5 Common Mistakes that New Animators Make

Let's look at 5 common mistakes that I often see made by newer animators!
Follow me on Twitter:
lastanimator
Check out my Instagram:
c.dong98
Support me on Patreon:
patreon.com/dongchang

[@TheGrassyou]

5 COMMON MISTAKES ANIMATORS MAKE: 1.BECOMING AN ANIMATOR

[@maroz5073]

2.WORKING FOR MAPPA

[@yergirl3368]

3.animating anime thinking they can make a waifu anime by themselves, kill me-

[@CadaGCreations.]

Facts

[@ChiupelAnimations]

4.having a lil too much ego

[@tnl-warrior3218]

​@@maroz5073overused joke

[@lulum1656]

I do animation as a hobby, I created anime characters when i was a kid and use your tips in my work. Love yer advice

[@Maybehaha755]

"As a hobby" people like you sick me

[@nijuhinaa]

​@@Maybehaha755it's not that serious bro

[@Vleaso]

@@Maybehaha755 care to say why?

[@Kaiyumaru]

@@Maybehaha755what?

[@lmnburger1017]

​@@Maybehaha755 ok...?

[@thexenoist3493]

The too many drawings complaint only applies to industry animators as independent animators might be working solo so a single person may draw both keys and inbetweens so the distinction between them is less vital for their pipeline.

[@ComfyCherry]

this whole channel is about professional advice, and his experience is in anime with japanese animation companies

[@Igorooooleynikov]

Animating on 4's 5's and 6's is also fine IMO if it is specific style. On real show - probably bad idea. Also doing strange timing make timesheet unreadable.

[@soullessbite]

Ain’t no rules in art

[@Chips_cooked]

@@soullessbiteI think its meant to just do your assigned role and not try to cover for other things that other people are meant to do

[@jmhorange]

Even when working by myself, I start with only the keys that are necessary and then go back with inbetweens. You can label everything as keys but it shows you don't have confidence in your timing and spacing to plot out your inbetweens later and it's going to take longer if you are making all the drawings in one go. It also makes tie down and cleanup slower.

[@shyimp]

that box perspective tip is amazing generally, even for illustration and composition

[@MochaxMatcha]

I want give a heartfelt message and thank you. One of your videos explained making lines aliasing, making the g-pen around 2.5, and using smoothing once your done. (I think on the tanya video) AND THAT HAS MADE JUST A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN MY ART!! I have always struggled with coloring and editing lines with my art that I had stopped doing so. But after trying it out, it's so much easier to paint, edit lineart, shadows. I can't believe I never knew. I really appreciate you man, it's gotten me drawing and coloring again after a 5 year slomp. If you ever make a video on how to make some compositing effects on clipstudiopaint like on after effects, I would be so grateful.🙏🏽 I don't have after effects and wanted to know if I have to use it. Thank you for reading! ✨️

[@philip4658]

The last advice sounds strange: if there is absolutely no movement between frames then it's better to copy lines than retrace them. Retracing motionless lines will produce flickering between frames even if you are very accurate retracer..

[@PaperWolfe]

At 7:30 he mentions that if it’s a held drawing then copying and pasting is fine

[@inisipisTV]

He's pointing to those that the character must be moving, ex. The char. is talking, it's very noticeable if just shift the drawings and just change the mouth flaps. When it's IB it'll look like a cut out. The hair must be moving, the shape of the cheeks when talking and the eyes must shift as if still looking at someone. Some lazy, or OG animators that's in hurry would do this to save time. Animators are paid by the footage (or by fraction of second of each scene) not by regular day wage. If you can animate 50 scenes in one week, you earn much more as opposed to just animating 10 scenes per week. That's why some animators love to get easily to animate scenes (like only the mouth moving or a hair blowing cycle) since they earn the same money as opposed to a scene where the character is doing lots of action (* though special complicated animation like intense fight scene or lots of moving crowd would getter higher rates than the regular scenes, in which the studio would hire a veteran specialist animator to focus on that scene)

[@cookee3000]

i love how you explain and don't criticize mistakes, its way easier to learn this way, thank you!

