WEBVTT 00:00:00.190 --> 00:00:06.540 Hello everybody, my name is Dan, I'm an animator, and this is New Frame Plus, a series about video game animation. 00:00:06.670 --> 00:00:13.019 So, I'm working on a pretty big multi-episode project for this series right now, and I'm very excited about it, 00:00:13.019 --> 00:00:15.508 but it is taking a long time. Fortunately, 00:00:15.509 --> 00:00:19.948 I do have one more regular sized episode in the works, too - should be out very soon - 00:00:19.949 --> 00:00:24.029 but after that, I'm gonna be pouring all of my attention into this big project, 00:00:24.029 --> 00:00:27.329 which means that this series is gonna sort of vanish for a little while. 00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:31.600 So, since there won't be a lot of New Frame Plus episodes happening in the near future, 00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:33.960 I thought that I would list off some other fantastic 00:00:34.280 --> 00:00:39.980 resources for learning more about game animation in the meantime. You will find links to all of these down below. 00:00:42.370 --> 00:00:47.489 To start, one of your best resources is going to be the GDC vault. This site contains 00:00:47.620 --> 00:00:51.809 recordings of just about every talk ever given at a GDC for the last 00:00:51.809 --> 00:00:54.509 I don't know how many years. There are some great 00:00:54.610 --> 00:01:01.619 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 00:01:01.620 --> 00:01:07.019 and explaining how they made awesome things, this is the mother load. Any animators watching 00:01:07.020 --> 00:01:11.580 this might be particularly interested in the animation boot camp, tricks of the trade talks, 00:01:11.590 --> 00:01:16.770 where a bunch of pro animators rattle off a ton of tips and advice rapid-fire. Now 00:01:16.770 --> 00:01:23.640 unfortunately, a lot of the GDC vault's more recent content is behind a paywall, and much like GDC itself, it 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:31.500 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. 00:01:31.780 --> 00:01:35.610 Fortunately, this paywall only applies to talks from the most recent two years 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:37.720 Everything from GDC 00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:44.669 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 00:01:44.740 --> 00:01:48.000 form so you can still get some of that information. Even better 00:01:48.250 --> 00:01:49.930 GDC does have a YouTube channel 00:01:49.930 --> 00:01:56.399 where they upload some of those recent talks for free viewing, and there are already a handful of animation talks on that channel 00:01:56.399 --> 00:01:59.729 so that's a good place to start. I hope they start uploading them there more often. 00:02:00.130 --> 00:02:06.000 Fortunately, a considerable number of animation talks given at GDC this year weren't actually at GDC. 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:12.959 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 00:02:13.090 --> 00:02:14.440 talks at the conference proper, 00:02:14.440 --> 00:02:18.369 so, there is an entire day's worth of GDC style animation talks 00:02:18.370 --> 00:02:20.620 which you can watch for free right now on Twitch. 00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:26.120 Animation Exchange was organized in large part by Mike Jungbluth, a veteran animator, who also 00:02:26.160 --> 00:02:32.940 participates in the game animation podcast Re Animators and helps to run Anim State, a website dedicated to game animation. 00:02:33.200 --> 00:02:36.580 Neither the podcast or the site are updated super often, 00:02:36.580 --> 00:02:41.640 but they're both pretty great places to find more animators talking shop. Speaking of helpful online 00:02:41.640 --> 00:02:48.400 resources, if you are an animator yourself, you might want to check out the Animator's Resource Kit, created by Adam Turnbull. 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:52.630 It is an immensely helpful site with links to just about anything an animator needs. 00:02:52.630 --> 00:02:58.689 You're looking for animation software? Tools? Character rigs? Video reference? Book recommendations? Tutorials? 00:02:58.690 --> 00:03:02.799 You can find links to all of that useful stuff through the Animator's Resource Kit. 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:07.540 So, bookmark that place. And there are a lot of other animators out there doing some great 00:03:07.640 --> 00:03:13.920 tutorials and analyses and live streams of their work. So let me just rattle off a few here. Let's start with Gwen Frey. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:18.910 She animated the flame and the flood, she was a tech animator on BioShock Infinite before that, 00:03:18.910 --> 00:03:23.000 she's done some work on the upcoming Psychonauts sequel, and she has a YouTube channel 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:27.420 where she started posting some short guides and breakdowns showing her work process. 