Reddit mentions: The best performing arts books

Steps out of the shadows super non-nonchalantly

So kid! Word on the tabletop is you want to get into making some sweet ass reloads. Come with me, I'm going to inject some valuable knowledge into that cranium of yours.

That didn't sound weird.

First - ANIMATION PRINCIPLES

All good animators at one point have looked for guidance by the keyframe gods for this one. Good animation follows principle, and there are twelve of them:

• Squash and Stretch: That sweet feel of weight flexibility
  
  
• Anticipation: Setting up an action for the audience
  
  
• Staging: While more applicable to traditional theater, directing the audience's attention to what is important in the scene
  
  
• Pose to Pose: Setting your key positions and filling in the extra interesting bits later on
  
  
• Follow Through: Keeping parts of the body moving through even though the initial action as been completed
  
  
• Slow In and Slow Out: Accelerating and decelerating at the beginning and the end of an action to give a bigger feel of realism
  
  
• Arc: Movement that follows an arched trajectory, hands that move in realistic natural arcs feel fluid, smooth and super nice
  
  
• Secondary Action: Literally the frosting on the cake, secondary action does not distract you from anything, its polish, clear and simple
  
  
• Timing: Obeying them laws of physics
  
  
• Exaggeration: This one is pretty self explanatory
  
  
• Solid drawing: DON'T LOOK AT ME I'M REALLY ONLY APPLICABLE TO TRADITIONAL ANIMATION GOSH
  
  
• Appeal: Give it charisma, make it interesting, go for something experimental. Maybe something that hasn't been done.
  
  The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is very helpful, and it includes everything here.
  PDF amazon
  
  Second - SOFTWARE
  
  Now its time to choose a 3D suite. Here are some of the goodies:
  
  
• Maya Subscription based, but has a free trial. If you are a student you'll get it free for 3 years
  
  
• 3ds Max Subscription based, but has a free trial. If you are a student you'll get it free for 3 years
  
  
• Blender FREE
  
  
• Cinema 4d Subscription based, but has a free trial.
  
  You can buy Maya, Max, and Cinema 4d without a subscription but Im pretty sure the cost is in the thousands.
  
  Personally I use 3ds Max. Its a great program made by Autodesk, and they make some great stuff. They also make Maya, which has some great animation tools. I would recommend you start with Blender, or get the Maya/Max free student licences.
  
  Third - MODELS AND RIGS
  
  If you known how to model and rig, great. If you don't there are plenty of gun models and arm rigs you can find that are free for personal use.
  
  I would look on either gamebanana or sketchfab
  
  Once you become proficient with your 3D suite I would try out modeling, its a great skill to have. Rigging is a bit more technical but a skilled rigger is always sought after.
  
  Fourth - REFERENCE
  
  Use reference when you animate. Just do it. No animator will ever tell you not to.
  
  There are a couple of ways to obtain reference. You can film yourself with props, or real guns. Granted you are a safe, responsible gun owner.
  
  You can use other videogames as inspiration. Find an fps you enjoy, and look for a reload that you really like. Try to replicate it. If you like it, try to replicate it and make it your own this time. Add something original.
  
  Lastly see what other animators do. Get inspired. Become familiar with other first person animators and their style. See what you like. See what you don't like. And PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. It can be a very time consuming process, but very worth while. And who knows you could turn it into a career for yourself.
  
  Slowly steps back into the shadows. Slips, falls, but gets up super cool-like
  
  Good luck friend.
  
  

Hello!

​

First of all let me state that I am an animator working at a 2D studio who is currently learning 3D animation and modeling on my own. This is gonna be a long answer. Finally: I am gonna push learning 2D first, but that does not mean, you can't do both at the same time, Also I am not saying you have to have 5-10 years of 2D experience before touching a 3D software, I am saying you should really just give it a good try for like a two to three months, before or alongside of learning 3D.

​

Ok, let's get started!

​

I want to reiterate what an instructor who does work as a 3D animator (but studied as a 2D animator) said. A person who is applying to a 3D animation job with 2D training and experience is much stronger than a 3D animator who has no 2D experience. I am willing to bet most 3D animators who work at Sony, Pixar, Disney BlueSky, and Dreamworks would agree. In fact most 3D animation curriculum at colleges and universities, including mine, first teach 2D animation. So do not underestimate how import learning and experiencing 2D animation is.

​

That is where you should start. With 2D, because it forces you to learn and calibrate not only your own style of drawing, but style of animation as well. By the way, you style, comes naturally from experience of drawing and recognizing patterns and being inspired by other artist and life, so don't worry about that too much. It means that you have to work through step by step learning how all the 12 principles of animation (the first technical thing you should learn by the way) work together and alone to create great character animation, to create something that is awesome. Weather or not you are gonna turn this into a career is doesn't matter as well. Starting with 2D will help you no matter what.

​

As far as materials and sources of knowledge;

​

As I stated before, you should first learn the 12 principles of animation. A good book to start with is The Animator's Survival Guide. A good video to watch for the 12 principles would be here. As far was weather or not knowing you how to draw goes; I agree with /u/arczclan. You should learn how to draw well enough to express your opinion and intent accurately. It really depends on what you want t animate and the purpose of your animation. You will find that animation that is more story oriented, may not have has high fidelity of drawings it just depends on how confident the animator is on weather or not their message got across. That being said, knowing how to draw can only help, for that, you should always draw from life. That is how you learn how to draw really well, really fast. Draw at cafe's, buss stops, still life, animal life, go to life drawing sessions. Picture are good to draw from, real life is better though. Focus on anatomy, form and movement. Here is a YouTube channel; for free life drawing sessions, i started by doing one every day:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAZZ8kXStsAD_SJS9LWNdEQ

Proko Panko is good for learning anatomy: Proko

​

Next is software/materials. Now you can go out and but animation desk, disk, pegs and paper, a bit expensive though. I would say you should invest in an electronic drawing tablet, by wacom (just cause they are industry leading). As far as software, there is Adobe Animate (requires subscription), Open Toonz (free), more can be found here

​

As far 3D software. Blender is free and amazing! However if you want to work in the industry, I would recommend Autodesk Maya, cause that is what every big studio uses. It does cost per month, but I think there is a free trial and TONS of tutorials.

​

Now after that you look up the 12 principles and learn how to use what ever software of you choosing, you should just... animate! The first assignment most students get is a bouncing ball (focusing on timing, volume, etc.) So you could start with that. Then go to animating a bean bag walking across the screen (focusing on using the 12 principles to give is more personality, to bring it to life) Then just think of other things you want to animate and just animate them, have fun with them. As well as keep up with your life drawings. I know you said you only have 4-5 hours per day to dedicate to this, but if you keep a sketch book with you (which I highly recommend for anyone just learning animation no matter what the medium) you can just pull it out when ever you are in public and have a free minute and do a quick life drawing, it all adds up! The point is just DO, try, fail, learn, try again, succeed.

​

I hope all of this talk of 2D doesn't scare you, in a nutshell you just need to be able to draw well enough to communicate your ideas and I really believe in the idea that one should animate in 2D first at least of a little bite before moving into 3D, there is a reason every school first teaches their 3D students 2D even for 2 months. Most importantly, once you learn the basic technical information and start with some easy assignments, such as bouncing ball, and swinging tail, then you just have to GO FOR IT! Have fun and welcome to the life of an animator man!

​

Hope that helps!

How did you get started?

Hiphop fan in the late 80s, got into rave in the 90s, got into DJing in 2000 cause all my friends were either ravers or djs.

How did you get money for your gear?

Got a job/begged/borrowed

What gear did you start with?

A Technics SL-1600 and a Technics SL-1700. Neither were meant for DJing and were hand-me-downs from my dad. They were terrible for DJing actually.

A Stanton SK-5 - shit mixer - didn't even have EQs

What gear do you have now?

2 Tech 1200 M3Ds

Rane 62

Pioneer DJM-707

VCI-380

Various midi controllers (Dicers, LPD8, Trigger Finger)

Small sound system (2 QSC K12s, 2 Yorkville NX720S)

How many different setups do you think you have been through?

So many. After struggling with the non-dj turntables, I bought one of the tech 12s and a numark table and then promptly returned the numark for another tech within a week.

Been through 3 mixers in between that stanton and my current Rane 62 (Roland DJ-1000, Pioneer DJM-707, Rane 57)

Owned a VCI-300 before upgrading to the 380.

How did you get your first gig?

Friend was a DJ, asked me to play with him.

How do you get your gigs now?

I hustle. A lot. It's my only source of income. Club, bar, and opening and headlining gigs are via reputation and networking. Most of my mobile and corporate gigs are either through networking or word-of-mouth.

I also have several different agencies and companies getting me different types of gigs. I have at least 3 companies locally - 2 for local corporate and mobile gigs and one for in-store gigs. Just landed a proper touring booking agent for doing headlining gigs so I'm hoping I can ditch the mobile and corporate gigs sooner than later. Stoked cause I hate booking tours myself.

What marketing methods would you say are most effective for a dj trying to get big?

How big? Local? Build a following that will come see you play - doesn't matter how good you are or what you play really - if you can guarantee a certain number of people to your gigs whenever you play, you will get gigs.

Beyond local? Produce, or try to make something that goes viral (or better still both). Neither are easy or guaranteed to work tho.

How much did you make when you started?

Very little - most gigs I did for free or drinks (usually opening slots for local electronic nights). I remember getting paid $150 early on for a gig and that felt like a lot.

How much are you making now and how did you negotiate that kind of payoff?

Anywhere from $100 - $1000+

I charge what I'm worth depending on the gig, what I get to play, who I get to play for, and how much work I have to put into it. I used to be very firm in my fees, but after a while I started only getting booked for certain kinds of gigs (mostly ones I didn't like doing) so now I charge less the more fun I get to have. If someone lowballs me or isn't offering what I think I'm worth, I decline.

Do you use Facebook to promote and if so how do you use it to promote?

Yes - engage the fans, give out my own tunes and mixes.

Have resources to show us how?

Just be social and engage people beyond just self-promotion.

Do you use youtube or soundcloud to promote and if so how do you do it?

Youtube - not enough. Soundcloud - lots.

I put up stuff and promote it and if people like it, they share it.

Where all do you promote your work online?

Everywhere. Facebook, message boards, soundcloud, twitter - need to get onto instagram and vine...

What is the best way you have found to sell your music and beats?

I haven't found a good way yet. I have 14 releases on various labels - some releases have done well, some haven't but I've barely seen a dime.

There's very little money in the music itself these days unless you get a big licensing deal (and most of my releases are exempt as most of them are on under-the-rader bootleg labels and contain unlicensed samples). The tunes are more for marketing to build your following and fans.

I'd rather give most of my stuff away for free nowadays.

What style of music do you play?

just about everything. I play music I like which is a lot of different styles, and I play music I don't like if I get paid enough. What I'm known for is breaks and funky music, but I'll play anything except maybe country and trance. Been really into mixing rock lately...

What are the best blogs or websites are the best to learn DJ stuff?

techtools, dj worx, serato forum, r/beatmatch

Best thing to do is just experiment though.

none of this was around when I first started so I just taught myself which I still think is the best way to learn, although learning some basic music theory will help a lot (was classically trained in violin for 13 years).

What books are the best you have found for learning to DJ for beginners? What about pro level?

for both: How to DJ Right

How would you go about getting started in DJ if you had to start over? (in terms of money, gear, style, and other basic stuff you can think of)

same way. collect vinyl, get turntables, learn to dj the old fashioned way.

Gearwise, I would have saved more and bought quality gear first instead of trying to be cheap and get shitty gear first cause I would have saved money in the long run. My techs are still working great after almost 13 years.

I should have also chosen a different name for my personal passion djing than my money/top 40/mobile djing.

Where is the best places to find gear?

Anywhere - ebay, craigslist, online stores like musiciansfriend.com agiprodj.com turntablelab.com - lots more

How do deal with the bar owners and patrons that show up to listen to your tunes?

uh, what?

How do you price your skill level?

I ask for what I think I'm worth.

Stop focusing on what you don't have and can't do. That's like the kid learning to ride a bike and can't stop staring at the telephone pole in the sidewalk: he keeps staring at it and he keeps steering straight into it.

Put some focus on the things you can accomplish and can acquire: You can make yourself stronger, and it's not the thing that will take you 4 hours a day (4 hours would make it faster, but it's not necessary). 25 pushups four times a day will take you no more than 5 minutes total and costs you zero, yet after a month or so will start showing you some visible results. Swimming takes a bit more time a day, but has more pronounced results on your physique. Bike riding is pretty much free once you have a bike. The girls calling you ugly is at least half kids just being kids and doing what they can to hurt other kids - adults don't do that sort of thing very often even when it is true. Get yourself into better shape and they'll probably start changing their tune.

Good grades will only cost you the effort you put into it, and will pay off tremendously in the future: college grants and the like come far easier to the guys who have great grades and learn how to apply for them.

Get yourself a hobby that is interesting and teaches you something - this will make you interesting to others and give you things to talk about. You can research it online at the library or get books on the subject. Astronomy will give you some perspective, learning to perform magic tricks will help you entertain people (The Royal Road to Card Magic is an excellent book to start with, and can be bought used for less than $2 plus shipping), balloon animals will help you get along with kids.

Get a part-time job. If you can afford to take a girl to dinner and a movie, they'll not be inclined to turn their nose up at you. Also, if you work in the food industry (McDonalds, pizza, fine dining, whatever) you can get meals free and might be able to take some food home - your family having to pay for less meals will help their situation and perhaps generate some upward momentum.

Also, cut your soda pop intake by at least %50. For most Americans, soda makes up about 60% of their calorie intake and is horrible for your teeth. Rotting teeth are very expensive to fix and very avoidable. Plus, making yourself look good is a lot easier if you're not overweight.

Get in the habit of walking around with a good, upright posture. Whenever you can, force yourself to smile at least 10 times an hour - this has been shown to actually affect your mood regardless of whether you had a good reason to smile, plus folks take a much more positive view of people who seem happy.

At least once a day pay someone a sincere compliment - don't just make something up, find something about them or something they've done that you can honestly say something good about. Also, once a day try to do something, anything, to help someone out or make their job a little easier: people that see you do stuff like that will look up to you for it, and the people you help will try to pay you back for being a good Joe.

Also, don't even try to date girls that primarily pay attention to your wallet - unless you enjoy watching them have sex with your wallet instead of you.

First of all, that's great! I'm always happy to meet someone who wants to give magic a start! Don't worry about being good at it yet, it's a very involved performance art, but once you know the core fundamentals (misdirection, audience management, sleight of hand, banterful patter) it's super easy to get into.

If you want to know how I personally started seeking out magic to learn, it was around age 12 with a book called Now You See It, Now You Don't by Bill Tarr. That was my first book on sleight of hand and it covers a multitude of moves and sleights with various objects like coins, cards, and balls. I studied that book like it was a holy text and learned every move, though I didn't quite know how routines worked yet and I wasn't especially charismatic at the time. Not to sound dramatic, but that book had a huge impact on my life and very much shaped the person I would become. I still have that same copy on my shelf. After that it was the Royal Road to Card Magic for my first real introduction to card magic and card routines, but that was a much denser book. It wasn't until a bit later that I discovered online magic stores and downloadable instructional videos. They were so accessible and easy to diget, my desire to learn skyrocketed.

The first I found was penguinmagic.com when I was maybe 13? It's still my gold standard for online magic shopping; my first purchase was Sponge by Jay Noblezada, game changing magic for a kid. From there I graduated to coin magic routines from In the Beginning There Were Coins (also Jay). I recommend sponge or coin magic to start if you want an easy introduction to the principles and fundamentals of sleight of hand.

After that, just before starting high school, I found ellusionist.com and the "leather coat" magicians like Brad Christian and Justin Miller (they've since become more hipsterish, and still a great resource). They were edgy, cool, and influenced my personal style an unfortunate amount... I wore a lot of black and gray back then.

Just before high school I stumbled onto theory11.com, which had more of an artful feel to it, but it's there that I found out about Daniel Madison's Dangerous video. His card magic shaped my performance style in a huge way. He was so laid back and casual about his massive skill. I got really into gambling sleights and card control and manipulation around that time. Cards became almost my exclusive medium for years after that.

I'm 27 now and I'm more into organic magic that fits in one pocket, so less cards and more coins, rubber bands, and mentalism. I use a lot of different resources and it's mostly advanced stuff, I love the challenge of complex sleights though! Those books, those sites and those names guided me into the world of magic.

You can find some other great starting resources on the r/Magic subreddit they have a pretty comprehensive list. There are also a ton of free materials in the public domain available through libraries, google, youtube, tons of effects and fun routines you can learn quickly and easily. If you ever have any questions, need some direction, or just want to chat about where to start, I'm happy to help!

Do you have a type of magic or magician you especially enjoy?

Welcome to the community! Happy to see a new face join in; I'm a little new to reddit myself, but, I've got a few places and lessons that have helped me develop my craft in a major way.

1. You don't need film school to be a filmmaker. Period. The only things you need are an idea, the ability to make the time develop it, and the passion to see your project through to any kind of distribution. Actually, coming from an IT background might put you in a better position than many of us; some of the more customizable screenwriting tools like Scrivener could benefit from an understanding of coding so as to make the program truly your own. Never feel like just because someone has a degree in the field that they are somehow more qualified to tell a story than you; write, write honestly, and write often. Those are the only prerequisites.
   
   
2. I recommend two books as primary sources: Story by Robert McKee and The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier. The former is for actual story development and the latter is the only formatting book you'll ever need. These books were very formative for me, but, it still takes a lot of practice to master the craft; above all things said in these books, nothing replaces sitting down and just writing. That first draft will be rough, because it is for everyone. To keep yourself grounded when it feels like it's impossible to save your current draft, I read Stephen King's On Writing. This book, while not directly related to screenwriting, is one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. It's so much more than just instruction, it's an honest memoir that is meant to speak to the writing process and its tribulations. I cannot recommend it enough.
   
   
3. For free blogs, I recommend https://johnaugust.com for anything screenwriting. His prose is fantastic, and always a joy to read, and most of his blogs actually center on aspects of screenplays oft neglected by theory and craft books.
   
   
4. Video Essays are a mixed bag. Some channels are fantastic and consistently informative, like Lessons From The Screenplay (YouTube). Others are designed to hook you in to a watch loop; which is dangerous when you're starting out as a writer. It's recommended to disengage and recharge your batteries with these between writing sessions, but, be careful not to over-indulge. The worst thing you can do is get caught up in criticisms of other works and neglect creating your own.
   
   
5. There are dozens of legitimate options for screenwriting software, each with their own merits and drawbacks. Final Draft is the (expensive) industry standard, Fade In is an emergent favorite among some circles, Celtx is web-hosted freeware, and Scrivener is a robust and intimidating toolbox with nigh-infinite possibilities. At the end of the day, it will not matter what you use, just the efficiency at which you write with it. Experiment. Try each one when you have the ability to use their trials. Decide for yourself, because no one can be certain they'll love any particular software over another.
   
   
6. Finally, read screenplays! It is so under-spoken how much reading produced speculative scripts (meaning scripts that were sold for production) will help your writing. My personal favorite screenplay is Bill Lancaster's second draft of The Thing (1981 for the draft, 1982 for the final film). Study how the characters interact with one another, the situations their own paranoia brings them to, and how the author creates mystery through ambitious writing. Just as in the final film, Lancaster is able to evoke unease in the reader by scene set-up and bare-bones character conflicts. It differs wildly from the film at many points, and arguably would have been a worse film had it been produced verbatim. It's a perfect example of how the first, or even the second, draft will not be the end of things; you will ALWAYS rewrite, and that is a god send! Your script may become a classic in the third or fourth draft, but you'll never know if you're satisfied with the first.
   
   Welcome to the craft. If you want some coverage on your draft, I'd love to give feedback once you're ready. Cheers!

I am obsessed. Here is my current collection:

Most of these you can find on thepiratebay / etc, but I own a hard copy of all of these except for The Mystery Method, which I read probably 5 times before I found Magic Bullets (actually don't own that either, just the pdf). I'll add to this list if I think of more.

Must Reads:

Magic Bullets - Savoy ==>> [Torrent] it's expensive!

• This book is so excellent. It's like a PUA encyclopedia. It walks you through the process, and cites every major text along the way.. none of this "my way works best" crap, but not afraid to make judgments either. For pickup books that employ some form of the M3 Model (however loosely.. which I think means: everyone except Ross Jeffries), this is the authoritative text. If you have an approach that is proven, important, and credible, then it is probably cited in this book.
  
  Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
  
  
• I got this book because it is #1 on this list. Turns out, it is the modern version of Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People (see review below).. only this time, it's by someone who knows a thing or two about applied psychology (which either didn't exist back then, or was too under-developed to matter). This guy freaking went undercover as a used car salesman, working with fundraisers, etc. Interestingly enough, I bought this book in the same order as The Game, and in chapter 1 Strauss mentions reading Cialdini's book to prepare for a trip to Belgrade with Mystery, which was his formal introduction into the PUA community.
  
  The Art of Seduction - Robert Greene
  
  
• I'm not done with this one yet, but I will say this: if you have a conscience, don't read this. It really is a fascinating study of seduction, but it does focus on seduction as a tool to victimize people.. That said, unlike your typical pick-up type book which does not bother to categorize gamers' personality types, this book categorizes different "types" of seducers. This is extremely helpful because you can figure out what type of seducer fits you best, and what things you need to focus on to improve your game.
  
  How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
  
  
• This book has sold over 15 million copies. It was originally written in 1937, but has been revised once or twice since it became the best selling self-help type book of all time, which it probably still is. He walks you through the basic principles of how to motivate people.. what works, what doesn't.. etc. Fun, easy, captivating read. It looks thick, but I think I unintentionally read it cover to cover in one sitting the first time I read it in college.. so it's a quick read.
  
  
  Should reads:
  
  The Game - Neil Strauss
  
  
• I think this is one of the best selling pick-up type books. I liked reading it, but it was less of a tutorial book and more of an autobiography.. it does get the job done though. It also is a very entertaining read, and if you doubt that PUA stuff actually works, this will prove to you otherwise because Strauss was a very timid and ugly mofo, but he fucked Jenna Jameson.
  
  The Mystery Method : How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed - Mystery, Chris Odom, Neil Strauss
  
  
• This introduced me into the world of PUA my senior year of college when I inadvertently stumbled upon a torrent of it (I was probably looking for something to jerk off to. How poetic). I downloaded it just to skim through it skeptically, but this book eventually introduced me to a whole new world. This is an excellent staple / beginner's text, even though I now recommend Magic Bullets because it is so much more objective and inclusive of alternate styles and approaches along the way.
  
  How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed - Ross Jeffries
  
  
• Not done with this yet, but Ross Jeffries is a freak (not meant to be insulting to him). I have no doubt that his methods are effective, but they are very different. And he really seems a bit evil, as opposed to merely mischievous like most other PUAs are. I haven't decided how incompatible, if not just different, his methods are with the Mystery / Strauss crowd.. but then again, I have never field tested any of his methods myself.
  
  Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation - Charna Halpern, Del Close, Kim Johnson
  
  
• A close friend of mine who studied improv in New York lent me this, and I forgot about it until recently -- but it is a very short but brilliant book about comedy. I'm listening now to David DeAngelo's Cock Comedy series, and I realized that almost everything he's saying is straight out of this little text. It's not really something essential for pick-up, which is why I wouldn't put it in Must Reads, but it is excellent nonetheless.
  
  
  Meh, they're alright:
  
  The Pickup Artist: The New and Improved Art of Seduction - Mystery, Neil Strauss
  
  
• You can definitely get some good stuff out of this book, but the whole thing comes across as an excuse for Mystery to brag about how awesome he is. He seriously spends an entire chapter (maybe more) telling a story about him bragging to other PUAs. He does deserve it though, the man is the single most influential PUA ever, if not the most successful in the field.
  
  Rules of the Game - Neil Strauss
  
  
• This is one of those books that you read once a day for 30 days, and write down statements of intent right in the book like "it is my goal to lose my virginity before my next birthday in 3 months." Probably good for beginners, but I skimmed through this after having been gaming in the field for several months.
  
  Haven't read yet:
  
  What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People - Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins
  
  
• This looks really good.
  
  NLP: The New Technology of Achievement - NLP Comprehensive
  
  Easy Mind-Reading Tricks - Robert Mandelberg, Ferruccio Sardella
  
  Palm Reading for Beginners: Find Your Future in the Palm of Your Hand (For Beginners (Llewellyn's)) - Richard Webster
  
  There are also some good videos out there (links are to torrents. these are all several hundred $$):
  
  
  Excellent Videos
  
  The Annihilation Method - Neil Strauss
  
  
• I met a guy who said he was looking around his apartment for things to sell so he could afford the $375 this costs. apparently he didn't think to check thepiratebay ;)
  
  Mystery and Style
  
  
• The videos of Mystery in here are just excellent. It's very interesting to see Mystery actually interacting with other people (not in a set), since he is the god of pick-up.
  
  Decent Videos
  
  Psychic Influence - Ross Jeffries
  
  
• This is interesting.. I'm not much of a Jeffries guy though, mostly because he's the most oddball of the group, and I haven't studied his material enough.

Well, you're going to be meeting a lot of people soon and I can give you a few pointers as how to survive/not be awkward. Most people love nothing more than talking about themselves, so an easy trick is to simply ask them about themselves and listen. This is a shortcut that will immediately make them endeared to you.

It's okay to be quiet, just be smart about it. Do a lot of observing before you talk and make what you say matter. Being funny helps tremendously, and if you pick your spots, you can be the "funny" guy without being the life of the party.

A dry sense of humor approach is best, but any humor will do. There's a great book about humor and being funny that can help a lot. It's written by a genius named Del Close (practically the inventor of long-form improv) called Truth in Comedy (http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Comedy-The-Manual-Improvisation/dp/1566080037). Check it out. You'll learn a lot.

