Animation and Video Life

One of my biggest stumbling blocks in moving forward with my own animation has been coming up with ideas that I can get excited about. Even with using time saving animation software like CrazyTalk Animator 3 creating animated shorts is still a lot of work that you need to stay motivated for. As much as I want to earn a living from creating my own animated shorts, the higher priority is to enjoy creating them... you know, if you enjoy what you're doing you'll never work a day in your life - that kind of thing. When I got back into creating animated shorts in 2008, after discovering GoAnimate , I was clearly having a lot of fun in the years before that site transitioned from allowing anyone to create animated stories to a business explainer video creation tool. I made somewhere around 180 animated shorts over the space of about 4 years - roughly 3 animations per month.

I recently purchased two online drawing courses created by former Disney Animator, Aaron Blaise , including How to Draw Human Anatomy , and Character Design . Both courses were included in Aaron's Figure Drawing and Character Design Bundle , pack deal. My own drawing style is heavily influenced by early Disney animated classics (think pre digital animation), which you can see in the more rounded lines of my characters - as opposed to the more angular character design lines you find in Marvel and DC comics etc. I wasn't sure how much I'd learn from either of these courses, baring in mind I've already studied both topics in detail in Art School, and have been designing my own characters since I was in primary school, but Aaron's a veteran and easily out classes my animation skills.

Star Wars, Forces of Destiny Episode 1, Sands of Jakku. Disney recently began releasing episodes of its animated shorts series, Star Wars Forces of Destiny , which focuses each short story around one of the female heroes from the Star Wars Universe. At the time of writing four episodes were available on the Disney Youtube channel and they're okay. The stories are fairly simple and likely targeted at a younger audience in the 7-12 range. The animation style is fairly typical of modern, Saturday morning cartoons, with the characters being fairly faithful cartoon versions of their live action counterparts. The reason I'm making a cross face is because the first two episodes feature Rey protecting BB-8 from various nasties on Jakku. Specifically with BB-8 and Rey being chased through the desert before she finally puts a plan into action.