Animation advice for beginners. "The Learning Curve".

Get a mentor, Consider the age you are now because animations take time and will take all your time if not well managed. You need practice. You also need money if you want to learn and get good at Animations. There, I just summarized everything you need to know as a newbie getting into it. But if you want to learn about my personal experience in this trade, continue reading. Hello everybody and welcome to HypefroActive, your number one animation blog for newbies and enthusiasts. I’m your host as always, Fred Ocheli. Now straight to the nitty gritty. I’ve had some crazy runs in Animations and in those times, I’ve lost atleast 3 laptops in over the course of 11years. I’ve lost friends and family in the quest to understand and get better at it. I’ve spent tons of money from my previous savings on softwares, hardwares, internet, power etc. And everytime, while every other thing, I might fail to do or attend to, I always found time for animations. Why did I take this long a time? Hmmm, I had no mentor and there were no schools around my region or “country” if I may, that taught it at the time. Still, it was a skill I had to pocess. And at the time, I was learning how to use the 3dsmax software. And that took close to 10years from me. Every single day. In 2020, I would stumble into 2D even if I tried to avoid it as much as possible. Because 2D required plenty of drawings and it’s the base for traditional animation. I was animating over 8000frames in 3D and I considered that as hell. Now imagine doing all that in 2D. Having to draw every single thing in frames. Yeah, that’s why I was avoiding it. The feeling of all those frames filled with drawings just makes me cringe. Plus you now are also faced with the challenge of making consistent drawing images to fit and connect every frame. But I soon realized that I didn’thave to draw everything in frame by frame. I soon realized that I could create a character and rig it like I did in 3D and voila. And this was how my 2D animation journey began. So that’s my run in learning Animations summarized (not in detail) in some paragraphs. I’m back here, again and hopefully, finally this time. I’ll be swaying towards 2D for the most of it. Follow me in detail to know how things are done here pronto.

Woman Palava 1

Hello Guys and welcome to another interactive session of Animations on HyoefroActive. Okay, so I've been gone for a very long time and I'm not going to lie, I miss you guys and I wish I could roll back the hands of time to make some "miss you guys" corrections but we are in the real world and what's done is done.

I'm really very sorry. And will try keeping up way better than Ive done so far.

Okey-dokey, so a very long time has passed and I've learnt quite a lot. So much that I'd like to show you. And by the way, I'm into the business side of Animations now. So yay.

Ive also added 2D Animations to my portfolio and that is what I will be sharing with you today.

New Animation "Gerrarrahere Mhen 2" {Gerrarrahere 2 funny Naija Nollywood skit 3DAnimation done with 3Dsmax}

Hello People and welcome to HypefroActive. The Blog that eats, drinks, spits and talks animations. Well it's become a thing for me disappearing and abracadaba-rin into the scene when you least expect me to. And i'm so tired of apologizing every minute only to do it again some days after like some evil villian in one of these cartoon series, maybe like Zangif or something. Eeeerrr maybe one of those bad guys in the Power Rangers franchise or the immortal "joker" form DC's Batman. Yeah i kinda like all these guys and maybe been bad is a good thing. Heck i like been bad. Ok, i'm just chidding, I'm sorry again and i'll try keeping up with you guys in the future.

Anyways, one good thing about me been away is that i never go away to come back thesame. I always come back a monster. In animations that is. So with no further Ado, lets get into today's business. Yeah i have been working on this Gerrarrahere 2 Animation which is adapted from one of the Nigerian Nollywood films with main actor "Francis Odega" and is sequel to this one right here for a while now. With the motive of this Animation not just bothering on not just animating per se but also to come as close as well as cartoony funny in relation to the original feature film. Well, i did finish the video some weeks ago rendering it out with the 3Dsmax scanline render engine and a preview of it is what you've been seeing as images in previous posts but just for the sake of show, here it is here. Why did i render out in the 3dsmax scanline renderer? Well to start with, it's a decent rendering engine that could at least achieve the minimum of what i what for the short considering render time. The Mental Ray Renderer in 3Dsmax would have been a much better option when it comes to rendering Animation clips or sequences but after animating and time is not on your side because there are a lot of other Animations or ideas waiting to be attended to, then you begin to weigh your options and perhaps see things like the way i see them. Anyways that's just me for now Animating in low poly and rendering out Animation clips in the 3dsmax Scanline render engine.