Also, confidence is attractive. You can have a confident air even if you're not. Season your conversations with statements like "There's always two sides to every story." and "That's a great point. I should research this topic more." Even if you have zero confidence, you can appear confident by acknowledging deficiencies in your knowledge set while swearing to become more intelligent about said topic. It's never a bad thing to acknowledge ignorance, it just makes you come across as honest and curious, which people love.

Make sure that you have established interests when you arrive. Like video games? Research game theory, it's fascinating and it's used in way more places than just the gaming industry. Basically, you can take anything that you're interested in and apply the principles to other parts of life. Now instead of being a "gaming nerd" you're a young and talented interface designer with a keen mind for sociology and anthropology - skills that apply to everything from future gesture-based interfaces to simply coming up with a better doorknob design.

Lastly, don't get hung up on stuff. Be the laid back, contemplative guy. It's okay to be passionate, but realize you don't have to win every argument. Arguments don't really have to end, nor will they, so you're better off making a quippy bon mot about the ridiculousness of an argument than trying to convince people you are right.

That's all I got off the top of my head.

Hey there!

Glad to hear there is another potential animator/artist in the world :)
A lot of your question depends on your budget as tablets can get very expensive very quickly based on size and quality. For instance buying something that lets you draw directly on the screen is going to run you several hundred dollars for the lowest tier models (Wacom Cintiq's are currently considered the gold standard but their monitors and tablets start at over $1000 new so that is out of the question for most people and definitely not worth it for a beginner). So if she's just wanting to explore, a drawing app on a samsung galaxy tablet is a cheaper option that works great for beginners and allows them to work directly on screen. Plus is she loses interest you'll still have a tablet to use for other things.

However most people start with something like a Wacom Bamboo tablet. They are high quality, very responsive, and made by Wacom (the current industry leader) for a much more reasonable price. However you're drawing on a tablet placed on a desk while watching your work on a separate monitor and this can take some serious getting used to. Once you've got it figured out though they're great (they come in various sizes and are used by professionals throughout various industries)!

As for software consider these:
Art/Drawing - Sketchbook Pro

Animation - Anime Studio 10
keep in mind animation programs can be tough to learn so she'll definitely need to watch tutorials online. However this is an awesomely priced option with a lot of great features to make jumping-in easy



If she really catches the animation bug there are two books that are wonderful (although they are thick and may be better for when she is a little older? Up to you but they could make great future gifts):
Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

and

The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas - Two of Disney's original master animators known as the Nine Old Men

Anyway that's a quick rundown of where equipment and resources stand. If I were you I'd probably go for the bamboo tablet and Sketchbook Pro to get started (for drawing) + Anime Studio 10 if animation is definitely something she wants to explore as all these items are an outstanding value for what they offer.

If things get super serious as she gets older prices begin to jump up very quickly (especially on the software side) but I believe the items listed above should suit her perfectly for at least through all her high school years. As she improves and explores you'll naturally learn what all the tools and options are on your own, as well as what her preferences are.

3D animation as a whole is a different beast that is very computer/technical heavy with a steeper learning curve. So if she wants to start trying that it becomes a whole different realm as you'll need a solid PC and a lot of time and patience when it comes to learning one of the various computer graphics programs out there.

Hope this helps at least a little! Good luck, and feel free to PM any time :)

I'm in RTF, and I've taken both classes the department offers in 2D animation, so hopefully I can help you out.

The first class, Intro to 2D animation, is really simple. You begin with assignments like some drawing exercises to get you acquainted with 1, 2, and 3 point perspective, making a character sheet, animating a single second in Flash, [animating a bouncing ball] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoR2k3B0ifk), [animating a flour sack] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPtMvIsjMY) (both of these are really standard animation exercises that basically everybody has to do when learning 2D animation). From there you work up to doing a walk cycle, doing lip sync in Flash, and then for your final project you begin with an animatic, and work from there up to a whole minute of conversational video between two characters.

Advanced 2D Animation is meant to be a direct continuation of the content from the Intro class, but I'd say this class is split into two parts: production readiness and the final project. "Production readiness" is my name for it, but basically the professor, Lance Myers, has you do certain assignments in order to acquaint you with the roles different people would have in a normal 2D animation production pipeline. For example, you do key animation, cleanup, assistant animation, and ink & paint. You also learn to read animation charts, and do a basic exercise where you make a character interact with a heavy object. Once you get into the final project portion, it's kind of the process you'd go through if you went to pitch an original short and develop it through production. You begin with a pitch document, with concept sketches, character designs, and the plot you'll include in your final short. From there you make an animatic, and then you'll proceed onto the final short. These are about 1-2 minutes in length, and can vary greatly in quality. With the pitch document, the animatic, and when working on your final project, you'll have the opportunity to get Lance's and your class mates' input on your stuff because you can share as much or as little with the class as you want.

They're good classes, but I'm a bit overambitious with my final projects, and this usually comes back to bite me in the end.

Now, what I don't like about the 2D classes is that you're taught Flash exclusively. In any creative discipline, I like to know what the cutting edge is, and I can tell you that Flash is not it. In Lance's own words, Flash has barely changed in ten years (he sticks with an older version that's basically identical to Adobe Animate CC), and in my research, I haven't run across a single studio using Flash/Animate in large scale 2D animation production in a long time. ToonBoom Harmony is basically the standard for 2D animation software now, and in Europe a number of studios use a piece of software called TVPaint. After Effects is really popular for motion graphics, and likewise DragonFrame is a helpful piece of software to know if you want to do stop-motion. There was one day when Ben Bays, another RTF professor, came and introduced us to DragonFrame, but by and large, we still stick with Flash. I know it might be a question of departmental resources, but I wish we could get our hands on some other software so we could use what professionals are actually using.

Also, I wish we had a chance to do real, traditional, hand-drawn animation on paper. Throughout both courses, all the animation we did was in software, and the only time someone did hand-drawn was because they decided to do it for a portion of their final short. It would have been a cool thing for us all to at least try.

On the whole, though, I think I've got a solid understanding of basically every aspect of 2D animation because of my time in these courses.

I'd REALLY recommend picking up [The Animator's Survival Kit] (https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284), which serves as the optional textbook for both courses. It's not required, but this really helped me in my animation, both in 2D and in the 3D stuff I'm doing now. It's written by Richard Williams, who is basically the god of 2D animation, who gifted the world with this book so that they could become enlightened (or at least semi-enlightened) animators like him.

Also, another thing to consider is that some of my classmates started the Animators Club this semester, which is a student org devoted just to learning animation and sharing it with one another. They've had two meetings so far, but I'd say definitely look into it. Some of their meetings will even cover basic techniques and exercises for someone trying to get into animation.

Also, if you felt so inclined, you can access the course website for my Intro course [here] (http://intro2danimationfall2016.blogspot.com). It's got all the lectures up there for you to view if you wanted.

I hope this helps. If you want to talk about it more either online or in person just PM me. Cheers!

Well, here's a list of items you'll find useful if you decide it's something you might like to pursue.

Round pegbar - get one and tape it to your desk, get another and tape it to your scanner and you'll have a very easy time keeping sheets of paper aligned. Shipping on these is expensive but I couldn't find any other place that sells them. You might be able to 3d print a couple if you have 3d printer access.

Three hole punch - anything that punches holes of the right diameter (1/4 inch) reliably with the same spacing of the pegbar is fine. You probably already have one of these.

Scanner - any scanner that fits letter paper is fine. You probably already have one of these, and if you don't you might be able to use one at a library.

Paper - cheap paper is ideal. This is the cheapest that I know of at $2 for 500 sheets but copy paper isn't hard to find for a reasonable price. Get 2 reams or a big old box. You'll go through it faster than you'd think if you want to make an animation of any meaningful length.

Pencils - It'll be easiest if you have two kinds, but the most important kind is a regular old 2B or 4B pencil. Staedtler Mars Lumographs are the best but really you can use whatever pencil you find around the house, lying on the street, and so on for practice. If you really get into it and you need a lot of pencils, you should get these. The other kind you'll want is a light blue or light green colored pencil. You can use the colored pencil to lay down really rough, quick sketches for each frame and do a refined, accurate drawing for each frame with the regular old pencil. Then, when you scan the frames in color, you can remove the colored pencil marks using a technique similar to this. I'd probably use Blender for this because it's easier to remove the blue lineswith the whole image sequence. If you need help figuring out how to do this efficiently you can PM me and I'll give you a comprehensive tutorial. After the non-photo blue is removed you can take it into OpenToonz or Krita to colorize the animation if you wish.

Erasers - it's very important to have a high-quality eraser! I recommend these. They usually erase very cleanly unless you dug really hard into the paper when drawing.

Book - For animation, start with The Animator's Survival Kit. It's got lots of good information in it. Absolutely essential book. If you can't afford it, you can find illegal copies online.

For drawing instruction, visit /r/artfundamentals and do all of the exercises. It's fine to use pencils for the exercises as long as you use them like you'd use a pigment liner, that is, pressing just hard enough to get a reasonably dark line and correcting mistakes by incorporating them into your drawing, rather than with an eraser. For this reason I recommend getting and using up one pigment liner just so you can get used to how it feels to use them. Then you can do the rest of them with pencils if you want, since you know how to use a pencil like a pigment liner, or you can get an inexpensive fountain pen that will let you refill from fountain pen ink in a bottle, which can be extremely cost-effective as long as you don't get into the habit of buying lots of expensive pens and every ink color under the sun.

All in all, including the book and excluding the items that you probably already have (scanner, 3 hole punch) you're probably looking at around
I feel like I should warn you at this point before you spend any money that you'll need to either have or acquire a pathological tolerance for tedium if you want to be successful at animating and drawing. You'll definitely be going through at least a ream of drawings before you're any good. As long as you're OK with that, go for it.

For two pegbars, two reams of paper, a dozen good pencils, 4 good erasers you're looking at around $60. If you have some of this stuff around the house you might only need the pegbars, which is about $24. In any case I'd encourage you to buy the book I recommended if you can afford it. It's really helpful.

Boy, I disagree strongly with most of these comments.
You go write a script every four weeks, and more power to you.

TL;DR: Learn to write fast, here are tools and best practices.

I encourage you to pursue your goal to become more prolific and write a feature every four weeks. That's 90 pages a month, which is slower per page than a TV writer gets to write an hour-long drama.

Learning to write quickly and productively actually improves your writing. Producing more work, with the emphasis on finishing, rather than quality, ultimately produces better work in the long run. This is true of all art. Read this quote from the book *Art & Fear:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes -- the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

source

Do not listen to the naysayers. Learning to write prolifically will improve the qaulity of your writing, and give you a competitive advantage over other writers. You will get more specs out per year, you will hand in more rewrite drafts. You will be attractive for production rewrites, and you will be able to perform under tight TV deadlines.

Most writers don't have the grit to pursue the path you have chosen. Be proud and write like mad.

>Are there any tips on how to be more prolific as a screenwriter?

Sure - here are my suggestions:

Set Up A System To Capture And Review Your Ideas. Every writer gets a ton of ideas when they are away from the keyboard. Prolific writers set up a system to capture those ideas and review them later. The method you use isn't as important as choosing a method that you will use all the time, and you will review later to make use of the ideas. For example, I have two apps on my iPhone: one is DropVox, which records voice memos to DropBox. The other is a notetaking app in case I don't feel like dictating. I also keep a pad and pen handy in case my phone has a problem. By my bedside as well. Waterproof notepad in the shower.

If capturing your ideas and reviewing them is a new idea, consider looking into Getting Things Done. (no link because I want to stay on topic.)

Buy Scrivener And Learn How To Use It. Scrivener is a $50 wordprocessor that will make it much easier for you to write prolifically. It's designed to help organize your thoughts and turn out pages faster. It has built-in screenplay formatting, index cards and more.

Scrivener can improve your productivity quite a lot. You do need to spend the time to learn how they have laid out the controls. Once you get used to it, you will love it. Look at the pro screenwriters and book authors who endorse it on the website.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, I strongly recommend buying the $20 iOS version as well. The iOS and desktop versions talk to each other over sync. You can jot something on your iPhone, and it appears in your desktop project automagically. I may start using Scrivener iOS as my note capture software.

Learn A Method To Break The Story Rapidly. Coming up with your outline, known as "breaking the story" is the hardest part of writing. Writing is easy and fun; figuring out the story is the hard part. Writers like Jim Cameron, JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon all talk about how tough it is to break the story. You need a method to go from idea to outline in the most efficient way. To start with, I recommend The Writer's Journeyand Save The Cat. These two books give you a quick start on structure that covers 75% of commercial Hollywood films.

Ignore the redditors who will squawk about these books. Use the books to break your story faster and write more scripts. The redditors will still be looking for inspiration when you are signing your union card.

Build Your Story Around A Theme. I recommend reading this book for a useful approach to theme. It's really about making a philosophical argument, which is really the purpose behind storytelling. Audiences like stories that are held together by a philosophical point of view.

More importantly, using the method in that book will allow you to structure your story faster and with more emotional resonance. Once you understand your philosophical argument, you can rapidly build other subplots that explore it.

Build Your Characters From Contradictions. Instead of writing lengthy character biographies, describe them with a broad, bold stroke, and then add one or two major contradictions. Tony Soprano is a tough, ruthless criminal who it tender to his family, and he's seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety attacks. Hannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer who is also a genius, and artist and a wine connoisseur.

Make sure to figure out how the character reconciles their contradictions internally. (Tony Soprano never thinks he's a bad guy, even when murdering people -- they had it coming.) Also, try to figure out how to turn their contradictions into a dilemma; a choice they don't want to make. Like choosing between his family and his crime business.

Outline Your Scenes Before Writing Them. This is important. Before you write a scene, figure out why it needs to be in the script, which character's intention is driving the scene, what forces resist them, how it resolves, and plot out the major beats of the scene. Go over the outline a few times and make tweaks and corrections. Make sure the shape of the scene is right before you start writing it. This single technique will speed up your daily productivity dramatically.

If You Feel Resistance, Write The Twitter Version. If you outline the scene, start writing it, and still feel resistance, try rewriting each beat of the scene outline as though it were a tweet. You have 140 characters to write the first beat, and so on. You'll end up with a brief sketch of the scene that's a little more than a rearticulation of the outline. From there, you can rewrite it over and over, fleshing it out a little more each time. The Twitter Version gets you to keep writing and continue making progress.

Capture Notes While Writing. You'll come up with all kinds of ideas while writing a scene. Many ideas will be about other scenes or even other scripts. Have a mechnism to jot down those ideas and then forget about them while you go back to writing the scene. Keep your eye on the ball; don't get distracted.

Write The Ending First After you know the story, write a rough draft of the last 10 pages or so of the script. Know where you're going. Realize that you will be rewriting the ending, this is just to plant a flag at the ending destination.

Make A Chart And Make Your Quota. Make a wall chart, get a calendar, use an app -- keep track of your daily page count. Make it visible, to remind you how you're doing. Two pages a day is doable. Five if you're disciplined. Ten if you're a monster. I'd say start at two and see what's comfortable for your schedule and personality. Mark off every day with your page count. Don't try to make up for short days or missed days. Just write you quota the next day. Feeling you're "in debt" on your page count can grind you down. You job is just to make your quota every day.

Remember The Real Purpose Of Your Job. Your job is not to write a great draft. Your job is to get a draft done, so you can improve it later. Your drafts can get great by draft 10 or draft 20. Just worry about getting them down on paper.

Have Fun.** Part of the joy of writing prolifically is that you don't need to worry about being perfect. Concentrate on being productive. Have fun, don't be too hard on yourself, and remember that you'll fix it in the next rewrite.

Good luck, write fast, and don't expect to be any good until you've written 1000 pages.

Hi, first some background. I am currently in the hell process of getting my first industry job. Keep getting interviews/test but so far I haven’t gotten a job yet...though it’s only been two months since I finally started to apply haha. I originally applied for RISD MICA MCAD SVA Art Center and CalArts and I got accepted into all of them besides CalArts, which I got waitlisted for. Every school I got into offered me scholarships but once I factored in living/food I still couldn’t afford it. So I swallowed my pride and went to community college for a few years then besides reapplying to art schools I decided to make a hour and a half commute every few days to take classes at Concept Design Academy, Which I’m still currently doing. My original plan was to go to Calstate Long Beach or Cal State Fullerton, both have really good animation programs but I could live with my family while I went.


I’m so happy I didn’t go to a traditional art school. I was about to reapply when one of my friends who now works at Dreamworks told me to just do Concept Design instead. I trusted her opinion since she went to SVA and graduated and ended up not having the exact skills she needed for employment and she was super in debt.

I’d say it’s 50/50 with people I know that attended college and currently work in the industry, other half did what I am doing/didn’t get any higher education, some of my closest friends are currently attending SVA. I’m going to be honest most think it’s useless and wishes they went to a state school with a good art program rather than SVA or did what I ended up doing.

If you really want to work in TV/Movie animation look into Concept Design Academy in Pasadena CA or CGMA online or something similar. If you are dead set getting a degree I’d recommend looking into state schools. Art school isn’t worth the debt. If you have to take on all the loans yourself it’s not worth it it will destroy your credit forever and you won’t be able to move where the industry is.

This is about art center(where I originally got accepted and planned on going too) but all my SVA/MICA/RISD friends have similar experiences

http://ghostbri.tumblr.com/post/178516711920/dude-i-really-wanna-go-to-art-center-what#notes

This specific artist also has great resources for finding alternative education.


DONT RUIN YOUR LIFE BC YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WONT SUCCEED IN THE INDUSTRY WITH OUT ART SCHOOL. THERE IS OTHER WAYS.


If you live in/around LA area or are willing to transfer:
http://conceptdesignacad.com/

https://animationguild.org/about-the-guild/education/

https://laafa.edu/


Online recourses:

https://www.cgmasteracademy.com

https://www.schoolism.com

https://www.theanimcourse.com/courses/

Alternative book based educations:

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators https://www.amazon.com/dp/086547897X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_U7xwCbZNA4X74

Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933492953/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_m8xwCbE8TH4VS

FORCE: Dynamic Life Drawing: 10th Anniversary Edition (Force Drawing Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1138919578/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_U8xwCbTRGJHWJ
(This one is currently out of print because they are changing the cover it should be back in a few weeks and be around 15 bucks)

Also here is a few good YouTube channels:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS3ZMbzTOXdDuJlhAZuXgaw

https://youtu.be/uDqjIdI4bF4


If you(or anyone reading this) have any questions please feel free to DM me!! If I don’t have a direct answer I know one of my friends that work in the industry will and I could ask. Art School isn’t the only way to obtain a good quality art education and a ton of talented artist make it in the industry without it!

Also sorry this is so LA centric, I grew up in the great LA area and currently work exclusively in it so it’s all I know in-depth.


Quick Edit; I’m a purely 2D based artist. I work mostly in concept and I’m currently working on transitioning into Boarding/Revisions. I don’t work on the animation end of these but that’s Bc most outsource to other countries now.

Hey! I finally get to say something relevant!!!

I'm currently in my third Improv class (Improv 301) at HUGE Theater! I was in the first Improv 101 class to be offered by HUGE just before they opened their doors to the public.

Anyone who is the slightest bit interested in Improv should take the 101 level class. 101 classes start this Sunday, May 1st!
Go here to register!

If you have concerns about paying the $200 up front, send the instructor an e-mail and they may be willing to work with you. They're super nice folks. It's a ten week class and they're really great. There's no pressure and you have a lot of fun... Seriously, I highly recommend it.

HUGE classes specialize in longform improv which are made up of longer, more engaging scenes. What you see in 'Who's Line..' is more considered shortform. Both forms involve games and characters, but longform allows you to really dig into scene work.

There is no straight line from taking classes to going into performing. I've had classes with experienced performers looking for a refresher.

Brave New Workshop has workshops available that guide you towards performance and some require an audition. HUGE and Brave New Workshop have great working relationships with each other and you'll see improvisors reporting in at both spots.

If you take a class at HUGE, you also get to go to their shows for free Sunday through Wednesday nights as a student. Shows are $5 normally and usually start around 8pm.

If you're looking to get your nerd on with the other improvisers, you may find some solace in the Minneapolis Improv Boards, although I don't think it's extremely active.

Disclaimer: I had ZERO improv or acting experience before going into class .. I had a friend who suggested I try a workshop for fun and I ended up signing up for the 101 class and loved it. I plan to continue on and even try my hand at performing after this class.

Good luck and I'll see you out there!

Edit: Oh yeah, if you're interested in some light reading, I recommend Truth in Comedy. Del Close helped start Improv as we know it today. Also, it used to be on Netflix Watch Instantly, but you definitely want to watch Trust Us, This Is All Made Up to see how amazing Improv can be.

I often see questions like “How do I become a screenwriter?” or "How can I write a screenplay?"

So here’s an answer you can read in five minutes or less.

Read at least two screenwriting “how-to” books

For example, you could try:

• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Screenplay (Syd Field)
  
• Story (McKee)
  
• Writing for Emotional Impact
  
• Save the Cat (series)
  
• The Screenwriter’s Bible
  
• My Story Can Beat up Your Story
  
  I think it’s a good idea to read more than one book because you don’t want to get the idea that there’s only one right way to write a screenplay. Different authors have different approaches that you may find more or less useful.
  
  TAKE NOTES ON WHAT YOU LEARN.
  
  

  Read at least five professional scripts
  

  
  You can often find them by googling the name of the movie along with “PDF.”
  
  You can also try Simply Scripts and The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb).
  
  Your reading list should include scripts for movies that have been made in the past five years, so you can see what styles are current.
  
  TAKE NOTES ON WHAT YOU LEARN.
  
  One thing you should notice is that professional scripts have certain things in common. For example, they almost all have sluglines that look something like this:
  
  EXT. RAIN FOREST – DAY
  
  Some writers put sluglines in bold (which is a current fashion), and some don’t.
  
  You should also notice that other things are different. For example, some writers use CAPS for objects and sounds a lot more than other writers do. Some writers write long, detailed descriptions of locations; others don’t.
  
  One reason for this exercise is to get a sense of what a professional script looks like – what’s “standard,” and what’s more a matter of individual taste/style.
  
  Another reason to read a lot of scripts (especially award-winning ones) is to get a feel for what “good” looks like.
  
  Think about how these pro scripts follow (or not) the “rules” in the books you’ve read.
  
  

  Follow along in the script as you’re watching the movie
  

  
  Notice how words on a page translate into sights and sounds on the screen.
  
  Notice how much detail is written out by the screenwriter, and how much is left to others (like the costume designer, set designer, or fight choreographer).
  
  

  Come up with a screenplay idea/story
  

  
  A good source for help with developing commercial story ideas is Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds.
  
  Or read this blog: https://lauridonahue.com/fantastic-ideas-and-where-to-find-them-stps-5/
  
  It can be helpful to put your idea into logline form. One basic model for loglines is:
  
  >[Type of person or group] must [do or overcome something] in order to [achieve some goal].
  
  You can also add details about where and when the story takes place, if relevant.
  
  For example:
  
  >A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a restless farm-boy must rescue a princess and learn to use his supernatural powers in order to defeat an evil empire.
  
  

  Create a beat-sheet
  

  
  A beat-sheet is a short (1-2 page) outline of what happens in your script.
  
  For example, you can use the famous/infamous Blake Snyder “Save the Cat” Beat Sheet.
  
  The books you’ve read may have other models for this.
  
  Some people don’t like outlining. They just like to jump right into the story and start writing. How you work is up to you. But you may find that having an outline will let you know if you’ve got enough story (or too much), keep you on track, and save you from wasting time.
  
  

  Write a treatment or a scriptment
  

  
  A treatment or scriptment is a longer kind of outline.
  
  Again, you may prefer just to dive in. It’s up to you.
  
  

  Try to write a screenplay
  

  
  It’s a good idea to get script formatting software, like Celtx or Highland or Final Draft. If you try to write a script in Word or another standard word processing program, you may drive yourself nuts dealing with format issues, and the end result may not look professional.
  
  Or, just can write your first draft in a notebook, and do your second draft using formatting software. (I decided I wasn’t going to spend money on Final Draft until I proved to myself I could finish a first draft by hand.)
  
  If you finish, congratulations. You’re now a screenwriter. Most wannabes never make it to that point.
  
  However, your script probably isn’t very good. Most first scripts are awful.
  
  What if you want to be a GOOD screenwriter?
  
  Then you’ve got a lot more work ahead of you.
  
  

  Put the script aside
  

  
  Don’t work on it for at least a week. You want to be able to see it with fresh eyes.
  
  Don’t show it to anyone yet, however much you want people to tell you how awesome it is.
  
  This would be a good time to start working on your next script.
  
  

  Rewrite
  

  
  Look back at your notes from the screenwriting books and scripts you read. Think about what makes a script good.
  
  Compare your script to the professional scripts, in terms of format, structure, dialogue, pacing, description, action, etc.
  
  Re-read the chapters on revisions in the books you read.
  
  Read a book like Making a Good Script Great and apply what it suggests.
  
  Rewrite again and again and again until your script is as good as you think you can make it.
  
  

  Get feedback
  

  
  Do NOT get feedback on your first draft. Get feedback on your BEST draft.
  
  So where do you get feedback?
  
  

• You could try Zoetrope.com for free (swapped) peer feedback or pay a screenwriting consultant (like me, ScriptGal, or Screenplay Mechanic, or check Sites, Services, Software, & Supplies) or put your script on The Black List.
  
• Some screenwriting contests, like the Nicholl and Austin, also offer feedback – but you may have to wait quite a few months to get it.
  
• You could take a screenwriting class – in person or online – and get feedback from your teacher and classmates.
  
• You could form or join a screenwriting feedback co-up and swap notes with fellow writers.
  
