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animation exercises and portfolio

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animation exercises and portfolio

im not new to animation, ive been doing it for a couple of years, but having never done any animation classes or anything like that i was wondering what the best exercises are.

i plan on going to do animation at university, and ill need to hav a portfolio for that. so i was hoping that i could get some tips on what they want to see in portfolios , or any other tips on how to make a good portfolio. if any of you have made portfolios, for univeristy or any other reason, then id love to see them. it'd help give me an idea of wat mine should look like.

any help is greatly appreciated.

Wow - "Animations"

"Animations" is for web based Flash animation...to animators it is "animation" (singular and plural)- only if you want to be taken seriously.

What kind of exercises do you want?

Basic movement or character based....???

What kind of exercises do you want?

Basic movement or character based....???

im not entirely sure wat you mean by basic movement, but id guess that id like some of both. id like to practice character movements, but i can probly think of quite a lot of things i can do to practice character animation (although if you have any that are most benifitial then it'd help). so although i dont know completely what you mean by basic movement, if thats things like the boucing ball then thats what i want more of.

Try my sites

Hello Matt,

You might want to try my sites- the Toon Institute has about a dozen free lessons and my blog has several lecture/demos- also reflected at YouTube.

Hope that helps...email me and I will give you a few more lessons to chew on...identify that you are from the forum or your email may be deleted.

Thanks.

Larry

ive only done the first few of the lessons on there, but ive already learnt a couple of things. im definantly gonna read through the rest of them, and ill be sure to contact you if i need a hand on something that i think you might be able to help with.

thanks.

Hi Matt, welcome to the AWN Forums. I'd suggest contacting the universities you want to apply to and ask them what they want to see in an animation portfolio. Then you can work on work on what they want to see instead of wasting your time animating things they don't want.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

thats a really good idea, im gonna try do that. i would still be interested in seeing other peoples portfolios, if people are willing to show them.

hi there, heres some of my portfolio

http://forums.awn.com/showthread.php?t=9996

theres a good bit not shown there

i agree about contacting the college and seeing whut they want, but there are a couple things your portfolio should have if you wanna make a good impression:

alright, life drawing is extremely important, if your life drawing is outstanding, show lots, if your not confident with it, do MORE and get GOOD! itll serve you well

Show all the animations youve done, well, if you have LOADS, then obivously be more selective, the most important things your tryin to get across with yer portoflio is your talent, and your interest in animation as a medium, they want to be sure that youll make the most of the course.

Do storyboards, different styles, time permitting, work on some projects, develope characters, environmental design, try and tie everything together, animate the characters youve created, they LOVE to see the development of an idea to some sort of conclusion

if your not a sketchbook kinda guy, jus get lots of yer loose sketches and bind them into a neat little sketchbook, does the job nicely :D

when selecting your pieces, start strong and end strong, ideally it should all be strong lol, but if theres some filler which is entirely acceptable (as long as it wont have a negative effect) throw it in the middle

also, presentation is everything! I bound (binded?) the storyboards, labelled EVERYTHING, made a little case for my VHS which is ubmitted with the animations on it.

hope i helped some, i got full marks for my portfolio

i draw pretty much only on the computer, hope that wont be a problem. my art is definantly not as good as yours, although ill hopfully be better than i am now by the time i hav to show it. is art the more important part of the portfolio? or would my animations be worth more in it?

is that all the art you had in your portfolio? or does it hav to be quite thick?

thanks for all the advice.

Hey Matt,
I'm an illustration student, and also go thru an animation class. Here are some of the exercises I can recall from the past two years:

A Moving Pendulum, To understand the concept of ease-in and ease-out
A Jumping Frog, To Understand the concept of movement of an object
Creating Stop Motion animation for kicks
Several Walk Cycles - Old, Young, Heavy...
Lip-Sync with head movements
Lip-sync with body movements
creaintg emoticons
Characters animations - up to 5 minutes long, looped

that's all I can recall - hope it helps!

ive had a go at stop-motion, but found that i liked ordinary animation more. the jumping frog is definantly a good idea, ill give that one a go some time soon. ive made walking cycles in the past, but i definantly need to work on them more. ive done quite a bit of lip-synching, this is my latest lip-synching that ive made http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/130308/65513_newest_people_singing.php , i think that its pretty good and i think that i need to work on the animation of bodies a bit more.