Teaching animation with TVPaint?

[Paul Fierlinger]

I know there are several animators here who either teach classes, have taught in the past, or teach intermittently, using TVPaint. I am one of those who teach intermittently and I can't say about myself that I am very experienced or particularly brilliant at it, so I'd like to learn from others.

1. How do you go about teaching TVPaint? Do you set everything up on your school's computers just the way you have it on yours, or do you use TVP just as it comes out of the (virtual) box? How do you see the usefulness of plugins in class?

2. Where do you start? Do you first show everything that can be done with TVP, or do you reveal all the features over the span of your classes?

3. Do you teach only paperless animation or let anyone go about animating as they wish? I am talking about teaching art school students who have never attended a 2D animation class before and typically know next to nothing about the craft.

4. What is your first assignment? The bouncing ball or some other exercise of your own?

5. What is your final assignment of the year, assuming that it is a one year (two semester) class?

Anybody who has not taught TVP but has received instructions in art school, please feel welcome to participate.

[Klaus Hoefs]

Interesting topic, Paul.
First I think it is important what kind of students you have:
- art-students, as starters most with good drawing talent and if already are in a higher semester with experience in nude drawing (also in motion) and in everyday sketching of people acting in real life. Most don't take much care of understanding the tech but looking for own personal style and theme. Often don't like to finish a project, many are undisciplined.

- the illustrator and design -students, not so intuitive in life drawing but good in drawing abstraction and fashion-like things. Always looking for "in" things and for new effect-plugins like the one that makes everyone doing a "booaa!". They love Flash.

- the techies, also programmers; always want to find "the one right way of workflow" and can buttonhole you every minute about the theory behind a function. Although they would like to draw by numbers or -much wanted- the button who creates a character in motion. Happy if you give them a functional spec.

- sociology students and students of literature (also film students). Very good at story telling so they are looking for ways to substitute drawing abilities, they like cutout and stop motion.

(there may be more...)

Answers to your points:
How do you go about teaching TVPaint?
1.In the classroom I like to stay with a setup from out of the box. Has many advantages like no irritation and no time loss if working with shortcuts and (hidden or non-hidden) panels. If using plugins then for all students in the same setup.
Where do you start?
2. Depends on the audience. I made a good start with cutout-like or stopmotion , which works for techies and non-artists from the scratch. "Sitting and stand up" is good for artists.
I never show everything of the program. That is really far too much, frustrating and boring. Telling always only the things one has to know for their actual project.
paperless animation/ non-paperless:
3. Everything is done paperless here. One exception: storyboards can be done on paper, if they wish this way to go intuitive.
What is your first assignment?
4. see 2
What is your final assignment
5. Always a students project. That means three or four students working in a group and doing everything from script to film. The film can be a short observation of any every day thing and it is not shorter than 30 seconds.

[Paul Fierlinger]

It makes sense to start fresh out of the box, but my problem is that I am so used to my own key commands and a few very essential plugins associated with the key commands, that I get cold feet and teach my own way so as not to get stupidly lost while trying to explain the most fundamental tasks. I suppose what I should be doing is learn how to do things straight out of the box before I start teaching.

For a first assignment I make the students animate a cycle showing a droplet of water falling from top screen down on a leaf and rolling along the length of the leaf to drop out at bottom screen. The beauty of this test is that it is open to many possibilities -- there are infinite ways to draw a leaf and animate the action, from cartoon funny to nature's realism. It reveals a lot about the student's drawing abilities, sense of humor, sense of timing and acting, imagination (there are many shapes of leaves in nature) and sense of weight. It teaches right away how to use one layer for a background, a second one for the leaf and a third one for the droplet. It also teaches humility, for they must learn that they won't be animating cartoon characters until they understand some fundamentals.

The problem is that this test seems to be for the majority of students I get much harder than I wish. It seems that you don't have much luck with your students either. To start off with a figure sitting and getting up must be even harder both on them and yourself, no?

[slowtiger]

I did an introductory workshop for my fellow graphic designers, years ago when we still used Director besides Flash, and lots of demonstrations of TVP for animators interested in the software.

The animators just needed to see basic drawing speed and instant playback, and most of them were already hooked at that point. The rest followed when I showed some more tradtional-media-mimicking tools and the instance/exposure system. They didn't care about Plugins or what, I just assured them that there was always at least one way to do things, but mostly several different workflows possible. (This is a general attitude to teaching I cultivated: always mentioning that this is the way I was doing it, but that other ways existed and every student will find his/her own.)