  Whatever you do, don’t be a douche about the feedback you get. Accept it with THANKS and graciously, even if you think the reader is an idiot for failing to recognize your genius.
  
  And before you ask anyone for free feedback, read this – and don’t be that guy.
  
  

  Rewrite again and again and again
  

  
  Again, in between rewrites and while you’re waiting for feedback, put your script aside and work on more scripts.
  
  You could experiment with different formats (feature, TV, short, webisode, etc.), genres, and styles. Discover where your strengths and interests lie.
  
  

  Get more feedback; revise; repeat
  

  
  Repeat as needed until people who know what they’re talking about (not your buddies, not your mom) say it’s good, and/or you start placing in contests like the Nicholl and Austin and/or getting 8s and up on The Black List.
  
  Keep in mind that it may take years, and many drafts of many scripts, before you get to this point… if you ever do. (Most people don’t.)
  
  If you do make it that far – congratulations again!  You’re now a pretty good screenwriter.
  
  
  (If you like this, please subscribe to my blog: https://lauridonahue.com/how-to-become-a-screenwriter-in-five-minutes-or-less-stps-4/)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Edit: this isn't mine it's Seshat_the_Scribe but it should help

Some of the best I've used:

Story by Robert McKee -- As its title indicates, this book takes a look at story construction from a more theoretical perspective. McKee works mostly in the realm of screenplays but the ideas he puts forth are universally applicable and have already helped my writing immensely -- story itself was one of the big areas where I was struggling, and after reading through this book I'm able to much better conceptualize and plan out thoughtful stories.

Stein on Writing by Sol Stein -- if McKee's book is written from a theoretical perspective, Stein's takes a practical look at how to improve writing and editing skills. The mechanics of my writing have improved after reading this book; his examples are numerous and accessible. His tone may come off as a bit elitist but that doesn't mean he doesn't have things to teach us!

On Writing by Stephen King -- A perennial favorite and one I'm sure you've already received numerous suggestions for. Kind of a mix of McKee and Stein in terms of approach, and a great place to start when studying the craft itself.

Elements of Style by Strunk & White -- King swears by this book, and although I've bought it, the spine still looks brand new. I would recommend getting this in paperback format, though, as it's truly meant to be used as a reference.

Writing Excuses Podcast -- HIGHLY recommended place to start. Led by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells and Mary Robinette Kowal, this is one of the places I really started to dig into craft. They're at Season 13.5 now but new listeners can jump in on Season 10, where they focus on a specific writing process in each episode (everything from coming up with ideas to characterization and world building and more). Each episode is only 15(ish) minutes long. Listening to the whole series (or even the condensed version) is like going through a master class in genre fiction.

Brandon Sanderson 318R Playlist -- Professional recordings of Brandon Sanderson's BU writing class. Great stuff in here -- some crossover topics with Writing Excuses, but he is a wealth of information on genre fiction and great writing in general. Covers some of the business of writing too, but mostly focuses on craft.

Love this idea - hopefully I've sent a couple you haven't received yet!

From a theory/craft/story building perspective, I'd start with either John Truby's Anatomy of Story (The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865479933/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_l1iMBb6PRTA0G), or Robert McKee's Story (Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060391685/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_e2iMBb0CKZ42M). They have some similarities but either is a good starting point for the background theories in story telling and story development.

For formatting/templates there are lots of guides. A general Google search for screenplay formatting should get you a good starting point for the standards needed.

Teaching yourself to have a critical eye to discern between good and bad film (and then further between good and great film) takes time as well as remembering that each person's opinion on what makes any one film good/great is subjective. That said, getting a basis in critical film analysis can help because that will get you watching films that have the best stories/characters/dialogues/settings/etc. This will prime your subconscious and get you thinking in those ways so that when you write your own work, you're starting from a place of strength rather than from cliche.

Research what kind of screenplays you could do - original, adaptations, big budget, studio specific, independent, genre, art house, etc. Maybe you'd be happier in a writer's room at a small studio as opposed to a large one. Maybe you really like adaptations. Try to figure out what powers your desire to write (Truby has a great exercise early in his book for this).

Find a local writer's group if possible. Hopefully one that has other screenwriters, but any good group you mesh with well helps, as they can be external mentors and feedback for your efforts.

Look at participating in National Novel Writing Month in November as a rebel (i.e. someone writing something other than a novel) as motivation/structure/deadline to forcing yourself to write.

And most of all - write. Just start. Get going and keep going. You'll want to freeze up or get it right, but so much good comes during the many iterations your story will take, so start earlier rather than later.

Hope that helps.

ETA: links

Hey Daniel!

Your video has some really great moments, and you seem like a really genuine and nice guy. Here are a few things I think you should think about:

• Cheesy tone - There are a few things that give this video a cheesy/childish vibe. First, you seem kind of fake and exaggerated, from the first "What's going on guys?" You also use quirky music in the background, which reinforces the cheese.
  
  There's nothing inherently wrong with cheese, and a lot of big YouTubers use it heavily, but I think you might want to try and experiment with the voice and tone you establish, and swap the cheese for something more genuine. There's no formal rule of YouTube that says you have to aggressively go "HEY GUYS!" at the top of every video. I think this would help your jokes land better too. The juxtaposition of someone seeming to be genuine/helpful, and then breaking out giant impractical props would land better. It's a better misdirection.
  
  I really like the premise of the video, but I think if you used the thumbnail, title, and first 15-30 seconds of the video to establish a more serious/genuine tone, the reveal 30 seconds in that this whole thing is a comedic skit would have a lot better payoff. Here's a video from Gus Johnson where he does a decent job of establishing a 'base reality' of a helpful how-to, and then it devolves into ridiculousness.
  
  You don't have to play as much of a character as you do. That's probably why the bloopers feel so genuinely funny, because you're not putting on a show, that's just you.
  
  
• Comedic heightening - You heighten decently in the video, with the giant jug of water, and with eating the chips, and with the tissues, but I think you would see more success if you heightened more. I think if you did some more riffing with each of the props, and really gave yourself some time to get weird with each one, you would have more options to cut to. This is what iDubbz does in his series 'bad unboxing' where he opens fan mail.
  
  There are tons of ways you could heighten more in this video, but I think an interesting way for this particular video would be to actually get some footage of you using these ridiculous props in class. If you cut from 'make sure you bring water' and you whipping out that giant ass jug, to then a shot of you doing the same thing in an actual classroom, and attempting to drink from it as people stare at you, I would lose my mind. Same thing with the chips, and the tissues, and the horse, and everything else.
  
  After looking at your channel, it seems like you're interested in doing comedy YouTube as a career, so I would strongly recommend taking improv classes to learn the fundamentals of improvised and sketch comedy. At the very least, order the UCB Improv Manual from Amazon, and read the first few chapters on base reality, game, and heightening.
  
  Basically they argue that scenic comedy has three parts:
  
  Establishing a normal base reality > Introducing a weird thing that sticks out from that reality > Heightening that weird thing to the point of absurdity.
  
  
• Background - The sheet is nice, but why are we looking at it? It feels a lot more normal if you just let the audience see your apartment/space. This would also help you establish that base reality of 'nice guy giving back to school tips.'
  
  Overall I think your video is leagues better than a lot of the other ones I see on this subreddit. Your channel looks like you've been working really hard to improve, and that's key. I think if you keep at it and experiment with tone a bit, you'll see some really great results. I subbed, and I'm really interested in what you make in the future!

> So I recently got the idea that I wanted to create a website and figured with little to no experience I would start a blog of sorts. I want to create it mainly because I want the experience and I plan to make more website in the future.
I have a few questions regarding the process and mainly looking for tips. I do not feel as if I am an amazing writer nor am I super creative, so I figured this would be a good way to help me improve in those areas. And also not being either of those should I toss the idea of a blog out? I came up with a website name and made a page but then it all stopped, every idea I had just went blank I was overwhelmed with what was in front of me.
So I guess my first question would be when creating a new website what do I do first? I made the page cleaned it up a bit but now its just plain and empty. I wrote a quick intro piece but now I find myself going to other blogs trying to see what to do.
When creating my website I also realized I have no pictures of anything and I was reading its not good to go to google for that. Which obviously I do not want to use some one else photos but I also feel like I need a starting point.
Again I am extremely new to this but it is something I would like to invest myself in. If anyone has any tips or references that would be great. Sorry if this isnt the right place to be.


First, I'd just start with Medium. It's a great first step so you stop worrying about the design and just start focusing on learning to write.

Even if your blog takes off years from now, you might still find yourself coming back to Medium. Look at Signal v. Noise. One of the first companies to take vlogging seriously in the early 2000s. http://signalvnoise.com/ (I write there) And we moved it all to Medium.

Images? If you need images in a post use Unsplash.com. License free. Gorgeous pics of almost everything.

Really don't overthink this. Just start writing something. It's not going to be very good at first I bet.

Just get yourself to commit to publishing something once a week. And it'll get better, I promise.

References? I'd just learn to tell good stories. Here's one of my favs:

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Structure-Substance-Principles-Screenwriting-ebook/dp/B0042FZVOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493417056&sr=8-1&keywords=story

Biggest lesson from the book is lead people from one "charge" of an important emotion to another. Show my sadness turning into happiness, depression to joy, broke to not-broke, frustrated trying to start a business to not ---- you get the point.

Show me the mountain and how you got over it. Or someone else. It doesn't have to be about you. Interview people. Tell their stories if you get stuck on you.

Getting interviews is pretty easy. Just email a bunch of folks that like to talk about themselves and promote themselves :)

There are ton of VIP type people who'd love to do an interview even on new sites with little traction.

Just send someone less than 5 questions and have them fill it out over email, and you can publish that. Or do a 15 minute phone call. Keep the time commitments light. (Someone just asked me to spend "a couple hours" with them on their podcast. I do not have a "couple hours" to do anything)

Just start. Stop thinking about this. :)

Do you have a background in comedy? Having experience in improv and/or sketch comedy will definitely be helpful. If you're near any major city, there are probably classes that you can take.

In terms of sketch writing, there are two main things you're going to need to understand. First, and arguably the most important, is the idea of Game. It's the fundamental pattern of what makes funny things funny. The inside joke that is crafted between the performers and the audience.

The second thing is just writing believable dialogue and characters you can invest in. You could have an incredible idea for a sketch, but if the dialogue is weak, then it's going to be harder to keep the audience's attention. Since you're on r/screenwriting, you probably have a good sense of this, so we'll focus on the Game.

In terms of resources, there are a number of great books on improv theory (unfortunately not very much about sketch, but at their core, the scene structure is quite similar).

The Upright Citizens Brigade just released a book that I haven't read yet, but seems like it focuses a lot on game, so it might be helpful. Truth in Comedy is another popular book about improv.

Once you understand the basics of how a comedic scene is crafted, I'd say just watch a lot of sketches. Watch SNL, Britanick, Good Neighbors, anything you can find online. Notice what their Game is. How they build and present their characters. It's the same thing with screenwriting. Once you know the pieces of a strong screenplay, you notice when they're done well or poorly in every movie you see. Then, find a style of comedy that is meaningful and funny to you and start writing!

Sorry for the huge post. I hope this was helpful! Best of luck!

Cal arts is very prestigious, so they might be looking for both talent yet room to grow, and that will Really show in your portfolio. So what should you add to the portfolio?

1: A Well executed Bouncing Ball animation. Laugh if you will but seriously, if you do this well, you will have solidified that you know the fundamentals of timing, spacing, and gravity.

2: A correctly implemented walk cycle. Again, might seem simple, but it is actually not. Walk cycles will be your bread and butter to whether or not you are a competent amateur or just a wannabe who won't put in the effort. Walk Cycles will give you the foundation of weight, anatomy, and movement.

3: Life drawings: drawings of nude people in interesting poses (don't draw pr0n, they'll kick you out if you add THAT to the portfolio). Take a cheap life drawing class. This will help increase your speed in drawing, but also help in capturing the bare bones shapes that make up the human figure. Also if the admissions office knows what they're doing, they WILL be looking to see if you know how to draw, cause if you don't know how to draw in their standards, you won't learn how to animate in their standards either.

Those three things are essential to learn and have in your portfolio. Note I said learn, not master. They don't have to be perfect, just enough that they can tell you know what you're doing, you're willing to put in the effort to practice things you might not like to do in order to improve the things you DO want to do, and show you'll be a perfect fit for their classes.

Now, how to learn these things? Youtube has an excellent amount of references for drawing bouncing balls and walk cycles, some even from Famous ex-disney 2D animators. (Bonus points btw) If you're in a spending money kind of mood, then this is your kind of book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

It truly is the Animator's Survival Kit, chock full of stuff that will help you learn the fundamentals of animation.

Now a few addendums to add to your portfolio. Add your creative stuff after you add the first three things. Concept art, Character Design, some animations of your own choosing, heck even a demo reel would be great. Beyond seeing whether you have the drive for animation, they want to see YOU, they want to see the you that is in your animations, your style, your emotion, your verve, your kookiness, your insanity, the you that you pour out into your work, and that you love whether it's crap or gold.


That's all for now, good luck, happy animating.

Artistically yours,

Io Kusanagi

All of them, really. Absolutely no harm will come from reading all the books out there (for a while). At worst, you'll learn ways of doing things that DON'T work for you but it's still good knowledge to have.

After a while, eventually, you'll start noticing though that all the new books out are just copying and rephrasing the books that came before them. That's when it's time to stop.

Some of the popular ones are syd field's book, Robert McKee's book, Joseph Campbell's book (and imo a book called The Writer's Journey by Christopher something that analyzes Campbell's book and puts it into modern story telling terms). That'll get you started. I have varying opinions of each of those books and none of them should be adhered to by law, but they ALL contain concepts and theories that, as a professional writer, you'd do well to expose yourself to. If for no other reason than that you can be aware of the concepts when others talk about them.

Tangentially, Stephen king's On Writing and William Goldman's books are great reads but don't necessarily apply to the craft of screen writing directly. Also useful to read any interviews or collections of interviews with screen writers. You may also want to check out some podcasts, Jeff goldsmith's interviews with screen writers is great and I have no idea if it's still available or even what it's called but I used to listen to one titled something like Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood (I am positive I got those names wrong) about two guys who up and quit their careers as restaurant owners and moved to Hollywood to become writers and share what they've learned. Ted Rossio and Terry Elliot also run, or ran, a website with forums (which are eh) and and a collection of articles about screen writing which are fantastic.

This was all stuff I was into years ago, so I don't know how much of it is still relevant, because like I said when you get to a certain point you've kind of read everything out there and it all starts repeating itself, and you realize all that's left is to read screenplays and write a ton.

Good luck.

e: back on my computer, here are some links:

Syd Field's Sreenplay (he has several books out, that's the one you should start with as it lays the foundation for basic story structure of nearly all modern movies. IMO, it's also the best one out there because he never says these are rules in any way, he simply analyzed a bunch of movies and lays out his findings for you to do with as you wish)

Robert McKee's Story

Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces

and Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey

Stephen King's On Writing which describes his writing style and, while I don't prefer it, is a very interesting style similar to the Cohen Brothers

William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie did I Tell? two accounts of William Goldman's experiences as one of the top writers in Hollywood, and dealing with the business. Writer of The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, and many others. Dude's a legend.

Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A podcast he also did the same style podcast while working for a screenwriting magazine, though the name escapes me right now

Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood holy shit I got their names right I can't believe it. Seems to be dead for a few years but it looks like their podcasts are still up.

Wordplay, Ted & Terry's website read every single one of those articles

e: BONUS! Not that useful as an educational resource, but it's fun to read Ken Levine's blog, writer on MASH and Cheers Ken's blog (no, not the guy who made BioShock)

If it's learning in your free time try loomis and expand from there. An often overlooked aspect of art is composition. If you aren't familiar with the subject check out framed ink. It's film/comic focused, but reading this will give you an immediate step up on the subject and a greater appreciation for visual storytelling. Also makes for a great bathroom/coffee table book.

If you haven't gotten all that far with pixel art this book, while poorly written, is a reasonably comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals (not art fundamentals, but pixel art specific issues like lines/circles, anti-aliasing, dithering, ect). If you do go a more traditional route and have some cash I would recommend looking into getting a cheap graphics tablet and trying digital art instead. This guy has some great free videos on making the transition (he uses photoshop, but most techniques can be adapted to other software with a bit of effort) with a little introductory material on drawing in general. I've found making good pixel art as time consuming as drawing by hand, but ymmv.

As a side thought on the art classes bit, make sure to check with other students before registering. It's common for a good art class to assign very time consuming assignments so make sure you know what you're getting into first. Whatever you decide to do college is a good time to experiment and learn. Be sure to go wild and have fun so long as the rest of your career and future are in order.

UMMMMMM lets see. I can take two routes. School or munchies.

I just recently graduated (video production) and there are a couple book's that I've been really wanting to get.
One for editing, And these for inspiration and reference to how my shots should look like

1

2

3

And I've heard anything from this guy, film related, is an amazing read for filmmakers

Ever since I graduated (I went to a really artsy school instead of a production school :( )I feel like I have way more to learn. Like it didn't fully leave me ready for what I want to be so what I'm trying to do is take all these books that are highly recommended in my field and learn as much as I can on my own. Hopefully to inspire me to make better films and really push me in the right direction. Any book would be perfectly fine.


As for munchies. I've been training for a fight for a couple months so my diet has been pretty strict. Fewer calories, no sweets, very low carbs. One week, my trainer goes to Japan to visit his GF and once I found out, I asked him if he can buy me some kitkats. In japan if you guys didn't know, they have a store dedicated to every flavor of kitkat you can think of and me having the biggest sweet tooth, I begged him if he can buy me a box. Since I was still on my diet when he came back, he was holding the candy for me so I wouldn't get tempted to eat it on my own time (I was 13 pounds away from my goal weight). He ended up getting me a pack of Strawberry Kitkats. So one day as he was in his house studying, he walks past the candy and says, "Hey, it's been here for so long, I think I should try one. I got a sweet tooth. There are 12 in the box so 11 will still be a good gift. So after about 30 seconds of having an orgasm in his mouth due to kitkats, he says, "ok one more." The only problem there was, one turned into 11 more. All my sweet precious kit kats are gone! One of the many foods I was planning to demolish after my diet are gone!!! Drops on my knees, lifts my arm and scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Sooooooo yeah. Since I don't really have the funds to go Japan I would have to use amazon until one of my friends returns to japan to give me one of those crazier flavors. They have things like mango, chili, red bean, guasabi, green tea, ice cream, pudding and I really cant think of the other ones but its really cool.

But these are the two boxes I have on my list. Either one would be more than perfect. I don't really know exactly what's inside those two packs but I recognize some like apple, strawberry and cheesecake so I wouldn't mind the surprise.

1

2



And if anyone else is interested in trying them, just remember they're all mini bars, not the full sized bars you would buy in the store. Sorry for the essay, I hope it was good enough lol. Thank you for the contest.

Really, studios don't have hired crews anymore, so unless you want a desk job, working for Warner Bros. isn't really going to happen. Writers definitely don't work for the studios anymore. Screenwriters are more or less "freelance:" they write scripts, then sell them to whoever wants to make them. Once directors and producers are hired for the project, they more or less pick their own crews for the shooting and post-production processes.

My advice would be to decide what you want to do and learn everything you possibly can about that craft. Each person on a film set has a specific set of responsibilities and must be able to do them well.

If you want to be a writer, you have to know script theory and format like the back of your hand. /r/screenwriting can be a decent resource, but take any advice you get there with a grain of salt. Many of the writers there are bitter and simply throw out rules and limitations that they read in the same books you can rent from the library or buy at Half Price Books for $5. $5 advice doesn't really help anybody in the long run.

If you feel like you have a great story to tell, then don't let anybody tell you how to tell it. That's the great thing about being the writer: You can tell your story however you want. If it's garbage, that's okay. At least it was a learning experience, and you get better with every new thing that you write. Don't be afraid to write bad material. It happens to all of us, especially when you're learning.

If you do decide to study screenwriting, David Trottier's The Screenwriting Bible is a great resource. I would also recommend picking up some sort of style guide. This is the one that I use, and it's great. It's set up like a glossary, so that if I forget how to format a certain scenario, I can just flip right to it.

Apart from that, just watch as many movies as you can and analyse them to the best of your abilities. There really is no better teacher than the work that came before.

Good luck and have fun!

Nope! Writing a novel or long fiction is a completely different experience than writing a screenplay. If the end goal is a finished screenplay, a novel is procrastination. Plus it's a hard transition. I moved from long fiction to screenwriting, and there's a learning curve.

Screenwriting is an entirely visual medium. Absolutely everything that you write should amount to instructions to the director as to what should be on the screen. The long-winded, descriptive nature of prose holds you back in a script, where you have 90-120 precious pages filled with more white space than words. Every last sentence has to count.

The best "intro" book to screenwriting I've read is Writing Movies for Fun and Profit. It's a realistic look at what the experiences, expectations, and challenges of a successful screenwriter will be. It has everything you need to know about formatting and story, but won't turn you into a Save the Cat robot. You'll also get the perspective of the "gate-keepers," and exactly what they're looking for in a screenwriter and his/her work.

I had to work on conciseness, too. Shane Black is the king of that, so reading his scripts might help. Something to remember is that paragraphs of action should be broken up at a MAXIMUM of every four lines, but readers will appreciate more often than that when you can.

People judge your writing based on dialogue and overall structure. If your action lines are simply instruction, no one will think you don't know how to describe a man getting shot as well as Faulkner, they'll be thankful you gave them three words to convey the same idea that 15 words would have done.

If you're thinking about writing a novel just so you have a better hold on the story, screenwriting has a lot of fun processes for getting to know your story. I'd suggest writing your story out as a treatment before you touch your script, and writing one page about the arc of each main character (feeling free to include details about the character not present in the script).

Unlike a novel, a movie doesn't give us all the information. It gives us the bare minimum it possibly can to tell a complete, enthralling, interesting story. Start the story and all scenes as late into the narrative as you can, and end everything as soon as you can.

Don't let your characters ramble. Don't make your characters sound the same. Don't make all your characters smart and funny. Real people do swear and say unsavory things, but in a movie you have to remember that every word and sentence should serve a purpose. I'm the one rambling, now. Happy to shine more light where needed, if you'd like!

Here are some resources I’ve found interesting and/or useful.

Books

There are over 10,000 results for “screenwriting” when you search for books on Amazon.com, and at least one new screenwriting book is published every week.

Here are some “how to” books I recommend:

• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Screenplay (Syd Field)
  
• Story (McKee)
  
• Writing for Emotional Impact
  
• Save the Cat (series)
  
• The Screenwriter’s Bible
  
• My Story Can Beat up Your Story
  
  There are also good books about the screenwriting life. Some of my favorites are:
  
  
• What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting
  
• Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
  
• Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade
  
• Just the Funny Parts: … And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club
  
• The First Time I Got Paid For It: Writers’ Tales From The Hollywood Trenches
  
  

  Software
  

  
  Some of the most popular screenwriting format programs include:
  
  

• Celtx (free; upgrades available)
  
• Highland (free, with $49.99 pro upgrade)
  
• Final Draft ($249.99 for Final Draft 11; considered over-priced and widely-loathed, but also the industry standard)
  
• Movie Magic ($99.99 for version 6)
  
  More options are discussed here, and you can find about 40 screenwriting programs at The Writer’s Store.
  
  Most programs have free trials, so you can see which one you like best before you commit.
  
  Having screenwriting software is necessary (IMHO) but not sufficient to write a properly formatted screenplay. The software will let you designate dialogue as V.O. (voice over) or O.S. (off-screen), but it won’t explain when you use which. For that, and for many other things, you need to read something that gets into the details of formatting, like The Screenwriter’s Bible.
  
  Many format programs have lots of bells and whistles including:
  
  
• virtual index cards that can be moved around on virtual cork boards,
  
• text-to-speech (so you can hear robots read your screenplay out loud), and
  
• collaboration functions (which are actually useful if you and your writing partner are in different locations or don’t want to crowd around the same screen).
  
  There are also specialized software programs that supposedly help with plotting and structure, character development, etc., but I’ve never used any.
  
  

  Screenplays
  

  
  You can often find screenplays for produced movies by googling the name of the movie along with “PDF.”
  
  Scott Myers has collected a list of 100+ scripts made available by studios and production companies here.
  
  Scripts often appear online around awards season (roughly the three months before the Oscars) but they may disappear later. So if you find a copy of a script you really want to study, it’s a good idea to download and save it.
  
  You can also try Simply Scripts, The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb), and Drew’s Script-O-Rama.
  
  Many libraries and bookstores carry published scripts, but often the format will be somewhat different from the original version.
  
  

There are a lot of great books on film out there. Don't listen to other possible saying watch YouTube or wrote your own screenplay. Well, do those things too, but learn some wisdom from some of the masters while you're at it.

You are going to want to read the following:

Hitchcock by Truffaut (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0671604295). One of the greatest directors of all time, interviewed by another of the greatest.

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1879505622/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1), one of the greatest editors ever. A pretty great director too.

On Directing Film by David Mamet (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140127224). A great book on directing by one of the great writer/directors.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452271878). He wrote this after El Mariachi, before he went on to big budgets. It's one of the most inspiring books you'll ever read-- you'll want to make a film tomorrow. Basically, how to make a movie wit nothing but enthusiasm.

