Finding Inspiration for your Animation

Animation direction and your brain

Sometimes as an animator you just aren’t sure what to do… and it’s at this point that you start to ask yourself all those hard questions…

Can I do this?

Am I good enough?

Is that too hard?

Well, my friends… fear not.

Until a few days ago, I didn’t know how to solve this problem; but I’ve learned an effective solution: when you find yourself unable to lip-sync that piece of song or unable to create the image your looking for in a scene, I have found that following these steps is the best practice…

STEPS 1-3… OPTIONAL

Step 1 Open music playlist

Step 2 Take a look at what you have

Step 3 Plug in your headphones and listen to your favorite song

Step 4 Open MMD

Step 5 Load a model and a stage…  any model and any stage

Step 6 Let your brain wander… imagine a scene; not of anything in particular but something small…  between 0 and 500 frames, give or take, and then make it happen slowly… add some motion of nothing in particular; just a random motion from your collection of saved files.

Step 6 and 1/2 If your having trouble finding inspiration for things to do, stop what your doing… close your eyes… and let any random scene come to you. It can be characters chatting… a beautiful concerto… or a fight scene you’ve seen in the past. Let it come back to you slowly and, most of all, don’t try to control your thoughts; make sure to let them roam. This can be best achieved by laying down or meditating

Step 7 Render that small clip (effects optional)

Step 8 Repeat steps 5-7 about 10 more times

Step 9 Open Sony Vegas or Movie-Maker and add all of those videos that you’ve just created.

Step 10 Pick a random song that you haven’t done and that you enjoy very much.

Step 11 Test it with some of the clips. Does it convey that certain feeling you where looking for?

Chances are that it does!

This is due to the brain’s subconscious desire to make things fit together. Not that it’s just luck; oh, no… your brain is hardwired via an emotional construction to make a feeling fit what you are seeing, and vice versa. However, some editing is going to be required to make sure your feelings come across to others as well.

Step 12 Finalize and render the final copy ( in at least 1280 or higher and always 30-60 fps)

Step 13 Upload and share it to FB or Twitter or any other platform, and include a vague yet meaningful idea of what the emotional felling is.

EXAMPLE OF WHAT THIS CAN LOOK LIKE AS A FINAL PRODUCT…

((The process))

What I did first? Well, I  actually did the scene as pure white first. I let my mind think back to the song Survive the Night and emulated the idea of that song to put into my animation.

Next up was  the piano. I was actually getting frustrated with the scene from Angel Beats OP where Angel plays the piano. I tried to emulate it as best I could.

After that, I animated the scene where Zazi goes from light to dark and singing with random lyrics and basic motions.

Lastly was the scene in the room… I was thinking back to Insanity Rider, a comic I read when I was young. In every scene there was a point when the character would sit in a chair and then scream miserably as his eyes turned pure white!

Finally… I edited it all together with a song I felt fit the mood of each scene… added effects… and added a model pack as incentive for those who watched it ^_^

AND that’s it! That’s all there is to it. I just needed to tackle the process in a new way. I hope this helps anyone with animator’s block.