[@watchpointoh3354]

Once again, I'm extremely grateful for your channel. I plan to get started with learning 2D animation very soon (once I'm done the 3D short I'm currently trying to finish by Christmas). Keep up the good work and tips, because they've been very helpful and motivating so far!

[@princessthyemis]

Good luck finishing it!!🎉

[@littleink1279]

Me too

[@AtelierOfWeebs]

Thank you for your work, animators touch our hearts everytime with the stories they help bringing to life, you taking the time to teach advices and techniques for other animators is very needed in this unfair industry (yeah we all know what the studios do to their employees)

[@sabbyxx]

i spontaneously started animating last week with _no_ knowledge or experience at all, it just seemed like a fun thing to do. im guilty for doing the copy paste thing. i did notice my animation felt weird but i refused to believe that id have to redraw the same thing dozens of times😭 now i know how much time animation really takes. still LOVE it and i could never stop now but damn

[@TheArtKingdomYT]

Hey Dong, I appreciate all of these videos, I've learned a lot even though I am still a hobbyist. Keep them coming as it is a much-needed thing for the industry.

[@damotoneko1500]

I can tell you really understand animation with these tips and tricks and insights. Like working on 3s and 2s or the timing chart guiding how many frames there are until the next keyframe. I also liked your tip on how to align a character to a background by using a box character. I very much liked this video. You earned my thumbs up :D

[@johndinner4418]

Do you know if he means animating on 4s is a slide show when talking about 24 fps? He doesn't really say at what rate but I assume 24 since that's one of the standards. Would that then be the equivalent of having a frame repeat for 10 frames if you have your animation at 60fps?

[@taliyahofthenasaaj7570]

@@johndinner4418 Frame-by-frame animation isn't something that's done at 60fps. The reason is simple: there's far too many frames at 60 fps. You simply can't draw them all out, so it's frankly not even worth going there. 24 is also incredibly versatile because it divides evenly into a lot of factors. Frame-by-frame animation is always animated at 24fps. 3D animation or some other kind of vector/interpolated animation (like flash animations) can be rendered at 24, 30, 60, etc., but to go above 24 for frame-by-frame is just too much work for not enough gain.

[@johndinner4418]

@@taliyahofthenasaaj7570 Thanks but that didn't answer my question. I was asking what is the base of saying animating on fours. If I'm correct by assuming he means that out of base 24, that means it'd be a different frame every 4 frames in a 24 fps animation which would then mean that if you ran that at 60 fps, it'd be the equivalent of 10 frames, right? That was my question

[@vananana1086]

​@@johndinner4418well yes, in the end in both cases there will only be 6 drawings per second, but animation works on 24 so I don't know when you would use 60fps

[@johndinner4418]

@@vananana1086 animated video games

[@xn9tj]

Theres a lot of guys where copy pasting is their staple but it requires a lot of skill and understanding to sell the 3d form of it, whereas beginners use it as a shortcut to get out of redrawing things, and that's where the problem lies same thing applies to using timings on 4's and 5's, it isn't a strict rule to avoid it just takes waaay more competence at an advanced level to pull off well

[@AlexThePea]

These videos are great man! I've been a freelance animator for just over a year now and they're so helpful so thank you:)

[@oleksiyraiu7190]

I really love the animation sketches, how they with minimum amount of detail manage to land a punch. Do you know any good classes/tutorials that teach one to draw specifically for animation sketches, aiming for precision, simplicity and clarity?

[@stephanos6128]

if you mean the early early sketch stages before clean up, like the key frames are mainly just rough simple shapes before inbetweens n what not, that'd be strong strong poses/silhoutte, line of action n all that. timing spacing ease in out ect basically the same princples still apply to sketch animation (and a basic grasp on gesturing and anatomy i think) just wothout the inbetween and clean up stage

[@Masterpj555]

love your drawing work ! :). The drawing on raw notations is super cute.

