I don't know what to animate!

[GhostGag]

Seriously, I'm just drawing a blank. Animators that inspire me are Oney, harry partridge, Redminus, SpazKid, and Twisted Grim. I'm wanting to make something completely off the wall random crazy animated shorts like they do. I guess I'm just having trouble finding a subject to do. What do you fellow animators do to get the ideas flowing?

So far I've just done some head turns, walk cycles and lip syncing with Flash, but I want to start actually making a cartoon.

[Ikonyami]

At 2/10/14 05:46 PM, GhostGag wrote: Seriously, I'm just drawing a blank. Animators that inspire me are Oney, harry partridge, Redminus, SpazKid, and Twisted Grim. I'm wanting to make something completely off the wall random crazy animated shorts like they do. I guess I'm just having trouble finding a subject to do. What do you fellow animators do to get the ideas flowing?

So far I've just done some head turns, walk cycles and lip syncing with Flash, but I want to start actually making a cartoon.

Start with something small would be my advice. Don't try to do too much if the stuff you just mentioned is all you've done so far. Trying to take on too much at once can end up being discouraging. But, an idea of what to animate: Try making like a trailer. A short hype trailer for something you're interested in. Quick cuts, flashy animation, and a dramatic ending. That way you're starting small but you can later expand that trailer into a full animation if you get some ideas and it will help develop some skills and reveal to you what you're good at / not so good at at the moment. Good luck!

[GhostGag]

Start with something small would be my advice. Don't try to do too much if the stuff you just mentioned is all you've done so far. Trying to take on too much at once can end up being discouraging. But, an idea of what to animate: Try making like a trailer. A short hype trailer for something you're interested in. Quick cuts, flashy animation, and a dramatic ending. That way you're starting small but you can later expand that trailer into a full animation if you get some ideas and it will help develop some skills and reveal to you what you're good at / not so good at at the moment. Good luck!

Thanks, I was thinking of doing something very short. Oney's Ice cream was only about 10 seconds and yet so entertaining. I'm going for comedy in my animations.

[Rustyhound]

Well there are always some basic exersises that you can do. Animate basic walk cycles, jumps or punches just anything to get you goin'. And dude, if you're thinking about animating an actual project (which seems like what you had in mind). The greatest advice I could give, is to make something where you don't put a lot of effort into it. What I mean by this isn't to say that you don't try and make something good at all, just don't get caught up on it. Get your self into the whole process of doing things first, learn the basics and fundamentals of animaing first (and learn 'em good as it's your basis for your understanding on how to go about animating certain things). The reason I say this is because more often than not people want their first work to be big and make an impact, which is understandable. But don't try to do things like that, you'll only end up taking forever without really getting anywhere. So instead just make whatever and accept it for what it is no matter how it turns out, you might hate it or you might hate it or you might love it. Regardless though, at least then you'll have something to use as a point of reference in regards to your abillities.

Man I went deep there...

The point is just do something, anything! whatever, and then learn from what you've made. Then take that and sort out what you need to improve on for your next project. This is mah two cents anyway. In the end, what you choose to take from this and implement is entirely up to you. So good luck man!

[Oh-Sama]

At 2/10/14 05:46 PM, GhostGag wrote: Seriously, I'm just drawing a blank. Animators that inspire me are Oney, harry partridge, Redminus, SpazKid, and Twisted Grim. I'm wanting to make something completely off the wall random crazy animated shorts like they do. I guess I'm just having trouble finding a subject to do. What do you fellow animators do to get the ideas flowing?

So far I've just done some head turns, walk cycles and lip syncing with Flash, but I want to start actually making a cartoon.

-Walk back and forth until you get an idea, any kind of idea will do the job even if it's simple.
-Have your ideas stored in a safe place, a notebook, a flash memory or your own memory (of course if you have good memory but don't rely on that too much) Any kind of secure storage will be useful.
-Keep records of the times you get inspired, and check what kind of things get you distracted from your main goals.
-Any time you catch an idea, try developing it by adding more details to the storyline, give your characters goals to achieve or enemies to get rid of. If you can't go through this step then repeat the first and second steps until you accumulate bunch of messy ideas and try sorting them out and see if you can create something from :)
-If you cannot get inspiration by watching movies then you can always listen to your best music genre. NewGrounds has tons of amazing tracks in the audio portal.
-Still if you can't get anything original, just start by doing parodies of existing projects. Not even parodies, you can mimic small parts of different animations in your own style and then combine everything together, after all if comedy is not your biggest interest. Surely you can create stunning stuff from :)
-(IMPORTANT) Join collaborative projects here on NewGrounds. I have in mind bunch of new Collabs projects in the future and I'll be announcing them here soon :)
-Share your experience with others here in the forums and hopefully you can improve :)

Note: I'm still in the process of developing this technique and I can tell you it's a bit hard at first but you could get something done at least, check my/any Collab entries for reference if ever interested :)