What are /r/animationcareer's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Gonna share an older comment I wrote about this. This is just a guide; everyone learns differently so don't feel like you need to follow this exactly!

>Here's a rough outline of the basic steps to getting into animation:

>1. Research the animation basics. Specifically, study the 12 principles of animation. Buy/borrow a copy of the Animator's survival kit. This book was pretty much my only textbook at uni and is something industry professionals still reference today. (Don't worry, there are lots of pictures).

>2. Pick a type of animation you want to do. 2D (drawing on computer or paper), 3D (CG, like Pixar), or stop motion (real life objects/puppets). Look up what materials, software, and skills you need to start doing that type of animation.

>3. Obtain your materials/software and learn the basics of how to use them. (for example, flipping frames and onion skin for 2D, or manipulating a rig and the graph editor for 3D).

>4. Try your hand at simple, basic animation exercises. Otherwise you'll be trying to run before you can crawl. I recommend starting with the pendulum, then the bouncing ball, waving flag then the flour sack. Look up tutorials and ask for help/critique if you need it!

>5. Once you've got the hang of that, move onto stuff like head turns, walk cycles, object interaction, and weight shift. Keep looking for ways to improve your skills and get critique, if possible. Don't forget to have fun! Hope this helps!

As a fellow Californian who is considering the same art colleges... and currently found my way actually into doing a couple animation jobs already...

Degrees usually nothing in the animation industry, so its usually how good you are, who you know, and your personality. (Especially the ability to take criticism.)

So if you want to learn storyboarding and want to keep the cost at low as possible, try Steve Ahn's storyboard class. I wouldn't aim for creative director right after college also. Those roles are given to the people with a lot of industry experience. They wouldn't place someone fresh-out-of-college as creative director.

There are a few options in 3D. Maya is the industry standard although Blender, Cinema 4D, and a couple of others are also popular.

Blender is free, is very powerful, and has a huge user base, so that's probably a good place to start.

Go to https://www.blender.org/ to check out he recommended specs. I do NOT recommend a laptop for 3D software. Generally you'll need as fast a processor and graphics card as you can afford, and as much drive space and RAM as you can afford.

You’re welcome!

Also you can find most of the ebooks for free here: https://z-lib.org/

And if you like traditional animation, here’s another: https://www.traditionalanimation.com/learn-animation/

I'm 22 and still working on becoming a professional animator. I mainly do freelance stuff for now. Based on what I've seen, having been doing this for about 5 years now, is that while there are 17 year olds who have it together and are extremely talented, there are also people ecstatic to be hired at a place like DreamWorks at age 27. And everything above and inbetween.

We are both super young, check out opentoonz (https://opentoonz.github.io/e/) for some dope (FREE) beginner 2D software and get crackin'!

​

Buy the Animator's Survival Kit and treat it like your coursebook. Do every exercise in the book. Buy the Illusion of life and read it cover to cover. Pick up Bill Peet: an Autobiography and learn about one of the best storyboard artists to ever live. Animation is hard work and study. You don't need money to learn it but you do need an elite level of dedication.

Hi! here's a rough outline of the basic steps to getting into animation:

1. Research the animation basics. Specifically, study the 12 principles of animation. Buy/borrow a copy of the Animator's survival kit. This book was pretty much my only textbook at uni and is something industry professionals still reference today. (Don't worry, there are lots of pictures).

2. Pick a type of animation you want to do. 2D (drawing on computer or paper), 3D (CG, like Pixar), or stop motion (real life objects/puppets). Look up what materials, software, and skills you need to start doing that type of animation.

3. Obtain your materials/software and learn the basics of how to use them. (for example, flipping frames and onion skin for 2D, or manipulating a rig and the graph editor for 3D).

4. Try your hand at simple, basic animation exercises. Otherwise you'll be trying to run before you can crawl. I recommend starting with the pendulum, then the bouncing ball, waving flag then the flour sack. Look up tutorials and ask for help/critique if you need it!