[@shinchan5355]

the thing about too many drawings is kinda subjective. for example when the director give you his or her go signal to do stylized animation, I would fill in all the IB my self in order to make sure that it will stay the same way I projected it when it goes to IB phase. most of the time my layout or the scene I animated became kinda off after IB phase. the overshoots, exagerations, and some aspect from my animation are kinda gone.

[@Cheeseguy738]

This is great, I wish you went into more detail about the spacing and what all the annotations mean in a lot further details, like the cells and timesheets, but the spacing charts for sure I get confused aviut

[@vheart_png]

I appreciate your videos so much! Thank you for the tips it was super insight full.

[@tzyionhoward4839]

Thank you so much for your animation videos. They really help me out a lot

[@Manahina1]

As someone who never animated before, I can safely say that I've never made any of these mistakes. ok I probably done the first mistake a lot but you get the point.

[@mochiemy]

Thank you for the tips. It was really helpful and I’m starting to do animation more😊

[@monkeydgoofy8074]

The most useful animation channel , It really helps me understand animation better

[@Simon-et4hu]

Very interesting! Thanks for the information. Also I really love seeing the peg bar at the top :D Is it for alignment when switching software or maybe just nostalgia? The examples you show seem to be done digitally that's why I'm asking.

[@akarticle8561]

thank you so much, i am stills trying to improve my animation but I know I can get there

[@bigman7856]

Getting into the world of animation is like staring into the eyes of a behemoth. Especially when I'm still sort of in the process of studying art in general. I think it's good that I am learning fast though!

[@AuraTrail]

Your channel is gonna be my best friend when I start to struggle animating

[@Astryca]

Very facinating to watch! Thank you so much for the insight! I just learnt to animate in Clip studio paint, and the latest thing i worked on i copied the frames a lot, ill stop doing that now haha. The reason i did it is mostply because i dont entirely know how to animate with more folders properly. I just recently did that by keeping the mouth in another animation folder. Not sure how to properly do it to be honest, if you have any resource for people to learn this better, id love to see it!

[@AGotT]

6:36 even when there is no movment in character try redrawing the last frame and repeating them so the still standing character will feel more alive

[@jcw-draws]

I learned so much from this video, thank you for sharing. I will definitely be subscribing!

[@plasturion]

I learned that low quality animation is better than high quality. Thank you!

[@logomuno]

I always seen those lines in story boards but never knew what they were! Love the insight!

[@Galaxyeyez]

I think a good idea for a video would be about common LO notations not covered in the satsuma or just a general LO notations vid. Can't tell u how many times I've run into a situation where I have to ask friends for certain notations u don't find in the satsuma.

[@pipeliner8969]

And congatulations for more than 100k subscribers

[@omanipadmehum39]

1. wrong perspective 2. wrong notation for communication 3. drawing too much 4. weird timing 5. copy and paste destroying the beauty of handcraft thanks!

[@mooncaketin]

Thanks for your informative videos! Sorry if this has already been covered before, but a recent album cover on iTunes reminded me of something I never understood. I've seen pencil drawings of key frames made with different colored pencils. Is there an assigned meaning to the specific colors used? Thanks for any insight!

[@EdwardChan.999]

As someone who as no experience in animation, the video is informative and easy to understand :)

[@busti4552]

Kudos for making Deca-Dence! I liked it very much!

[@tzyionhoward4839]

As a new 16 year old who dreams of creating his own anime one day, your videos really help me out a lot. One thing I wanted to ask was if you could consider doing a basic anime animation course on KZbin. That would really be super helpful!

[@xSakuraStrawberryx]

You can create an anime style cartoon, but you can't necessarily make a real anime if you're not Japanese! Because anime is Japanese animation.