I'm in the same place as you (sorta), working successfully in a job outside of animation, but wanting to make the leap over. Here's what I've learned so far (in an obligatory wall of text):

A strong foundation is really important. Learning and practicing how to draw may take time, but luckily for both of us, there's an incredibly large number of resources both online and offline to take advantage of. Live drawing classes can help you figure out proper proportion and gesture. So can taking a sketchbook to a coffeeshop or zoo. This book in particular was very helpful in figuring sketching out:
http://www.drawingforce.com/

Learning to create strong compositions is important in any visual medium, animated or not. You could probably benefit from doing film studies, with a focus on understanding why characters are positioned a certain way within a frame. Failing to do this, you end up working uphill, trying to animate something that was flawed from the start. In this regard, this book is a great resource: http://www.amazon.com/Film-Directing-Shot-Visualizing-Productions/dp/0941188108

Finally, you'll probably have a lot of fun figuring out the tools synonymous with the animation industry. For 2D, Flash is still a big player, as is Harmony and TVPaint. Lots of resources online geared towards learning how to use these tools. At the core though, good animation hasn't really changed too much... make stuff until your stuff is believable. It's time consuming as hell, so I wouldn't invest in a huge, overly ambitious project from the start. Short, simple ideas that let you test your abilities would probably be a good idea.

Other than that, I don't know! Work hard, work smart.

> I don't want to make money off of [short films]

Well, great news! You're very unlikely to make any money off any given short film. However, it can be a great calling card for something else (features, ads, music videos).
It's a lot faster to see the rewards than a feature (which is a long hard slog to be honest). And shorts are a great introduction to the medium without being overwhelming (and weighed down by structural considerations).


> I'm immensely interested in shorts. What I lack is a story. I mean, I've no idea how to structure a short. I'm assuming it's the same as the feature one? The three act structure?

I advise to watch as many shorts as you can (you are spoiled for choice on Vimeo, YouTube and/or Short of the Week). Make a note of which ones you love and why.
Personally, I like shorts that have a 'sting in the tail,' some sort of revelation at the end that alter your perception of the rest of the story. However, a short can be a slice-of-life or a character study or
just plain experiment.

The structure of a short can be fairly fluid and still enjoyable and consumable. You don't have the time to establish a lot beyond one or two characters or an intricate plot (at least, without being confusing).
Very often, great shorts are two acts. A set-up and a pay-off. Or three acts, but the third act can be extremely short.

> An idea which has a beginning, a mid point, and an ending. How do I get an idea for a short?

So the great thing about a short is that it is often an exploration of one or two key themes or ideas. It can be based around a single joke ("The Furry Chequebook").
You really can just think of "what if... " and explore just that idea, without having to worry about fleshed-out characters or a B-story etc. What if a guy had control of a small Black Hole?
What if Cape Town was riddled with monsters?

Regarding getting ideas. Observe things around you. Write down thoughts that occur to you. Things that are important to you and you think worthy of exploration.

> My last question is, please suggest me a good book on formatting?

The usual reference for this is the latest edition of David Trottier's The Screenwriter's Bible. This is a great resource for beginners
as well as a reference if you've forgotten a good way to format some element.

I don't often deal with agents but I've worked with a lot of directors and producers who have that reputation.

When someone gets mad and yells, it's for one of two reasons--

1. You really did fuck up and they want to make sure everyone else learns the same lesson so that they don't make the same mistake. I saw this happen once where a director asked the on-set editor to cut together the day's scene after wrap. The editor realized there were 5 alts on a line so he didn't edit anything and went home. In the morning, the director wanted to see how the previous scene played before shooting the new stuff. He yelled at the editor for 10min nonstop to make sure everyone knew that you have to do your homework, even if you have to do 5 versions of it. The editor was experienced and should have known better. Another time, I was told to stand next to the director in a loud set and repeat what he said word-for-word into the walkie. I did as I was told because I was new and he yelled at me because it was annoying. He's right, it was.
   
2. They don't know what they want and they're mad about it or covering it up. This is pretty common and usually happens when their complaint is non-specific. The key is to learn when to ask for clarification or when to just fuck off for a little while and disappear. A director might complain about a setup and insist that it be re-done to buy himself time to figure out how to shoot it. A producer might make up vague little lies nitpicking something because they aren't yet able to pay you for it. If it's done and they're happy, then they owe you money. If they're not, they can delay.
   
   Mostly, don't worry about it. Try to find ways to be helpful and do tasks that your superiors don't want to do. They'll wind up giving you more and more and you'll learn and grow. If you do get stuck under someone who's truly irrational or terribly organized, stick it out for a while. Everyone else knows that they're a nightmare and once you've learned stuff and have gotten truly useful, they'll happily pick you up and quietly commiserate. Whatever you do, don't badmouth anybody. You never know who's friends with whom.
   
   Story time: A buddy of mine is an illustrator and really into comics. His last summer of college, he got an internship with a reknown comic artist. All summer he did little menial jobs with a great attitude. At the end, the illustrator invited him out to a lunch with a bunch of his friends. They got to talking about comics and costume design. My friend chimed in about how terrible Nightwing's costume is and how that whole character is a pox on the Batman franchise-- he really went off. No one said a word, no one stopped him, they just let him go. When he was done, the conversation continued politely. A year later, he graduated and emailed the illustrator but didn't get any response. He couldn't get a call back from any of his contacts. It was two years before he realized that the creator and designer of Nightwing was sitting at that table. He called-- years later-- to apologize. The illustrator was really nice and gracious about it but just wrapped up the conversation and hung up.
   
   By far the best book on the business side of film is Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, written by the guys who did Reno 911. Their central thesis is that when you're brought onto a project, your job is to help the producer keep their job. They're going to hire whoever they think is going to help them keep their job and if you're able to do that consistently, you'll always get re-hired. Writing scripts that are actually good is just a bonus. The book's really funny and super short. Well worth it.
   
   Buena suerte!

Using 25 cent words alienates you from your audience. You won't ever be an incredible story teller if a good portion of your audience needs a dictionary to decipher your speaking.

As for actual advice, don't use "thinking/feeling" verbs. If you need to talk about what a character is thinking,/feeling talk about it in analogy or better yet, just describe the thought process without saying outright that the character is thinking.

Part two, work within a structure. Syd Field's "Screenplay' is a good jumping off point when you want to learn about 3 act structure. There are plenty of others out there, but basically you want every interaction to build the story and it should follow a good narrative path that has consequences and is linear enough for the audience to follow.

If you are planning on doing this in public and/or with friends, be prepared to improvise. As a story teller, you are the actor of all the parts. You have to be the one that connects with them. So.if you see them getting bored, be flexible enough to change things up. You may have a good spiel down that you memorized and are reciting, but overall that feels phony unless it's in your own type of voice. Remember that the improvisation should still follow the structure.

For better inspiration, I suggest listening to pretty much any standup comic. Their job is telling stories. Henry Rollins is also quite good for actual stories. He's super charismatic and engaging. A good, live musician can do it as well, but in my experience you'd have to head towards the folk scene. I would suggest Arlo Guthrie for that. You may not like his music but his storytelling is incredibly engaging.

Please let me stop you.

As I did the same because of Mega64...5 years ago. Flash forward to this past spring where I graduated from broadcasting school, moved to LA, interned, got fucked over, moved back to my original state got a last minute offer and moved back to LA within a month. It is not easy. College will not make it any easier. Film and TV really only exist in LA or NYC. It's extremely hard to find work anywhere else. Mega64 is a group of guys who got lucky by finding an audience online that comes back every week to give them love and views. Going to school for broadcasting only threw me into a already over saturated market. What I learned most in LA is: a friend who went to NYU told me this as I was an assistant editor for him for a month, "any dummy can edit, it's the motion graphics where the money is." so with that I say go to school for graphic design with a focus in motion graphics. Not only will you get a degree from a place that values you, you can work at an agency in any city...anywhere. The people I interned over the summer were all self taught by youtube and books. That's all it takes in filmmaking is experience; going to broadcasting school did nothing in that category for me. I had to research, network and go out of my way to keep up with NYU/Florida State film school big leagues HOWEVER unlike them my college debt will only take 5-10 years to pay off. NYU(not Florida State, holy shit their tuition is cheap and their program is amazing so if you're in florida GO THERE! Otherwise read the rest of this)'s tuition will follow you past your death. Editing/filmmaking is much like painting or any other creative outlet, it takes time and the more you do it the better you get; the more you work with people who are better than you; the better you get; the more hungry you are for opportunity the better you get.

Some books I recommend for pursuing your interest in anything creative further:

In The Blink of An Eye

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential

And some helpful links in what it's going to take. You can't learn everything in college, it's only a gate to your journey that opens the day you graduate and enter the real world.

Ash Thorp - Steps On A Creative Path

Say No To Spec

Fuck You, Pay Me

Here's what film school taught me: How to order my own DSLR, tripod, memory cards, case and a second lens. How to download the creative cloud and pay for it using a student license. How to play with Avid but not really learn how to edit in avid. How to make shitty short films so you get that out of your system and never try to make some deep bullshit story ever again, you're 21 years old you have no life experience stop throwing 20 minute films about pills down other peoples throats. How to understand 3 point lighting. How to waste money on courses for information I could of gotten off research. Now for the good stuff I got out of going to college: friends, mentors, experiences, memories, and chances to work(without pay). I was able to learn how to get burned but I was also more driven than the other students in my program. It's all about drive, and Mega64 has an unstoppable drive that's why they've been successful for the last 10+ years in keeping interest alive. You gotta take that inspiration that drive to want and keep moving forward with you to the future. Let mega64 be your inspiration but for the love of god don't waste your money, talent or time on broadcasting school.

Dear guy in the first half of this note,

Here's your fucking problem, asshole: you're a self-centered shitheel who only writes for himself. Want to know how I know this? Because you're bitching about the one aspect of editing that requires the least amount of patience and provides the greatest benefit to readability: spelling and punctu-fuck-you-ation.

Grammar Nazis, jerks or not, are providing a public fucking service. I'm glad you're pissed off. You should be. However, if you're getting a complex, it's not because they're Nazis, it's because you're a shitty student.



Dear guy asking for help,

Great to hear you're interested in improving your ability to communicate. On one hand, it is as easy as having a conversation. On the other, it's really not. Without non-verbal cues and cliches to communicate your meaning and subtext, it becomes easy to write in a way that feels stilted or transmits ideas you don't intend. I recommend continuing to read the authors you like, but start keeping an eye on syntax and structure. That's really the best way to keep sharp. You'll be able to learn which rules persist because they work well (using dashes rather than parentheses, for instance) and which can be broken for the sake of an aesthetic or readership (i.e., Cormac McCarthy's phobia about double-quoting dialog). The rules aren't as strict as you might have been led to believe, but you'll find in time that you respect those stronger rules more for a simple reason: they just work, no matter what you're communicating.

For composition, I recommend William K. Zinsser's On Writing Well. It's a pleasurable read and useful for all but the very best and most experienced writers (and maybe them as well).

For story craft, I recommend Bob McKee's Story and Stephen King's On Writing. The former is nigh fucking indispensable; the second, just gratifying to read.

For spelling, Merriam-Websters and practice.

For punctuation, just be sufficiently considerate of your readers to google the rule you're not sure about.

Thanks for posting this. I hope my 2 cents help.

My degree was only in Film, which was heavily spent on theory, which at the time I thought was stupid. I wanted to learn the tools.

Now I realize that it's actually a lot more important to understand how and why things work(the kuleshov effect, editing theories, story archetypes) because the tools are always changing(at an insane rate too). Learning these theories and studying the past gives you a better "eye" and more inspiration to pull from.

So you can take those ideas/theories you learned in film school and apply them to almost any visual medium. I was already using After Effects and Photoshop outside of class(heavily) and I originally wanted to be an editor. So eventually I just cutup a reel of all the animations I was doing in my free-time. Luckily learning all those techniques and devouring tons of other material and reels allowed me to create a shitty but short reel(nobody wants to watch 2 minutes of garbage animation).

It was enough to get me an internship, which lead to my first advertising job, which lead to my second job in a much higher paying field. In-order to keep up and progress I basically just bought a bunch of textbooks on animation and design.

I didn't read all of the books, I just got what I needed from them and moved on. Online communities are incredibly helpful as well. You can learn everything you need about design, animation, and even film online. Just create a good portfolio.


And I'd just like to clarify animation is a pretty broad term, technically I'm in the middle of design, animation, and video. I've worked on commercials, installations, and explainer videos and I'd like to eventually get into title sequences like the Bond intros or True Detective titles.


I'd recommend picking up these books.

Animators Survival Guide

Design for Motion

Animated Storytelling

Also start learning some of the tools. All of the adobe programs are heavily used, specifically After Effects, and some 3D programs like Cinema4D are helpful. As with anything it's good to get the fundamentals down. People don't realize how much animation there is in their daily lives. From apps to games to TV shows. You can carve out a niche in anyone of those spaces.

Well, as a freshman in art school who has also had a few years in the real world I can offer some perspective. (BTW, my real world experence consists of street portraiture, landscapes and portraits by commission for about two years before going to school)..

You were probably the best painter/drawer in your school, but now you go to school with a bunch of others like you. Most everyone else is talented and if they don't appear talented it is likely they will blow you away in something like photography, or collage, or some other media with which you've never had much practice. So the field has been leveled and the only real difference between good and bad work is the amount of time you spend on it. There will be students who blow you away every week, and they spend more time on it than anyone else. There are students who suck on projects every week, and they spend very little time on their work.

Now, it is easy to tell who will be able to get work after graduating. Those that keep up their pace and keep working harder and getting better, they might have a fighting chance. A lot, and I mean a lot of people seem to plateau. Even more important than talent or skill is networking. I don't mean building a network of buddies, but talking to teachers, getting internships, doing freelance work, winning awards in your field, getting into exhibits, having a website, keeping contact with people you meet. Your network is a huge part of how you will achieve after you graduate, so try and get an internship as soon as possible.

For whatever reason, many of the students smoke waaaay too much pot and party waaaay too much. They place a lot of importance on their friends and having a boyfriend or girlfriend. Its a lot like any other school in that way.


As far as things you can do before going to school. If I were you I'd get some of the basic writing or english courses done at a local community college over the summer. That stuff takes up too much time and can really fuck up your art if you have to spend a lot of time thinking about paper writing. And if you are going to be in animation I suggest you read Animators Survival Kit because it is a good read. It has helped with my illustrations.

Even if you are going into animation. Your freshman year will likely consist of a lot of drawing in charcoal or pencil or whatnot

tldr; the playing field has leveled, because now you are among others just as good as you. time to build a network and start losing sleep. read Animators Survival Kit.

TL;DR: A 70D package with everything you need is about $1350 on amazon. Skip the Point and shoot, don't worry about 4K yet, and lighting is important.

This Canon 70D package is about $150 out of your price range, but you have pretty much everything you would need: Camera, Lens, 32GB Class 10 SD Card, and a Rode Mic.

I would skip the point and shoot all together to be honest: your Cellphone already fulfills whatever you would want out of a point and shoot, as well as the GoPro.

The 70D features an articulating screen, 1080p Automatic and manual video exposure, Kelvin scale white balancing, and so on. Knowing how to use these features, such as manual exposure and white balancing are extremely important to the film making process, and a firm grasp of these elements will only make your videos better and more professional. For further reading on exposure, read this, or for Kelvin scale White balancing, read this.

As a plus, the 70D is the go to camera for cinematographers to preview lighting on set while they wait for the Cinema Camera to be built. (Movies use cameras that require accessories mounted on the camera in order to work, such as external monitors, External recorders, wireless video, etc.)

The lens bundled with the kit is honestly shite, but you can still get great picture out of it, and of course going with a canon DSLR means that you can save up for higher quality glass further down the line, and future proof yourself when you want to upgrade the body. Plus, Canon mount is an Film industry standard lens mount along with PL, B4, and C, but you can't really get a sub 5k camera with any of those mounts.

Now, the main drawback of this package compared to others in the $1-4k price range is the video resolution: 1920x1080p, or HD. Most cameras in this price range are moving towards 4K platforms (around 4 times 1080p). Consider, however, that most people watching youtube videos usually are looking at 720p Laptop monitors with shitty bit rates due to youtube compression. 4K is still a few years from being a household standard resolution, as most UHD 4K displays are extremely expensive. The big two 4k prosumer cameras right now are the A7s II, and the GH4, and they aren't all that great yet: the A7s, while being used in hollywood for interviews and as a B-Camera, is only really good at interviews and low light. The GH4, on the other hand uses a Micro 4/3rds sensor, which is much too small for most professional use, though it occasionally pops up on ultra low budget jobs. In a few years, Canon might develop a body that does 4K well: The 5D MK IV has 4k video, for example, but the way in which the camera does it creates all sorts of problems that ultimately make video shooting with it unusable. Further down the line, of course, you can upgrade to an A7s or GH4 and adapt them to a canon mount.

Another thing you should consider after buying your camera is saving up for some lighting. This is the most important part of shooting, before the camera and the lens. For now, some house hold lamps can work, but in the future, you should consider getting some video lights. I started with Home Depot Clamp lights, but eventually went to cheap LED fixtures, and now Tungsten Fresnels, HMIs, and Fluorescent sources. Lighting can be tough to grasp, but if you read The Set Lighting Technician's Handbook by Harry Box, then you will quickly have enough knowledge to become a hollywood electrician.

Good luck, and I hope your Knee gets better!

Edits: sentence structure.
Source: Camera Technician, and Gaffer

My favorite lighting-related resources are:

• The Visual Story. This book is just amazing. It's about how people interpret everything you could possibly put in a frame. Empowering. It's not so much directly about lighting, but lighting is a tool you will use to accomplish what the book describes.
  
  
• Set Lighting Technician's Handbook, every time I read in here I learn something new. I still haven't read it all (It's HUGE) but it's so worth the money. Gives you the techical knowledge to make the best decisions on set, as well pre-production. Needs to be paired with general cinematography-knowledge.
  
  
• Matthew Scott's blog. Great for inspiration and new knowledge.
  
  
• Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know Broad, but nicely covers a lot of the things you can do as a filmmaker to tell the story. I remember thinking everyone in my film school HAD to read this after I finished it. Even though some parts weren't very relevant to me. It's perfect for a director, but you say you are a videographer so I'm sure you will find much use of it as well.
  
  For basic lighting YouTube is your friend.

It is a tough industry in many ways, and built around some very specific cities. One decision you should make is what exactly you want to do in film. If you want to be an artist and create your own films, you don't necessarily need to go to film school or even work your way up in the industry. There is lots of cheap gear available. Chances are you have more than enough film making gear right now in your phone and PC, more than you could have dreamed of affording 20+ years ago- when film was film.

So if you want to work in the industry, it will mean 'paying your dues' and might mean never getting to make a film on your own - schools, training programs, etc... are a good idea. You might be poor for awhile, you might have a job so busy and high pressure that at the end of the day more film work (even on your own dream projects) might be the last thing you are interested in doing. Another approach is to come up with a solid day job outside of the industry so that you can pursue your own creative pursuits on the side until such time as they pay off. If you have to count on film making to pay the bills, you would be very fortunate to direct corporate videos and cooking shows and stuff you might not really feel. You will be so close to your dream, but so far away at the same time and that can be frustrating - depending on your goals. If you want to make films on your own terms, you can and should start right away. Don't feel bad if the first 5 or 10 of them are terrible. You are working the bugs out. Read Lumet, a bit of Mamet, and some Rodriguez. Watch a lot of Making of docs on Youtube.

​

Robert Rodriguez wrote El Mariachi with a bit of a brilliant approach. He listed all the interesting ('expensive') things he had access to through his friends (a pit bull, a bus) and incorporated those in his script so it looked a little more big budget. If you write a helicopter landing on a bridge, you would have to pay for it. If your grandma has access to a tennis court and your uncle has a dirt bike - write that instead, and you could pull it off for free. Don't get caught up buying gear, use what you have. You don't need to use lacking gear as an excuse for not making something, and don't need to use buying gear as a replacement for being creative. I have seen that a lot in film, photography, and music. You could hypothetically make a great film for free as a flip book on a pad of paper, and if you do you could show that to people that would help pay for more gear if you need it. Anyway, ramble ramble - free advice is usually worth what you pay for it. Good luck!

And done!!!

1. Blue the best for obvious reason.
   
   
2. Summer what’s better than beer pong? Pool beer pong.
   
   
3. Usual Food the best because it’s a local thing.
   
   
4. Gift for another for my love of Disney animation.
   
   
5. Book to read great insight into the human race.
   
   
6. Cheap because yummy.
   
   
7. For the doge because adorable.
   
   
8. Useless yet so awesome.
   
   
9. Movie because it’s my favorite.
   
   
10. Zombie to destroy their brains.
    
    
11. Life changing to adapt to in work life.
    
    
12. Add on because my kids are always getting sick.
    
    
13. Fandom because it’s an awesome show and these are in apparently.
    
    
14. Pricey for when the lights go out.
    
    
15. Sharks because it’s badass and my daughter would love it.
    
    
16. Good smells one of my favorite scents.
    
    
17. Childhood feels spent so many playing games on this.
    
    
18. Writers was helpful for me once upon a time.
    
    
19. Obsessed my life of Disney is strong right now.
    
    
20. Weird because lol.

Draw draw draw. Look up and follow a WIDE variety of artists and their social media. Look at old paintings and news photography (you get some really great reference in genuine emotion in a lot of that stuff, but it can be very intense so beware).

Watch out for colleges that are "WE graduate lots of artists who ALL MAKE IT BIG!" There are a LOT of scam schools out there and you can find cheaper better teaching environments like community colleges or Atelier's. These are generally more geared towards the traditional ways of illustration, but what you learn would help you establish more believable worlds to put your characters in.

A couple of resources I can recommend are Framed Ink
and a illustration group called One Fantastic Week.

And ThatOneDruid brings up a good point. Don't look at comics being your sole job as for many artists its not. Even the currently working artists who are employed do so on a contractual basis and often need to do other gigs on the side. Whether those other gigs are other full time jobs or just other contract jobs making ads, you're looking at a lot of hustle. Not bad if you can keep it up, just keep that in mind (especially if you're going alone and don't have a partner who can provide the more stable stuff like insurance and income.)

This is also very true if you're trying to do the whole indie/kickstarter thing as its really nice to go and put out your own stuff into the world, you have to do all the hard work of finding your audience and staying consistent with content.

And as always, you can start putting your stuff out there now on any social media site you'd like. Just draw draw draw and good luck!

Do yourself the biggest favor possible and pick up a copy of In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch; that will teach you the core concepts of editing and audience psychology and I believe it to be best and most enjoyable. Murch is the master, and his discussion of old film editing techniques, as well as modern nonlinear systems, will not only teach you a lot of terminology, but also the history of it (which should help in understanding it).

Then, you can move on to video tutorials specific to the editing software you are using. They are ALL over youtube, or if you are willing to spend a little money, lynda.com is great and will be much more in depth. For your application, I would suggest Adobe Premiere or FCPX (despite the complaints filmmakers people have about it, it's because the newest Final Cut has been geared more towards videography). I know others who do professional video work that swear by Vegas Pro, but it just doesn't fit my style, but feel free to look into it. Of course, you can start doing simple things in iMovie or Final Cut Express, but you are going to hit a limitation ceiling fairly quickly.

The reality is that your greatest teacher is going to be experience. Edit as much as you can, develop your craft, and keep things simple and clean until you've mastered basics; then play with bells and whistles. And please, please, please be upfront with people about what you do and do not have experience doing. A lot of what I do is clean up for nonprofits and other groups who had a videographer promise a big product and then couldn't deliver. Then I have to make magic happen and restore faith in the industry. I hope this helps.

Listening to a lot of mixes is certainly a great idea, I didn't even think about DJing for years, I just love music so much, I realized after a while I had a serious collection going and people seemed to like my taste in music.

I started using Virtual DJ without a controller for a LONG time, just putting together mixes with a mouse and keyboard (painful, but it works). I'm always listening to music, always looking in various places for music new and old. Beatport is a great finger on the pulse of electronic music, but certainly don't limit yourself to one place. Did you hear a song, a band or producer you like? Type that shit into pandora and have a listen, you won't find gold every time, but it's a good way to discover new stuff.

My buddies in the IRC channel (look how to access this room on the right hand nav bar dealie, we'd love to talk to you about getting into DJing) are usually linking this book and this one as well to newcomers. I haven't read them myself though.

Your passion for music will drive you forward, just keep listening and do some practice transitions, keep mixing, all the time. The different styles and techniques you can employ in your DJing can be overwhelming, but just focus on the basics. Learn your style, your niche, your SOUND, work on blending tracks and whatever else you want to do will.. present itself in time. Good luck homie and I hope to see you in #r_djs!

Oh man do I have a list for you!

Joe Murray's Creating Animated Cartoons with Character is an amazing read and he gives some information on the creation process for his shows.

Nancy Beiman's Prepare to Board! talks about story development and character creation, but she mostly covers storyboarding in the book. Beiman also has exercises included as you read, so it feels a bit more interactive.

Jean Ann Wright's Animation Writing and Development covers writing for TV animation. Wright talks mainly about how to land a job as a writer for an ongoing show, but he does cover character in the book.

Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino's Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series) talks a bit on character creation for the show and how the show kept evolving until they finally arrived at Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But you shouldn't just stay with finding books on how to create characters for animation. It shouldn't matter if they are animated or not, we need to believe in these characters!

Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing
is my personal favorite on character development. Although this book is mainly about writing a play, Egri covers dialogue, characters, character motivation, and story development perfectly. I keep returning to this book everytime an idea pops into my head. I cannot express how much this book has helped me in creating believable characters and conflicts.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! is a book I have never gotten around to reading, but I feel it worth mentioning as most of my colleagues and friends keep recommending this book back to me.

And again, although you will learn many new things from these books and they will help you view stories and characters more analytically, you won't get better until you start to create more and more characters and stories. You may also start looking for interviews of your favorite creators and look for what they have to say about character.

Hope this helps!

> So what I'm asking is a couple of lots of things. Do you have any sources or exercises that could help with form both short and long form? Is there a way to improve choice-making? Listening exercises? I want them to continue to be great once all of the Seniors leave.

Sounds like they need a GREAT foundation.

Obviously, the new UCB Theater Training Manual is the best overall tool.

PG 20. 33, 38, 41, and 45 are the examples you want.

