Been a long time since and update so some decent progress to report.

I started a new job in may.

Have been chronically off-line since then sorting out life and getting settled into the new role. It's been great so far, more pay and less stress. I've gotten my energy back outside of work to achieve more and I'm significantly happier which feels like a big win.

I joined a gym recently. I'm about 9 weeks in, I've skipped 2 of those weeks and averaged 1 to 2 visits the rest of the weeks. The original goal was 3 times a week. I still struggle with it mostly from anxiety and not knowing what I'm doing. It's been helpful to time my visits for less busy times of the day so far. I'm also going to start some personal training mid October for about 8 weeks so hopefully I'll see some really strong progress from this as well as a better direction as to what my goals are and how I go about achieving them.

I've been a lot more social recently. Due to my core social circle moving over COVID it's been hard to restablish myself socially but I have been doing a social activity of some kind at least once a week. It's still a struggle and I'm not quite sure how I'll go about meeting people and getting to a stage where I'm not lonely. I think it will stem more from being self assured than from actual socialisation as I do have a lot of friends. Feels like it's more of an internal issue.

Financially I'm ok at this stage. Hoping I can be made permanent in my current role next month as that will really solidify my position. I've been investing and gotten a housemate to increase my resilience.

I haven't animated in a fair amount of time. I'm going to do a sketch collab entry but I imagine I'll be rather rusty. I am starting up some regular collab calls with friends on discord to just brainstorm and chip away at ideas. I'm hoping this will lead to me creating some cool stuff as well as getting better at working collaboratively. Also making plans to go to the Australian newgrounds meet up which will be outside my comfort zone but a still very excited to meet some of my friends irl. :)

You can get like cheapo bluetooth ones, just the less you touch the camera / phone physically the less chance you have of camera wobble which is main sign of amateur stuff.

Just google 'iphone camera remote control' or whatever phone. Bluetooth ones usually universal.

Look into different lighting sets ups like 2 point lighting like in physical sets is more applicable. A lot can be changed in post like color balancing a shot is a whole role in film to get specific looks and feels :)

If you do end up making some test shots feel free to post here or tag me :D

Sorry for all the responses but I want to say having watched your brick films you've uploaded I think biggest advice definitely is lighting and composition. Doing compositional studies, I recommend trying to recreate your favourite shots from movies as exact as you can to understand the process behind it.

Also you should learn to economise. A lot of productions animation wise will find ways to reduce the amount needed to animate, like show the top half of the body during a run etc. This can help you make stuff quicker

Also stress that good lighting is 10x more important than a good camera

Live onion skin, on something like dragon frame or frame thief or whatever. Making sure you have a solid camera set up and external camera controller can make your work flow a lot faster.

If you want to go really expensive with it, good rigs and learn to do compositing afterwards to fix things.

Thing with stop motion is almost always all straight ahead so you are animating in a linear order, so 'blocking' a scene in advance like animating just key poses as a preplanned phase.

I agree @ntilcheff my ips are much better. Everyone should work for me for free instead!

I'm really enjoying monster 8 at the moment.

Been thinking about a way to create a collab that can facilitate a large number of creators contributing.

My mind went to the pokemon rap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMk8wuw7nek&t=30s

We could have multiple submissions for popular newgrounds characters either as art pieces or 5 second animations to edit together into a 'rap'

If you would be interested in this project let me know, as well as any characters you might want to submit or even just see.

If there's interest I can update this post with project invites and a discord for organizing.

Can't say I don't deserve the call out :p hehe. Catch you next year when you screencap this response.

This time will be different!

Pen and paper! Real men animate traditionally.

I'm back to animating. Just small FX based tests while I get my skills up to par.

Gonna look for small scale projects i can chip in and help with too :)

Ah I appreciate the response, it's always interesting to see. Seems most people that post on how to get started never really get past that and make an attempt.

Unfortunate but understandable given how intense animation can be

I agree I think the most positive thing to come out of it is wage transparency. Especially given the wage fixing scandal like 4 or 5 years ago that everyone just conveniently forgot about. People lament industry problems and exploitative practices and I don't oppose industry action but so long as there are people that are naive and consumers that don't give a shit the world will keep on turning and those funny pictures will keep moving

So looks like lots of people gave you advice and suggestions someone even linked in a list of beginner exercises. I'm curious OP have you animated anything yet?

Cant you just post the details here and I'll post the scenes here. I don't want to dm

Hey you might not be aware but there's a place to upload tests to link to so you can get feedback before actually posting to the site. Allows you to work on your stuff so it doesn't get deleted by people who don't think it's up to par.

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump

should be able to link to files on there in future if you want feedback on tests or WIPs without getting it removed.

alternatively can post gifs here or embeds

Really good quality brushes, similar workflow to photoshop if you've ever animated in that.

I would say once you get past certain idiosyncrasies of the program you can really run wild with it.

If I were to describe it i'd say it's halfway between photoshop and TVpaint. A good mix of traditional and digital workflow.

Its like a trad workflow thats pure digital. You have the layer based animation, so animation layers exist individually in groups, which can be a big hang up for people coming from more vector based programs.

Really good for frame by frame stuff though, a lot of variety in 'feel' and style can be achieved which is what I like about it.

