Welcome to my blog dear visitor, I decided to create this blog in order to gather people together, share their knowledge and wisdom with 3D animation software, so we together can make the dreams of our imagination become true in this materialistic world. Enjoy and share. Thank you.
RiotZone (RZ) by Mail.ru is a tactical free online MMO game that has been launched in the beginning of 2012 in its Beta version.
The game’s features include PvP, 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3,variety of huge battlefields, and also fight that are semi-automatic for the intense part of battles taking place in some parts of the game.
Including the regular strategic free online MMO games, Riotzone includes Diseases, training the soldiers on your side, upgrading your weapons from time to time.
Here is an image from Riotzone:
RiotZone
No doubt that this new game will be tested in the few upcoming weeks by most of the MMO gamers, especially those who like a shooting game, 2d mmo’s, and those who have experienced Mail.ru’s previous games such as Gunblade Saga (based on the TV series), and Allods.
Will update in the upcoming days more about RZ
Have you already played RiotZone? Share your insights from the game – comment here!
wanna receive new game reviews by mail? subscribe to elite club of 3Djulio.com on the right sidebar
Online & Software – Meaning that these Animation Courses are online website/firms that are teaching you the technique of animating on a software like 3d max, or studio – well, you know, software. The thing is that it’s an online course – with people to guide you through it but can’t really be next to you – even though distance is no longer a problem, it simply depends whether they put in the effort in the online platform or not.
Offline & Software – The same as before regarding the software part, but really with much more attention in terms of helping you go through the actual process of creating the animation, the final process at least. The issue with these kind of courses is that you can’t have them unless you are not in the area that they take place in, or unless you move to that area (lots of money)
Offline & Mentoring – Mentoring, what do I mean about that? Exactly what you think. People tend to think that if they have the great skills of animating it means they can work in any firm with a group of animators, script writers, directors, or from the other side – run their own business and animate as freelancers – SO WRONG! These kind of offline mentoring programs, are being offered for the public without any specification in the animation field.
Online & Mentoring – as for Online mentoring, well, I am not really aware of such an idea – that’s why I am about to open this kind of a program in the next few months, teaching, consulting, in all kinds of subjects that are not related only to animation in its technical aspect but also in the aspect of the actual work – owning a business, marketing yourself, working in a group, and so on.
Now, after I divided to categories, you know how to look on the list of animation courses, so I want to make a list of the best online and offline animation courses available, for you to make up your mind, I will post a new post in the next coming days so follow up – and subscribe to my list so you can get notified once I upload this update.
You probably already know that it is not going to be an easy mission to accomplish my friend. Most of animators believe that if they have a super processor, 26” screen, and they know some Maya and/or 3ds-max then that’s it, Disney animation studios or Pixar animation studios are looking after them or after their Demo Reel.
It’s not like that at all.
Before I explain exactly what is it they are looking for, if you want to see a list of the types of 3d animation jobs you can go to this post.
These days, knowing all this stuff mentioned above takes searching on Youtube for some videos, getting a version of the 3d animation software, or even a simple animation software you want to create your art with, and pretty much that’s it.
The studios are looking for creative animators, 3d artists that have their opinion but can also work as a team with other 3d artists, working with a director that has a budget over his head, and a deadline to show a final product.
That means that you need to have additional skills and you need to maintain them as well:
You have to be organized – and I am not talking about knowing that you have everything on your laptop
Your time management should be excellent (oh my god..not that!!!) – remember, you have a producer or a director that has a deadline.
Working in a team of other 3d artists is crucial, it’s not just you and the software
You must be thinking that the studios have no way of knowing whether you are a team player or not, if your time management skills are good enough for them or not until you start working.
You might be right, but that would be guessing.
Lots of animation studios are aware that most of the animators have the same basic level of skills, and the really important thing is the discussed above – being organized, time management, working in an environment of other 3d artists, and creativity that includes all of the previous 3 skills.
Being organized – you have to keep things organized!
What does that mean?
Well, it means that in case you are working on a project you want to know exactly where everything is placed, what are the latest ideas that came up in the last meeting of the team.