They should be your Boot Camp Exercises. The second you add new people, or come back from a break, you should have 5-6 hours of these exercizes as fast as possible. Like within a week.

Then after that at your weekly meetings you do one or two of the exercises at the start of each session.

If you want a great team, you need to treat it like a team. Practice, giving everyone the same terminology, and having goals you can reach. Treating it like a club or a fun hangout means there won't be a drive to be the best.

I'm not the best person to be giving advice, but I just dropped out of film school last year (I was only there for a year) and have begun making some progress on my own.

First of all, watch a lot of movies. Literally the only thing I miss about school was having access to so many classic films playing in the theater every weekend. Netflix can be just as good, however. But never stop going to the theater.

Secondly, read. Look up some textbooks that film classes use. I really enjoyed Shot By Shot and On Directing Film, since I want to be a director.

Thirdly, and most importantly. Make films. Try to work on projects all the time. Your projects, your friends projects, random web series that post on facebook asking for free crew members.... it doesn't matter. Stay surrounded by film, because that's another one of film school's biggest strengths. It can be difficult to stay motivated when you don't have a GPA looming over your head.

Again, I'm by no means a success so take my advice however you will. Good luck!

Okay, couldn't find my box, but I managed to dreg up what I remember as far as books go.

This book is a good start for coin magic and sleight of hand in general. Be warned though, the coins you will need for this might be slightly hard to find (silver dollars, half dollars) but is worth it. For whatever reason people think that the bigger the coin, the harder it is to work magic with it. This is false. The bigger the easier and the better looking.

This book is a good start for card magic. Sometimes it is a bit hard to understand (as all books are) but this is pretty simple and will give you some good pointers.

This book is my all time favorite. More card magic, but more advanced than the previous one.

And lastly this book which gives some good tricks, teaches some good things. Much of it is based on props and stage magic, and much of it isn't. A good read.

And lastly some advice: if possible find someone who knows how and is already practiced. That makes it MUCH easier. And stick with it. Once you learn something you never unlearn it. I have not practiced in near 5 years and I can still pick up a deck of cards and mess with them. Learn a few versatile tricks and learn some flourishes. The tricks can fascinate, and the flourishes look pretty, but only when used together does it really blow people's minds.

Okay, first thing to know is that you're not alone. Animation is a pretty time-consuming and daunting skill to try and learn at first, but everyone has to start somewhere - and honestly, drawing skills aside, I think that animation is one of those things where with enough practice you can get the hang of fairly quickly.

I'm guessing you probably aren't out to hear the typical "just keep practicing and you'll get better" so I'll try and stray away from that.

Speaking as a current animation student, the best thing you can do for yourself is to view as many animations from skilled and professional animators as you can.
And I'm not talking just "watching" animations; Sit down and try and critically analyze a piece of animation. Find something where the movement is interesting to you and try and reverse engineer how that animator may have constructed that scene.
After sitting through a bunch of those, find animations from more amateur or beginner animators, could be of your own animations or someone else's. Compare and contrast between what makes these professional animations work and look good, and why these other ones just don't seem to match up.

I've also taken a look at some of your animations and I don't think they're totally awful. It's clear that you're making an effort to show movement and life in the characters, despite your minimal technical understanding.

​

So, educate yourself on the technical side of things.

Read up on the principles of animation, essentially the core rulebook many industry professionals follow when creating animations. Here is a video which has a pretty thorough look at each concept, and here is a considerably shorter summary of each principle with short examples.

The Animator's Survival Kit is one of the most popular books people recommend to people just starting out in animation - it lays out a lot of the key parts of the 12 principles in deeper detail and focuses a considerable amount of the book to timing and walk cycles.
Here's also a playlist to the book in, more or less, a simplified video form.

Some other books you might want to look into are Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair, and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas.

​

As for the program you're using, I found that Adobe is one of the more simpler and intuitive platforms to use when first learning animation that's still considered an industry standard.
Pushing through and learning the program will help you considerably if/when you decide to move on to a more advanced program.

However, if the difficulty of the software is what's keeping you from animating, I'd recommend using flipbooks and indulging in more traditional forms of animation.
Not only will you be developing a skill in an area of animation not many people today seem to be very skilled in, but it'll keep you from being distracted by all the flashy buttons and options on some digital programs.

​

Hang in there man, and keep animating.

Pick up some books on story structure. Save the Cat is a great one--it's about screenwriting but it has a lot of good advice that applies to writing novels as well. Joseph Campbell is a good call for this too, so you've got a good title there. I'd google "character building in novels" and check out /r/worldbuilding too, if that's your thing.

But once you read up on story structure, start practicing. Seriously, when you set out you're going to be horrible at wordsmithing (meaning you won't be able to string together beautiful sentences, and you probably won't be able to get the perfect imagery on paper) but that's ok! As a beginner, now is the time to focus on structure. Write yourself some really bad books where you just explore how to craft a plot, how to build characters, how to make a world... and the more really bad books you write, the closer the decent book is, and the amazing book.

The most solid advice is definitely just "sit down and start writing", but if you want to take advantage of being a newbie then ignoring craft for structure (at first) is the way to go about it, definitely.

Good luck! It's a great journey.

/u/Goodwood2794 - welcome to the world of filmmaking! The basic how-to book I recommend for new filmmakers is ["How to Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck", which you can download to Kindle] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051NHJFU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0051NHJFU&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) [Referral Link].

This book was written by Hollywood writer/director [Steve Stockman] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1870021/), who directed Sally Field in [Two Weeks] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TV1ST2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TV1ST2&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) [Referral Link], and is a great introduction to visual storytelling.

Here is the trailer: http://vimeo.com/24147165

Reading Steve's book will save you a lot of time and money - and make your movies better right out of the gate.
Once you've read Stockman's book, some people might recommend books about cinematography, lighting and editing, but I've learned more from books from successful filmmakers who have actually made profitable movies, such as [Referral Links]:

• [Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player] (http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Crew-23-Year-Old-Filmmaker/dp/0452271878/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&keywords=Rebel%20Without%20a%20Crew&qid=1462414414&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) - by [Robert Rodriguez] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001675/)
  
  
• [Filmmaking: Direct Your Movie from Script to Screen Using Proven Hollywood Techniques] (http://www.amazon.com/Filmmaking-Direct-Script-Hollywood-Techniques-ebook/dp/B009W328QK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) - by [Jason Tomaric] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866388/) (This book was written by [Jason Tomaric] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866388/), who made [Time and Again] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006AZ4OQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0006AZ4OQ&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) for less than $2000 and is now an Emmy winning Hollywood director)
  
  
• If you can find it, I also recommend Tomaric's [The Power Filmmaking Kit: Make Your Professional Movie on a Next-to-Nothing Budget] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/024081021X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=024081021X&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20). This book is out of print, but is more of a practical "workbook" for movie production than Jason's other book.
  
  
• If you're on a budget and can't afford any of the other suggestions, I recommend [11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie: or, How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros - which is $0.99 for Kindle] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009YKJ5UI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B009YKJ5UI&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) - by [Vince Rocca] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1455690/), I have read this book - and it is worth a lot more than I paid for it.
  
  I have not read this one, but [The Reel Truth] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MQLZKS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003MQLZKS&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) is next on my list - it consists of interviews with over 100 successful indie filmmakers who detail the mistakes they made - so the reader can avoid them. It is extremely well reviewed - literally 95% out of 89 reviewers on Amazon have given it five stars.
  
  Hope this is helpful and happy reading!

There are definitely guidelines. Some are strict, but many of them can be bent.

Your script says "awesome as fuck". I don't know what that means. I need you to explain it. What makes it awesome? That's how you have to spell things out in a script.

But great work on hammering out a screenplay! If you're interested, here are some good books on screenwriting:

• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
  
• The Screenwriter's Workbook
  
• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Essentials of Screenwriting
  
• The Dramatic Writer's Companion
  
• Save The Cat!
  
  The line you mention from Django is really good. We see that it is a stereotypical western town. We all know exactly what that looks like because we gave seen those millions of towns in westerns before. For your line, we all have different interpretations as to what "awesome as fuck" is.
  
  Did you use Celtx? If not, try it. Great free screenwriting software.

Starting out is an awesome advantage; not yet set in your ways you can find your own style.

While it is true some complex styles can take a lot of time, pixel art can be super simple and often less is more - like lessmilks's games

Working from something is easier than all at once so keep iterating - i.e. start with your current squares and add just squash and stretch to anticipate motion, or eyes to indicate move direction.

Pedro Medeiros has some great pixel art tutorial gifs

An free browser based sprite editor

Using a dedicated program with layers, pallettes and lighting control makes it much easier - this list of pixel art programs might help (Asesprite is great)

At the other extreme if you need lots of animation use a pixel art shader for blender3D
Or use some of the multitude of Free and Open Source pixel art at OpenGameArt and mod it for your needs.

Submit your stuff to /r/pixelart and request constructive criticism.

The Animator's Survival Kit is a great book (& on youtube)on the art of making drawings come alive as is The illusion of life

Look at spritesheets to see how others break animation down into frames.

Jan Willem of Vlambeer has a great talk on tricks to 'juice up your games'

• Cheap good tripod on Amazon $20 Dolica ST-300 57-Inch Lightweight Tripod
  
  
• Amazon $16 - The Screenwriter's Bible, 6th Edition: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script (Expanded & Updated) 6th Edition - i think is one of the better basic books to explain plots and script outlines with many many examples; plus, it's an easy read
  
  
• Search facebook for local filmmakers groups to join (here's the searchlist I found of groups on fb in your area: https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=seattle%2C%20wa%20filmmakers
  
  
• Checkout Videocopilot.net and creativecow.com
  
• Setup a youtube and vimeo account. Checkout vimeo's Staff pick vids
  
• Other cool youtube channels to checkout:
  
• thevfxbro
  
• Action Movie Kid
  
• Patrick Boivin - makes insanely good stop motion vids that your son will love such as this one: Transformers-Jazz with a General problem
  
• One of my all time favorite small-time youtube filmmaker F.C.Rabbath
  
  
• show all time great shorts like:
  
• BOBBY LOVES MANGOS PART I
  
• Covert Operatives - he will love this GI Joe stop motion one
  
• MOMENTOS - great short film for LG tv's - most people haven't seen it
  
  

Note: Obviously this list is incomplete, if anyone has suggestions please add to this. Also this list is not specifically for kevleemur, but for anyone looking to learn about movie stuffs

Online material is nice, but there are many great and more reliable resources that come in these old fashioned book things.

General

Shot by Shot

MasterShots

The Visual Story


Directing

On Screen Directing
(may be hard to find)

On Directing Film by David Manet

Cinematography/ Lighting/ Camera/ On Set Learning

The ASC Manual (some earlier editions come in one volume which is nice)

Creative Control by Michael Hofstein

The Set Lighting Technicians Handbook

Painting With Light (John Alton's book. A little outdated but still a good read).

Reflections

The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video by Tom Schroeppel (very simple, a good start)

The Grip Book

The Camera Assistant's Manual

Cinematography: Theory and Practice



Producing

Creative Producing From A to Z by Myrl A Schreibman

Scheduling and Budgeting Your Film by Paula Landry

Editing

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch (Sound designer and editor from Apocalypse Now----EXCELLENT)



Screenwriting

Story

Screenplay the Foundations of Screenwriting






ONLINE RESOURCES:


http://www.rondexter.com/

http://cinematography.net/

http://www.rogerdeakins.com/

http://www.arri.com/

http://www.mole.com/

http://www.panavision.com/home

http://www.filmtools.com/

Aside from familiarizing yourself with knowledge and technique the best you can without being involved on set, one of the best things you can do is read up and become as knowledgeable as you can with gear that you will eventually encounter, which is why I listed the last four links. Even if you do plan on going into producing or directing, it is always helpful to understand lighting and camera and why the people working with you need the things they do.


GO LEARN THINGS!

First off, read anything by Carl Jung. His theories on archetypes and the collective unconscious form the groundwork upon which not only games, but the entire modern entertainment industry are built.

Basically Jung argues that there is a collective set of symbols and ideas that all humans, regardless of culture or upbringing will respond to. Understanding these symbols, and building your game around them - either as mechanics or story - allows you to influence how the player will respond.

Jung: A Very Short Introduction is a pretty easy way to get started. After you read that I'd suggest getting into the meat of Jung's own words with The Portable Jung (coincidentally edited by Joseph Campbell)

And with that, you should also read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. He takes Jung's ideas, and shows the specific symbols used in the Hero's Journey - one of the most common story types. People talk about the Hero's Journey all the time - but it's a really important concept to understand if you're doing any sort of creative works. Here are two quick video primers on it:

A more serious one: Ted Ed: What Makes a Hero

A more awesome one: Glove and Boots: The Hero's Journey :)

If you want to go further on the narrative route I'd also suggest The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. He takes the Hero's Journey and shows how it is just one of several different plot archetypes, all of which have their own internal path, rules, and idiosyncrasies.

Now, in case you're thinking "Why are you sharing these books about narrative with me? Games are not stories!" remember that people have been responding to stories for all time - and good storytellers are masters at making people feel the desired emotion at the desired time.

Therefore I'd also direct you to Story By Robert McGee as well as Poetics by Aristotle. Both of these books look at story in a mechanical sense, and explain the precise methods storytellers (both ancient Greek ones and modern Hollywood ones) use to evoke emotions in the audience. These principles almost directly translate to game design.

After that I'd suggest looking at Chris Crawford's list of books all game designers should read. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of the list on the internet, but it's at the end of his book Chris Crawford on Game Design

Surgical video editor and animator here.

HungryLikeTheWolf99 just dropped some science. The emphasis on organization can not be understated.

To this I would add:

• Learn the keyboard shortcuts for your software, they speed up your workflow significantly and speed is always of the utmost importance. 3-point editing is what's up.
  
  
• Know your codecs and file formats, learn about compression algorithms, linear workflow, stereoscopic and whatever else you hear about but don't use or don't think you need to know currently: when all of a sudden someone asks for/about it, knowing will make you look like a pro even if you've never touched it.
  
  
• Check out "Framed in Ink" by Marcos Mateu-Mestre, best storyboarding book I've come across and breaks down good cinematography fundamentals beautifully.
  
  
• Start getting your honorary-MBA-via-the-internet now. That is to say, dig deep into Google on the business stuff. Learn as much as you can about contracts and licensing agreements, marketing and the like. "Selling the Invisible" by Harry Beckwith is a great read for starters.
  
  Good luck.

CGTalk is a great forum for cg and animation of all types, but it's more aimed towards professionals and becuase of that it can be pretty intimidating for beginners. It should be in your bookmarks any way!

Polycount is another great forum that specializes in game art. Unlike CGTalk it is a lot more beginner friendly and a great learning resource.

As for tutorials. In my personal experience there are a few good free ones out there, but the majority are rather lackluster. Most of the time you will have to pay for a DVD or a book. Digital Tutors' introduction DVD's are fantastic, The Gnomon Workshop is great too but geared more towards intermediate and professional users.

I'm not sure exactly what you want to learn because Computer Animation can mean a lot of things so I'm not sure what specific tutorials or resources I need to point you at. But if it's animation you want to do then The Animators Survival Kit is a book that should be in the shelf of anyone who even considers doing any form of animating.

Pretty much all vinyl. It's the most fun. But, despite having spun a few parties, it's just a hobby for me, which makes it way easier to justify the format (and a big part of the fun is digging for old house and disco records, and finding gems in the dollar bins).

Ellaskins was pretty helpful when I was starting although I think that just as helpful as his actual videos is his takeaway message, "practice and enjoy" - just gotta stick with it and get the feel for it. Also, I had the book How to DJ Right which helped me visualize some things early on.

As for BPM, I finally got around to putting BPM stickers on my disco collection because the BPMs are so all over the place that I got tired of thinking "oh yeah this track would go great next" and it turns out to be like 20 bpm slower once I start attempting to mix it. I haven't bothered with my house collection because it's all in a similar range and I just have a good idea of which records are "slower" (like 115-120bpm) "medium" or "fast" (closer to 135), and so as long as you are not grabbing an outlier, with practice, you should be able to figure out about how much quicker or slower the new record you're trying to mix in is, and you just get a feel for pitch slider position. I also generally try not to go over/under about 4% on the pitch slider especially if the track has vocals (for something more like, say, techno, I think this matters less). I'm sure lots of people have different opinions on that, just giving you mine.

I have two different pieces of advice but I am no professional by any means, I've only done scriptwriting properly for 3 years now and still learning a lot as I go.

Firstly, I would just say write, keep writing and as you write, you learn and develop your skills, but don't neglect the essential parts of what creates a script: Logline, outlines, character description profiles, beat sheets and so on that help hone and give your script depth.

Another is to start working on smaller-length scripts first before pursuing any feature length script and practice the different narrative structures, but this in a way contradicts what I previously said about just writing. I'm writing my first feature length this year after 3 years of short pieces and glad I took that time, but at the same time, nothing helps than to just write over and over.

One thing I would say is to definitely develop the story you want to create with the planning stages before writing (unless you have scenes in mind that you can write down, then go for it), but everyone has a different process and I take bits from everything I have mentioned here.

It's entirely up to you and what helps you at the end of the day, and if you're new to the scene I would recommend a couple of books:


Save the cat and Screenplay are both useful books for all levels and have helped me when it comes to writing. Both fairly popular books so should be easy to purchase/access depending on your region.

​

Good luck with your writing journey!

>I was coming here to say the same damn thing.

​So was I, but I'll actually do it.

Animation degree here. (Really dont need a degree. My professors who worked in the industry said many dont have degrees still to this day, its all about passion and skill... and being willing to work 16 hour days)


Seriously fantastic animation. All 12 principles of animation are represented.

Your bro just needs to keep uploading and making animation. Its essentially a portfolio.

Animation companies dont care if you have a degee. They want a stacked portfolio. With solid animation.

When your bro starts applying for animation jobs. Make sure he has a solid demo reel. A demo reel is only the best animation hes made compiled in one vid. Its the resume for these places. Its all about skill.

Fyi the #1 and #2 books (no particular order) for learning animation and developing it are priceless. My professors stressed these books every year. They were used in 90% of my animation classes.

This book...

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators https://www.amazon.com/dp/086547897X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5JSgDb5GHT9WJ


And this book....

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786860707/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OKSgDbZMMJBVE


This would make an fantastic gift as well for any animator


Tell your bro not to be down about it. The companies dont care about schooling. Skill and passion are all that matters.


Edit: forgot our schools favorite websites!

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/

Cartoon brew keeps animators updated on general cartoons and animation


http://www.11secondclub.com/


We got extra credit for doing the 11 second club. You got an A for that semester in one class if you could break the top animations that month. Few students did that.

Hey that's awesome!

I'm currently in school to be a professional animator and I strongly recommend The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams:

http://www.amazon.ca/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

It might be a little beyond what you're trying to achieve but it's super helpful in technique and theory to help make the animation process easier.

In terms of programs there are lots of tutorials online and on YouTube that can help you with functionality. In our program we use designated drawing tablets with screens (Cintiq5) but for personal animation at home I use my Intuos4, both by Wacom.

If you're thinking of getting a tablet you might consider the cheaper Bamboo by Wacom but I personally recommend the Intuos line as the screens are larger and much more sensitive, as well as have shortcut buttons on the side as well as an adjustable touch zoom wheel.

Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

YES!!! this is the book you have right?

My boyfriend and our friends do the same thing every sunday!

For the season premier we made onions in gravy, Roasted Aurochs with Leeks, and turnips in butter- for dessert we did frozen blueberries with the creme bastard! lol

Last night we cooked the beef and bacon pie. SO delicious. Definitely one of my favorite cookbooks. However there were a few spices that i still have found that I couldnt include in certain recipes.. like Grains of Paradise. I went to 5 different markets...3 of them had never even heard of grains of paradise. =(

edit- wow! I had no idea that I can use cardamom. I read that GoP was a mixture of different kinds of pepper with citrus notes. I was using a mixed pepper mill and a tiny bit of orange zest. But if I can use cardamom- then it makes things a lot easier! THANKS EVERYONE !!!!!!!

I'd start with Save the Cat because it's a fun read and does a great job of laying down the basic structure without over-complicating things.


After you've got that down I'd move on to something a bit more theoretical. I would highly recommend The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. It's about playwriting but the structure is similar and it really impressed upon me the importance of structuring a plot around a character and not the other way around.


I'd also recommend The Sequence Approach as a supplemental structure to the traditional 3 Act structure. The book basically breaks a screenplay into a number of goal-oriented sequences that help guide you towards a satisfying resolution.


I'd keep Story by Robert McKee and Screenplay by Syd Field around for references, but they are more like text books for me and not really inspiring.


One of my professors in grad school wrote a book called The Story Solution based on his own interpretation of story structure. Similar to the sequence approach, he breaks out a screenplay into 23 'hero goal sequences' that keep your story grounded and moving forward, while ensuring that your hero is making progress and completing his character arc.


Also, in answer to your beat question: A beat is the smallest block of measurable plot. a collection of beats make a scene, a collection of scenes makes a sequence, a collection of sequences make an act, a collection of acts make a narrative. Every beat of your screenplay needs to serve the premise in some way or you end up with a bloated script that will drag. Many times writers will actually write 'a beat' into their script to show that there is silence or a pause that is significant to the plot. An example might be a brief pause before a character lies to another character.

https://www.amazon.ca/Sick-Little-Monkeys-Unauthorized-Stimpy/dp/1593932340

here's a book about the making of ren and stimpy. it's mostly about ren and stimpy. but it touches on some things... including sending work overseas to be animated in korea and sending people over to Rough Draft, the company that animates the simpsons (i think still?) and many other shows. the ren and stimpy crew sent people over there because there's a language barrier, and it's Very difficult to get the Performance out of someone who doesn't speak the language. you can't tell when and where to accent words with, say, an eyebrow raise... so you have to have Everything timed out in advance and it allows for very little improvisation from the creative team.

there's a ton of information about animation history out there but not so many documentaries... a lot of sucking off of Frank and Ollie and the disney "9 old men" for having "figured out" animation rules back in the day (as if they were the only ones doing it). -- they released a book called the illusion of life https://www.amazon.ca/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707 that talked about the early days of disney film.

animation used to be this wildly experimental thing. they first were funny rubber hose things, then people started trying to tell better stories and then the disney crew tried to make you REALLY sympathize for the characters by really focussing on "pathos." to this day, every fucking Cal-Arts student has pathos drilled into their fucking head like it's the only way to tie your shoes.

meanwhile, the wb team kept it loose, they were doing animations to show before movies, set to some of the jovial tunes in their music library. they called them looney tunes. and after 15 years of making them, they Also started to get quite good. John Kricfalusi (the ren and stimpy creator) wrote a ton about Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones (but mostly clampett) on his highly educational blog here http://johnkstuff.blogspot.ca/

hanna barbera discovered it was way cheaper to just make a well drawn design that's highly graphic so that the appeal wasn't in the movement but in the image. then you could just animate the mouth or the legs, limiting how much drawing you really needed. with this method, animators were able to produce Much more footage.

other studios started up to try and milk the surge of this new artform, and sell toys and cereal with it. there were TONS of Really Shitty cartoons. i mean, look at this shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXd-2gVOZFk

anyway... in the early 90s, disney experienced "a renaissance" with their films. there IS a documentary about that... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeoyRjEiUU it might be on netflix...

disney cartoons became enormously profitable again and animation production kicked into high gear. disney put a ton of money into their tv division and nickelodeon, a rather new company at the time, did the same. but while disney's focus was on their IPs, spinning off pre-existing characters into shows, Nickelodeon needed new material, so they put a HUGE focus on the creators. this of course, attracted creators. Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life... etc... it was a huge wave of highly entertaining new material, and it did well.

of course, in the late 90s, animation had sort of ballooned a little too much and films were kinda missing targets despite Enormous budgets, and 3d was this hot new thing people were curious about...

here we are 20 years later and animation is SO FUCKING PROMINENT... tv, films, streams, games, not to mention medical instruction videos, architectural project development, chinese news lol...

rick and morty is animated in canada though. not korea. so there's that.

There's nothing to it but to do it.

Well, there is a little more to it. Start by watching movies or TV shows or whatever it is you'd like to write. Watch them with a focused, critical eye, in a way you never would have thought before you considered screenwriting. Watch them as if they were pieces carefully constructed by deliberate, talented professionals--they are. Then read up on it. Most writers swear by Save The Cat but a little shopping around will show you all kinds of good material. Go back to the stuff you watch and see how closely it matches up with what you read.

Then, go about outlining your idea. Figure out the essential plot points (there's always debate as to just how many there are and where they belong in the story) and make sure they apply to your idea. Then get some free screenwriting software and get to work.

It's important to always stick to the conventions of screenwriting when you're a beginner. It's a medium that allows a great deal of creativity, but there are so many things that are industry standard for a reason (not just formatting but the placement of inciting incidents, second act turning points, resolutions, character arcs, etc.). Don't go thinking you'll change the industry by breaking all the rules. You're more than likely to end up with a bad script. It's art, but there are rules.

Since you're 15 you have plenty of time to go about it on your own for a few years. Hopefully you'll figure out if you really want to pursue it when it's time to consider schools and internships and the like. But whatever you do, have a blast!

• Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual is usually the first one that people speak highly of. Half of it is theory, and the other half is exercises. I find it the most solid gathering of tactics, but maybe a comparison to other schools would help me understand why their “game” makes them so different.
  
• Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out by Mick Napier is probably the next best one on my list. It personally resonated with me because the idea of “take care of your partner by taking care of yourself” identified one of the less-spoken of but more critical parts of improv. I’ve been in many scenes where the who/what/where slips through the cracks because we were too polite to not make a bold choice and each of us were scared to decide what the scene should be about. If each of us collectively decides individually and “yes, and,” we’re on a really good trajectory.
  
