BrianKouhi

🎅🎄 TOAnimate's Big Christmas Sale is now LIVE! 🔴
If learning Blender or improving your animation skills has been on your list for a while, this is the perfect time to jump in.

Our Ultimate Animation Course and Blender Basics (For Animators) have helped thousands of students gain and improve their animation skills, and for our Christmas sale, you can join them at a 30% discount!

Just use the code XMAS25 at checkout to get your 30% off.
www.toanimate.ca/

Details:
🔥 30% OFF
🎁 Use code: XMAS25
📅 Sale ends on December 31st

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 11

BrianKouhi

Just spent 3hours with 3 YouTube animation legends, talking about animation, the industry, education and AI. Check it out!

1 month ago | [YT] | 5

BrianKouhi

🔶 FREE mini-course alert!
Learn everything from the basics of Blender's animation tools to animating your first walk & run cycle.

👉 Join here: toanimate.ca/blender-challenge

🎓 100% Free
🎬 Learn by actually creating
🎁 Free rigs & PDFs
💪 Structured like a 3-day challenge

2 months ago | [YT] | 19

BrianKouhi

Weight painting lips and eyelids has always been a major pain when it comes to character rigging, so our co-founder Vladimir Mokhov spent a couple of weeks and made a tool to automate the entire thing.

🔶 This will be included as part of a toolkit for our upcoming Ultimate Character Rigging course (in Blender) at TOAnimate.ca

4️⃣ The tool uses 4 points on a loop (corners and upper/lower mid points) and breaks it into quadrants, then distributes weights evenly along the points within the quadrants based on the step count, calculating distance between the points.

This makes sure that every point is weighted identically and consistently. The weight generation/distribution is done through geometry nodes, and the rest is with python scripting. The goal of this tool is to make facial rigging way more painless for our students and save them time.

📆 The course is coming later this year, inside it, we'll be covering tool development such as this as well as the entire process of creating movie-quality character rigs.

🚀 Sign up for our newsletter (bottom of the page) to stay updated: toanimate.ca/animationtips

8 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 52

BrianKouhi

Working on a full video breakdown of how we made "Bob - Awakens" cinematic.
Our brand new studio's (TOAnimate.studio) very first paid project.
In the video I'll cover what our process was when creating a CG cinematic from scratch for a client, using Blender.

Bob - Awakens cinematic: https://youtu.be/tjKp6LeiJ9Y?si=8ZiPN...

8 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 55

BrianKouhi

🎬 WE’RE STARTING A STUDIO… WITH BLENDER! 🎬
For years, we’ve been creating, teaching, and building a community around animation. But deep down, we’ve always wanted to take things a step further.
Well, we’re finally doing it. 🚀

TOAnimate Studio is officially live! We’ll be focusing on game cinematics, 3D promos, and short films, and we’re already wrapping up our first paid project!
👉 www.toanimate.studio/

This is something we’ve always wanted, and we feel incredibly lucky to be able to make it happen. Huge thanks to everyone who’s supported us along the way ❤️

9 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 36

BrianKouhi

10 Steps to Animating the Perfect Shot 🎥

1) Find a dialogue clip*
This will help inform your acting choices based on the situation/mood of the shot.
* you can skip this step if there is no lip sync and you’re not animating to music.


2) Brainstorm and sketch out acting beats
Think about who your characters are and how they would react in the situation you’re animating. Do they have any props? Do they interact with the environment/each other? What would be the best camera angle and most compelling composition?


3) Shoot references
Now that you can picture your shot, record some references from the correct angles. Do several takes trying out various acting ideas and pick the ones that feel most natural and look interesting.


4) Analyze your references
Take some time to analyze what you like about your performance. Focus on finding subtle movements and facial expressions that will elevate your acting and make sure to inject them into your animation.


5) Create golden poses
Before you get too deep into the shot, start by sculpting out the main acting beats for the entire shot. Don’t rush and make the expressions and silhouettes as appealing as possible.


6) Complete your blocking
Now you’re ready to add in all the remaining key poses and tweak the timing of your shot. Create a playblast to make sure the animation plays well in real time.


7) Blocking +
Flesh out the rest of the shot by adding in breakdowns, overshoots & settles, eases, moving holds, shaping the arcs, etc. In most cases, your animation will still be in stepped/constant interpolation at this point.


8) Spline
With your shot fully fleshed out, you’re ready to head into spline. This step will reveal everything that’s wrong with your shot, such as incorrect spacing & timing, broken constraints and floating movements. Your job now is to make the animation look as good as it did in Blocking +, with smooth movement replacing still images.


9) Polish
Once you’re happy with your shot overall, it’s time for polish - the most tedious of steps that requires a sharp eye. Go frame by frame and tweak any little movements to add extra fleshiness, clean up any intersections, double check your curves, and make the shot as beautiful as you can.


10) Lighting & Render
Though a nice playblast can be sufficient, you now have the option to bring it to the next level by adding appealing lighting and rendering out a final version of the shot with the added atmosphere, effects and camera blur (if the shot requires it).

Check out the rest of our infographics here: www.toanimate.ca/animationtips

11 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 35

BrianKouhi

Our new FREE GHOST Rig for Blender 👻
Download it here and: www.toanimate.ca/store
🎃 Make some spooky animations this Halloween!

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 65

BrianKouhi

Tomorrow's the day!
Our Asset Store for Animators will release tomorrow with 25 rigged and animation ready Characters/Vehicles/Weapons and other props... anddd we'll be adding to that roster every month!
We'll be running 30% off on all rigged assets tomorrow: www.toanimate.ca/store

1 year ago | [YT] | 25

BrianKouhi

Our Blender Marketplace for ANIMATORS (TOAnimate Store) launches in 2 days! 👀
👉 toanimate.ca/store
An asset store filled entirely with feature-quality rigs.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 20