You actually want to dominate the process sa if you were the director, the producer and the animator combined.
Time management – time is the most important resource you have
What should I do about time management?
You need to have a plan:
- A yearly plan (very large scale plans)
- Monthly plan – regarding your current project
- Weekly plan – helps you realize what needs to be done each and every day
- Daily plan – that takes all of the plans and brings alive whatever it is you are designing
Now, that’s a small tip on how to manage your time better, but of course there is more to it in order to have excellent level of managing your time through lots and lots of projects.
Working in a team – lots of great minds together brings a lot more to the table
How can I become a team player in a 3d animation job?
This is something that you probably won’t learn in all of these online 3d animation courses or the 3d animation tutorials on youtube.
They simply don’t see team work as an important aspect of animating.
You want to be able to listen to your co-workers in order to get much better results for the project.
Creativity – being creative is understanding that you know nothing.
So what do I have to offer?
You have everything it takes in order to be creative, you just have to understand that what you know now, is already know, because you have learned it from someone.
Being creative is a never-ending process which includes taking courses of things that look irrelevant, going to museums, reading, visiting places.
Being creative is a full-time job. You don’t have an office to sit in, it’s a job of changing your perspective about the art you are creating.
I hope that now after reading this post you understand the importance of these aspects of being a 3d animator, when looking for a 3d animation job, your skills in animating are important but the studios are looking for a team player, creative one, that is organized and manages his/hers time great.
If you would like to get a free report - “10 Top Secrets of The Most Successful Anomators” copy you can insert your email in the form below and you will get a copy right away.
Wow, that’s a bombastic name for a post, isn’t it? Now try saying that few times in a row 3D MMORPG Online Games- impossible.
Well ,3d stands for 3 dimensional (which is not quite 3 dimensional..)
MMORPG stands for – Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Game !!
That means that you are playing along with other players online LIVE, and that you can choose the character you are playing with, hence the role play game.
In most 3D MMORPG’s you get the chance to cooperate with the rest of the players who are online at the same time as you are. When I say cooperate I mean that you have to work together as a team in order to go through the mission.
The best 3d mmorpg game out there in the market is most definitely World of Warcraft , you can see it here.
You must be asking what makes it the best game? Well, I think you should try it for yourself and ask me that question after you tried it already. The graphics is awesome, and the quests are good enough in comaprisson to other games that are not mmorpg’s.
Here are the most important aspects of a mmorpg, IMO:
Graphics
Cooperation with other players
The number of quests
The time it takes to react to an action
The number of over-all players
What do you think? Is there any other aspect that is important for 3d mmorpg games?
I wonder how would it look like when we’ll have a real 3D MMORPG’s, I mean, what we see here as 3D is only a movement that is actually 2D, and when we will have the option to play on our 3D TV’s or LCD’s I guess that would be a totally different experience.
Not to mention the holographic option that probably will take few more years.
I bet that you are not the only one that is asking how to draw cartoon animation. I would say that everyone that saw at least once in his life a cartoon animation wants to know how to do it. Enough said, let’s get down to business.
I won’t be writing a whole book here like this great book, but we will have the exact steps you need to do in order to draw an animation, follow these steps, and you will get there.
First things first, what exactly is animation?
To make it short, animation is a form of art, that takes drawing and brings a sequence of drawings to a live dynamic stream of images. Each drawing is a frame of the final animation, read here more on frames in animation.
There are 2 ways to use frames in animation, one is refered as free-style, and the other one is pose-to-pose, let’s see the differences between them:
The freestyle approach is for those of us that have plenty of time to create this animation, and that’s because animating in freestyle is FUN! It really let’s you be creative and mind less about deadlines as a professional animator.
The pose to pose approach is a bit boring for those of us who just want to animate to create a simple animation, and don’t want to work too hard for it, but it is great for those who are pros in order to get a more accurate animation (that can be achieved also in freestyle of course.)
Pose-to-Pose let’s you manage the process much better, that’s all.
I would say as I wrote in this post earlier this year, that combining both approaches is the best result in creating an animation.
