More bouncing balls

When you are animating a bouncing ball, it seems that the only principle you are dealing with is "Squash and Stretch". It is the most obvious, isn´t it? However, as far as I know, you are dealing with:

- Timing, the most important principle for me. Very hard to be good at timing. With balls you are practising it aaaall the time.
- Spacing. It´s not a principle itself (although it is similar to easy in and easy out), but it is the second most important thing in animation. Animating bouncing balls you can see clearly how the spacing works.
- Exageration. Do the balls deform like that in reality?
- Anticipation. Not in purpose, but you are doing it. You can see that the ball squashes before going again into the air. Well, that is not really anticipation, but can be useful to understand it, because the effect is quite similar.

I cannot thing of anything else, unless until the ball has its own tail. Coming soon. :D

Kisses.

A head in Lightwave

Following a videotutorial this is what I could achieve:

Lightwave is quite comfortable to model with. But I have no idea how to model yet. This head doesn´t mean anything, because following a tutorial is very easy to do and you don´t really have to use your brains at all. So, please, no compliments. Thanks. :D

The next step I suppose it is texturize it. No tutorial this time! What to do? Well, I was told that to add textures to Lightwave models it is much better to go to Blender. This program is for free, and it is said that it works really well, especially for texturing and animation. I have been having a look at it for a couple of days, just getting used to the interface, but I still don´t know what to do. Maybe I should insist with Lightwave until I know how to deal with it in every aspect? Or should I go directly to other program that someone else said it was better?

Well, I will tell you what I decide. It is probable that I try to learn a bit of Blender, because if I want to focus on animation, and Blender is better for that, the logic solution should be that.

Anyway, let´s see.

Walks

Another important thing to learn animation is to practise walks of all kinds. So here you go, the first one of a lot, hopefully... :) Of course, any comments are welcome!

Animating

And, of course, I have to practise animation from the basics... I know that this is rubbish, but the idea is to improve bit by bit. :)

Draw, draw, draw

As I said, I don´t know anything about animation, but I read that to keep drawing is very important, so I try to do it as much as I can. I have even tried to do it while I am watching TV, but I confess that it is impossible for me. I get absorbed by whatever I am watching and completely forget about the pad and the pencil. That´s bad. :S

The ideal is to draw from life, but I find it really anoying, because I am very shy and hate people looking at me, and I am even afraid that they get upset or something because I am drawing them. So, to keep practising fast drawings, I use Posemaniacs, a really great page to train the right side of your brain. However, I will keep on trying to draw from life, because animation is life and the only way to learn it is to observe real people, animals and whatever.

So, here are some thirty-second drawings, done this last two days. They are suppose to help! Next to them, The Animator's Survival Kit, one of the greatest books about animation.

In pursuit of a dream

I am pursuing a dream. That´s why this blog is called like that. Well, actually, a couple of dreams. One of them is being able to speak English properly. You will see very soon that my English is not great, but this blog has been thought to help me with that. And the second dream is my DREAM, that is to become an animator.

I really don´t know anything about animation. I don´t have experience and sometimes I think that I don´t have the talent or the spirit of sacrifice. But I have to try and discover it for myself. And that is the reason for this blog to exist.

I am in London at the moment, working for a production company, and I am starting with animation, bit by bit. There is no other way to learn but bit by bit. I am working with Lightwave, but I also love drawing, so I try to combine and practise both of them. That is why in this blog you will see not only animation, but drawings and 3D models and whatever is related with art and animation.

This blog is mainly for myself, to keep me focused on my goal. I hope it will have a long life.

The only thing that I know by now is that I am very keen to do animation. Let´s see if it is enough.

Let´s pursue a dream.