[@Raiya.Merlyan]

@@xSakuraStrawberryxanime is literally “cartoon” if translated.. but people decided to split the genre because the animation style differs a lot then western csrttons

[@tzyionhoward4839]

Wait so you’re saying that I can’t actually create an anime 🙁@@xSakuraStrawberryx

[@tzyionhoward4839]

That doesn’t really make sense. If a Japanese person created an American style animation, then according to your explanation, it would be considered anime even though it’s not even anime style.

[@tzyionhoward4839]

Exactly, thank you @@Raiya.Merlyan

[@uknowmejones9388]

Would love to get into animation but it’s rlly hard to find the drive for it after spending 2-3 years of doing art. Kinda jus don’t want to go through that struggle again

[@nichescenes]

My biggest issue is consistancy. I get the first drawing super detailed than realize ugh i gotta do this 100 more times. And i add too many frames. Maybe its something you learn. Animation i dont try at looks super fluid, ones i do look choppy. So weird.

[@valkoreyarts]

Hey your videos helped me out so much! I can't get enough of them ❤ I can't find any information about professional anime color charts. How they are made and how they differ from the west... When I got in contact with an anime studio they asked about color charts and planned over a week to make them. If I had made them beforehand it would have probably saved time... Are they only for characters? Or also backgrounds and shading? I also saw them in the studio ghibli log (in their artbook) but no details or pictures from it. If anyone knows something about this I would love to hear :')

[@BerryStudio11]

Yes i've been through that when i first start animating, copy and paste drawing make the motion looks awkward and not good.

[@salww.]

I love Mr Dong! He's like everyone's big brother when it comes to art!

[@Riof421]

Please keep up the good work !!!

[@lauraribeiroferreira566]

I am trying study animation with flipa clip and I copy and lap so much frames just animation is frame to frame... So, I agree that the character's moviment is so bad, no smooth. Well... Your videos will be so important for my study, thank so much 😊❤

[@KillerTacos54]

Thanks for this awesome video

[@christiansoto6396]

very concise yet elaborate

[@Igorooooleynikov]

About copy and paste part of a drawing. I see experienced artists use it very successfully, bahijd is good example. It seems argument there is to not just take and skew and move whole cell. I agree with it, simple movement has artificial feel to it. Also, Im working on a show and on genga stage artist does exactly that - duplicates a head and moves it a bit, even without gosei instruction. And it happens with close-ups of detailed characters and there is simply no time to correct second drawing. Well maybe I had to find time to correct it. Show is traced digitally so maybe it is why they are just basically doing a head slide...

[@Fairiz_lll]

Could you cover unique lineart next? Like The cursed energy in jujutsu kaisen or just demon slayer in general.

[@andnanm]

Please make more videos lessons on after production process

[@skocreation6674]

congratulation for 100k ☺

[@GarciaFranc-yx5pj]

These are truly the mistakes I use to commit as an animator. Calling my attention! But, until now, I can't get how to note a dialogue in timesheet. The great difficulty I have!

[@AccelSternritter]

Why you sound constipated? Nice video by the way, i like how you show everything clearly with specific examples, like the running animation.

[@Mark-jy5wb]

As a 3D animator with experience of doing 3D animation for almost 5 years now, I wanna try do 2D animation and having the skills of knowing how to pose a model I have some confidence in progressing with 2D style and I really hope I get good at it.

[@rejas3383]

6:33 oh shit, its hit me a lott

[@prettyspectrum6371]

I would love a video abt how to communicate and write time charts correctly. I know the western way but can't figure out how to do it as the Japanese way

[@Basagazel]

When I am alone drawing animation, I need to draw everything 😂 so deleting for in between is not so good

[@axhvjvlnkmogpnjnkcvbccus]

Question: How can you color the words in the perfect shape? I hope you make a video on how to color the animation

[@yoshiyoish]

Although copy and pasting is not allowed, another way you can cheat in LO is by using skewing/transform/liquid tool. You can't do it in genga, douga though. Amazing tutorial, it made me watch everything haha!

[@rattersworld1016]

Thank you!!!