Most animation tutorials will teach you only about what we have talked so far, but that’s not enough, you have to take care for the timing of the animation, the “look” and the “feel” of the animation you are creating, and how do you do that?
Tip #1:
You have to watch other animations done by both professional and amateur animators, and it doesn’t matter if you are yourself an amateur or a professional – I know that I am both!
That what keep s me alive, and that is something I want you to remember, this is one of the most important secrets I handing to you just like that in a post of drawing an animation.
Your approach to your animation should be as if you know nothing, and on the other hand as if you are the head animator of Pixar Studios.
You got that right!!!!
Subscribe in the form below to get my complete eBook on the “10 Top Secrets of The Most Successful Animators”
Tip #2:
Write down at least 5 ideas on how should the environment of the animation look like, that way you will know where you are heading with your animation, and won’t get too lost (I wish you do get lost, it is the fun part..)
I mean, (1) if it is a basketball court, what is the size of the stadium? (2) Are there any players on the court or is it just MJ? (3)Is he in the Staples Center or maybe in the Madison Square Garden?(4) wearing a white outfit of the Bulls or the red ones? (5) how much is left on the board?
You know what I mean right?
Tip #3:
Try to keep it simple, and when I mean simple I mean, even a simple animation software, or a simple idea for the animation, the simpler it gets, the happier you and everyone is, because all of us can work hard to get a super animation, but the real good ones are those made out of simplicity.
KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
That’s it for today, will get to writing more in the next days.
In the mean while, I remind you to subscribe to get my eBook on “10 Top Secrets of The Most Successful Animators”, the report is full with amazing tips that will keep you busy reading until my next post just for you.
Getting a 3d education in animation is one simple thing on one hand, but on the other hand, it requires preparing yourself well before making a decision. You should have an idea of what field in animation you are interested in – will it be Character Animation, 3D animation movies expert, maybe you would like to be an architectural animator? There are a lot more options but the process of deciding should be the same.
I want in this post to help you realize how to make the decision, but before that, I would like to offer some great schools that already teach lots of lost animators:
Animation Mentor – probably the best online school for animation of all kinds
CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) – I really believe that this is the best, simply put – it is art institute, and it teaches animation
Youtube+Google+Yourself – You must understand that no matter how much they are going to teach you, you need to learn what they teach.
Now, it doesn’t really matter whether you will study here or there, you have to ask yourself if you know how to become an animator – and since you probably don’t, read my post about it. It will set your mind free.
Let’s get to 3d animation education.
ask yourself these question:
1. How old are you?
2. Who do you take care of? (children, parents, cat, dog, whatever..)
3. How many hours a day you are on chats?
4. What is it you like about animation?
5. What makes you think you can make it in this industry?
5 simple and innocent questions, but really they are the key to your success in picking the right educational path.
let’s see what you could do with each answer, start with the 5th:
Tough times will come. When you have not an ounce of creativity, no ideas, things go really bad, and you have no idea why you want to animate at all. In this kind of moments you need to look at answer #5, take a breath, smile, and relax. EVERYONE is going through it, all of us, not everyone have the answer to Q #5. Keeping that in mind, and you are 3 steps ahead of everyone out there animating.
Q #4 is meant to make you understand what is it you are into making in animation, i mean, this industry has a wide range of animation jobs, but you should ask yourself, what is it you really like in it. That will help you choose the school that specializes in that exact niche in animation.
Chatting. Well, if you are more than 2-3 hours a day chatting online, you probably won’t be able to study online, maybe have extra time to read and see more tutorials, but not really as an educational path. So you should focus on fiding a real-life school, the one in which you can e late, and can’t sit with your underwear in front of the screen. Bummer. I know.
The first 2 questions are more to see if you could move away from home, or if you could have a single course to check your skills, the way you study or anything else related to animation education before making the big choice.
That way you can prevent twice the shock of starting your education, and then quitting it suddenly.
The most important thing you must remember is that preparation is the most significant thing you could do before any action.
Albert Einstein said:”I fi had 5 min to save the world, i would think 4.5 on how to do it, and will do it in the next 30 seconds left.”
