Hi! I was wondering if I need to be good at art to do Animations in Blender or something?
You need to be good at your art and your art is going to be animating.
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Using magical animation powers - I’m guessing your asking if you need to be a good traditional artists to be a good animation artist. The answer is no - however most animators and most of the best animators are, or were traditional artists at one time before they started animating.
Creating believable animations involve creating pleasing motion, poses, exaggeration, subtlety, personality and emotion derived from those poses and motion. Without an eye for detail and some basis in traditional art, it’s unlikely a person will be able to be an exceptional animator.
But - there are exceptions to the rules - like in anything else - ever.
Depends on what you want .
Want you be a great CGI Animator, and do all from scratch, or looking you for animation that can be easily use for
Games ?
If the the last , you can also use mocap. Adobe has a huge libary with professional motion for free. (formerly Mixamo)
No, but it helps.
I’m presuming you mean illustrative or other traditional art. Or perhaps 3d art? Either way, it’s really the same answer. You don’t, but no skills will hurt you.
But animation is a pretty specialized skillset. I know plenty of animators who are all over the spectrum of other art skills. Though most can at least kind of draw. Drawing and gestures are a useful skill for talking about animations and demonstrating things without having to actually do the animation. They’re not strictly necessary, but it’s recommended that you draw and practice drawing characters in motion while learning to animate.
This page has a pretty decent overview for someone who knows nothing about where to start. But I can’t attest to the quality of the animation tutorials(they seem ok). Animation for Beginners (Where do I start?) | Bloop Animation
He also has a list of schools, though I would rank them very differently. Just don’t go to Full Sail or Art Institute(Ai schools). If you’re looking for online tutorials, Digital Tutors and Gnomon are generally the better regarded 3d tutorial resources(Gnomon is better, but has less stuff and their animation videos are few). Some people like Lynda.com but it’s very hit or miss, imho. Go to one of the others, before seeking info here.
Keith Lango’s old tutorials still float around the internet, and there are a few good basic articles on angryanimator.com
I also think the videos on 3dmotive.com and animationmethods.com are pretty good for beginners. The narrators are competent and they explain stuff clearly.
Hope that helps.
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My strength is animating. I can animate 4 legged animal running and jumping.
To answer your question you will need to be a good drawer for a 2D animator in photoshop to make a 2D game, but to animate in 3D you do not need to draw anything except for drawing rough Thumbnails, rough Reference, and maybe a rough Storyboard. To be a good 2D and a 3D animator you will also need to know the basic Key poses, Breakdown, Timing, good at observing a Video References, and using the 12 principle of animation. You will also need to be good at observing a video reference. For example, I relies a 4 legged animal looks like skipping when they are running pretty fast. You will also need to do some basic math and maybe some basic physics to calculate the distance between a animated walking cycle.
Good points - one other is also important - an animation artist should know when to over exaggerate and under exaggerate. A lot of times if you watch animated videos, or character animation cycles slowed down you will notice incorrect poses, or motions that over extend and hold longer at specific poses. This is done with an artistic eye - to enhance animations.
The best example of this is from the original Disney stuff. Goofie and other character were commonly animated with a backwards bent (broken) knee on the passing frame. In a still shot it looks incredibly wrong, but when placed with the other frames and animated, it is a perfectly unique walk cycle that adds so much character and style to the animations.
Another great example for over exaggerating is on facial animations. Most facial animations require the animator to over exaggerate the extremes and hold poses because if not done the character looks stiff and emotionless.
A great example of stiff looking animations is the Final Fantasy movie. All the characters except the main female protagonist were straight motion capture animation content applied to the characters. You’ll notice - they all look stiff and lacking in emotion. It’s not because the mocap data was bad - it was tracked accurately. The problem is the poses needed to be exaggerated for them to look right.