The Final version of the shot though was re-rendered by Liquid Cenema. Which is a powerful Animation studio here in Nigeria owned by a friend and partner. They also do alot of CGI and VFX stuffs and ind this shot, LC actually re-created the environment, re-lit the scene and re-rendered the whole Animation shot and that's why it's coming a lot different from what i used to render out as rendered animation clips. And for the record, again the character was rigged with the 3Dsmax CAT rig and animated all within 3Dsmax. No custom bone rig, no other rigging software, just the default 3Dsmax Cat Rig. That's to lay to rest that it's not all about the Rig all of the time but about what you can do with the Rig when faced with an Animation challenge. Now, this is not to say that the CAT Rig matches the Custom Bone Rigs of 3DSMax. Because it doesnt really come close in reality if you begin to compare the two. However, for simple or a little advanced animations that would require less movement from the "Hip Bone", then the cat would do just fine.

So that's it for today, i'll be working on something new next and do follow to see what it would be plus i still am going to do the fight Animation. So keep animating and stick around.

Gerrarahere Nollywood 3D Animation teaser (Video)

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. Ok, it's been kind of a little while since i dropped something here and as you are aware, i'm working on an animation shot featuring my Dante Mascot doing the Nigerian Actor, Francis Odega's "gerrarahere mhen" which is quite popular here in Nigeria. It's tasking and very challenging but what can i say, i do what i can. A lot has been done and plenty learnt and in all it has been fun animating this piece. So with no further ado let's get on in and talk about it.

Well, seeing the original clip and watching Francis go will get you thinking, hey this is easy. Guys, animating a Francis Odega especially in this clip is nothing near easy. This guy is a toon in himself. Most of the dialogues were done with his head doing the movements. Then there is this SUV he's sitting in, getting up from and exchanging beer cans about. It truly is a hand full.

The challenges met with animating this shot would be the RIG itself and understanding animations. If you are on the CAT rig like myself then you have to understand exactly how it works because there won't be any room for training on the job. And by the way, the hand pose that i thought would be of advantage for me if i use the CAT turned out a nightmare. It didn't turn out as as expected and reason is that i set the fingers(digits) up badly. I guess if you are using this RIG with the hand presets in mind then it's a good thing for you to test them out even before skinning. Then again, it could be that i've stayed away from animation for too long.

Well somehow i managed to get this piece out for your viewing so that you as always are in the know about HypefroActive. It's almost done, low poly as usual and the environment is a little bit filled up and i'm using the Scanline rendering Engine. So you see, i'm keeping everything really simple but opening the nozzle in animating.

 Here's a link to the video and please rate it by commenting, or liking, or both and criticize in anyway you can. Click the link below for the video.

https://youtu.be/AJeWro2eFp0

Animating gerrarahere 2

Dante posing with car hiden

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of animations on HypefroActive. It's weekend and i hope you guys are gearing up for the goodies that comes with it and while at that i hope you also accomplished your tasks for the week. If you didnt for whatever reason, do not relent, get back in there and fix things unless otherwise you've abandoned them with good reasons.

Ok, so last week i released the finished version of my Dante character cartoon animation doing the "gerrarahere mhen" originally made famous by the Nigerian actor "Francis Odega". I've also been trying to re-trace my roots back to the construction industry because that's where i originally from and like HypefroActive, me and my partner are coming up with something for the construction industry called the COPORAD Project. That will be kicking off anytime next week.

Dante posing with car

Today, i've come back to animating after taking some time off to work on my construction business and the time has also come to animate the other final half of the "gerrarahere mhen" shot. In trying to come as close as i can to the real thing, i have embarked on doing more models for the car and i might eventually model the houses and surroundings that's caught up within the major take of the camera. but wether i model more or not, the car has to come into the scene. A pain in the butt if you ask me but i gotta do this. So incase you haven't seen the part 1 of it, here is the link https://youtu.be/enCSbLk3idI

Dante posing with car hidden in another view

The car has been created and that's it with Dante striking a pose somewhere up there. The car is not finished but i at least have an idea of how it should look, where the steering should be, the car seat and positioning of Dante.  These parts are very important because he actually made contact with all these parts and though i will be animating very close to what the actor did in real life, some little additions and exaggerations will be added to make it look cartoony. So these parameters are enough to get the animation going and when i'm done animating, i can come back to finish up the modelling work for the car.

Now here's a tip, the last anime i did which is the part 1 of these shot, i set up the rig in FK and switched one of them to IK some few frames into animating. It gave me some problems as i couldnt rotate the IK solver in all three axis as i would have wanted. I dont know why that is but this time around, i switched everything to Ik from start and have tested it a bit to make sure nothing weird is happening and so far everything has been good plus i'll be doing a lot of "pose to pose" animations and why is because, i am animating to an already existing shot so the poses do matter a lot if there is to be any semblance at all compared to the actual film. Yeah, the first was more of a free style trying to run wild with it but in this one, i want it looking as close as it can get with some very few variations and that means i have to study the clip to understand what Francis is doing.

So, that's the 411 on what's happening on HypefroActive and yeah, see you guys next  time as always.