5. Once you've got the hang of that, move onto stuff like head turns, walk cycles, object interaction, and weight shift. Keep looking for ways to improve your skills and get critique, if possible.

Don't forget to have fun! Hope this helps!

Well most showrunners for shows started as storyboarders.

Rad Sechrist who made Kipo and the age of wonderbeasts was a storyboarder for dreamworks.

Same with the creator of Steven Universe, Spongebob, and others. All storyboarders. Essentially being 'proven' in the industry is a prerequisite for people with the money to fund your stuff.

​

Source:

https://www.amazon.com/Animation-Development-Production-David-Levy/dp/1581156618/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=animation+development+from+david&qid=1620542892&sr=8-1

Ultimately one has to be realistic about ones goals. If you want to do everything on your own a webseries is the most one can do when one is fully indie.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284 this is the book that every course suggests to read. It's pretty much got all the principles you'll need . Other than that, there's some good tutorials on using blender 2D at the moment. Opentoonz tutorials are pretty good as well. Just set yourself a project . Like a storyboard, drawings and plans for a 2 minute music video . And then do it like a school project. No pressure to show it then do another one. It's all they did at my uni, and it was cheaper to stay home and learn online

Most worthwhile university art/animation programs require a portfolio, but it does vary by university and you will have to research this on your own. To help you sharpen your drawing skills and observational eye - I highly recommend getting the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Do the exercises faithfully and you will become better at drawing because it teaches you how to see.
I've coached students without a portfolio in their final year of secondary school and with the exercises in this book, they were able to get a worthwhile portfolio together. The results were truly outstanding.

Graphic designers require less figure drawing skills, but it is definitely an advantage to be able to draw and communicate your composition ideas to clients. A great basic graphic design book is Design Basics Index

Chances of getting a job are the same as any industry.

For 2D animation, I think the first exercises are;

1. Character turnaround - an animation of your character from different angles so that it rotates
2. Ball bounce (with squash and stretch)
3. walk cycle

I'd really really recommend getting your hands on a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit . It's pretty much considered the animators bible, and I'm pretty sure there are PDFs out there if you can't afford it right now.

It goes into a lot of detail on keys and how they relate to timings specifically. In fact, pretty much everything in there shows the keys used and key poses, and how to achieve weight.

Alternatively, if it's mainly the 'illustrating' side of things you enjoy rather than the 'figuring out how to make things move gud' aspect then something else you might want to look into is motion graphics, and starting out with making some of your existing character illustrations move around a bit with After Effects.

Toon Boom Harmony is another software looking into if you get a chance - especially as you already have a grounding in 3D. From my understanding, it's the same workflow as 3D animation only with 2D rigs instead. I'm pretty sure shows such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Rick and Morty, Family Guy and The Simpsons use it - but it's far more common in industry these days than traditional (hand-drawn) animation.

It depends on what you want to do. It takes a long long time to learn 3D animation, so I would recommend to focus on the animation part itself if it's animation you want to do. You can try Blender which is open-source and free to use. /r/animation and /r/learnanimation also has plenty of resources for you to learn animation, check out the sidebars for more info.

​

Storyboarder by Wonderunit is free for all platforms and can do that too, and more. I havent used it yet but I do dare recommend it to you. It looks like its tailored to make animatics with. But it exports pdf's as well.

Wacom is industry standard, but I'd look into reviews of the cheaper brands. I've heard they can be pretty darn close to the quality of Wacom.

Little to no storyboarding is done on paper.

Edit: Wonder Unit makes fantastic free storyboarding software. The little pop-up notifications are helpful and so encouragingly feel-good. It's very straightforward with few bells and whistles, and takes about 5 minutes of noodling around before you understand it and can dive into your first boards.

