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Hello everybody, my name is Dan, I'm an animator, and this is New Frame Plus, a series about video game animation.

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So, I'm working on a pretty big multi-episode project for this series right now, and I'm very excited about it,

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but it is taking a long time. Fortunately,

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I do have one more regular sized episode in the works, too - should be out very soon -

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but after that, I'm gonna be pouring all of my attention into this big project,

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which means that this series is gonna sort of vanish for a little while.

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So, since there won't be a lot of New Frame Plus episodes happening in the near future,

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I thought that I would list off some other fantastic

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resources for learning more about game animation in the meantime. You will find links to all of these down below.

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To start, one of your best resources is going to be the GDC vault. This site contains

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recordings of just about every talk ever given at a GDC for the last

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I don't know how many years. There are some great

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animation talks in there, as well as a vast bounty of talks on other game development topics. If you're looking for industry folks talking shop

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and explaining how they made awesome things, this is the mother load. Any animators watching

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this might be particularly interested in the animation boot camp, tricks of the trade talks,

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where a bunch of pro animators rattle off a ton of tips and advice rapid-fire. Now

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unfortunately, a lot of the GDC vault's more recent content is behind a paywall, and much like GDC itself, it

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is unreasonably expensive. Which kind of sucks. Frankly this vault could and should be one of the best game dev education resources on the Internet.

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Fortunately, this paywall only applies to talks from the most recent two years

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Everything from GDC

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2015 and earlier has been made free to watch, and even the talks that are locked behind the wall are often still available in slideshow

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form so you can still get some of that information. Even better

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GDC does have a YouTube channel

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where they upload some of those recent talks for free viewing, and there are already a handful of animation talks on that channel

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so that's a good place to start. I hope they start uploading them there more often.

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Fortunately, a considerable number of animation talks given at GDC this year weren't actually at GDC.

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Twitch was kind enough to host the Animation Exchange, a day full of animation talks by a lot of the same folks who were giving

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talks at the conference proper,

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so, there is an entire day's worth of GDC style animation talks

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which you can watch for free right now on Twitch.

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Animation Exchange was organized in large part by Mike Jungbluth, a veteran animator, who also

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participates in the game animation podcast Re Animators and helps to run Anim State, a website dedicated to game animation.

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Neither the podcast or the site are updated super often,

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but they're both pretty great places to find more animators talking shop. Speaking of helpful online

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resources, if you are an animator yourself, you might want to check out the Animator's Resource Kit, created by Adam Turnbull.

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It is an immensely helpful site with links to just about anything an animator needs.

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You're looking for animation software? Tools? Character rigs? Video reference? Book recommendations? Tutorials?

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You can find links to all of that useful stuff through the Animator's Resource Kit.

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So, bookmark that place. And there are a lot of other animators out there doing some great

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tutorials and analyses and live streams of their work. So let me just rattle off a few here. Let's start with Gwen Frey.

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She animated the flame and the flood, she was a tech animator on BioShock Infinite before that,

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she's done some work on the upcoming Psychonauts sequel, and she has a YouTube channel

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where she started posting some short guides and breakdowns showing her work process.

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It's a great way to get a taste of the technical side of game animation,

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which is only becoming more important. Next up, Kristjan Zadziuk, a veteran animator who worked on Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell Blacklist.

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This guy has a YouTube channel as well, featuring not only a handful of videos on motion capture and some fancy new

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motion matching tech that he's been working on at Ubisoft,

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but he's recently started a series where he gives critiques on people's animations reels. If you're studying animation

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yourself, and you want an idea of what sort of things industry leads and recruiters watch for an animator reels,

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this series is gonna be very useful to you. Then there's David Gibson, he is an animator on Overwatch.

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He also worked on Evolve, and in film before that. He has put out some videos breaking down his work,

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you may have already seen that

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time-lapse of him animating Mei's play of the game intro. He gave a great talk on Overwatch's animation at GDC, which is free to

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watch by the way, and he also occasionally streams himself working on his own personal project. A really sounding game called Line

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He's a fantastic animator,

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so watching him work is gonna be a great way to learn some neat tricks.

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And to learn a lot more neat tricks,

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you should also check out Jason Shum, a senior animator at Riot who not only has a Vimeo channel with videos of his work and

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a handful of tutorials,

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but he also offers a full-blown online class.

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If you sign up, you can get access to his video

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tutorial course, and get personal feedback and critique on your own work. If you're looking for some animation fundamentals training,

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but aren't quite prepared to shell out the money for animation school,

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his course might be worth looking in to. He also runs the Anim Break animation challenge, a monthly themed

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contest that anybody can participate in, followed by live critique sessions of the reels people submit.

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They even give out some pretty sweet prizes to the winner. Then there's Mariel Cartwright aka Kinuko.

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She was the lead animator on Skullgirls, and she's currently the lead animator on Indivisible.

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She has given some great GDC talks of her own, and she occasionally

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streams herself animating on Lab Zero's Twitch channel.

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If you want to see how an Indivisible character comes to life, or if you just want to see a professional at work,

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this is gonna be an amazing learning resource. Oh, and there's also Jonathan Cooper. He's an animator at Naughty Dog,

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he worked on some Mass Effect games and Assassin's Creed 3

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before that, and he's got a blog called Game Anim, where he posts links to a lot of the interesting game animation videos, talks, and

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articles that pop up on the internet. Great way to keep up with things. Follow him on Twitter, too,

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he tends to share a lot of great thoughts on game animation there.

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In fact, follow all of these people on Twitter. Find

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animators from other games you like on there, and follow them, too. If there's something interesting happening in the world of game animation,

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not only are these the people most likely to be talking about it,

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they're gonna be the ones speaking from experience. And I think that'll do it for now. Thank you for watching,

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I hope you found this useful or at least interesting.

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Like I said,

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I've got another New Frame Plus episode coming soon, and then a much much bigger New Frame Plus project coming... not so soon.

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I'm really excited about it, though!

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And I hope you will all enjoy it when it is finally done.

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Until then, if you haven't checked out the rest of my New Frame Plus episodes, here is a playlist of everything released so far.

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I hope that'll tide you over until the mega series drops, until then...