00:03:27.430 --> 00:03:30.940 It's a great way to get a taste of the technical side of game animation, 00:03:30.940 --> 00:03:38.109 which is only becoming more important. Next up, Kristjan Zadziuk, a veteran animator who worked on Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell Blacklist. 00:03:38.420 --> 00:03:44.470 This guy has a YouTube channel as well, featuring not only a handful of videos on motion capture and some fancy new 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:47.199 motion matching tech that he's been working on at Ubisoft, 00:03:47.200 --> 00:03:52.959 but he's recently started a series where he gives critiques on people's animations reels. If you're studying animation 00:03:53.030 --> 00:03:58.479 yourself, and you want an idea of what sort of things industry leads and recruiters watch for an animator reels, 00:03:58.480 --> 00:04:03.940 this series is gonna be very useful to you. Then there's David Gibson, he is an animator on Overwatch. 00:04:04.040 --> 00:04:09.310 He also worked on Evolve, and in film before that. He has put out some videos breaking down his work, 00:04:09.310 --> 00:04:10.790 you may have already seen that 00:04:10.790 --> 00:04:17.739 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 00:04:17.739 --> 00:04:24.529 watch by the way, and he also occasionally streams himself working on his own personal project. A really sounding game called Line 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:26.270 He's a fantastic animator, 00:04:26.270 --> 00:04:29.680 so watching him work is gonna be a great way to learn some neat tricks. 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:31.900 And to learn a lot more neat tricks, 00:04:31.910 --> 00:04:38.479 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 00:04:38.479 --> 00:04:39.650 a handful of tutorials, 00:04:39.650 --> 00:04:42.350 but he also offers a full-blown online class. 00:04:42.350 --> 00:04:44.959 If you sign up, you can get access to his video 00:04:45.060 --> 00:04:51.500 tutorial course, and get personal feedback and critique on your own work. If you're looking for some animation fundamentals training, 00:04:51.500 --> 00:04:54.470 but aren't quite prepared to shell out the money for animation school, 00:04:54.470 --> 00:05:00.589 his course might be worth looking in to. He also runs the Anim Break animation challenge, a monthly themed 00:05:00.750 --> 00:05:06.079 contest that anybody can participate in, followed by live critique sessions of the reels people submit. 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:12.020 They even give out some pretty sweet prizes to the winner. Then there's Mariel Cartwright aka Kinuko. 00:05:12.030 --> 00:05:16.639 She was the lead animator on Skullgirls, and she's currently the lead animator on Indivisible. 00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:20.059 She has given some great GDC talks of her own, and she occasionally 00:05:20.220 --> 00:05:23.479 streams herself animating on Lab Zero's Twitch channel. 00:05:23.479 --> 00:05:28.009 If you want to see how an Indivisible character comes to life, or if you just want to see a professional at work, 00:05:28.010 --> 00:05:34.249 this is gonna be an amazing learning resource. Oh, and there's also Jonathan Cooper. He's an animator at Naughty Dog, 00:05:34.250 --> 00:05:36.979 he worked on some Mass Effect games and Assassin's Creed 3 00:05:37.080 --> 00:05:44.240 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 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:48.769 articles that pop up on the internet. Great way to keep up with things. Follow him on Twitter, too, 00:05:48.770 --> 00:05:51.799 he tends to share a lot of great thoughts on game animation there. 00:05:51.830 --> 00:05:54.889 In fact, follow all of these people on Twitter. Find 00:05:54.960 --> 00:06:01.250 animators from other games you like on there, and follow them, too. If there's something interesting happening in the world of game animation, 00:06:01.250 --> 00:06:04.339 not only are these the people most likely to be talking about it, 00:06:04.340 --> 00:06:09.470 they're gonna be the ones speaking from experience. And I think that'll do it for now. Thank you for watching, 00:06:09.470 --> 00:06:11.989 I hope you found this useful or at least interesting. 00:06:11.990 --> 00:06:12.740 Like I said, 00:06:12.740 --> 00:06:19.849 I've got another New Frame Plus episode coming soon, and then a much much bigger New Frame Plus project coming... not so soon. 00:06:19.849 --> 00:06:21.409 I'm really excited about it, though! 00:06:21.409 --> 00:06:24.079 And I hope you will all enjoy it when it is finally done. 00:06:24.180 --> 00:06:29.750 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. 00:06:29.750 --> 00:06:34.070 I hope that'll tide you over until the mega series drops, until then...