I hear character design can be a tinge rough (i.e. hard to break into), obviously everyone needs animators and storyboarders. A good position to look out for is production assistant or storyboard revisionist, can be a good way to get started. If you’re in school you’re a prime candidate for internships too (like you mentioned). You could start on LinkedIn (if you haven’t already) and start emailing for internships. A lot of animation jobs, internships included, aren’t advertised, it’s a very word of mouth industry.

At your age though, and your level of interest, I’d say your well ahead of the curve.

I‘d get started on this book next https://www.amazon.com/Your-Career-Animation-2nd-Survive/dp/162153748X/ref=pd_lpo_4?pd_rd_i=162153748X&psc=1

Hi! I always think graphic designers make great animators!

As a 2D animator myself, I can tell you animation leans heavily into design—when I’m animating I like to think about my linework as “notes” for a logo design. Great animation, like Ollie or Milt, is about a logical flow of lines, very much a design (so-so animation is about making things move).

You can check out the idea (more eloquently) here (Amazon).

Welcome to animation!

I’m sure you’ll be great at it (don’t worry too much about software, TV Paint is the industry standard—expensive—but there’s also toonboom, and what I work in procreate). And be wary of grumps (they’re everywhere).

She can try out Pencil 2D, TupiTube, OpenToonz, Animation Paper or Synfig. All are free. However, none of them will hold your hand and teach you the principles and craft of animating. To do that, you should buy her:

https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Animation-Preston-Blair-techniques/dp/1633228908/

And

https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X

I have a crappy office chair, but getting a back support pillow really helps. I tend to slouch or lean so the pillow helps me sit up properly and supports my back.

Unreal Engine is absolutely free for animation.

Edit: Epic takes 5% royalty fee for "games or other interactive off-the-shelf products" that pass $1.000.000 (a million) in revenue. Their license is free to use and 100% royalty-free for creators.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq

The closest thing would be Walt Stanchfield’s “Drawn to Life” notes (that’s how I learned to draw at least)

https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961/ref=asc_df_0240810961/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312280575053&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17861723081911976934&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&a...

The only animation book you really need is Drawn to Life Volume 1&2. These have single handedly taught me everyothing I know about drawing and animation.

https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961

Your mom is rightly worried that "being an animator" is tantamount to being an "artist"

(which is another way of saying you'll starve).

I'd show her some animation degree/college programs and some job postings. Assure her that an artist and an animator are very different vocations.

This is a job spreadsheet of some of the animation jobs open [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eR2oAXOuflr8CZeGoz3JTrsgNj3KuefbdXJOmNtjEVM/edit#gid=0]

And a career guide for animation https://www.amazon.com/Your-Career-Animation-2nd-Survive/dp/162153748X

I cannot recommend Drawn to Life enough. I’m a self taught animator/storyboard artist. These books (two volumes) are 50% of my knowledge alone, w/ just practice and sporadic tips for the rest.

https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961

I just thought of an artist who didn't go to art school but is now a story artist at Disney: Natalie Nourigat. She has a really great comic about her career journey: I Moved to LA for Animation. It's from her perspective as a story artist but it has great info about job searching, animation culture, and LA stuff that is useful for anyone in the industry. Hope this helps!

Seems legit to me. I’d also recommend the book Film Directing Shot by Shot, by Steven Katz which contains a big chunk of knowledge on storyboarding among other things. https://www.amazon.com/Film-Directing-Shot-Visualizing-Productions/dp/0941188108/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1655945800&refinements=p_27%3ASteven+Katz&s=books&sr=1-2

I really want to suggest the book Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive by David B. Levy, particularly the recently updated 2nd edition which addresses the current remote-working climate. It’s a solid read for all sorts looking to find their way in animation, focuses on building connections, and helps you understand how the industry is made up of people. I read the original a few years ago on a plane and then bought the new ebook on my phone for another flight when it released. Very useful information written in an encouraging voice with different guests sharing their experiences and advice :)

- Make sure your setup has good ergonomics, and that you have good posture when working as a whole. your pain in your wrist/fingers can come from postural issues higher up like in your elbow, shoulder, neck, as a lot of that stuff is connected.