[@zzzipp0]

awesome video like always!!! i was wondering, what anime are the clips at the beginning from? it looks so familiar but i can't put my finger on it lol

[@zzzipp0]

nvm i'm dumb lol it's just deca dence (i saw it said that but i thought that was like the producing company's name)

[@LeafMaltieze]

watching this channel makes me feel like I could be an animator...

[@tresbienjevois7013]

Thank you

[@jilliancrawford7577]

I think I have a problem with drawing too much outside the frame that would get cut off. Drawing a little more than what fits in-frame helps with quality by giving extra context, especially for animation, but I've noticed that I feel compelled to focus too much on that to where it slows me down and could even become a waste of time and effort. Is there a way to be more relaxed and casual about such excess context information, to have a healthier priority with it?

[@Random-mh7gx]

After watching this now I'm confused on how to decide the key drawings and maybe I'm just making some in-betweens 😢

[@sketchy-chan]

I've wanted to do animation ever since i knew what it was, but still can't animate hope this video helps

[@nikhilgirish7314]

ok, so from ur list, only the "too many drawings" is what i am suffering with. Thanks for the advice~

[@philip4658]

This advice is suitable only for Japanese animation. Because they send their keyframes to China for outsource inbetweeining. If you do not have this option then you should draw both keyframes and IBs by yourself. In threes by the way. ; ))

[@Raiya.Merlyan]

@@philip4658even tho I’ve been learning animation for a year now I have never made inbetweens

[@hubguy]

I feel called out by #3 lol. I draw way too much before I get into the in betweens

[@KenTheEagle2001]

When your drawing , what is the setting you use for your pen tool ? I’m working in toon boom harmony and the pencil tool has different modes but I haven’t found a line point and that’s similar to most key frame artists .

[@pipeliner8969]

Please make more Open Toonz tutorials!

[@GalaxyGoldbox]

Never going to use this, but good know

[@FigureUnboxing]

Not sure how you manage to do that. I mean, it takes me like one whole week to edit my unboxing video (after cutting office work hour) and it leaves me tired. Animators are like super humans!

[@DaRUde117]

How was your time working on bullbuster?

[@cabk.4538]

interesting techniques I've never encountered.

[@natus_podil]

WE NEEED MORE TUTORIALL TwT

[@abuzzedwhaler7949]

4:15 Mitsuo Iso has left the chat ;_;

[@ukuviispert9599]

the perspective thing isnt really true tho. If the perspective/fov/"camera lens" is changed between the subject and background intentionally it can make things look and feel extremely beautiful. The perspectives not matching up is only a problem with a still image. Animation, however, is about fluidity and motion. And not individual perspectives can do so much to convey the emotion that the viewer is supposed to feel. A big example of this are fight scenes, especially in shows like AoT. Sometimes something is extremely close to the subject character yet is drawn very small, or is very far away yet is drawn very big, even tho it messes up the relative sizes between the character and the object

[@IKKANmangaka]

Which 2D soft do you use ? What are the most used softs in japanese studios?

[@stevecaptor3738]

I copy and paste when a drawing its supossed to be inactive jsjsjs

[@Matthimeo]

I’m a cg animator, it’s interesting how the same mistakes in poor notation crosses mediums. A lot of newer cg artists may have a janky workflow that’s hard for people down the pipeline or people that pick up their revisions, so you often need to bake their animation out and delete swaths of work as you go to actually make it something you can work in.

[@tdowg8821]

Got any tips for someone trying to get into cg animation ?

[@sleepycritical6950]

I have a question. What’s the difference between a key and an in between, since you say that there’s a flicker if all the frames are key. Since I hobby animate solo, my workflow is usually to make the whole thing in one go either on two’s or three’s as the scene requires. Also I don’t really differentiate between a key or an in between because I can’t seem to draw something right between two frames nicely if it wasn’t planned from the beginning. I guess I just have an art skill problem on top of an in between problem, but any advice?

