't do what I want it to do and you have to find workarounds again that wastes time or worst case you have to scrap the shot and start new within your rig so make sure that you take your rig test out the movements test the controls and the best thing you can do is to take the shot that you want to do and write down what are the extreme poses what is the body doing at its extreme what is the face doing at its extreme and pose that up just do a couple poses fully polished I know this might take time but trust me it's going to save you time down the line because you won't have any surprises so polish it up test everything out the facial controls the body so you know oh the range of my clip is from 1 to 10 whatever and you can actually pose out all the way to 10 tip number three use libraries scripts or tools to avoid repetitive tasks if you do something over over and over that takes time and that's what we're focusing on to spend less time so it's great to have a pose library for instance for the face or hands for finger poses especially fingers because posing fingers out that's very time consuming so either you have that that's provided through the rig or before you start you go what I do into the minus minus one two three or whatever in your scene and I do basic hand poses whatever you need then you just copy paste that pose for faster blocking same thing for mouth shapes and a body picker so instead of going through and tumbling through your scene and trying to find the controllers body pickers going to save you a bunch of time now tools and scripts is the topic I want to revisit later on because that is massive that being said all the tools in the world are not going to help you if you don't have a plan and if you have a specific work ethic that I'm going to cover later on and the other thing is you also don't want to rely too much on these tools even though they're great because what if they break what if the studio your ad doesn't have those tools what if you at home suddenly don't have those tools you need to be able to be a fast animated without all that extra help if you have it even better but you need to have the basics and the foundation ready and a big part of that is blocking so tip number four focus on the storytelling not the details you got to block out the right way and I definitely have a lot of thoughts about blocking edit a whole series about this this is super important it's probably the major issues that students struggle with when it comes to showing their work and going through the process of animating so definitely check out that whole series but the main part is in your blocking that your blocking is clear it tells the story but don't waste time on the details so if a shot is mostly about body mechanics and you don't really have to worry about mouth details and lips now if there is lip sync in your shot you can still block out the whole thing it don't really worry about the details just do the major jaw movement so it tells the story and have basic facial expressions so we know what is going on emotionally with the character make sure that blocking is structured and organized so that you can make broad changes because you do your shot you show it to someone you're gonna get notes and you want to be able to just take a chunk delete it incorporate those notes plug that in and then move on because if you have something where you need to incorporate a note and you change your animation and that unravels everything and your animation becomes a huge mess that's a huge time waster tip number five make a list of notes to stay focused the other trap that you can fall into that waste a lot of time is just to watch your playblast with your animation software use to watch your clip and just kind of sit there and look at it and just kind of focus on one thing maybe that you get kind of lost like god it's going to watch this and maybe i'll figure some stuff out huge time waster what helps me a ton is i look at the playblast and either you draw on the playblast or you open up a separate app or something whatever and make a list now the list itself is important too don't start going well i gotta tweak the pinky on frame 17 make sure that you address the major points first is the shot working general now if you're showing this to a teacher someone obviously you're gonna have help with that but generally need to look at is the story clear is the emotion reading all the bigger parts because again if that is not working you're gonna have to make major changes and sweeping changes to your animation and you need to be ready for that so look at the big picture first are the major story points clear and once that is addressed then you can go down into the nitty gritty of the body mechanics so you look at the root first if you change anything in the root it's gonna change the whole character so don't focus again on like fingers first so start taking notes of the root the chest the head and arms and then go into details but focus on what breaks the shot is there a pop is the arc horrible is opposed not reading so go big first and then go small but write it down address that make it out of playblast check it again make a new list of notes and then continue all of this will keep you on track will help you to not waste time now when it comes to notes of course there's a difference between getting notes from your supervisor your client whatever it is and you worked on your own shot and making your own list just know that when you're at work your notes are going to be focused hopefully but you're gonna have very specific direction to get the shot done because you're working for someone so there is a distinction in terms of notes but trust me as you work on your own by yourself you will get better at identifying what's wrong with