A LOT of prefabs out there on their store thing, both free and paid that can help you cut out some work, either as reference material or actual asset based stuff. It's quite mainstream in anime industry now esp. with foreigners doing contracting (who dont have access to legacy software like rtx paint or whatever it was called)

Ok so can someone give me a tl:Dr version of what the situation in Crimea was seeing as I keep seeing people comparing the two.

Also now that they are invading a new video would be appreciated so I can be told what to think

Thank God a video! I was getting tired from all this reading

I agree a lot with what @Gario said.

Art can't exist in a vacuum and if thats an argument against the forum existing it doesn't really stand on merit.

The deletion of the forum seems unnecessary imo and would cause more problems than it intends to solve.

I think if drama is a genuine concern shutting down the entire BBS will be the only way to achieve it.

It's not caused by political discussion itself but by individuals and the way they carry themselves. You'll find the same kind of discourse in any one of the other forums.

As much as it can turn to vitriol and a clash of ideology with no actual discussion it also introduces people to new ideas and concepts and leads to very fruitful discussions.

I for example recall sharing details of politics behind the bushfires in Australia and what was occurring and why. A lot of people were surprised to hear some of the additional context behind the events and we had a very thorough discussion about it. People asked questions, challenged me on my perspective and even brought their own perspectives.

I don't view politics as something we are meant to enjoy but more of a civic duty. It's something we are meant to do, for the greater good. I think allowing discussion allows more people (that want it, as another user pointed out it is a conscious choice to navigate to the forum) to be exposed to a larger range of ideas and to develop a healthier relationship with politics.

I think the political forum is actually a merit to Newgrounds site. Some people may not like having the forum but I believe it is something we need.

Also sidenote: people constantly cite how this is an 'art community' and meant for art yet in the same breathe say go to other sites pushing away the very people that frequent the site.

I think if 'community' is something you genuinely care about you should all reflect on what a community consists of and what genuinely generates a sense of belonging.

Personally I see this place as a bastion of self expression and creativity no matter what form it comes in. That was the feeling I got from 'everything by everyone'.

Also as far as facial expressions go you can do texture tilesheets or blendshapes depending on whether you want actual hybrid 2d / 3d or just stylized 3d like NPR etc.

Blender NPR has one of the best communities and documentation on this subject IMO.

I would recommend checking them out.

I really liked lightning boy studios cel shader approach, had really good results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdoBJ2lnkks

good luck

That's great progress so far!

I agree making things work on weekdays around a job is extra difficult.

Make sure to break things down and even if you dont hit the exact goals any progress is good progress!

You have time :)

Hi @Sentio welcome! Always good to see a new face in here! :) Good luck with your goals this year!

Thanks for covering for me @Cyberdevil :P

Happy new year to everyone! Hope you enjoyed your holidays :)

This group will be 2 or 3 years old in March which is pretty crazy.

With New years comes new resolutions haha, let's see how we go.

I did this and it fell off close to Christmas coz holidays I guess

Hahahah this failed.

I got weird anxiety about food shopping so didnt do this until this week. But better late than never ;)

I am allergic to exercise . Time to get a gym membership.

Goals for January:

• train / exercise 3 times a week.
• Upload an animation by the end of the month.
• Wake up at 4:30am and perform my morning routine.
• [BONUS] make more effort to socialize with friends old and new

Proud of you all and your progress last year! Here is to a powerful 2022!

Nearly December so time for me to get on it.

Since me checking in around October....

-I have lost 10kg

-My housemate moved out (this has helped a lot)

-I've kayaked with my dad but it's been sporadic at best

-I did not finish my sketch collab entry (nor did I start it...which is bad)

December is a busy time of year so im not going to be too hard on myself!~

My goals for December are:

-Wake up at 4:30am where possible (I actually did this most of last week and it was amazing)

-Try to animate every day (starting from today, i'm going to track it same as the previous one so even if I dont 100% it I can report back on how I do, hopefully the more flexible approach will lead to better results)

-Try to build a habit of meal prepping over the weekend (will save me money and increase my health)

-Exercise 2x a week

They semi boring, but im feeling pretty positive about it all. Miss my friends so hopefully my change in sleep schedule will help me catch up with people more. I think im going to do some art / illustration stuff for fun too because i haven't done much of that at all. Also trying to push myself over the edge into doing life drawing once a week but its a bit of a mental struggle.

How'd everyones November go?

Anyone have any plans or goals for December?

I just really like the idea of dedicated 'study' sessions with like a muted call and some lo-fi so I feel like there are people doing it with me :P

I actually wouldn't mind that idea

That's all good, im not even sure if it's an idea that would work for most people.

I typically get distracted when im in calls with people but im in a similar position as you are so im trying to find ways to 'leverage' myself to be more disciplined.

I'm thinking daily exercises and maybe adding streaming for a sense of accountability.

good luck hope things go well :)

Also I know I post this a lot but that's because i think it works.

This + animator survival guide give you massive improvement in short amount of times.

https://www.animatorisland.com/51-great-animation-exercises-to-master/

Always a good approach to start small and grow scope as your skills improved (like you did initially with short form content like animation memes)

What's everyones timezones / availabilities? Maybe we can do a newgrounds animation 'study group' :P

Stay motivated and work on stuff together

I dont really think 700M4NYC472 is indicative of the whole community lol.

There are a lot of forum regulars that are skilled and industry professionals not to mention those that lurk.

I wouldn't resign the culture to someone who literally only joined a couple of months ago.

Also best not to engage with people like that and discuss with Mods if you think they are overstepping.