- try using a soft padded night brace. These really helped for me in the past. they make sure that when you sleep you aren't messing up your wrist/fingers any more due to their angle or position. I've used this one and it was good: https://www.amazon.com/FUTURO-48462-Support-Nighttime-Symptoms-Breathable/dp/B0057D86QA/ref=sr_1_5?crid=1C5JNNF32U0AA&keywords=night+wrist+brace&qid=1654573730&sprefix=night+wrist+brac%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-5 I found these to help more than wearing braces while working.

I totally understand feeling pressured to get good as quickly as possible, but I think you're trying to run before you can walk. You should focus on getting comfortable with the fundamentals before you stress about whether you are employable yet. If you're having trouble teaching yourself, buy an online course or take a class. Following a tutorial can teach you the basics of the process and thus help you learn how to teach yourself better. Reading the Animator's Survival Kit and doing lots of gesture drawing are a good place to start. Or if you're doing 3D, using a free beginner's rig so you don't have to teach yourself modeling and rigging on top of animation. And when you do your exercises (pendulum, bouncing ball, flour sack, walk cycle, etc), don't beat yourself up over it not being portfolio work. If that's the best you have, be proud of it.

Easiest way is ipad + apple pencil + procreate. Cheapest way (a lot more hard) is a camera and some paper (well, and pegs). Don't get bogged down in (27 ^(1/2) principles of timing and animation, or whatever)--just dive in. Motivation and experimentation go a looong way. You can tighten it all up later on.

This is very best book on the subject https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961

This book has been recommended a lot here. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Career-Animation-2nd-Survive/dp/162153748X/ref=pd_bxgy_img_sccl_1/132-1789477-2458200?

I don't know how much of it deals with marketing ,but it could be a decent starting point.

I’m self taught (was homeless as a kid, so art college was not going happen).

It’s hard.

You have to network, network, network. You have to network more than everyone else if your self taught. Be humble (like crazy humble), and nice. Dont rely on your ability, everyone is super nice and complimentary but you’ll quickly find the bank doesn’t cash those.

Yes, keep working on your portfolio (because that’s the whole point of being an artist). But expect the job market to be a just like any other job.

Your resume > your connections > your portfolio.

Here’s a book to get you started

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Career-Animation-2nd-Survive/dp/162153748X

Totally doable. Many paths in 3D. I know a bit about tv and film. But games should not be ignored. That said this isn’t my area. But get on a path asap.

Don’t know a ton but I heard a few good things about animationmentor.com

If that’s not a fit that’s fine. Fine something to get out out of tutorial hell asap. A structured program of some sort helps.

There’s good online classes. See if you can loosely follow a track.

https://www.cgmasteracademy.com/courses/animation/

If you can’t afford a whole semester of this stuff, take one course every few months. Every term at least one. And keep at it. That’s what i did.

I don’t know your starting point, but I actually would do at least 1 drawing course. Something to get you started. Do a ball bounce and basic animation. This is a very good fundamentals book for both posing and animation basics. Not a lot of pages, very to the point. (This is regarding posing for drawings, but in 3D you still pose and design good angles and silhouettes)

Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair, Revised Edition!: Learn techniques for drawing and animating cartoon characters (Collector's Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633228908/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_VJS3HF7S722NRQEQ1VXK

You’ll want an i5 or higher for your processor. i3 is only a dual core, compared to the i5 being a quad core.

https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/

Site says a dual will run the minimum, but that’s not gonna be an enjoyable experience.

I’d suggest spending more to save yourself money in the future. You’re not gonna find anything decent for under the $1000 mark in my opinion.

I built my PC, so I don’t have any laptop suggestions unfortunately. Have an integrated graphics card, 16GB ram (or more), and an i5 as your core or higher on your laptop.

