Aaron Blaise's Animation Tips

I discovered a series of YouTube videos by an ex-Disney Studios animator called Aaron Blaise. He gives short tips and tricks about designing animated characters, which I am finding very useful for my own work. It is helping me to create more professional looking images. The first video I came across is one in which he speaks about basing your character positions on the > and < shapes, to emphasize direction of focus and increase clarity. The videos are specially aimed at beginner animators such as myself.

The second video I watched was the first in his series. In it he discusses 'evenness' in composition, which he gives tips to avoiding, because it is visually boring to look at. He gives examples of symmetrical vs. asymmetrical works. The asymmetrical pieces look a lot more dynamic because they have greater contrast and varying perspectives.

The third tip, which comes in really handy for this point in time when I am supposed to be storyboarding, is how he emphasizes the importance of thumbnailing when planning out an animation before you actually begin the motion creation. It help you identify key frames in the animation and determine the mood that the movement of your characters gives. He gives examples of his own work on the film 'Beauty and the Beast.'

From around 5:00 onward in the following video, Aaron describes how to create gestures and lines of action in animal forms, which is useful for me, because I want to create anthropomorphic creatures for my animations. getting this right created fluidity and movement in your characters and makes their positioning more believable.