Bad news: Animation takes patience and

technical skill and you can have plenty of both

and still get poor results. Good news: Your
creativity and instincts will make you great.
Four professional animators explain how to
make your animations POP.

Make Your Animations

Animation by Cristin McKee www.sessions.edu 1


Chris Georgenes
http://www.sessions.edu/faculty/facultybios/chrisG.asp
The most important element of a good cartoon
or character animation is the eyes. Hands down, its
the eyesthe windows to the soul, they say.
Often, a perfectly-timed blink is all you need to
get a good laugh. A well-designed set of eyes can
connect with the viewer immediately.
You can get the inspiration for the eyes and other
aspects of your animations by simply observing
whats around you. Inspiration is a very organic
process for me. My inspirations come from
something as simple as a doodle on a cocktail
napkin or as complex as a Caravaggio painting.
Lately, art has been imitating life, as one of my
favorite new characters is based on my daughter
Andrea. Other areas of inspiration come from
simply watching people everywhere I go. Spend
any time on a subway or a bus, and youll soon be
inspired to draw characters and animate them.
Make Your Animations
The eyes are the most
expressive feature for a
cartoon character.
When you get down to animating, believe in
your skills and trust your instincts. You have to
challenge yourself and take on projects that will
make you a better designer and animator. I cant
tell you how many times I have said yes to a
client without knowing exactly how I was going to
pull it off with any level of success. The day I stop
feeling challenged by any of this, is the day I will
make a drastic career change.
www.sessions.edu 2

Cristin McKee
http://www.sessions.edu/faculty/facultybios/cristin.asp
The key to really great animation is to be
inspired by all the great art that has come before.
The key word here is art. Animation is not a
science and its certainly not paint-by-numbers. To
be a great animator you need an appreciation for the
fact that this is an art form. If you come at it from
the computer science end of things, youre coming
at it all wrong. This is where your own creativity
and your study of what others have done with this
mediumwill help you create strong art.
Make Your Animations
Fortunately, there has never been an easier time
to build a strong art foundation. Many of us today
were raised on Disney lms. Its likely that these
lms inspired most of us to become animators. In
the modern age, we have unprecedented access to
these lms. We can study them at our leisure. We
can even digitize them and watch them frame by
frame. We have access to countless books about
animation, in addition to seemingly endless blogs
and online articles. We have video cameras and
various other resources to record ourselves or
anything we want for video reference.
Knowing how to use a
program doesnt teach
you what to do with it.
Early animators had none of these resources at their
disposal. They had to gure it all out for themselves.
What they created was a very successful set of rules
(the principles of animation) to bring the most life
and appeal to their animated characters. Computer
animation relies on these very same principles.
With a fair bit of patience and study, this many-
decades-old art form can be combined with a bit of
high-tech savvy and strong creative drive to create
powerful character animation.
www.sessions.edu 3
 Make Your Animations

Reality Bites: Beginning animators often

make the mistake of trying to create realistic
animations.

One of the secrets of

David Witt
http://www.sessions.edu/faculty/facultybios/david.asp
Use Complexity to Your Advantage: A single
animation is easy for the viewer to process
visually, which makes it less engaging. Add
two or more animations, playing at the same
time or close to it, and youll multiply the visual
complexity. This is the key to creating visually-
stimulating animations.
Use Location to Add Complexity: Screen
positioning is also key to building complexity. The
eye can only focus on one area of the screen at a
time, so you can create interesting visual sleight
of hand by having different animations occur on
different parts of the stage.
animation in any medium
is that the best work
creates an articial
appearance that only
approximates reality.
Cartoonists certainly understand and practice this
in all of their work, in which complex movements
(and even emotions) get boiled down into a series
of simplied keyframes! Once you understand
that animations create their own reality, you will
become more effective in your own animation
work, guring out methods to create an effective
end result, which is usually greatly simplied and
stylized, that the brain perceives as realistic (and
hopefully with some pop!).

www.sessions.edu 4
 Make Your Animations

Try getting up and

acting out your
animation a bit, then do
it again in slow motion. There is no one way to create animations.
Even the best animators all have their own
preferences and ways of keyframing that other
animators nd frustrating. What can help any
animation, however, is the use of reference
material. Reference footage can come from many
sources: yourself, lms, other animations.