• Improvisation at the Speed of Life: The TJ and Dave Book is my long-form inspiration. You get a lot of mindset here, not as tactical as the others.
  
  Interestingly, this one blog post “How to Be a Better Improviser” is actually a brilliant distillation of the most important concepts.
  
  It goes without saying that without practice reading alone will have limited utility.

Definitely not too late -- I moved to Los Angeles when I was 23 to write and now I'm a professional illustrator / artist. Major change but it can be done if you're willing to put in the work!

When you say "3D," are you looking to be a modeler, a concept designer, an animator, or something else?

Drawing skills are not going to hurt you when learning 3D. Learning how to draw is not going to "mess things up" in any way. If you're a modeler or concept designer, being able to visualize forms in three dimensions is a must. If you're an animator, understanding flow and gesture is a must.

If you want to learn basic form drawing and sketching, check out Scott Robert's Gnomon DVD. It's really essential for learning basic form drawing, perspective, and line techniques (how to freehand straight lines and curves):
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/323/Basic-Perspective-Form-Drawing

Analytical figure drawing -- go through and copy all of the notes in this blog into your sketchbook. It'll take you a couple days but be well worth it:
http://analyticalfiguresp08.blogspot.com/

If your'e interested in animation, Richard Williams' "The Animator's Survival Kit" is the book.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

As far as Wacom vs. Traditional goes, start with whatever you're comfortable with, but know that you'll have to pick up and become fluent in using a Wacom if you want to work professionally. There's a bit of a learning curve with the Wacom but the secret to all drawing is practice practice practice.

Personally, I'd recommend enrolling in a drawing class of some sort, and/or a 3D class, if they're available in your area. I find I work better with a little bit of competition around me.

Good luck!

Hi Alymae! I'm a fellow furry who just so happens to be graduation from an art school for animation! My work isn't fantastic, and I'm more 3D based (just for my own personal interest) but I can already tell you your well on your way to being a good animator! If you would like a really good guide to animation that will cover everything you need to know as a beginner, but isn't too technical, I highly recommend "The Animators Survival Kit" Amazon you can see some of my own work at youtube and Deviantart

The hardest part about animation is motivation! But If you stick with it you will discover a world of beautiful motion and life! keep it up! and feel free to contact me if you need help with anything ^.^

There are a lot of areas that need work here... (Obviously because it's your first mix)

There's nothing wrong with varied genres, but you have to connect songs together with something. It could be a vocal line, complementary melodies, or a matching vibe. Mixing in a song that is the complete opposite mood to the previous track can also sometimes work as a surprise. Songs have to relate! Learning to beatmatch helps you find these connections because as you cue your next track and mix it in you start to hear what works and what doesn't. Your song choices have absolutely no flow. They're not beatmatched or in key and the filter use throughout them is irritating...

The two Toro Y Moi songs and "Get Lucky" share a similar vibe. You could mix those, then move to a darker tone with "Addiction" followed by the Metronomy song. That may or may not work but it's worth a shot... Since you are using Ableton you have the luxury of pre arranging your mix ahead of time, so you should make sure it works perfectly.

As a beginner I highly recommend this book: How To DJ Right It's definitely not Ableton specific (it was written in the era of turntables) but it will help you through your initial stages.


And you should watch this video for some basic mixing techniques: 5 Basic Mix Techniques

I thinks you've got a good start with your taste in music but take the time to practice the fundamentals!

Of course! :)

Here are a few of my favorite youtube channels that cover our universe.

These guys do a good job of giving excellent and creditable facts while keeping the video short and sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/user/scishowspace

This channel covers more than just space, but again they give good facts while still keeping the videos not too lengthy.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt

And of course, nothing gets more credibility than the big guys themselves, NASA. These videos are a bit long, but are just loaded with a ton of real world space Q&A's.

https://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision/videos

The few magazines I have lying around my house right now are all related to space, and they are a great read for any of my guests! Heres a link for the planetary society (main source of my reading material)
http://planetary.org/

and here are a few books that every curious mind should take a good long glance at when it comes to our universe.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pale-blue-dot-carl-sagan/1103141155

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

(this one is a MUST READ!)---> https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378

The main podcast I listen to is Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He has a plethora of different guests on at all times talking about new and fascinating topics. Here's a link for his show

https://www.startalkradio.net/

And when it comes to articles, most of them come from Reddit! I am subscribed to a ton of different space related subreddits which post countless numbers of interesting articles all the time. Here is a small list just to name a few

r/space r/astronomy r/astrophysics r/astrophotography r/science r/spaceporn

I hope this helps!

Typically it's best to start with an idea of what you want to do, after you finish building the world, but usually you will want to start with characters. The reason for this is that you don't want to have characters that just fill roles for your story. That's not to say that you can't do it the other way around, but from everything I've heard from experienced writers, and from my own experience, character first then the plot.

What I mean by an idea is, you should know what sort of story you want to tell. Since you have a futuristic world based around a Science Fiction setting, think about what sorts of stories you love in that genre. Do you like Star Wars? Maybe you could write a Space Opera. Do you like very accurate stories based in real science? Maybe you could write Hard Science Fiction. Figure out what sort of story you want to tell before you begin plotting and coming up with characters.


After you've done this you need a main character who has needs and desires, and the plot will be based around him not getting what he wants. This is one of the basics of plotting. You need an initial inciting incident to set up something that he wants, and you need him to not be able to get it without trials, tribulations, sacrifices, and the kitchen sink coming to life to eat him.


The resource I always send people to is Brandon Sanderson's Writing Excuses. He does a much better job of explaining this sort of thing than I can in a few paragraphs. Another good resource is Story by Robert McKee. This book is more focused on Screenwriting, but he delves into story, plotting, and things that every writer should know.


Hopefully this can get you started. Good Luck!

I'm replying quite late, but I don't think you want to gift him bicycle decks. He's probably already got enough of those and would continue getting more. I think it wouldn't be special to him. He would really appreciate some fancier decks as a gift. Please take a look at www.theory11.com or www.ellusionist.com for some decks. Most of them are $10 so a fair bit more expensive than the regular bicycles. www.artofplay.com has some wonderful ones as well, broader range of prices. Multiple copies of whichever deck you select would be worth it, because he would never use a fancy deck if he had just one.

Its also worth checking with him on which books he has already. Royal Road is very popular and he might already have a copy.

An example gift I would set up, priced at around $30(not including shipping costs) :

3x Aviator Heritage Edition (Art of Play) [$21]

OR

2x Knights Playing Cards (Ellusionist) [$20]

+

1x Royal Road to Card Magic (Amazon US store) [$11]

I would say get some DVD's and watch the special features.
If you're still interested, get some books about filmmaking, filmmakers, and story telling.

Read "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch. As a film maker it's one of the best books I've read. It's based in editing, as Walter Murch is an editor, but it really covers the basics of how to make something "work" on the screen. Check it out for sure!

Then get yourself a camera, heck, it can even be the camera on your iPhone or whatever you may have. Shoot some film (not literally, you're using your phone), use the stock editor that comes with your computer (iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, whatever you may have) and cut something together, even if it's just a minute or two long.

If you're still enamored with film like the rest of us are, then start working on bigger projects, and try to find work on a film set (or if your strengths are in the office, you could be an Office PA - better hours, but less exciting than being on set). Working on a film set could be dictated by where you live (in the event you don't live in a "film friendly" city, there will be less opportunity of course).

The advice of jeanfr elsewhere in this thread is also top rate.

Good luck to you!

Lynda.com has a lot of good stuff. I believe it is subscription based, but it is a good service. Now while it is important to know how to use software, editing theory is an even bigger deal. Start watching movies praised for editing. Last years, "Whiplash" won best editing at the Oscars, and it was well deserving. Also reach "In the Blink of an Eye" by, Walter Murch.

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Revised-2nd-Edition/dp/1879505622

It's a really great lesson on theory in editing, and I highly reccomended it to anybody wanting to learn editing.

And if she’s up for something different I highly recommend the game of thrones cookbook, A A Feast of Ice and Fire , There is a blog too , so you don’t need to invest. I love the cookbook and trying out the medieval recipes vs the modern versions. It’s fun and gives perspective on how food and cooking/baking has changed.

And if you pm me an amazon wishlist link I would more than happily gift it (that’s how much fun I find this book).


Also, I’m glad you made caring for yourself a priority it’s a great example for the kids. When they see you making self care a priority they will too. ❤️❤️❤️

I shoot on a 7D, and my kit contains a 50mm f1.8, a 28-135mm, and a 10-24mm. I record audio on an H4N Zoom, but honestly.. try your hand at one technique at a time. I've a made a few silent films with friends and family, honestly just to hone my craft.
Here and here.

I've also directed music videos using the same equipment.
Here

To be honest man, just go and shoot. The number one rule I see time and time again is just go shoot, and shoot with whatever you've got.
Let whatever limitations you run up against force you to surpass them.
Robert Rodriguez of "Desperado" and "Sin City" fame made his first short films on a home VHS video camera.. and he took those shorts to film festivals and won.

Check out his book, "Rebel Without a Crew". Here ya go!

Good luck dude, and most importantly HAVE FUN!

EDIT: You can put together a decent lighting package with some of those cheap silver metal clampy work lamps from Home Depot and a white bed sheet for diffusion. That's all I used for those two silent films.

I don't think they would expect a lot of practical experience regarding animation from you, because they will teach you that, right? I got a illustration test at the animation college I attended, to create a comic.

However, if you want to start practising, a good one to start with is a bouncing ball. This will probably be one of the first examples you will get at that college. And if you want to have theoretical information, as well as examples, I can recommend the animators survival kit to you. It is the de facto book on animation, written by master animator Richard Williams, animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The Illusion of Life is also a great animation book to start with. It is written bij Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's best animators.

In terms of working in the animation industry, it can be difficult to get a steady job animating, but if it is your passion, it is very rewarding and great to do! Good luck!

A lot of folks dislike CGI beyond reddit; lots of folks in production and in animation also.

The reason is something called "suspension of disbelief". A rule related to this in screenwriting, as illustrated in Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder, is called "One Piece of Magic" rule. With rare exception, you can only have one piece of magic per film. So if The Nutty Professor also includes aliens or ghosts, that's too much magic and you lose the audience because they are willing to swallow a supernatural SciFi weightloss formula might exist, but once you introduce aliens or ghosts into the story, you break suspension of disbelief. Many films have violated this rule and caused the audience to disconnect. Think of how disengaging Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was, and how much you groaned at the end.

This is what CGI does when people catch it, and up until recently it's been very easy to catch.

The reason practical effects don't usually cause audience disconnect is (1) they usually create a better illusion and are harder to spot the line between fantasy and reality, (2) even if caught, the audience will be impressed and know it had to happen in reality somehow, (3) that being the case, they're often amazed at the fantasy effect, almost like a stunt.

Think the effects of the original Star Wars. How'd they do that?! You've probably watched footage of how they accomplished the dogfights; yet you never wondered that about the ring of fire added to the exploding Death Star in the remastered versions. Had they done that in the late 1970s using practical effects, you'd of been truly amazed and would have been cheering and gasping in the theater. Not so with CGI because we know it's completely animated.

This is why in Live Free or Die Hard it was stressed that in a certain scene they actually did throw a real car. This excited many folks in my circles, because it maintains suspension of disbelief and impresses the audience with the illusion--almost like a magic trick.

CGI probably should be relegated to helping the illusion or polishing. Textures, lighting, a close up on a black hole in space. That said, pure CGI animation as the vehicle to effects are lame, distracting, and unimpressive.

Here's a studio that does practical effects. They'll show you a comparison and give you the run down on why practical effects are far superior.

I think the best place to start would be learning some traditional animation skills. Two really great resources are the Animators Survival Kit and The Illusion of Life. I would read the reviews to see what you think might be best. The Illusion of Life goes into a lot of Disney history and the history of animation itself. Once you get a feel for that, I'd check out Ross Plaskow's Youtube Channel. A lot of people say he has one of the best character animation tutorials. There's lots of different ways to animate characters (frame by frame, rigging with the puppet pins in after effects, rigging with duik in after effects, or rubber hose in after effects (a really easy to use way to create rubber hose style animation and my personal favorite), and adobe character animator - just to name a few. Just an FYI, I suck at character animation, I just really enjoy compiling educational resources. Anyways, I would suggest if you aren't feeling too confident, once you get the principles under your belt to invest in rubber hose if you can afford it. It's really simple to use which gets you making things faster, and I think that's one of the most important parts of learning (just having fun messing around and making stuff). School of Motion did a review on it if you wanna check that out, and Ross also shows how to use it for character animation on his channel. But just remember it's not about becoming dependant on the plugin, I just think it's a great way to get making things quickly.

Honestly in this day and age you can very much just teach yourself animation, it all comes from practice.

Look up as many tuts as you can, and if your serious about animation GET THIS BOOK and any others like it. You just want to absorb as much knowledge as possible if you're going down this path.

And of course, animate! From little animations where you try to make a character jump smoothly to bigger ones that challenge everything you've learned. If you want to get into the industry I suggest Toonboom over Flash, not necessarily because one is better than the other (even though ToonBoom is widely considered better) but because that is the program almost all animation studios use.

Also, if you haven't done much with animating with frames and whatnot yet, try this program. it's free and simple, it really helps you get the basics of making smooth movements and whatnot without having to worry about your drawings being good. While you're looking for free
things, here's a bunch of other animation programs that are free, I still encourage you to purchase ToonBoom though.

Go out there and make us proud.

I didn't get involved in the improv scene until after I moved away from there but I've looked into it a little when visiting.

I've seen some shows and taken a workshop at Spectacles in Fullerton that were a lot of fun but the age group may be slightly older than you're looking for. They seem to be the most active and organized group and I think I've seem them post on this sub in the past.

Here are some other organizations I found you may reach out to:

Improv City High Schools

OC Crazies

Nothing about training but maybe a resource.

South Coast Repertory

If you're looking to do Long Form Improv you could pick up the UCB Handbook and some friends and start on your own. After several weeks of consistent practices you could try and hire a coach from one of the resources above. I've found that many coaches are more interested in helping dedicated improvisers improve and not in getting rich... hopefully you'll have the same experience.

For a broad and comprehensive overview with less technical information, go for Screenwriting 101 by Film Crit Hulk, along with any of his wonderful articles.

For the technical specifics of modern screenwriting, The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley is solid, though it's really not that complicated and I wouldn't worry too much. Just use a program like Celtx to do your formatting and you're sweet.

If you want to blow your mind with dogmatic but largely correct info on the structuring of effective stories in general go for The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, written about playwriting but incredibly relevant.

I also recommend you learn the basics of filmmaking. I personally believe it's vital to properly writing screenplays (rather than generic writing dressed in screenplay clothes). The stuff's got to be shootable, designed for a reasonable budget, and more importantly, suited to the film medium itself.

A great book for that is On Film-Making by Alexander Mackendrick.

I also highly recommend In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch, written about editing and invaluable. Editing is the essence of film as we know it, so it's in your interests to know it intimately.

First, read J.K. Rowling's rules for writing here:

https://www.bustle.com/articles/181377-13-writing-tips-from-jk-rowling-because-she-knows-a-thing-or-two-about-perseverance

Second, read the Anatomy of Story:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933

Third, read Save the Cat: (yes, it's for screenplays, but it still applies to writing fiction books)

https://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/

Fourth, read the Talent Code, especially the bit about the Brontë sisters:

https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown-dp-0099519852/dp/0099519852

Fifth, watch Everything is a Remix: (yes, it's for movies, but it still applies to writing fiction books)

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

Sixth, spend time reading tropes every day to learn the mechanics of writing & different situations:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

Seventh, write every single day. If you want to be a writer, you write. Doesn't matter if it's pure garbage when you start out. The way you get good at things is by being bad at it first, then working on getting better, then good, then great. In the writing community, you'll find doers & you'll find dreamers. There are plenty of people with aspirations to write who simply don't write.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, lol. That should be obvious, but it's not! Write every day. Steal stories. Rewrite them. Learn tropes. Learn story structure. Learn the rules, break the rules. Copy your favorites. Write new & better twists & endings to movies & books & TV shows & plays. There are a lot of people who are interested in writing, who talk about writing, who like being in writing communities, who don't actually ever just buckle down & write. So write! Shakespeare bit the bullet & wrote 400 years ago and we STILL read his stuff today! WRITE!!

Don't get too hung up on books, they can be useful but but realize they are still limited in information, technique, application, opinion etc. That being said: Loomis is widely known as the standard for drawing anatomy; Masters of Anatomy have some great pose references to practice dynamic figure study; and lastly Framed Ink is a short but valuable book about how to use compositions to achieve different things.

When you do studies, just think of what you want to learn better and build your own study to achieve that goal. Want to learn dynamic lighting? Grab some lamps and set up a still life. Want to learn compositions? Get some professional images with great composition and trace the major shapes over the top, then try to reverse-engineer how and why the artist did things that way.

The best thing to do is draw from life. Draw your pets or random people at a cafe. Use quick, light pencil strokes and don't erase. Just keep laying out lines as you form the object/person. Once you got the shape right, you can press harder and make those lines darker so they stand out against the exploratory lines. Basically you're chiseling away at something until it looks right. Make sure to draw quickly and not spend too much time with detail when you're drawing people and animals since they tend to move. Work on filling in detail with inanimate objects. It helps to gather random objects from around the house and make a still life.


And keep doing this. Even the best artists keep practicing and making quick, squiggly sketches. It helps you imagine things in 3D and translate that to 2D on paper. I learned all these things from art classes and talking to other artists.


My craft is animation, but having a good foundation in drawing is the most important thing before animating, painting, illustrating, and even sculpting. I learned animation with a book called The Animator's Survival Kit. And I did it by using a Wacom tablet and Flash (but there's a free program called Pencil). Even if you want to animate traditionally with pencil and paper, it helps to practice and learn quickly with digital tools.


I learned about the book and other tutorials by going on animation forums and talking with like-minded people. No matter what medium you choose, it really helps to communicate with people doing the same thing. Getting critiques is very important for improving. Others can spot mistakes you overlooked and point out how you can do better.

For beginners:

Film directing: shot by shot was passed around in college and was on our recommended reading list, but i don't know if it was the best book.

For advanced skills:

In college, my animation professors told me the best way to develop storyboarding skills was to watch films, with emphasis on older films. I was to storyboard a sequence that I thought was pretty good, then study the shots in sequence to understand why the shot choices were made. After that, try to see if could I make it read better /have more impact for the audience than the original one.

It really depends on your skill level.

If you're more of a beginner, The Royal Road to Card Magic (mentioned elsewhere on this page) is a great introduction to the subject.

Card College is another great resource. This five-book series provides much more in-depth information on all aspects of sleight of hand, and as such is valuable regardless of whether you're a beginner or an advanced card handler.

Finally, if you already have a little skill, Expert Card Technique is a fantastic resource with tons of great tricks that will fit your criteria.

Hope that helps!

•Riddle 1

The soft kitty socks on my $10 and under list would keep my toes nice and "TOASTy" in those drafty dorm towers. Then I would be less inclined to "WhINE" about being cold.
•Riddle 2

I am sure that Arthur Weasley would be fascinated by the handy muggle invention that uses "eckeltricity" to make sweeping a breeze. The Dust Buster can be found on my Organize All the Things list and would help me keep my dorm room clean and tidy without having to use a "BROOM"
•Riddle 3

The shaggy baby boy's "HAT" on my list for Reproductive Unit #3 would be the perfect size for keeping my owl warm and toasty while delivering mail in the winter.
•Riddle 4

Perhaps a copy of the A Feast of Ice and Fire "cookBOOK" would give the house elves some inspiration for the tasty meals they whip up. It can be found on my Books, Glorious, Books list.

Riddle 5

My packing skills are dreadful. I would probably need the Foldable Engine Hoist on my Spouse Creature list just to lift my "TRUNK"

Bonus Riddle

The Superman bathrobe that is also found on my Spouse Creature list and would definitely double as a "CAPE" I am a pretty modest person, so this would be required for shared bathrooms.

This is pretty much the best answer. The more creative works you enjoy the more tools you have to tinker around with.

For example let's pick a completely arbitrary Star Trek TNG episode and make it work better in a fantasy setting. Season 5 Episode 15 is about a group of prisoners who have been converted into energy beings as punishment for their crimes trying to take over the physical bodies of the crew both in order to escape their prison and to regain the bodies they lost. At first the crew think they're helping what seem to be victims of an accident before realizing that they are in fact about to facilitate a prison break.

Already we have some really cool ideas for adventure plots. The idea of the party trying to help the villains by accident seems like a great idea and I enjoy the thought of having incorporeal beings pulling a fast one on the group. Since energy beings are a bit too scifi for a fantasy setting how about we swap them to be ghosts? And since ghosts are dead people it's pretty obvious that instead of being prisoners we can have them be bound spirits. Perhaps the party thinks they are helping a bunch of victims of a necromancers pass on to the afterlife when in fact the ghosts are members of a cult whose ritual went horribly wrong. Or maybe they were damned by age old clerics to haunt the mortal realm as penance for their crimes.

To introduce this plot TNG uses a distress beacon, the fast an easy solution to any space plot ever. We can substitute this as rumours and nervous villagers if we want to go a similar easy route or, if we want to be a bit more devious, slot it into any dungeon romp the party is currently engaged in. Perhaps they stumble in on the ghosts by accident while exploring some other plot lead?

This adventure could potentially end in multiple ways. Maybe the evil ghosts are released and the party has to immediately fight them to undo what they just did? Maybe the party realizes that something is fishy and turn against the ghosts? Maybe the party is actually super cool with releasing some evil ghosts into the world and they ally themselves with them to bring forth an age of death and misery? In the end it'll be the party who decides what ultimately happens.

And that's just a very straightforward adaptation. Once you have a large collection of ideas you can start combining them, twisting them, and mixing them up in interesting ways. Even if you don't do anything as active as this the stuff you've seen will be there in your subconscious to provide inspiration and a reference to compare against. An adventure to rescue a princess from a dragon probably didn't come to you out of sheer creativity. It came from having encountered the story before. Just start twisting it and playing with it to see what you end up with. Maybe the party has to rescue a dragon from a princess?

As for books, I've heard Save The Cat! is good. I've never read it myself though.

TL;DR

Play with plots you've seen or heard.

Alright, after reading part of The Science of Interstellar apparently it's because the fifth dimension is very much compressed compared to the lower dimensions.

I'm going to type this all up, a summary of the chapter about bulk space. Gimme a few minutes.

Explanation

So, first, gravity. Gravity in our regular universe decreases by the inverse square law, and you can visualize this by drawing lines out (see diagram on the left) outwards from any body with gravity, let's say the sun.

Now, if I am at distance r, the number of tendex lines over a certain area at that distance will give me the strength of gravity. This means in three dimensions, it correlates to the increase in surface area of a sphere. So, let's say at 1 meter from an object the gravity is 4πr (r in this case is 1) m/s^2. At 2 meters, it would be 4π4, or 16π, since 2^2 = r^2.

Now, since gravity can transcend dimensions, this means that gravity would also propagate in higher dimensional space. This means instead of the surface area, the strength of gravity will fade based on the change in volume of the sphere. (Integrating surface area) which would be 4/3πr^3. This means gravity would run by an inverse cube law, which means it would be incredibly weak and the planets would fly off.

So how in interstellar can people traverse meaningful distances in the 4th dimension, but not fuck up the rest of physics? Well that results in the ante-de-sitter warp of the bulk. So let's assume we go back to Romilly's paper universe, where our universe is two dimensions (paper thin) and the "bulk" or hyperspace is three dimensional. We can't have gravity escape away from the paper, so we instead only allow it to escape an infinitesimally small amount by having the amount of traversable space in the bulk decrease with its distance from our universe.

Here is a diagram of how this works. The lines are tendex lines of gravity, and the out-back direction is the direction of hyperspace. Our universe (or "brane") is the orange plane. This basically prevents the volume of the sphere being significant and prevents it from dispersing gravity.

This also presents another possibility - that the space in the bulk between Gargantua and Earth is much smaller than the distance in real space, although this is technically not a wormhole.

The distance would shrink by a factor of a few trillion, changing the distance between Coop and Earth from billions of light years to only tens of millions of miles (1 AU)

The "confining branes" 1.5cm from our universe are at the distance necessary to allow for gravity to not screw up, but allows for space to accomplish meaningful actions outside of our brane. (This is where the tesseract was located)

Therefore once the tesseract collapsed, Coop had already travelled the distance back to earth due to the excessive time dilation he had already experienced around the black hole. As a fun thought experiment, ante-de-sitter warping is actually one of the theories used to unify string theory and it's 11 dimensions and the escape of gravity as a way to account for dark energy repulsing the universe. (Gravity forces could be leaking into our universe from the bulk, and it's only noticeable on very large scales such as galaxy clusters)

tl;dr Space inside the tesseract was smaller than regular space because physics, and this with the time dilation meant Cooper was already home by the time the tesseract collapsed. Hyperbeings just needed to push him in the right direction.

Also the pictures are from a later chapter of the book that my sister got me for Christmas. Thanks Karen!

Hey dude. Graduate high school first, generate a portfolio of scripts, and pay artists up front to illustrate your work, otherwise nothing will ever, ever happen.

I work on an anthology dedicating to helping first-time creators get their first published experience, and we pay artist and writers a small rate. We get 100+ pitches a year, and sift out the best 20 to develop. Think about your pitches in that context - could it stand out against 100 competitors? Is it as concise, unique, and emotionally compelling as it could be? We regularly have artists turn down a paid opportunity because they're not interested in a script, so you need to have something that is really, really good to convince an artist to work for free.

I recommend Save The Cat and Jim Zub's Pitch Tutorials as good places to learn more of the craft. I do wish you the best and hope to you see submit something in a few years.