your shot and you will develop your own critical eye and be able to make notes that matter and kind of disregard what's kind of the detail in the fluffy stuff tip number six work in chunks so you're not overwhelmed and by chunks I mean beats or whatever you want to call this well let's say you have a shot that's 10 seconds long hopefully it's not that long but sometimes you have a shot and there's so much to do you're overwhelmed and even that approaching this and what are you gonna fix first can be huge time wasted because you're just sitting there going what what can I do so what helps me are two things so in terms of chunks either you look at a beat just the character performing a specific action this could be one beat is the character reacting to something this could be another beat look at elements in the shot where you can divide it up and then you can attack this section then the next section and so on and if everything is kind of flowing together and it's kind of one long big beat then maybe just attack it every 50 frames and the next 50 frames and so on so on maybe just 10 frames or 20 but break it down into separate manageable parts so you're not overwhelmed you can stay focused and again use the trick of add notes be structuring your notes and the combination of the note taking list and working in chunks is a huge time saver if you're student and you realize that I don't have time to finish my exercise look at what is the main action of the shot let's say you do weight assignments well just lifting the weight that's the main thing you're to portray weight so how the character gets to the object less important what the character is doing after the character lifted the weight also less important so you can start with the main focus and if you have time you can go backwards and forward and add more tip number seven avoid distractions because all of this sounds great but if someone's constantly coming to your office or if it's really loud there's a bunch of stuff on your phone notifications all of that are distractions that are going to interrupt your flow and again at time that you don't have so if you're working at a company or at home close your browsers put your phone on airplane mode put on noise canceling headphones if you're in office close the door or put on some music now this might be distracting but for me it helps to stay focused on the shot action music some classical music some sad music whatever gets me in the mood to animate but sometimes either with headphones or with speakers that can also keep you focused and drown out what's going on out there tip number eight stay healthy was again all of that sounds great but if you are in pain fingers elbows the back the neck however you're you know like you're maybe you're animating like this like golem that's going to slow you down too because you're going to need to take more breaks you're in pain you're slower so also take care of your body because that whole list is going to mean that you're going to be focused and working you know very concentrated and a lot and the downside of that is that you might forget your health physical health or mental health and then slowly over the weeks and months and years it's going to take a tool on your body and you're going to start breaking down that sounds very dramatic not like that donovan but you will get older if you have a longer lasting career and it's going to get harder to find the energy to work on shots and follow that list and always have the right energy to get the shots done so all of that goes hand in hand you have a great list to work in terms of the plan and your tools and everything but one of the bigger tools you have is yourself are your fingers your eyes so take care of yourself so that you can have a long lasting career i know that's a very broader comment in terms of speed but it's really something you want to pay attention to because like i said all of that doesn't matter if your fingers are in pain all the time and you can barely animate you're going to be slow and it's going to waste time and your career is going to go down the drain that being said it's also subjective this has helped me a bunch but of course you might have different tips so feel free to comment let me know what your tips are maybe i'll see something new that would be great and i can expand that on maybe a part two or something but this list has helped me a ton and i've been working for quite some time so take that list and start with that again make modifications do whatever you need to do to be a faster animator on your own but at least try this try this as a starting point but some things are really not negotiable like you need to have a plan you need to take care of yourself tools are extra helpful i mean these are to me the basic foundational blocks of having a fast workflow but don't get me wrong i do love tools and scripts and stuff like that so watch out for your future part speaking of future if you feel like in the future you want to do something really cool with your shots and you need help you know what the pitch is i have workshops you can sign up at any time let me know i can work with you it can make your shots even more awesome incorporate all of these tips and more and help you become a better animator that's like soap that's so pitchy but it is a pitch but if you want to know more there's a link in the description with all the information let me know you can sign up at any time the workshops are always open and if you haven't subscribed yet and you feel like that's kind of cool i don't want to miss the next upload then subscribe and hit that bell button so you won't miss any of my uploads that is that on my end i'm done with all the pitching so thank you thank you for watching and i'll see you in my next upload