I haven't viewed this myself, but here is an article/video from MasterClass about storyboarding. Industry board artists use Storyboard Pro, but when I was learning I used everything from Photoshop to index cards. One really great way to learn for free is animatics. You can find animatics for many shows and movies on YouTube. The side-by-side comparison ones are the best, you can see what they started with and how it ended up. TV boards have to be a lot cleaner than feature boards (since often the overseas animators will draw directly from the boards) but you'll see how they use composition and shading to make characters pop.

And of course, the best way to learn is to try it yourself! Give yourself a 1-2-3 challenge: 1 location, two characters, three props. Use just those elements to create a 20-panel board. If you can tell a story in three sentences, you can make a board from it! Go for several small projects instead of one big one, you'll learn more from multiple iterations. I'm an aspiring board artist myself, so let me know if you have any questions!

Whilst I don't have a chair recommendation.
I'd highly recommend a stand-up desk. I finally got one after years and years of being slouched at my desk, wacom or over a lightbox and it's been great. I used to get regular neck/shoulder pain that lead to visits to chiropractors.

Now, for the first 2-3 hours of the day, I'll keep it in a standing position and it definitely helps.

Also having one of these type of chiropractor cushions that you can throw on your desk chair helped too. Keeping your 'core' working... or something like that. For £11-£15 it was worth a punt and I think it helped.

As for stand up desks, they're obviously not low cost but I did find it was cheaper to get the legs for the desk (with electronic raise/lower) and buy the desk top separately. All in it was about £269.

Blender is a 3d program that is free forever. https://www.blender.org/

Most other 3d software does have learner/educational/trial versions available but usually on a limited time basis or limited to that you must be a student in an accredited college/university.

I like what everyone else has commented, I also want to point out that learning photoshop and other programs is indeed helpful to any art career (from 2D art, to 3D animation). BUT, learning to draw, and draw well on a screen, is the main goal when people say 'learn photoshop'. Photoshop is expensive, so if you want to wait before buying it, you can use Krita (krita.org) which not only has many of the same features Photoshop has, it's free, and you can open and save photoshop files with it. It also saves files as krita files, but I often save files as photoshop files when sending art to other artists or jobs.

FableFinale gave the best advice. The thousands of hours of practice it takes to get good usually comes from internal motivation, so invest in the tools he needs to practice, but let him follow his interests and draw for himself. I would not recommend any courses at this age unless he requests them. Fear of failure is a huge issue for artists of every age ( your drawing rarely lives up to your own expectations) so I wouldn't hint too much that it is important for his career.

His computer should have Photoshop CC and a tablet, and his bookshelf should have lots of comics, games, and movies that he likes. If he shows an interest in computers you might want to show him scratch (scratch.mit.edu) .

Sorry, the form should be public now.

If it still doesn't work then here's a new link:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=UBzjllrT0UicvFq7UcsWiLD7SJluZZtJoE6fDn2Nm0NUQ1ZSTzJCWFM1NlFBM0M0V0xMNDZRUjgwSi4u

Thank you!

The one you linked to could have been done with a software called After Effects. You'd track the controller and add your graphics.

As for the VFX (visual effects) you see in films, it's a result of hundreds of people's work of many different careers. There are animators, motion capture, concept art, matte painting, rigging, rotoscoping, designers, simulations, particle effects, technical art, programming tools, rendering, lighting, etc etc... Lots of it is in 3D, so you might want to check out Blender and see if that's something you like.

Assuming youre from north america, check out animation colleges websites and look at their requirements. I had show 10 piece of my of original artwork such character design, perspective drawing, to show my capability of drawing skill. And also bunch of life drawing sketches in big newprints. You will be doing lots of life drawing lessons in college. So find a good life drawing studio near your area it usually costs 5-10 bucks per session.

Worry not you dont have to be good at drawing to make as an animator but it certainly helps as an artist and increases your value in the jobmarket. There are industry standard 3D softwares that you must learn if you want to get hired by big studios. Go to pluralsight.com or flippednormals website and start learning fundemantels of maya right away. There are many other courses for animation fundemantels that you can start learning. These courses cost money but it will be your career and will shape your future so invest in it.