Thanks, if I seem "in the know" it's because I was asking these same questions a year ago when I was in the same position as you. Since then I've been studying animation fulltime. I suppose another bit of advice that a lot of the professional animators I talk to suggest is that if you want to get a job at the big studios, it's best to specialize. Pick what you love doing, be that modeling, lighting, rigging or animating, and become an expert in that field. While being a jack of all trades is great for making your own shorts, most companies want you to do one thing and do it very well.

Also, if you're looking at schools and courses, you should know that when it comes to getting a job in the industry degrees and certificates don't count for much. Find a place that will help you produce a great demo reel. Learning on your own is also an option, but it's definitely the harder road.

If it's specifically animation that you are interested in, many animators swear by the techniques found in the Animator's Survival Kit. It has more of a focus ontraditional animation, but it's still a must read to learn the basic techniques.

Anyways, best of luck in the future.

Know that there is going to be a shit-ton of work. But if the fleeting joy of seeing your creations come to life outweighs the pain of all the hard work then you might survive as an animator.

It won't really matter if you want to do 2d/3d since the principles will (should) still all be there. 3d gets a touch more technical but 2d is where you test your mettle.

First up - Absolutely w/o fail you must master the art of gesture drawings. constantly do 10sec-30sec quick renders/poses. is there life in those quick squiggles? Does it feel like the pose or motion? Good animators are some of the most phenomenal artists there are.

The rest will just be applying the fundamentals of animation (and art in general) to your creations.

Some places to start:

Animators Survival Kit - great great insights. tons of tips to watch out for, funny anecdotes about legends...

or this great intro to all the basics especially if you grew up watching classics (loony toons, wb)

1. That depends, film school is only really worth it for the connections you'll make. For me, it was worth it. I'm from a very dead film less part of the world and University helped me meet people I can go out and make films with now. But if you're living somewhere were you can already pick up a camera and go, then no.
   
   
   
   
2. Yes, read, research and pick up a camera.
   
   I'm not going to post any sites related to the art of making films, rather the act. So how to use a camera correctly etc.
   
   [Phillip bloom] (http://philipbloom.net/)
   
   
   [Stu Machwitz] (http://prolost.com/)
   
   
   [Vincent Laforet] (http://www.laforetvisuals.com/)
   
   
   [Nofilmschool] (http://nofilmschool.com/)
   
   There's many, many more. but you can start with these and see where they send you.
   Remember this is about how to use a camera correctly, not how to make a great film.
   
   Books:
   
   [DV REBEL] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-DV-Rebels-Guide-All-digital/dp/0321413644/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335343450&sr=8-1)
   
   
   [Rebel without a crew] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rebel-without-Crew-Robert-Rodriguez/dp/0452271878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335343468&sr=1-1)
   
   
   
   
3. The best resources for an aspiring film maker is a camera. I will give you an example
   
   I started by learning about DP and cameras. Like I said, I don't know lots of people who will pick up a camera and film for me. So I depend on me. I bought myself a camera, lenses, filters, shoulder mount. Downloaded editing software, watch lots of videos and just went from there.
   
   I was the best camera man anyone could ask for (in university), and now. When I make my own films that's worked out really well because I'll pick up the camera and make a film. I just need to find a couple of actors on the internet and ask a few friends to come out for the day.
   
   Goodluck
   

I wouldn't discount going with an all-in-one loaf of bread camera for now. Built in lens, xlr ports for audio, zebras, waveform (probably).....lots of little tools most SLR's won't have. Sure, they dont have the large sensor so the DOF is not so striking- however in the real world you arent generally shooting WFO on a large sensor as the depth of field is too small to be practical without a crackerjack 1st AC.


That's not going to be a popular opinion with the DSLR revolution thing, but it's not about the camera. Learning good composition and how to light comes from experience. Just as important is learning to shoot for the cut and previsualization so you dont waste a bunch of time on set.


A few things you should be ready to invest in outside of the camera:


-ShotPut Pro or Double Data. These tools are invaluable for making sure the footage coming off the cards is intact and not corrupted.


-A good fluid head. There are plenty of great ones you an get used, watch DVX User's marketplace. Vinten and Sachtler make some great entry level heads these days and you can save a bundle buying used.


-Extra batteries. You will need them. 3 is a good place to start, one in your pocket, one on the brownie, one on the charger.


-A couple books to get you started: Film Directing: Shot by Shot and Cinematic Motion are both great. I know you will have curriculum books, but I would buy these anyway.


And now some general advice.


-Go PA. Find time, but go PA. Leave your film school knowledge (and ego) at the door, keep your eyes and ears open, keep your mouth shut unless you are asking a question to learn something. You will learn so much by working on real sets and you can bring that experience back to school for even greater success. There is no replacement for time on real jobs.


-Learn the names of the tools and the phrases and verbal tools of the set. It's a part of set etiquette. All the grip/electric gear has names and you will get respect if you know what someone means when they ask for a lowboy combo, a lollipop, a onkybonk, and a show card. How long before something is done? "We're moments away." Do you run on set? Not unless something is on fire. New deal, watch your eyes, coming up, coming at ya, flying in, it's hot, stinger, 10-1, 10-4, up 1 (radio brevity), call sheet, walking breakfast, having had.......there is so much stuff to learn.....PA, PA, PA!


-Learn to budget and run P&L spreadsheets. Pick apart every scene in a script and figure out what gear you need, what personnel, location, how much time then add up the cost. Group the scenes for shooting by location and talent availability and get day by day estimates. The sooner you learn this stuff the better. Again, it will help you in school.


-Make to-do lists and stay organized! Keep your receipts (even if you dont have to turn them in), its a habit you always need to have for this business. I use a combination of Any.Do, Evernote, and BaseCamp to keep everything organized.


-Share your knowledge and listen to others. Even the death march nightmare pilots/films/industrials/whatever donkey fucks offer something to learn. Find it. Always find something to learn.


-Don't waste your time shooting dog shit. If the shot sucks ask your self what you can do to make it better. If it's still dog shit, move on.


-Always, always ask yourself what you can do to make your shot better. Always.


-Work on everything- reality/commercial/film/doc/industrial/whatever. Be versatile.


-Learn to shoot for the cut. Did I say that already? I'm saying it again. Watch TV and Movies and pick the scenes apart to see how they cut. #1 problem for new cameramen/directors/dp is not having footage that cuts in edit.


TL,DR Shit i have learned over the years that is off topic but useful for newbies coming into our business.

My favorites:

The Visual Story


In the Blink of an Eye

How to Read a Film (personally bored by it but a lot of film classes I took in uni versity used it)

The Filmmaker's Eye (huge fan of this book)

The rest of this post is just general advice on how to gain a deeper knowledge of film.

If you want to learn the grammar of film, read about film history (it will help introduce you to editing/camera movement/directing techniques and the filmmakers/films that influenced your favorite directors).

Read criticism from Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, David Bordwell (his blog is a fantastic resource), Jonathan Rosenbaum, and older critics such as Bazin/Eisenstein. There are more out there, but this is a good start.

Read reviews after you watch a film instead of beforehand--those reviews will hopefully give you a deeper view of the film. That being said, you really have to look around to figure out who you like, stylistically speaking. There are a lot of critics that have no idea what they're talking about from a technical standpoint. If you're bored with short reviews without substance you might like FILMCRITHULK.

Watch YouTube tutorials and video essays on filmmaking. Video essays are particularly helpful at illustrating and pointing out things that you might not have noticed otherwise. It's also a hell of a lot more entertaining than reading criticism that was written in 1962 in another language.

From a practical standpoint, pick up a camera and shoot something. Edit it. Read books on composition--I've found that photography composition books are pretty helpful. Read scripts from films you love and films you haven't seen to get an idea of how a film exists before the first day of shooting takes place.

Keep watching films, and watch them actively. Don't text during films, and try to watch them in one sitting. The goal is to immerse yourself in the image and analyze the shots/cuts/etc. as they happen. Watch films with commentaries, watch them with the sound off, and branch out into different genres and time periods so that you can attain a more concise view of film.

Above all else, watch as many films as you can. You'll find that the watchlist keeps growing, no matter how many films you see.

My two cents is draw from reference. Real life is the best, but anatomy books are a decent substitute, then move to creating your own style or copying a style using what you gain from practicing realism. People say "practice" because the only other things you truly need are devotion and patience. The more you do it the better you'll become.

I'm way out of practice now, but when in school I started off drawing simple ovals to make up the human body, it looked ridiculous but that was the extent of my skill. I kept at it and I was able to see progress in a couple of months. I was still drawing simple ovals, but the proportions were getting better and more consistent.

Also, sign up for any public site and ask for critiques. People will more than likely give you some good tips. Don't get knocked down by people obviously being trolls, nor should you feel bad that you're making beginner's mistakes. My teacher used to tell me you have to draw as much as you can, have all the crappy drawings first, then all that's left are the good ones.

Good luck to you!

Another How-to Post

[Book Recommendation for Animation]
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Expanded-Edition/dp/0571238343/ref=pd_sim_b_1)

[Book Recommendation for Human Figure]
(http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Out-Beginners-Drawing-People/dp/1933027800/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341886111&sr=1-10&keywords=figure+drawing)

"An elegant universe" by Brian Greene is a good read. It leans more towards string/superstring theory. "The science of interstellar" also touches on some concepts related to quantum mechanics.

I know that you asked for books but "PBS Spacetime" is a YouTube channel that does a great job explaining quantum mechanics. "Veritasium" is another great channel with a few videos explaining phenomena as well. I posted links below. Physics is dope. Happy hunting!

An elegant universe:
https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X

The science of interstellar:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393351378/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502885214&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+physics+of+interstellar&dpPl=1&dpID=41Ii8OmMy0L&ref=plSrch

PBS Spacetime:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

Veritasium:
https://m.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

Haha! Good start! Funny stuff.


If you want advice, the best I can give you is this:

Be mindful of the brush size and the zoom % you're doing line art in. If you're working in 3 size brush and you're zooming in and out to different % to do your line art, you'll find the line art becomes very inconsistent. Brush size is entirely relative to the zoom percentage you decide to use. So what I recommend is, rough out your animation with whatever zoom or brush works for you, it doesn't particularly matter at this stage.. Then once you're done with your rough, go back over it on another layer entirely on 200% or 300% zoom (you'll see the amount of zoom in the top right of the stage). I recommend 3 size brush, pressure sensitivity and 40 smoothing. If you're mindful of this your line art will look awesome! You'll find the imperfections on lines will be lost the closer zoomed in you decide to do the line art.

Also this book will change your life.

GOOD LUCK DUDE!!

Start playing around, learn what you can do with your new hardware! Don't worry about technical skill yet, just learn some verbs.

Load up a track you like and play with it. What can you do with it, and how do you do it on that controller? Speed it up? Slow it down? Play it backwards? Set it so it plays from a certain point in the track when ever you want it to? Loop a section of the track?

How about another track? Maybe you can get them to play at the same time? See if you can get the timings matched up? Try playing one track, then playing another before it's done and see if you can transition smoothly with the crossfader. Take a dance track with lots of drums on the intro and outro and see if you can transition from its ending into its beginning.

Once you're comfortable with that a bit, I'd say start soaking up tutorials and learning from others. This book really helped me: How to DJ Right. If you have any friends who can teach you how they do it, they will be your most valuable asset.

This is all general advice, I've never played with an S4 before, but I can't imagine it'd be different than learning any other cool new music thing. Best of luck!

Animation degree here. (Really dont need a degree. My professors who worked in the industry said many dont have degrees still to this day, its all about passion and skill... and being willing to work 16 hour days)


Seriously fantastic animation. All 12 principles of animation are represented.

Your bro just needs to keep uploading and making animation. Its essentially a portfolio.

Animation companies dont care if you have a degee. They want a stacked portfolio. With solid animation.

When your bro starts applying for animation jobs. Make sure he has a solid demo reel. A demo reel is only the best animation hes made compiled in on vid. Its the resume for these places. Its all about skill.

Fyi the #1 and #2 books (no particular order) for learning animation and developing it are priceless. My professors stressed these books every year. They were used in 90% of my animation classes.

This book...

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators https://www.amazon.com/dp/086547897X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5JSgDb5GHT9WJ


And this book....

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786860707/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OKSgDbZMMJBVE


This would make a fantastic gift for any animator


Tell your bro not to be down about it. The companies dont care about schooling. Skill and passion are all that matters.


Edit: forgot our schools favorite websites!

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/

Cartoon brew keeps animators updated on general cartoons and animation


http://www.11secondclub.com/


We got extra credit for doing the 11 second club. You got an A for that semester in one class if you could break the top animations that month. Few students did that.


Edit: thanks for gold! insert keyframe of me jumping in 80s pose

Your skills to 'show, not tell' will become more essential. As the previous comment said, you are going to lose most of the 1st person POV prose accommodates (and even if some of it is retained....compare something like Fight Club the novel, to Fight Club the movie or Fight Club 2 the graphic novel....still considerable differences once visuals come into play.). Even dialogue can be a bit of a sticking point - it depends on the genre you're writing for as how much room you have before audiences start to get bored.

If you're writing for film/animation - consider learning about basic camera movements and shot framing (ie ECU, CU, WS, rules like the 180 degree rule). Watch videos on film analysis, one of my favorites is the Every Frame a Painting channel on YT, but there are other series/videos out there that aren't completely boring (and some that go very extensively into worldwide film history, such as A Story of Film: An Odyssey which is streaming on Hulu at the moment, used to be on Netflix)

Animation is a little trickier as a lot of writing is actually done in the storyboard phase (so is more art oriented), but a classic there is Disney's The Illusion of Life book as a starting point even for non-artists.

If you're writing for graphic novels: My favorite beginner reference is the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, with Will Eisner being another classic author on the genre. Brian Michael Bendis did a book that's pretty good too.

Likewise, stage plays, radio plays, have their own sets of tips and industry tricks, but I'm not as knowledgeable on those topics to offer suggestions. Good luck and have fun!

Stewed Rabbit: "You'll eat Rabbit, or you won't eat. Roast rabbit on a spit would be quickest, if you've got a hunger. Or might be you'd like it stewed, with ale and onions." Arya could almost taste the rabbit. "We have no coin, but we brought some carrots and cabbages we could trade you". (A Storm of Swords). Very good but very plain. Most certainly felt like a hearty stew that I'd want to be greeted with at an Inn after a long day of travel.


Sansa's Lemon Cakes: "Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she could not manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them" These went away so quickly! Family was grabbing them off the cooling rack before they'd even been iced. I now understand why they are so often pilfered from the King's Landing kitchens. Again, very simple, but packed with sweet, tart lemon flavor. I should note that when I prepared the recipe as instructed the dough was very, very dry, and that I had to squeeze in a lot of lemon juice to get it to the right consistency.

Both of these dishes were taken from A Feast of Ice & Fire. While each dish also had a more modern recipe, I decided to go with the more traditional approach.

I'm too busy to read the entire script, but after about 4 pages in let me give my two cents:

First the critique. I believe you should invest in buying a screenwriting book that helps you with formatting. Here is the one I have on [amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1935247107/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482011419&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=screenwriters+bible)

Beyond that, with the descriptions, there are too many lines and makes it hard to read. Try to combine them. That's my biggest critique.

The good part is I am intrigued by your story concept. Right off the bat, it reminds me of "In Time" where there is some kind of time aging thing, but instead of time being currency, it sounded like you purchased more life. That concept is gold, stick with it.

I think you just need to practice formatting. Use [celtx] (https://www.celtx.com/index.html) which has a free version with a great system for organizing screenplays.

Tl;dr Great idea; work on structure.

Firstly, it's fantastic seeing people with an interest in editing. Editing is one of those rare things where it's both an incredible art form and a well paying job (when you get the work).

Like others have said, the three big tools you'll need to know now and going into the future are Adobe Premiere, Avid, and Final Cut Pro X (perhaps in that order). All of these tools have their own strengths and weaknesses and it's important to know all three. With that being said, editing is all about, well, editing, and not the tools you use. So I'd recommend picking up some books on editing theory. Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye is a nice, light read which is quite thought provoking.

But back to the software itself! Like others have said, learning Adobe Premiere first is probably wise, as you'll find it less difficult to learn since you have experience with Sony Vegas. Likewise, Premiere is becoming a real powerhouse in the industry, which is crazy because 5 years ago it was considered a bit of a joke.

The only recommendation I have is to, while you're still a student, pick up an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. As a student, you should be able to get a crazy deal.

Good luck with everything!

How old is he?

1. Get him Joshua Jay's Complete Course in Magic. It's super easy to read, has great photos, and covers card magic, coin magic, stage illusions, and tons of other stuff. Joshua also has this book for kids.
   
   
2. Royal Road to Card Magic is a book that starts with cuts and shuffles then progresses to card magic in the manner most helpful for building skill.
   
   Also get him several decks so he can tear them up practicing.
   
   Bicycle is the most universal brand. 808 Rider backs are the most common. So if he practices with those then he'll be great if someone hands him a deck at a party.
   
   They're sold in "bricks' of 12 for cheap (compared to $3.50 a deck at Walmart).
   
   
   So for like $40 you can start him on an amazing journey.
   
   
   

Learning how to do magic might be something to look into. It can get expensive, but if you're smart about it and you're willing to put in a good amount of work it can be pretty cheap. Get a deck of bicycles ($2-3) and The Royal Road to Card Magic (≈$10) and start working. That's an older book and a lot of modern beginners ignore it, but it has great information.

The biggest problem with learning magic as cheaply as possible is that you have to learn primarily from books. It's not a massive problem, but it can get really confusing when someone is trying to describe a slight without any real demonstration. I can list some other pros/cons if you're interested. It's a fantastic hobby and it'll help build creativity and dexterity.

This is the blunt truth.

I went to an art school specifically for Computer Animation in the late 1990s. About a quarter of the students who started with me in the two-year program were gone in the first year. From the remainder, I knew of one person who left before graduation to go work for Capcom (the video game company, not the bank). Out of the people who were friends, NONE of us got a career in computer animation for one reason or another. (my reason was family - mom got cancer, hit a wall with my career and never recovered). One person I know from the program started her own company. I imagine she's doing well but I haven't talked to her since we graduated.

From friends in the class just before us (programs started every quarter), two people I knew went on to work in video game companies. One was a gifted artist, but he was in the illustration program - not animation. The other was an amazing traditional animator and 3D modeler. He was a prodigy. This stuff came as naturally to him as breathing. Some of our instructors were respectable names in the industry and they gushed over this guy's ability. Most other people got into another field like IT or Engineering.

Like they said above - never stop drawing. Study anatomy. Grab the Animator's Survival Kit. Study your subject. LIVE your subject.

There is still use for traditional animation - you just have to be good.

[Music, Culture, Aboriginal Voices] Episode 74 ~ Don n' Mack Attack, Gyroscopic Juggler Appears + Interviewer Becomes Interviewee

NSFW

iTunes // Soundcloud // Google Play Music

By the end of the show five guests had rolled thru the studio to share their stories, or at least their unique perspectives. Not going to lie, there may have been alcohol involved. But, I think you'll agree, we tapped into some pretty raw honesty.

5:13 - "Softball report" > More of a beer league commentary than anything, let's be honest. #sports

19:00 - Rafa, from Montreal, steps up to the mic reminds us how beautiful the weather's been in paradise. Turns out he's got some legit hippie knowledge bombs for our listeners:

"The universe pays you off differently than a paycheck."

49:25 - I read a passage from "How to DJ Right" www.amazon.ca/How-DJ-Right-Scien…ying/dp/0802139957

1:19:35 - I thought "devil sticks" died out in the 90s. But no, turns out they still bring meditational minds like Juan into the flow state in the 2000s eh? Actually, we just saw this dude straight-up gyroscopic juggling legit right outside the studio and bid him come in. So glad he did, because it brought a deep sense of chill to a situation that might have otherwise spun out of control, u know?

1:40:40 - Rafa decides to turn the tables and begins asking me questions. He felt my listeners deserved to know a bit about what brought me to Tuff City Radio. I hope you enjoy the details he managed to extract.

The Frequency Horizon is a West Coast podcast based in Canada's surf corridor of Tofino-Ucluelet, B.C., blending the freshest oceanic sounds with enlightening interviews and unique mini-doc segments.

Twitter // Facebook // Web

Friends of mine have used animation mentor.
Whatever path you take, bring this roadmap: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284


You may not understand it all now but it will get you started, and even years later I sometimes look to it for reference on certain things.


You'll need to choose what software to work in. You can animate in Photoshop. You can animate 2D in Blender 3D using the greasepencil. I personally use Adobe Animate/Flash but also know Toonboom and After Effects. There are a lot of other programs like flip note- but I've NEVER seen flipnote used in the industry (not counting artists like Kiki who is given a project and uses it because that's what he knows best and he can make the call on any.)


Most jobs in the field use Toonboom or Animate/Flash that I see. There's other software but once you get the basics switching to something else is just adapting to another user interface so I'd suggest using either of these. Possibly even Photoshop- most animation jobs don't use Photoshop for animation but knowing Photoshop is good and has a vast amount of uses.


Start off with simple exercises like the ball bounce, pendulum swing, saving hard stuff like walks for last.


Here's a video that was recorded in a college level animation intro class: https://vimeo.com/15213159 It's unedited, but literally a recording a professional animator made while teaching his class so his students could rewatch the lesson when they got home (you miss things the first time when you're first learning it) The first one is a ball bounce.


This one teaches overlapping action: https://vimeo.com/7328290


There are a TON of other tutorials out there, but draw loose and practice the basics like bouncing balls BEFORE you try to do character animation.

You have a nascent talent in modelling and materials. Good work!

The best thing I ever heard from an instructor was, "Nobody cares about armour and weapons. Show me something I like!"

This boils down to whether what you've made is "clever" or something which people (the ones who pay you) actually enjoy looking at.

Of the Twelve Basic Principles of Animation, appeal is the most important. Do older people like this? Is it approachably intricate? Does it look cute?

The Animator's Survival Guide is an essential resource for an aspiring modeller, animator or designer. Also check out the classic work of Preston Blair which is like a re-education of your childhood cartoons.

I hope you do well on your course.

If he's going to be making his own films (and could be serious about making scripted films) opt for a nice tripod or lighting instead of a gimbal. They will have a much longer use-life. It's not the flashiest toy in the toolbag, but he'll appreciate it in the long term.

Fluid Head Tripod - https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1087198-REG

Lighting, I personally own three of these and use them on content for major broadcasts - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XSVP7J6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_C-2-BbJQFXBG7

Books on screenwriting and cinematography can be helpful, there's a book called "Save The Cat" that's a lot of people's quick-read favorite for script writing basics and outline. I also liked Robert Rodriguez's "Rebel Without A Crew" that's an enjoyable read, his story of what it took to make his movies. Pretty humbling.

Other smaller things that every filmmaker has in their toolkit would be lens cloths/ lens cleaning kit, bongo ties, extra batteries & charger for the camera, or a camera backpack can be handy.

Here are some resources that have helped me.

First Time Director

Story

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Dov Simens 2 Day Film School


Dov Simens might come off as a horrible/ tacky salesmen but his 2 day course you can get on DVD is great, he breaks the process down better than I've seen elsewhere. Some stuff may be dated but it could get you started.

Take this approach to study.

Find a Director who's work you love, watch everything you can find of theirs. Watch all the behind the scenes you can find, then start copying them until you have learnt the rules and are able to recreate something almost as they would. Then with that experience start trying new things.

Also Gnomon Workshop and Digital Tutors are very helpful for the post side of things.

So... I'm gonna be a little critical here.

I don't get this sketch. In improv terms, I don't know what the "game of the scene" is. Your comedic goal seems to be weirdness and then shock value. It's not that it can't work, it's just not for me. For example I feel like this same scene could easily have been accomplished with 2 characters instead of 4 or 5, and it probably would have let you define a relationship between those two characters more easily and play with that relationship.

Anyway, your production quality seems fine to me, you mention some audio concerns, but that to me shouldn't be your focus. I would recommend some improv or comedy writing books, my favourite being Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. It'll teach you some core essentials for finding fun in scenes.

Hope this helps! :)

Yes and no.

There are great books about screenwriting for the feature film like Save the Cat, but the recent upsurge in longer-form television writing required for the binge services (Netflix,Amazon etc,) stretches the conventions of these books.

The lessons learned in a college level script analysis class apply to all types of media using theatre as an example, and are generally grounded in classics. Many film-hopefuls don't know that understanding these classic forms tend to make the difference between truly great stories and stories that will fade away.

Taking a screenwriting class after or in conjunction will improve your ability to write in a variety of forms that might be required by the different story ideas that you might have. The industry is evolving almost as quickly as it did during the invention of film and later television.

You will need to understand the classical structures and ideas at some point during your career as a writer, and so I would heartily recommend a script analysis class. But then again, I'm a college teacher. Who teaches script analysis. And often acts in movies when directors and writers don't understand these classic forms.

Think about the possibility of hitting a home run without ever been told to keep you eye on the ball or step into the pitch. It's possible. But it's much less likely.

> I've seen a number of videos about pitch-riding and beatmatching basics, but everything I've seen thus far has made it look wayyy easy

This is because the people teaching can do it almost flawlessly. Believe me it is fucking difficult to learn. Practice makes perfect, but aside from videos, I would recommend this book. Fantastic resource and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well it's visuals do at teaching you beat & phrase matching.

Also, what genre are you trying to mix?

Below is a link to a good book. It won't teach you how to be a storyteller, but it will teach you how to format a script. For grammar, purchase The Elements of Style. For screenwriting software, purchase FinalDraft. Yes FinalDraft is expensive (you may have to save up) but it will make your writing journey a lot easier than it probably is now. Best of luck.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Screenwriters-Bible-6th-Complete-Formatting/dp/1935247107

Basically, you just need a standard camera. Stop motion, like other forms of animation, is essentially a series of stills, so you set up the scene, take a shot, move everything just -barely-, then continue on down the line.