Now, before I finish this post, I want you to subscribe in the form below to get an ebook I have prepared for 3d animators who want to learn more deeply into all things that do not relate to softawre animation, but have to do with creativity, so when you are going to a job place, you know how to work in a team, be creative etc., after all -reading is an essential part of getting 3d Animation Education.
Here is a short list of 3d animation movies that came out lately:Puss in Boots, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, Cars 2, Kong Fu Panda 2, Rio and it’s needless to say that the list is much much longer than this one i just put here. And i also didn’t mention the 3d non-animated movies like Pina (in memorial of Pina Bausch the great choreographer).
The question is why is this happening?
Well, as i see it there are several reasons for this trend that takes more and more place in the film industry, according to research made by Tech Navio:
“By 2014 the global 3D animation market will surpass $1.5 billion. Do you get it? we are going to see more and more of those 3D movies.” You can read more of this article right here – click this link to read the whole announcement
so if i go back to the question - why:
1. You don’t need a location
2. You don’t need actors (you do need voice actors, of course)
3. You can control all of the aspects of the scene – characters, outfits, location, weather etc.
If I want to popular and talk about the financial size this industry is going to be in 3-4 years from now, it would be too easy, That will lead me to lots of other reasons why this industry is growing, I mean really – I could go on like this forever with the right reasons to do 3d animated movies instead of the regular ones BUT – I believe that all of this is happening simply because we are moving to an new era in humanity in which I believe will be a bit more realistic, even the animated, and on screen experiences we are going through will become more and more real , as if they are happening here, next to me or you.
And the way to do that is with holography – which is a huge field that is not taking care of too much now days but i believe that in 4-6 years we will begin to see new lines of products that will have holography enabled in them.
This new era will play us movies in our living room, as if we are on the set, in the movie itself, with actors that we want to see, and not the way the animators decided to design their Character Animation.
Even Steven Spielberg is working on a new animated project, I think that says it all…
I don’t think that he will learn How to become an animator, but he has enough director skills (good ones too), in order to make a great animation video, w/o being an animator himself.
Now, if we look at the numbers this market is going to surpass, and the “new” way we are going to consume entertainment – that means that all of the 3d animation software, all of the schools for animation, and actually anything related to animation is going to be much more developed over the next few years, and it seems like this is a great industry to look for a job in a couple of years. Today, it is not that easy to find a 3d animation jobs, but I guess that having more and more schools, and the market evolving in the upcoming years will bring good news about it.
One more I added now after i forgot mentioning in the beginning – This market is very important to all industries because they involve the most important customers on earth – Kids.
It has been tested in research that kids can be emotionally connected/attached to a brand or a logo before 2 years, and can demand a specific brand even before getting to 3 years old. I guess that now you are convinced that 3d animation/animated movies is going to be one of the biggest markets in the entertainment market – no doubt.
Turn off your cellphone, close your Facebook page, stop eating donuts. You are about to find out the top secrets of how to make simple animations, on your own, no assistance required. There are 3 main secrets or if you want steps, in order to make your simple animation.
Let me mention all 3 of them, and then i will tell you more about each:
(1) An idea – the actual animation
(2) A mentor – someone to walk with you during the creation
(3) An animation software – the technology that will produce the animation
YES, in that order! Don’t let everyone fool you , thinking that the better software you use, the better your outcome is. Of course you need to practice your animating skills, but that’s related to time, and the effort you put into your animation education.
(1) So the first to go is your idea, what do you want your animation to be about? how long do you want it to be? what are the characters? There are more than 20 questions you should ask yourself before even starting to animate, you have to understand what is the world you want to create with your animation – realistic? with real laws of physics? or an imaginary one?
I say it again, to makes things clear – your idea, is actually the outcome of your animation, all the rest is just how much time and effort you put into it.(2) And because no one has all the time in the world, and your skills could always get even better, you must have someone to guide you through the process of you making even the simplest animation, why? to make the process more efficient.