The graphic designers got my "animation principles in a nutshell" talk, very basic, starting with timing and spacing of a circle in the frame, leading over to the bouncing ball, squash and stretch, weight, and finally some expression. Most of them wouldn't ever draw something, but even their Flash animation improved. I act out a lot, demonstrate different timings, dynamics, and so on.

One routine I often use is to explain why a keyframe sits at a certain position in time. I show around a piece of 35mm film, so they understand how long a second is, then tell them to imagine a piece of live action, then black out most of thee frames, leaving only the keys. They immediately understand that concept. Then I grab a chair and act the "get up" movement, stopping at every key and breakdown. This works nicely to illustrate key, breakdown, anticipation, and arcs, all in one go, even staging, because I turn the chair to show that the very same movement becomes unreadable from the front.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I act out a lot, demonstrate different timings, dynamics, and so on.

What exactly do you mean by this? Do you jump up and down and punch the air; that sort of thing?

I also explain that there are many ways of doing the same thing, which they have to explore for themselves, but I also have to explain that I can only teach my way, not any generic way which doesn't really exist, and this becomes difficult for me because my way is not always the best way for beginners.

[slowtiger]

No jumping, but acting out spacing and timing with my hands, accompanied by sound effects. A bit like a conductor during rehersal: "Now there's the ball rolling, and it goes brrrrrrrrrrrr - dump-dump-dump-dadadaDUMP!" I demonstrate how many steps can go into one second, and how one can imagine a timing which will be quite close to the final one.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I see... this falls into the realm of our own differing personalities. Every teacher had to be envious of Robin William's part in the "Dead Poets Society" but few could emulate that kind of acting.

I often wonder though, how much this is akin to directors "reading actor's lines". Some actors become hysterical when this is done to them and some appreciate it. I prefer to explain the action in words and let the students put their own personalities into their interpretations of my words. I imagine that your method must be close to the big studio method where everyone has to follow the director's instructions to be on the same page.

My method appeals more to the individualists. From my experience, most students seem to appreciate your method.

[Peter Wassink]

I have about 20 first year students
My lessons are officially in the category of technique lessons and started out as only learning the software.
but since that is rather boring i quickly pushed the emphasis away from that to be more about learning animation, which is off course also technique, using the tool of TVP
so in answer to question 3; everything is done paperless.

1. i also start out of the box.
2.4. After a brief walk trough of the basic functions and interface of tvp i start by letting them make a background, as a way to get familiar with the drawing tools then they have to do the (yes) bouncing ball on this background.
then a walkcycle on it, i end the first block (6 lessons) by letting them make a camera move of this walkcycle over background using the keyframer.
i notice that many students struggle quite a lot with the keyframer. but its the idea in the first block to let them see a glimps of all the potential possibilities of TVP.

in the second block i leave most of the button explaining out and give assignments that only make use of the most basic animation functions, this way there is the least amount of frustration about technique and students can fully concentrate on drawing their animation.

The final 1st year assignment in our school is also a film and some people choose to do it in TVP but this assignment is for another class, in my class they get several smaller assignments for each block.
There are 3 TVP blocks
the end assignment for
block 1 is the walkcycle with Keyframer camera movement.
block 2 is a hand drawn camera movement a p.o.v travel through a couple of rooms each student ending at the door of the next:


block 3 is also a pass on animation in which each student has to set a begin position of a black square and end with the position of a fellow student, then present me with a storyboard of an animation with a story of how the block changes postion

[Paul Fierlinger]

Peter, your methodology is fascinating because of the fascinating results it brings. It looks like you spend a lot of time with your students. Do they get the sound track before they start animating? Who does the editing and on which NLE? I can imagine how much fun your students must have watching each other's solutions and how they work when edited into a stream.

I just love what you do and how you go about it, but this is something I could never emulate for a whole bunch of reasons, but I am going to consider giving assignments so that they can be tagged onto each other as a continuous flow. I never have more than 5 to 8 students so all could be edited as a single project with 5 to 8 clips, including sound.

What astounds me is the artistic quality of many (if not most) of those clips. I get students who are mostly at the level of the one with the cannon... argh.