Pay attention to where your weight is, and in

what order your joints move. View your footage
frame by frame and watch which joints lead a
motion and which lag behind. The key here isnt
so much that you want to copy this motion, but
learn from it. Very cartoony animation is not
realistic (nor should it be), but you need to know
how to exaggerate things and still keep the motion
looking balanced and motivated. Additionally,
reference footage can often provide subtle details
to add character to your animation.

Another key part of keeping your animations

interesting is to stay away from bad acting.
Certain stereotypical gestures can be animated
very well and still look poor. Dont gesture on

Nat Stein
http://www.sessions.edu/faculty/facultybios/nat.asp
every word, and dont overact every scene. In
order for an animation to work, it must follow the
rules of lm. If every shot and gesture is at its
maximum, you cant build the energy at all.

www.sessions.edu 5

Contributor Bios
http://www.sessions.edu/faculty/index.asp
Chris Georgenes has been using Flash since version 3,
when Flash was primarily considered an animation tool.
His background is art, and he is self-taught as an animator.
Chris spent six years as Director of Creative Development for
Soup2nuts (a division of Scholastic, www.soup2nuts.tv) and
art-directed many animated TV shows including Home Movies
(Cartoon Network).
Chris is currently a full-time freelance artist, animator and all-
around designer for the Web, digital media, and television. His
clients include Pileated Pictures, Lucas Arts, Universal Records,
Plot Developers, AOL and more. He also maintains www.
mudbubble.com as his online portfolio and www.keyframer.
com, an online Flash tutorial resource. Chris is a member of
Team Macromedia.
Cristin McKee is a character animator at Anzovin Studio,
where she has worked on a number of high-prole projects
including the features GI Joe: Valor vs Venom and Action
Man: X Missions, game cut scenes for Halo 2, Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory, The Da Vinci Code, and Sid Meiers
Railroads, as well as a number of television projects and
short lms. Cristin has spoken about animation on panels at
Siggraph and Northampton Film Festival and taught animation
at Hampshire College, MA. Cristin is currently co-directing
an animated short. Cristin earned her Bachelor of Arts from
Hampshire College, MA.
Make Your Animations
David Witt is a San Francisco-based new media artist and
award-winning interactive multimedia designer. He has worked
for many top brands and agencies, and has a background in
graphic design, web design, digital imaging and high-end print
production. His current focus is on creating new paradigms in
interface design and multimedia applications using FlashMX/
Actionscript. David holds a MFA in Design + Technology from
Parsons School of Design.
Nat Stein is a modeling supervisor and CG artist at Anzovin
Studio. He has worked on animation for games such as
Sid Meiers Railroads and Halo 2, as well as a variety of TV
shows and movies. Nathaniel attended the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst , where he also taught courses
in Animation and Modeling after his graduation. Nathaniel
co-authored the book Visual Quickstart for Maya 7.0, and is
currently working on a new book. Nathaniel received his BA in
Computer Animation from the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.
www.sessions.edu 6
 Make Your Animations

About Sessions Online Schools of Art and Design

(www.sessions.edu)

Sessions Online Schools of Art and Design offers courses and certicate programs in
graphic design, Web design, multimedia, business marketing design, and digital arts.

Sessions was founded in 1997 with the goal of bringing new media design education
to graphic and Web designers worldwide, through online education.

Once a pioneer and now a leader in the distance education industry, Sessions has
delivered tens of thousands of courses to students in over 100 countries. Sessions
is accredited by the Distance Education Training Council and the Middle States
Commission on Secondary Schools (MSCSS) and is the rst of only two online
schools licensed by the New York State Department of Education.

For more information about Sessions Online Schools of Art and Design,
visit www.sessions.edu.

www.sessions.edu 7