If you're actually interested in doing this, I might suggest a few things. First, pick up a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It's an essential book on timing and basic animation principles that will help you immensely. You may also want to consider Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation to see how things progress and make sure you have a proper, showable film at the end.

Do know that it's a long, tedious process. But if you have a story you want to tell, it'll be pretty awesome. I just graduated with a degree in animation, and I happen to think it a wonderful artistic form that should be encouraged.

Glad you're trying it out and putting in the effort.

I don't want to sound like I'm encouraging quitting or anything but there's nothing wrong with realizing that something isn't for you. You may need to check out more things/adjust your expectations (of yourself and of the work) before making that decision.

Don't be frustrated just because you don't understand as much as you thought. If you want to and you're dedicated, you can become even more skilled and knowledgeable than anyone on that set. These things take time and effort, of course.

Lighting isn't the easiest thing to grasp and "3-point lighting" is really just a starting point; a general way that you might decide to use to light a scene and which can work any number of ways rather than being one particular setup/ratio. The Set Lighting Technician's Handbook is very informative, if you're really interested, but there's also plenty of guides online and I'd be happy to break down a few basics if you'd like.

It's a great book for just about any field - it helps teach the reader how to effectively tell a story, which in turn helps one appreciate stories more. I think Story by Robert McKee is also a great book on story-writing (screenplays, this case), and also a potentially valuable book for many more people than just aspiring writers. Incidentally, it's been recommended reading by several prominent comic book writers (such as Brian Michael Bendis).

Syntax as Style by Tufte is the best for sentence level mechanics. By far.

On Writing Well by Zinsser is the best for non-fiction.

If you're interested in fiction, Story Engineering by Brooks is the one I usually recommend for structure. But you might use Knight's Creating Short Fiction for that purpose. Or Save the Cat by Snyder.

People often recommend Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It has the benefit of being very short and direct. It will make your writing better, if you're a beginner. Your essays will read more smoothly. But I don't like recommending this book because it lacks nuance and is sometimes wrong. If you just want to improve your writing as quickly as possible, get this book. If you actually care about language, get Virginia Tufte's book instead.

Animation is an art and good animation requires a strong understanding on how things move. A good resource for making both convincing and interesting animation is the Disney Bible: https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707/ and another: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/. But realistically it takes years to understand and make good animation. That's outside of the learning required with tools (such as Maya).

If he doesn't know the principles of animation he should learn them and then your critiques should be focused around 1) does the animation meet the intention -- ie is it usable and 2) how can the animation be improved to make it more interesting and believable.

> if writing a good story with an interesting plot were something that could simply be imparted with advice from strangers

I mean, it can't hurt to keep copies of On Writing, Strunk & White, and The Screenwriter's Bible handy. That plus a couple of, ahem, "style guides" (Neuromancer and a Hammett anthology) make up my writing block ready rack.

But yeah, the improvisational nature of roleplaying means that it's difficult to pre-plan how things are going to go. An experienced GM who knows their group well can often predict what course the PCs will take, but even at the best of times you can only really count on middling accuracy in my experience. I've had some of the same players at my table upwards of ten years, and they still manage to surprise me on the regular.

I do not think it's an exaggeration to credit Vince Baker's "play to find out what happens" as one of the most useful sentences ever put to paper in an RPG book.

I can't recommend this book enough: http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Revised-2nd/dp/1879505622

That won't help you with the technical aspects, but it will give you a really good foundation in theory.

The best thing you can do is just start making stuff. Get a crappy camera, use your phone if you have to. As an editor you need to have a solid understanding of story mechanics and the quality of footage won't have too much of an effect on your learning.

Shoot really dumb 2 minute films, anything that allows you to play around with time and atmosphere.

I saw friends in film school using Windows Movie Maker and their webcams who were making better films than the people who could afford nice equipment. It's all about creativity and having a clear view of what you're trying to accomplish.

Magician here. Head on over to the sidebar at /r/Magic - there's plenty of information on exactly where to start.

For my money, there's no better place to start than a cheap book. For card magic, look to "The Royal Road to Card Magic". For coins, grab "Modern Coin Magic". For general magic, pick up either Mark Wilson's Complete Course or Joshua Jay's Complete Course.

None of those books should run you more than fifteen bucks. Grab a copy and just read it until you get bored.

Also, please, don't ever learn magic on youtube. The thing that's hard for those new to magic to understand is that it is a craft that has been worked on for thousands of years. Every secret, every beautiful piece of magic ever invented has been based on the work of others, which couldn't have existed if it weren't for the work of others even before them. Every secret, as minute as you can imagine, deserves to be shared with the express permission of the person who put in the hours, days, and years of work it took to discover that secret. YouTube magic schools rarely give proper credit, and truthfully, they rarely teach a magic trick very well at all. You can also never be truly sure that a YouTube magician is worth their salt, whereas you can see--from the fact that these books are decades old yet still being heralded as some of the best magic books out there--that we magicians think they are worth reading.

Bottom line: youtube will teach you secrets. A good magic book, like the ones I recommended, will teach you how to be a magician.

Ok, now take note of what went wrong with your drawing and try again, and again, and again. Then after a few weeks go back and compare your latest drawings to this one.

The master has failed more times then the novice has tried.

If you want some resources, here are some youtube channels:

• Sycra
  
  
• Sinix Design
  
  
• Kienan Lafferty
  
  
• Jake Parker (Not many tutorials, but interesting videos on art philosophy and business with real-time inking/drawing in the background.)
  
  
• Mark Crilley
  
  
• Mattias Pilhede (Not tutorials, but some very motivational videos from an artest who started late in life.)
  
  
• Proko
  
  And also some books:
  
  
• Figure Drawing for All It's Worth - Andrew Loomis (Free PDF with his other books too. Althogh if you can aford it I think having the real book is more useful.)
  
  
• Masters of Anatomy
  
  
• Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter - James Gurney (Great for non-realist painters too. Written by the Dinotopia guy.)
  
  
• Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers - Marcos Mateu-Mestre
  
  
• The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators - Richard Williams (Useful even if you have no interest in animating. Writen by the Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Thief and the Cobbler guy.)
  
  
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud (One of the best books ever written. Great even if you're not interested in comics)
  
  You should also check out http://drawabox.com/ and https://www.ctrlpaint.com/.
  
  Edit: Labeled the links.
  
  Edit 2: Just in case anyone saved this post, here's a couple of youtube channels I started watching recently:
  
  
• Brookes Eggleston
  
  
• Marco Bucci
  
  I hope things are going well for you. And remember, as long as you keep moving forward you'll get to where you want to go eventually, even if your steps aren't as big as you'd like.

I like books, so maybe we should have a book section? We can include:

• How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records for technique.
  
• Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. Not necessary but probably interesting for DJs.
  
  We should probably include things about turntablism too. Here's a tutorial video series for that. And links to documentaries? I found Scratch to be pretty entertaining. Or would this stuff be more suited for the turntablists subreddit? r/DJs has more subscribers...
  
  Harmonic mixing seems like it would be a good thing to throw in there.
  

I don't think you need to read the whole book (there's a small summary that's a few pages out there), but I found Greg Dean's book helpful for learning how to write simple setup/punchline jokes.

For improv (and it applies to sketch too imo), the UCB manual is the best book I've read.

For writing, this book from one of the founders of The Onion is really good. I think if I had to recommend just one comedy book, it would be this one.

• Both. Repeatedly.
  
  
• In the books it's a toss up between Asha and the Blackfish, but on the show Tyrion all the way.
  
  
• Definitely house Greyjoy for me. Love the sea. Love the Kraken.
  
  
• Winter is coming. You really can't beat those. So evocative. But I sure love the "What is dead may never die.." of the drowned men.
  
  
• A lovely cookbook
  
  
• Not only do I have something on a wishlist I have two whole wishlists that are GoT related. Not that I'm obsessed or anything.
  
  
• “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

I think you're on the right track, definitely spend time modeling and animating before leaving your current job.

I would recommend getting started doing modeling and rigging yourself (then feel free to use pre-built rigs and such if you want). This is basically just so you know what's going on behind the scenes of rigs you'll use in the future. Even if you never create a model or rig throughout your career as an animator at a studio (which many times may be the case), you'll have the knowledge to communicate with modelers / riggers to get what you need to animate.

For animation, I do think it's worthwhile to have some experience in 2D animation (a little easier to get started in and helps you practice fundamentals you'll end up using in 3D) Acting for Animators, Animators Survival Kit, and Drawn to Life are all highly recommended books for 2D animation. Oh, and good news! you can practice all the fundamentals of animation with stick figures!

On that note, I would highly recommend practicing drawing. Ctrl+Paint has some decent video things on drawing and painting. While you don't need to be Da Vinci to go into modeling / animation (I'm not great at drawing / painting myself) it does help to be able to sketch out quick ideas (concepts for models, storyboards, etc). Just a little practice each day goes a long way!

As far as 3D software goes, it depends on where you work what you'll use, but the fundamentals will all be roughly the same. The company I work at uses Motion Builder for our animation, though I primarily use Maya for any work (and I know plenty of people using 3DS Max, Blender, and other software for the whole process). Some companies may even use proprietary software that you have no access to outside of the company and will expect you to learn it after being hired. Just stick with whatever you use, learn it well and you'll be able to transfer that knowledge into whatever software you'll need in the future

TL;DR Take your time, learn some 2D animation, draw stuff, and learn a 3D modeling / animation program like the back of your hand.

PS. I know a lot of people say you don't NEED 2D animation, and I'm not saying you NEED to know it, it's just useful.

Royal Road to Card Magic - http://amzn.com/0486408434

And a fresh deck of Bicycle cards (fancy decks are expensive and make people suspicious) - http://amzn.com/B010F6BXEA

I'd also recommend Modern Coin Magic - http://amzn.com/0486242587

If a coin book sounds good, get four kennedy half dollars (or similar sized coins if you're not in the states) from the bank, just ask a teller.

Reading books is way better than watching youtube, as most trick tutorials are by people who don't actually have a lot of experience or knowledge. If you read books, you also develop your own style instead of parroting whoever is on the video. Start with those two books, then practice a lot in front of a mirror. Think about presentation too- what will you say? When? Why? (a great resource, if you're interested, is Strong magic - http://amzn.com/B00534I956) Once you feel fairly confident, perform the trick(s) as often as you can for as many people as you can. At school, at home, on the street, wherever. Stick with it and do it a lot and you'll get the hang of it.

Break a leg!

I just started reading Writing Movies for Fun and Profit and it is really interesting. I have 0 interest in making movies, but it gives a lot of insights to the inner mechanisms that drive so many movies today.

Also, on how to make movies for no profit, All I Need To Know About FILMMAKING I Learned From The Toxic Avenger is also a lot of fun and is interesting. I was was co-written by Llyod Kaufman and James Gunn back when he was pretty involved with Troma. A lot of interesting stuff on how indie films usually to carve out different markets through the past 4 decades.

Animation is very very deep, but incredibly rewarding.
For characters, Richard Williams animators survival kit


https://www.amazon.ca/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Formulas/dp/0571202284

It is an industry standard. It has tons of great information and people all levels refer to it constantly. There are tons of great youtube tutorials but I can't grab any from mobile ATM.

A search on YouTube for the "12 principles of animation" may be a good jumping off point. If I remember I'll try and find you something tomorrow.

Start doing crude little shorts with the resources you have. If you have your own computer then you probably have SOME way of getting a bunch of still images into it and putting them together in a video editing program; there's a few programs out there that can do that. Use toys, Lego, jam armatures into stuffed animals, whatever, just start animating. Make little shorts, take random lines of dialogue and animate to them, parody scenes from popular movies you like, whatever. Build a body of work. Post it to Youtube. Find other people learning to animate - preferably stop-motion, but other 2D amateurs will have something worth saying as well - and trade critiques. Oh hey there's even /r/stop_motion, I dunno how good it is but it's right there on Reddit! Learn to take and give critique gracefully, separate your ego from the quality of your work and strive to always do something better than your previous best, or at least to not make the same mistakes you made last time. Watch the making-of DVD extras. Get a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit, it's one of the best books on animation currently available - mostly oriented to hand-drawn work, but you will learn a hell of a lot of things applicable to ANY form of animation from that book.

IIRC, Laika and Aardman are pretty much the only studios crazy enough to regularly do stop-motion features. If you can get in one of them as an intern then that would help a TON.

I can't give you any specific stop-motion references and tips; I'm an ex-animator but I was thoroughly a 2D kind of girl. Find stop motion communities and they can probably point you to the most awesomest references on the technical tricks unique to stop-motion.

Maybe this tip can help you. I am an actor (hence the username lol). I have studied a little bit of comedy and I can tell you this. Truthfullness is funny! Use inspiration from your real life as a source of comedy. I know an uprising comedian that is doing the same thing. It can also work in improv comedy. Maybe look into this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Comedy-The-Manual-Improvisation/dp/1566080037

I admire the fact that you have done stand up comedy. I want to try it one day.

I watched what DJs were doing a lot, I googled a lot, I read shit tons of forum posts and I wasn't afraid to ask questions. I know people who swear by this book.

Feel free to ask me about junk.

As for actually improving as a DJ rather than tech stuff, here's a few tips.

• Listen to mixes, preferably ones with video, and try and work out what the DJ is doing
  
  
• Try and experiment with different ideas, timings and techniques
  
  
• Record your mixes and listen to them the next day. Work out what sounded good and what didn't. Often you'll be surprised!
  
  
• Practice! Don't get bogged down, thinking about gear or promotion. Actually DJing is how you improve, not by making midi mappings or picking the next mixer to buy.
  
  
• Keep it fun. Mixing should be fun and you should be doing it for your pleasure first and foremost. :)

You're on to a great start just by starting! Here is a great book that I would recommend for composition, which plays a huge part in the layout of comic strips. I was a layout artist at Disney for Frozen, and a lighting artist on many other films and this book was a great way to learn some of the fundamental (and not so fundamental) ideas to staging and drawing for storytellers. Hope this help! Keep it up! http://www.amazon.com/Framed-Ink-Drawing-Composition-Storytellers/dp/1933492953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417589562&sr=8-1&keywords=ink+marcos+mateu

I received the Feast of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones cookbook as a gift last year. We decided to make meals from the recipes based on different regions from the show for watching different episodes this season. This week it seemed only appropriate to cook food from King's Landing and invite a few people over for a feast to celebrate the wedding :)

I normally always include recipes for all the things I post but this time it seems a bit wrong since it would just be copying recipes from their cookbook. I shared the ingredients for some of the items in the figure captions and have typed out the recipe I modified for my favorite dish the salmon fig tarts

I wish I could have taken better pictures, but I just had time to snap a few shots before we started eating. There was nothing that I didn't like. The game hens were a bit boring but still tasted fine. The cheddar onion pie, the salmon fig tarts, and the lemon cakes were my favorite! I'm excited to try out more recipes from the book. I think the authors have more of their recipes posted on their blog

If you're tempted to give it a go, then go for it. I'd advise you to think ahead, though. If you just write one book, you can expect it to swim and then drift downwards. I did originally think standalone before I started. My research quickly put that notiob to rest. I had to start with a series. I wrote my first three before even marketing which worked really well. (If you see my OP you can look at my stuff)

I highly recommend you read two books right now.
One is this (essential): https://www.amazon.com/Publish-Repeat-No-Luck-Required-Self-Publishing-Success-ebook/dp/B00H26IFJS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484083927&sr=8-1&keywords=write+publish+repeat

And here's the other one - it's technically for screenwriting, but the tips in there apply to books (essential for helping you write and think about your stories): https://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/dp/0060391685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484083965&sr=8-1&keywords=mckee+story

Hope this helps! Am happy to help you along the way, hit me up on FaceBook if you like.

The majority of the money came independently through individual investors. Of course, friends and family pitched in but the majority of it was plain old salesmanship. Rob and I both spent countless hours putting together professional sales packets going over the story of the film, the location, our experience, the financial possibilities, etc... A lot of salesmanship, but always being honest with potential investors.

We used Kickstarter sparingly having just hit a $5k goal recently for some extra finishing funds.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rbhamiltoniv/the-suffering-independent-horror-film-completion-f

Screenwriting wise, Rob and I both are ardent believers in reading all scripts you can get your hands on. Particularly if they are films you have seen and are familiar with. It's the best way to understand how a script translates finally onto the screen.

Of course, reading Save the Cat, and one of my favorites,

http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396988059&sr=8-1&keywords=save+the+cat+screenwriting

"How Not to Write a Screenplay"

http://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Write-Screenplay-Screenwriters/dp/1580650155/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396988100&sr=1-1&keywords=how+not+to+write+a+screenplay

But to be honest, it's all about the story. It's what helped us acquire our investors. Having a story that was genuinely intriguing and frightening helped us reach our goal. However, the script doesn't come easily it took well over a year to work out from inception to completion.

There were many books before Save the Cat (which is an OK book for screenwriting and/or storytelling technique).

The earliest writings on story structure, though, go back right to Aristotle in Poetics.

Humans have been telling stories ever since speech had developed.

There are two kinds of storytelling books. Snyder's method is a perscriptive method. He gives you a formula and tells you that the only way to a good story is to fill those beats. Syd Field does this too in his extensive bibliography on the subject of screenwriting.

On the other hand, Robert McKee gives a more descriptive method in Story and explains the process of "writing" as opposed to "filling a beat sheet".


The best book on writing (that is, the one which gives out the greatest tips on actually taking your own ideas and putting them into a coherent story) is Stephen King's On Writing. It has nothing to do with movies, and everything to do with stories, which is exactly what great screenwriting should do.

Nevertheless all writing books give out tips, tricks and cheat sheets. Good writing comes from within the writer and, as many "gurus" insist, you cannot become a good writer, you have to be born one and get training.

Source: Screenwriter/Writer here.

On the subject of books, Walter Murch's 'In the Blink of an Eye' is a great insight into filmmaking and film editing, and how the idea of cutting (which is mainly what separates a finished film from its component shots) relates to the real world and human perception. When, and when not, to cut.

Don't treat the man's words as gospel, but they'll certainly make you think.

And as others have said, don't just aim to be a director and isolate yourself in that. The best directors have at least some experience of every position they're asking others to do - you're never able to fully appreciate what you're asking of people unless you've done their job at least once. This will at least make sure you're asking the right questions, and people are much more likely to want to help you/work for you if you seem to understand where they're coming from.

SPOILERS, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET, also go see it now.

Reality can be stranger than fiction, sure it looks far fetched, but in a 5 dimensional reality, they were really testing the viewer, to see if you'd just brush it off as stupid, or would embrace it. People tend to just disregard or call out 'bullsh*t' when they don't understand it.

Here's a potential explainer:

"Picture a timeline as an expression of one set of possibilities spawning from any singular moment — a graspable example: start with your moment of birth, and track your life as a collection of moments (faces on that never-ending “you” as observed from the Fourth Dimension) all strewn together. Now, turn once more. Imagine this line as itself one face on an object made up of lines of the like — all of the possible lines of moments/faces that might spring from that initial point. Every conceivable thing that could happen after Point A (your birth) gets its own line, and each of these lines is a face on the Fifth Dimension’s view of “you.”

That, in effect, is what McConaughey sees from his daughter’s bookcase… though his focus on a singular timeline as opposed to all possibilities, and his manipulation thereof, call into question transition into the Sixth and Seventh Dimensions, which are tough eggs to crack (more so, even, than Eight, Nine, and Ten). But luckily, Nolan doesn’t dive too deep beyond a brief hiccup in theoretical consistency here and there. So we can rest our studies here and not worry about anything beyond No. 5… until the sequel, that is."
http://www.bustle.com/articles/47537-what-is-the-fifth-dimension-in-interstellar-how-to-understand-the-films-complicated-physics

This was a very risky move, but definitely a win for me, transformed this movie from a good adventure movie into a spiritual human experience. It would be amazing if our civilisation managed to survive long enough to understand, and actually control five dimensions, our body would need upgrades of course, but we'll be able to do that in the future. Let's just try to survive the next century without killing ourselves, or overpopulating.

There is also a book, released yesterday by Kip Thorne, who was the scientific advisor for the movie, and set the scientific rules for Nolan.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378

I'm going to sound like a broken record and I apologize for that.
This is a reply to another person starting to use SFM. Hope this helps you and anyone else.

Do NOT give up. I'm forcing myself to go ahead and learn to animate.

Here's some stuff you can use to learn about animation.

• The Animator's Survival Kit (http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284) There's an iOS app for The Animator's Survival Kit for 35$. It's not cheap but it's pretty handy and comes with example videos you can see (stuff that's in the book, but animated for the iPad)
  ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-animators-survival-kit/id627438690?mt=8 )
  
  
• Endless Reference (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvspTjApofA2Yg3i10gTdQ)
  
  Plus, look for SFM Tutorial (add animation to specify) and you'll find a lot of tutorials. Some nice stuff is Jimer Lins and really, REALLY recommend the stuff from Zachariah, specifically lighting and camera tutorial.
  
  
• Lighting tut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6McfZmwgBQ0
  
• Camera tut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZN2bBxCXQU
  
• Rule of thirds tut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDZpZTzn-VY
  
• Thomas Larson's Graph editor tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L7nvTyu-Zg
  
  Improvemente only comes with practice, practice and practice! :)
  
  
  
  Also this from another post:
  
  Check this one out from MaxOfS2D:
  http://youtu.be/cKnpx9ajemg
  It shows tips about light settings.
  
  I know there's also a guide in the Steam Source Filmmaker community about Ambient occlusion.

First things first. It's good to be critical of your own tastes and wanting to be able to talk about it is great.

The thing is; to talk about movies you talk about intentions (intentions of the director, but also the cameraman, the lighting, the actor, etc). Although there is a common goal, these disciplines approach it in very different manners. If everything works; it's all conveying the right intentions at the right time. To get why some movies work and some don't you need to learn the "languages" of at least a couple of the disciplines. You should notice the way the camera frames the person and why at that moment in the narrative they chose to do that in this specific manner. You should notice the way the scene is lighted; is it dark, is it red, etc. All these things get you on the track of what the overall intention is. Things like this can be picked up from books like ["In the blink of an eye"] (https://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Perspective-Film-Editing/dp/1879505622). Which is a great book about editing.

Now if you talk about the cultural remark a movie makes. What it says about something in the real-world; In real life. Your entering the domain of sociology, psychology, anthropology and/or philosophy. This again is a whole other beast. It's taking all the intentions of the movie and trying to see what it "means". The Why. This is also very personal. If you like dystopian settings. That can be connected with nihilism. So you read up about nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche (although not technically a nihilist) or Albert Camus. I can go on and on.

The point I think I want to make is that it's a total package. It's not one book that can teach you how to think about movies. There is no one book that can tell you how to take them in and to express your feelings about them. I must add that I did not study film criticism so I don't know the material they teach there and I'm sure there are books that give you a glimpse or an overall view how to approach this topic. But in the end there is no book that can show you your own way of conveying your feelings. Discussing the marks a movie left on you with others.

The only way to do that is like learning a language. You have to read it but also speak it and "live in the country" to really master it. So find a friend/forum/teacher/parent/dog/cat you can talk with about movies you both saw.

I would highly suggest either Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual or any of the other books listed in the sidebar of /r/improv Or Improvisation For The Theater

The UCB manual is mostly concerned with Long-Form Improvisational Comedy, but it'll have good insight for any other kind of work.

Depending on who you ask, you can get different "tenets" of Improv. But the most basic things two I'd say are:

1.) Yes And - It is not just about literally saying yes, but about agreeing and adding information.
2.) Don't Deny - Again, this isn't about saying no, but about not denying the reality which has been created. As in, if you're in a scene where it is established that you're on normal Earth, don't just start going "Hey, I'm flying!"

I wouldn’t say microscopic, but significantly smaller than a small black hole. Surprisingly, and please Reddit, don’t hang me for citing a Hollywood movie in a discussion about astrophysics, the movie Interstellar is a fantastic example of what happens when you’re close to a SMBH. Kip Thorne was the science/physics advisor for the film and does a great job keeping the physics true to science. If you’re able, read The Science of Interstellar. It’s amazingly written and Thorne is so so so good at explaining complex ideas in simple language. Also pictures.

Pixel animation is a whole beast of its own but if you want to have a serious foundation for animating (without taking classes) this book is the best there is. The Animator's Survival Kit teaches everything there is to know about 2d animation and how to do it right. Lots of great examples of good and bad and why things work.

Interpolating between animation loops is a neat idea. Sounds tedious though. I'm sure that would require some serious thought on the programming/scripting side as well. High five!

If he enjoys Game of Thrones and cooking, how about one of the Game of Thrones cookbooks? This is the one that I see the most frequently. You could maybe pair it with a fun kitchen gadget or a nice bottle of wine. My boyfriend is a huge Star Wars fan too and I've always wanted to get him this remote controlled BB8, but it's pretty far out of my budget, haha. It could be a fun splurge item if you think he'd like it. There's also this Star Wars subscription box that came out recently. I hope this gives you some ideas!

I like a mix of books and Lynda on the software, kind of dry but as they start with the fundamentals it's handy to have on hand or gone through once and a while to know the tools. As for principles which help you make good work or do a good job I like

The Animator's Survival Kit - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0571202284/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_awdo_O92lxb1TVGTG4 via @amazon

And for editing
In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing http://www.amazon.com/dp/1879505622/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_awdm_E72lxb0R0HGDZ via @amazon

Ok, The best way I think there is to start off with is with Flash cs 5. It is easy to use and really fun once you get the hang of it. There are tons of tutorials out there for it too. I also recommend getting the books in the links below. They really helped me and I have been doing flash for almost a year now and love every piece of it. You can also start off with Stop Motion. It really gives you a sense of how frames work and timing works. Hope this helped!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cheat-Adobe-Flash-CS5/dp/0240522079/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382186191&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cheat+in+adobe+flash+cs5