[Paul Fierlinger]

in the second block i leave most of the button explaining out and give assignments that only make use of the most basic animation functions, this way there is the least amount of frustration about technique and students can fully concentrate on drawing their animation.

I have learned this lesson too and will implement it this time.

[malcooning]

Basically, do you go teaching TVP, or do you teach animation using TVP?

[Paul Fierlinger]

Basically, do you go teaching TVP, or do you teach animation using TVP?

I have to teach TVP first to be able to teach animation and then go a little beyond even that and teach bits of cultural awareness and survival skills needed to succeed in life as an animator and how to pursue independence.

[Fabrice]

I often have to teach TVP in one two or three days, to students already knowing animation (mostly they have used paper).

1°) I use to show a few pieces of work from the gallery to make them understand they can animate everything with TVP. (classic, ink, oil, etc ...)
=> at this state they understand why listening to me could be useful for them. TVP can help them to create the animation they are dreaming of.

2°) I give the basics of the interface, shortcut, panels, rooms, etc ...
=> at this state they understand TVP has a different but coherent logical. (it avoids too much comparison with shortcuts coming from other softwares)

3°) I give the basics of the drawing tools (including : undo/redo, basic tools settings like connections, sketch panel, custom brushes, paper, how to create an eraser ...)
=> at this state they can draw what they want, and they really want to know how to animate.

4°) I explain how to animate by hand in an anim layer (it includes : instances/exposure, lightable, layers, blends, stencil, faux-fixes, animator panel ... + floodfill with auto pick color)
=> at this state they can animate what they want by hand. Mickey animations appears on some screens ; )

5°) I explain the clip/scene concept with camera moves and storyboard
=> at this state they can organize their film /animatics.

6°) I explain the other useful stuff for the paper users : Pegs Stabilisation, Scan Cleaner, alpha histogram, preserve alpha, background, etc ...
=> People wanting to keep the paper are reassured. TVP is not against the paper animators.

5°) I explain the FX concept with a simple shadow, and give a few exemples per categories. (distortion, keyframer, etc ...)
=> The technicians students are now happy with the compositing inside TVP.

6°) It's time for Import/Export. (including tvpx, png, psd, ...)
=> They now understand they can work with TVP and other software if needed.

7°) Open questions. "How can I do that in my project ?"
=> Now they are all happy with TVP, because I love to answer them, and finding the workflow and/or the tools they need.

(nb : I start from the basic config )

[Paul Fierlinger]

This is a very useful list, Fabrice. I might copy it to my syllabus just so the students can experiment with some of the features on their own time which I never use myself. I will not demonstrate all of it myself because your list is oriented towards sales, whereas mine would be (as Peter points out) oriented towards focusing the students on drawing as soon as possible -- and only paperless.

An interesting aside here; I have never been asked by a student about scanning paper drawings into TVP. I always ask the students if any have problems using the Wacom tablet (Intuos 3 at our school) and have never come across anyone who felt uncomfortable using one. As you said elsewhere, this is a generation of animators who won't be bothered with the pencil versus stylus issue. Their most annoying question for me is, 'Does it do automatic tweens.' A student of 2D animation must have a passion for drawing and not be looking for workarounds on the first day.

But I had to learn to practice more acceptance myself, because most of my students come to my class only to become familiar with what goes into 2D animation and not to become animators for a career. When I ask who wants to become an animator for a living after graduation, most (sometimes none) don't raise their hands. That took some getting used to on my part. These students have majors in computer sciences or illustration and may be headed towards careers in advertising so it's good that they want to become acquainted with 2D animation without having plans to major in it.

Having said that, at the end of each year there are at least one or two students who have become enamored with TVP and have changed their minds. I bet their parents hate me! (I know of three former students who are animating with TVP now for a living or will be doing it soon, after they feel secure that they have enough contacts to drop their daytime jobs).

[Fabrice]

Well, it's a very basic list.

I have to adapt it depending on the number of people (5 students is not the same as 30 ...), the school, their future projects, the training they already have on paper. ( the worst classrooms are those which have never used the paper before TVP ).
It depends if the school/teachers focus on the quality of animation, the artistic rendering, the workflow with 3D softwares, etc ...

Anyway, before trying to sell anything, I'm here to help them to do their own projects. I often write them after the training sessions, to give advices I could have forgotten.