Something I’ve noted over the years…

Often aspiring animators… even professionals… will point to books, even quote them as the authority on a specific approach, technique or insight into animation. The common problem however seems to be that the advice given in the text or illustration is more often than not simply referenced and not actually followed.

Here might be a case in point from Richard Williams’s ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’:

Here the animator is urged (in italics even!) not to give their assistants assignments of creating inbetween on thirds.

The issue here is that animators who use computers as their assistants think nothing of expecting their digital assistant to do that very thing… animate… interpolate… keyframes on thirds. And worse!

Garbage in. Garbage out.

Consider this the next time you get mad at your assistant…digital or otherwise.