51 Great Animation Exercises to Master

51 GREAT ANIMATION EXERCISES TO MASTER

Every day, I’ll be doing one of these exercises with a slight twist, which is to do the exercise and then add something to it, whether that be a background or something to make it “unique.” I’ll be posting videos on YouTube with my results posted here. I encourage anyone who wants to take part to post their results here as well. I’ll be creating the videos, that means I’ll need time to edit, so my timing will of course be different from everyone else’s since I’ll do the exercise in order to edit it into the videos.

Anywhoo, here goes:

DAY1 (Ball bouncing in place (LOOP)):

Exercise_1

I did these two before I got the idea of the ball being a king, bouncing on its chair. I was thinking of adding fire and burning down the room, but I thought that would be way too much
Ball_Bounce
Ball_Bounce2

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Very good initiative!

The floor is lava!

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Day 2 (Ball Bouncing across the screen)

Exercise_2
This is what I came up with to make the exercise my own. I moved the ball up, added a bat and the extra stuff, and there we have it.

Ball_Across_Screen
This is the completed exercise.

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Been a while I’ve done any computer art at all. Maybe I could join in with the simple ball exercises but the mediums ones involving face and hands… impossible for me and definitely not gonna attempt those :sweat_smile:

Hope these exercises help me catch up with whatever’s new with Synfig.

Also very cool artwork/animation :ok_hand: :sunglasses: :+1: @Khemardi. Mine’s gonna be so amateurish than yours :grin:

Maybe a bit of motion blur for the boucing ball?

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It’s not impossible, you can do it!!! I believe you can :smiley:

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That would be good, but I wasn’t thinking of motion blur at the time :sweat_smile: Sometimes ideas come after everything is done, and by then it’s too late xD Maybe someone else doing the exercise can add motion blur to theirs.

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What you’re doing is cool… Mo-blur would detract from the overall motion and emphasis of exaggerated movement. We very rarely use motion blur in a 2D pipeline as it often looks out of place, and you’d be amazed what the brain fills in. I would probably talk more about the use of onion skin as an aid to plotting motion.

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Yea I would love to talk more about onion skin. I realized late that it needs some attention in Synfig, before frame and after frames should have different colours that’s one of the things that distracts me whenever I try to use it in Synfig. I lose track of which frames are before and which frames are after and onion skin is essential, especially when doing frame by frame animation.

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Day 3 (Brick falling from a shelf onto the ground)

Exercise_3b

I couldn’t think up anything more creative in the short space of time, lol. But I got it done and remain committed to one exercise per day. I would love to have added more broken pieces when the brick fell… Oh well

exercise_3

I should have stuck with white for the brick during the process, then changed the colour after, since I was already working whit a white blue theme… :sweat_smile:

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Day 4 ( Simple Character Head Turn)

exercise_4

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Day 5 (Character head turn with anticipation)

exercise_5

I could have sold the idea more if I had allowed him to look a little longer to the left, or maybe had his eyes widen as if surprised before looking to the right. so many possibilities. I think that’s what makes this fun. Anyhoo, that’s it for this week. Weekend break!! Woo

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I’ll do mine in the weekend XD

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lol, ok can’t wait to see it

Don’t expect anything good lol

Too late, I expect GREATNESS!! :grin:

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1 - Ball bouncing in place

Motion blur applied lightly.
I’m gonna do mine without the “Squash and stretch” principle. Not enough will :sweat_smile:

01 - bouncing ball

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2 - Ball bouncing across the screen

02 - bouncing ball

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3 - Brick falling from a shelf onto the ground

03 - brick falling from shelf

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My time was scarcer than I thought :frowning:

1 - Ball bouncing in place

bola-quicando-giz

2 - Ball bouncing across the screen

bola-quicando-e-andando

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