Complete Noob looking for direction

[AppleH4x]

Many much greetings all,

I've recently decided to give animation a try and am continually running into one problem or another. The first of which, is I'm starting off as a horrible artist. I mean stick man level skills here. I've started drawing daily with a sketchpad, reading books and watching videos. Needless to say it'll be a long road. My ultimate goal is to make decent 3 -5 minute flash animation videos involving a small cast of characters.

Still I can't quite decide where I should invest my time. Should I continue to doodle on paper or would it be faster/wiser to stick to messing with my computer/pad? I can't quite help but thinking that learning to draw in programs could completely bypass paper and traditional methods. I don't want to invest a year into learning more advanced drawing techniques only to find all that knowledge is waste the second a computer is involved.

Either way I'm also looking for any advice or direction as to were to start. Think you're at level 1 on your journey, what do you wish someone would of told/shown you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope you're having a great day/eve.

-AppleH4x

[KhanhCPham]

At 8/16/13 06:31 PM, AppleH4x wrote: Many much greetings all,

I've recently decided to give animation a try and am continually running into one problem or another. The first of which, is I'm starting off as a horrible artist. I mean stick man level skills here. I've started drawing daily with a sketchpad, reading books and watching videos. Needless to say it'll be a long road. My ultimate goal is to make decent 3 -5 minute flash animation videos involving a small cast of characters.

Still I can't quite decide where I should invest my time. Should I continue to doodle on paper or would it be faster/wiser to stick to messing with my computer/pad? I can't quite help but thinking that learning to draw in programs could completely bypass paper and traditional methods. I don't want to invest a year into learning more advanced drawing techniques only to find all that knowledge is waste the second a computer is involved.

Either way I'm also looking for any advice or direction as to were to start. Think you're at level 1 on your journey, what do you wish someone would of told/shown you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope you're having a great day/eve.

-AppleH4x

Depends on how time your willing to invest. I had my first experience on traditional and also went to school for it but personally I'd jump straight into digital if your intention is to show your works on the web. Also your going need to learn digital anyway so its better to both learn the program and draw on it.

[Bored4Fun]

If your artistic skill is only as good as stickmen, then now is a perfect time if any to begin learning frame by frame animation or motion tweens (whichever suits your preference). Stick men are perfect for learning the anatomy of character movement, and so by getting this out of the way early you would have a much easier time when it comes to full fledged character design. Teach yourself to animate using stick figures digitally on your computer, and whenever you're away from your computer take the time to learn character design in the style that you like.

Hope you find this helpful, and good luck on your animations!