As for basic skills first thing animation school will recommend is to buy animator survival kit by richard williams. You can get on amazon. Learn what frames mean, what timing and spacing means.

Also go to youtube and search how to animate bouncing ball in maya and just follow it.

You can get maya for free as an educational license. Go to autodesk website and tinker around. Google how to get the software thats on you.

Very first thing you will learn in any animation school is to learning to how to animate a bouncing ball. So master that. Hope it gives you basic information on how to get started. Goodluck on your journey friend

For CTN I'd actually recommend putting your portfolio pieces on a tablet instead of a website because you do not want to rely on convention wifi to show your pieces. You'll either have to pay for the internet connection or deal with it being slow and laggy. (This is even with cell service- my general experience has been that getting cell service in a convention center can be rough.)

If you're looking for something cheap to hook a domain up to, it's worth checking out caard.co. On their professional plan you can have different pages with whatever images/videos you want and hook up a custom domain for $9 a year. I think you have to buy a domain separately, but I bought mine for around $12 a year, so that's a total of $21 a year for a website with your own domain and all your work.

I'm currently on Wix and while it's pretty easy to make a good looking and easy to navigate website, I'm right now in the process of swapping to self-hosting a Wordpress site because I've had hosting issues with Wix.

I got this desk https://www.amazon.com/UNICOO-Adjustable-Standing-L-Shaped-Workstation/dp/B08W435Z43 - thought I thought i got it for closer to $200. Really great. Tons of room and the cheapest standing desk option I can find. I have my 22 Cintiq to my right at all times, and have my monitor and speakers in front of me. Its nice cuz I never have to set up my enviroment, its always ready to go

For 2D layout this is a good book. https://www.amazon.com/Setting-Scene-Evolution-Animation-Layout/dp/0811869873/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=2d+animation+layout&qid=1628476440&sr=8-12

I learned to draw from Walt Stanchfiled‘s notes I think I’m a half decent artist ArtStation.com/kirkhodges

Use flip a clip then! People are doing insane stuff with it:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vblast.flipaclip&hl=en_CA

I also think the setup looks fine, my guess would be from gripping the pen a bit hard? I've been having wrist pain from gripping my stylus too much, if you look up "carpal tunnel stretches" any of those can also help. They mostly involve putting your arm forward and stretching the hand back with your other arm every hour or so.

If things get worse I bought a little stretch kit similar to this: https://www.amazon.com/Strengthener-FitBeast-Adjustable-Resistance-Exerciser/dp/B07G824Z3V/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=hand+stretcher&qid=1595267262&sr=8-2

that actually really helps. It won't make things better immediately, but the next day my hand felt much better. Not sure if it will help with forearm though, it's more for hand + wrist. I've also had a friend advise that arm strength work outs will help (with weights, push ups, etc), but have been too lazy to keep up with it :P

Hope it feels better!

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Way-Draw-Working-Study/dp/0395530075

Other than that, just draw anywhere, everywhere, anything, and everything. Try to fill up a sketchbook a week. Work on gestures, form, etc.
I'd even suggest trying to do gestures and quick sketches with your other hand. Some of my best sketches came out of my opposite hand.

Look into workshops in your area. Depending on where you are, often the Community Colleges or local art schools will offer weekend workshops.

If you can afford 15 dollars a month, ToonBoom Harmony essentials is pretty affordable, and they also have a free trial period. ToonBoom is one of the US industry standards and there are lots of tutorials online. I would def recommend getting your GED and seeing if the art schools in your area require the SAT or ACT before anything. A lot of animation schools and programs care a lot about your ability to draw the human form, so it's important to work on your figure drawing. Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis is a really good guide but you should really look for live figure drawing sessions in your area. Also, make comics! I got into my animation program despite having no animation experience because I had a portfolio that showed that I could make sequential art and think about storytelling and framing a scene.