You see, you can get the same result with or without a mentor around your lazy a**, but with a mentor there is someone that will actually tell you that you are making mistakes, and you will be able to save some time to watch a bit more TV when you are not working on your simpel animations. A mentor is a MUST HAVE when you want to to know how to become an animator, or if you are interested in ever getting some kind of 3d animation jobs.
That’s it. Your animation is ready.
Oh – yeah, I forgot,(3) you need some kind of an animation software, well – how to make a simple animation – must have a simple animation software with it, no? read my post on 3d animation software if you don’t like the simple ones. You really don’t need anything more than the simple version, do yourself a favour, don’t buy some heavy stuff when you are just a beginner – that’s just an advice of a friend. And before you move to the next page – get your copy of the top secrets of the best animators, it’s on the top of the page on the right side.
If you would ask animators, how to become an animator, some of them will tell you that either you already are and you just need to bring it all out, either you aren’t. You know what? They are half true. Because if you already are, all you need to do is bring your talent to realization.
But what if you want to become one? As if like they’re suggesting you don’t have it?
I say you CAN DO IT! I’ll explain why I am so sure, and what exactly you need to become an animator:
-(1) Self motivation
-(2) Education
-(3) Skills
-(4) Creativity
Self motivation:
Well, that’s kind of obvious, if you won’t be motivated about becoming an animator, it won’t happen. That’s true for everything you decide to do in your life. Everything. You have to follow what you feel about something and simply do it. If you want to. Check this video if you don’t really get what I mean:
So first thing you want to do is to check with yourself whether you want to do it or not, but how?
My suggestion to you is to read as much as you can on the subject, and that includes this 3d animation blog of course, you can subscribe to get a special free report on ”The 10 top secrets of the most successful animators”.
Besides that you should be reading magazines, to see what is the 3d industry all about, maybe have an introduction course.
That leads me to the 2nd step you should be looking at.
Education:
Education seems to be the most important aspect after you are motivated enough to becoming an animator, well – I can agree with that, but you have to understand that it will only take you to a certain level.
Just understanding all the different animation techniques, and knowing about the different fields of animation isn’t enough, it’s simply not enough.
You should be looking for a place that can teach you more than you can get through online tutorials of animation.
You need place that will teach you the aspects of working in a team, being organized, having the abilities of time-management.
Skills:
While studying whether it’s online or in a college/university, you need to realize what are your skills, and maybe discover new ones as well.
Did you ever think that being a good actor can make you an excellent animator just because you can come up with great characters? (there are lots of animated actors, maybe this is something you want to try..)
Having a good sense for physical laws will help you determine how a character should walk, run, eat or maybe fight in a combat if you want to do video game animation.
Creativity:
Creativity is a bit unclear when talked about , who can decide that you are or aren’t creative? And if you are who can decide whether you are creative enough or not?
No one can, you should check with yourself if you have lots of ideas, if you can imagine a 2d sketch into a 3d animation. You should take care of this aspect and see how you can bring it to mastery level.
Let’s have a small exercise I do with people I coach to creativity –
You have 1 min. to come up with 3 different characters. GO!
Now let’s see, if you stopped after less than 15 seconds – you are creative but you are kind of lazy.
If it took you about 40 seconds – then you should have more of these kind of exercises to improve your creative skills.
If it took you the whole minute to come up with 3 different characters and you did come up with 3, and you could use some more time – that’s being creative, because you were trying to define as much as possible as long as you have time for the mission (at least that’s the way I see it.)
Now, if you didn’t come up with 3 – that’s related to something else I would recommend you reading on the special report I have prepared “10 Tops Secrets of The Most Successful Animators”, you can get it by filling in your email address in the form below.
On top of all that you should be constantly exploring for new ideas, improvements, technologies, and of course being patient.
It isn’t the easiest job in the world, and lots of people want to be part of the famous animation studios, and I am sure that you are no different. Defining difficult goals is great, but in order to get there – to become a successful animator you have to think like one, and mostly to act like one. Action has to be made.
I hope I answered your question on how to become an animator, after you did so, you might want to check another post I wrote about 3d animation jobs, there you can find more of the perspective of the most successful animators.
If the first video isn’t enough motivation for you, check this one out:
