This is my full interview with Casey McDermott where we chat about animation workflow and some tips. Casey takes us through his more straight ahead approach to his animation by breaking down one of his shots while working at Blizzard! It was great getting to catch up with Casey and always try to learn and grow.   Enjoy! JP Read More

Came across this youtube channel Watch Me Animate, last week and starting looking through it to see some great content in here. There are bit of Tips and Tricks and lots of breakdown of process like these two on animating a dragon flight cycle. Quadrupeds are always challenging so it’s great to get as much insight as you can. Have a look around Enjoy! JP Read More

Ran into this great site by Chiara Porri. There are a bunch of great stuff all over the site from tutorials to tips and lessons. I saw this one about animating a character head turn. She goes into tons of detail and even breaks it all out in long form on the blog. So check out the blog I Want to be an Animator Enjoy! JP Read More

Great post over at the League of Legends Dev Blog about using animation to strengthen and define his character. In this post they talk about personality and run cycles, being limber and gameplay animation. Some great stuff about process and good insight. http://www.animatorsresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IvernAttack.mp4   Also check out more animations of Ivern by Warren Goff Enjoy! JP Read More

Lately Aaron has been doing some live streaming of his process. In this previously streamed video he did a jump with a polar bear. It is a great run through of his thoughts and process. If you get the chance follow him on facebook to get notices when he is live-streaming. I believe if you are subscribed to his youtube channel you will get an email update as well. Have a look around. Enjoy! JP Read More

Been looking around the animatorschecklist.com site for a bit and some really useful insights to Gabriel Garcia Poignet animation process from workflow to performance. I’m always looking at others points of view to even grab a nugget of knowledge or allow my brain to process someone else’s way of thinking about animation. So have a look around. There is a fun post on breaking down the Key Frames in your animation. Enjoy! JP Read More

Have you ever had to do a test for a studio? I’ve done a few and been on the receiving end of many at my time here at VV. I know that studios take some serious time and effort in putting together a test that will help gauge whether or not a potential candidate will be a good fit. (more on this in a future post) It can be a fun and sometimes nerve racking Read More

I follow quite a few people of twitter and there are always really great snippets that I see and save or re-tweet but this one from Kevin Parry got me to really stop and think about my time in the industry and all of the struggles I go through as an animator and an artist. Each shot that comes our way presents new challenges to the notion of how good we are as artists. They continue Read More

Found these workflow tips over at CG Channel by Dreamworks an Sébastien Wojda. He goes through a bunch really great stuff from prepping your shot with reference to exaggerating your curves. 10 Great tips all around to grab from and help your workflow. A couple pasted below.     You can see the entire post and read up on it here 10 Killer Tips for Better Character Animation Enjoy! JP Read More

Found this great breakdown of a running cycle. The narration is a bit dry but super informative. He goes into some pretty extensive detail about the mechanics of the entire body moving through the run. I think it can be a good insight to how to think about your video reference. Enjoy! JP Read More

Happen to come upon this great site by animator Anita Gaughgan. There is lots of really fun animation all in Gifs. Have a look over at her site…lots of great creature stuff! Enjoy! JP Read More

Over on the Artella blog, Art Director at Riot Games Alex Lehmann, chats about some useful tips from his time in games. I had the chance of meeting Alex during the Animation Bootcamp at GDC this year and he is super insightful and has a bunch of knowledge. Rory Alderton – Animation for Blog Post from Artella on Vimeo. Check out the blog post for more. Enjoy! JP Read More

Frank Abney an animator at Dreamworks has recently posted some pretty fun Body Mechanics tests on his vimeo page. Below you can check them out! Spider-man animation test for my Animsquad students from Frank Abney on Vimeo.   Enjoy! JP more from Frank Abney frankabney.com Read More

Saw this post a little while back about breakdowns in Zootopia from Tim Rudder. He uses some examples from the Face and Hands. Fun quick way to analyze some animation.   Enjoy! JP Read More