[@HappyGoof4]

Okay, so imagine a car driving from the left to right on a page. There are three key frames. 1)The car being drawn driving from the left side, 2) The car in the middle of the page, and lastly, 3) The car driving on right side of the screen. There are also frames that act as the movement of the car going in-between each key frame. The frames in between the key frames are the in-betweens. Does that help you?

[@sleepycritical6950]

@@HappyGoof4 that’s not what I meant when I said I don’t differentiate between a key and an in between. What I meant was that since I’m doing it all solo, it makes no difference for me to only draw the keys and then in between, and to draw both key and in between together. I usually just draw the key and in between together (meaning that for me all the frames might as well be key) because I have a hard time drawing the characters consistently unless I plan it out from sketch to finish.

[@HappyGoof4]

Oh. Sorry!@@sleepycritical6950

[@endusk64]

Do what is best for your workflow. I alternate between these two methods. Sometimes it's all keyframes and no inbetweens, othertimes it's keyframes first then inbetweens. It depends on how difficult a scene is for me, or if adding inbetweens feels unnecessary. Right now I'm trying to adopt Studio Trigger's "less is more" approach. This does require perfect keyframes though.

[@kollykwuru2738]

I am a canadian hoping to do animations like these in the future, how did you find a job in japan? it would help me a ton to know so i can try to find a similar job to this

[@justsaraki6593]

Hello. Im a first year european animator student who aim to work as a professional animator later. Thank you for this video but it seems its adressed to those who work in the industry.... Do you have tips and video for those who just started animation? Great wish

[@vidiav4614]

i have to become an animator. i have to.

[@leetlebit403]

Is there a specific pen in supposed to use for animating maybe?

[@yezzzsir]

Wrist slaps from DC lol!

[@AidilAfham]

Thanks for this! I do however, am curious why copy and pasting is not a good practice since your tips are targeted at professionals working in the industry. Wouldn’t it save time and money to do use what is efficient? I’m not a professional and I’m surprised at that tip, since I noticed alot of anime uses same animations for diff scenes.

[@Ashura86AE]

thanks for the advice

[@trunks10k]

question Dong do you perfer animating with OT or CP?

[@RedGallardo]

Badass animation

[@rum_4869]

on too many drawings: how do key drawings and in between frame drawings differ? do you have to draw them differently?

[@RailRide]

It's a division of labor thing. If a key animator is drawing too many frames, he's slowing himself down making extra drawings that the inbetweeners are supposed to handle. The key animator does the major poses, and the inbetweeners (a larger group of animators) fill in the motion that takes place between them. If you're working by yourself on a hobbyist project, this is less relevant as you have no assistants helping you. Some solo animators still do this though. Example, Ed Tadeo's animation of Wolverine: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXTIeqWtoNuDbJosi=d8dz-gw46rNFD2LI You'll notice that he first does a very rough jumpy animation. Those are the key frames. When he goes back and starts adding frames with blue/pink shaded drawings (onion-skin function), that is inbetweening, at this point he's drawing the frames that fall between the "major" blue and pink figures that define the major poses in the sequence.

[@verendale1789]

I was actually under the impression that anime is mainly done on 2's not 3's, didn't know that.

[@endusk64]

2s is mostly an american cartoon thing. 3s is the staple for anime unless it's a sakuga scene, then it's animated on 2s. Movies are also animated on 2s. 4s are usually background effects.

[@loganshalloe5927]

Could you explain notation to an even more basic degree? I'm not sure what A1, A2 etc. refer to, or what the spacing diagram indicates, or how the timesheet works

[@S4NSE]

thaaaaaaaaaaanks

[@lotosla3199]

what is the best school for animation in tokyo?

[@MiladyGchan]

Whats the name of the software used in this video?

[@ChimeraLotietheBunny]

Interesting anime stuff

[@ilikecats5426]

I will consider this... when I am skilled enough to make animation like this LMAO

[@MASTERCRAFT938]

Hello there :D