Over at Oliver Ladeuix’s site, he just recently updated an older post he had written about wanting to become a rigger and many of the thoughts you should consider while undertaking that path. Many of them I feel are important from an animators perspective as well. Understanding the functionality of rigging and what ultimately will be user friendly to the animator will make each workflow better both animation and rigging. I also feel that the Read More

Found a pretty cool tumblr page today by SCAD instructor and 20yr vet Scott Wright. Check out the rest of his page to find some more need tips and thoughts on animating. Enjoy! JP Read More

So AnimSchool released Malcolm 2.0! Tons of new updates and extra goodies like outfits. 1.0 has been used all over the place and can’t wait to see what is created with this one. Get em here!Enjoy! JP Read More

A great example of getting shape changes in your dialogue using squash and stretch. If you haven’t already have a look at Aaron’s Page where he has plenty of great tips. Read More

Just read up on a post over at the Animated Spirit blog all about Phrasing in animation. James Chiang does a great job of breaking down what makes Phrasing so important when planning your shots out. Not only is James able to communicate his thoughts on phrasing in animation in a way that seems effortless and easy to follow but he also shows off some great examples.   “Phrasing is the effort to present ideas through a series Read More

Tim just posted about a technique to help further his understanding of animation. It’s a fun little read about thoughts on process. Enjoy! JP Read More

Some more insightful thoughts about animation process from Ken Fountain. He talks about what he feels is important to animating multiple characters in a scene rather than the lonely one character shots. “Handle multiple characters across multiple shots – “acting is reacting”. You’ve produced plenty of single character test shots up to this point – enough lonely rigs spouting soliloquies in front of the camera for no particular reason. It’s now time to do what real Read More

A cool little snippet into some of the daily process at the studio. Cool to see. Enjoy! JP Read More

Some fun insight to Bryce’s workflow on Peabody & Sherman. Check out the use of video reference. It’s great to see so that you can look at the bits that he uses and the areas where he pushes the performance. Check out his blog brycemcgovern.blogspot.com for posts that have more insight to his process on these shots. Fun stuff! Agamemnon Process from Bryce McGovern on Vimeo. Peabody & Sherman Scene Process from Bryce McGovern on Read More

Have a look at the workflow reel. Its always great to see the raw data and how the animator makes it their own. Ted 2 Showreel – mocap and final animation from mike safianoff on Vimeo. Enjoy! JP Read More

Saw a great post over at Tim Rudder’s blog where he chats about he lecture he recently attended about breaking up your motion so animation doesn’t feel as pose to pose. He even posts some great examples from Mulan.   Head on over and check it out. Enjoy! JP Read More

**Looks like some of the recordings are available and I added below..I’ll keep u updated** Some really nice free recordings of live webinars that CGTarian hosted. You have three posted from Day 1. A couple of Workflow Breakdowns and one about Demo Reels. Some really good nuggets coming out of these. Animation Reels Lecture – CGTarian Webinar 2015 – Part 1 from mike safianoff on Vimeo.Part 1 (of 3) of a lecture covering what I Read More

Have a look at a shot that Geoff Hemphill did on Rango. His reference is really great. If you watch it closely to you can see the difference in his ref and his final performance. It’s not completely 1 to 1 and shows how you can take the bits from reference and then keep pushing the performance beyond it. Enjoy! JP you can find an interview with Geoff on AnimatedSpirit Read More

Been a while for an interview and this one has been sitting in the queue for bit now. Sorry for the delay, but I am happy to share the latest interview I have up. This is my full interview with Darryl Purdy and David Hubert, two veterans of the animation industry chat about the challenges in both film and games. Darryl then does a quick breakdown of how he approaches some of his creature animation. Read More

If you’re like me and many animators out there that have been using tweenMachine since the beginning of time… then check out the latest update and head on over and download it. Enjoy! JP Read More

Here a great action sequence broken down into different stages. The action is obviously pushed but you could almost see it working for a super hero movie. Action test Progress Reel from on Vimeo. Showing a range of what you can animate is never a bad thing Enjoy! JP Read More