Reddit reviews Elemental Magic, Volume I: The Art of Special Effects Animation

Hey, is there anything in particular you'd like to recreate, i presume you don't want to just copy the entire thing :)

I animated the whole thing over a few days. Probably 1½ days worth of solid work.

The Logo and type was designed over a couple of days, here's some variants that led to the final version - http://dribbble.com/shots/1313667-New-logo-ideas?list=users&offset=7

As a couple of the people here have already said, it's a mix of Cell animation and keyframed layers in AE and 3D from C4D at the end.

For the cell animation this book is a great start - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0240811631/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you're new to AE, start with the very basics first, start small. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet - but this might be a bit much for someone who's just started using AE.

Good luck! I'd love to see what you come up with.

It's okay. It's a bit jittery, but overall the facial expressions look good. I feel the movements would look a lot better with some cleaner easing. Her drawing skill seem solid, she just needs to flesh out her movements.

If she hasn't read it already tell her to go get the following:

Animators Survival Kit

Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation


She's off to a great start!

There is a book called Elemental Magic that really changed the way I draw 2D fluid. I would say its the Animators Survival Guide of dynamics.

http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Volume-Special-Animation/dp/0240811631

Looks great! Are you familiar with [Elemental Magic?] (http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Volume-Special-Animation/dp/0240811631/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330802986&sr=8-1) Great book

So I don't know of any Anime particular effects resources to be honest, but there are some amazing books I definitely recommend that show some incredible effects.

A great start would be finding Joseph Gilland's Elemental Magic effects book. The book contains literal stepped processes on many different effects animation composed by fantastic american animators, a lot coming from classic 2d Disney backgrounds. It's a great start, and it isn't very hard to find a free pdf of it online, or buying the book physically which for some reason I like more.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631

Other then that, studying, and practicing what you find from great effects animators on Sakugaboru is what I'd recommend.
Some of my personal favorite guys that immediadly come to mind are:

Yoh Yoshinari (Classic Gainax/Trigger Effects)

Yutaka Nakamure (Impact Frames, fire, lightning, in bombastic style, the guy is a legend for a reason)

Masanobu Hiraoka (Surreal, and mind melting work, incredible what he pulls off)

Hope all this helps out. Have fun.

This is a pretty great book on the subject, if you have the spare cash and time:[here] (http://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1300190930&sr=8-5)

As far as the behavior of the water, I'd take a gander at videos of waves, choppy water, things like that for references. Unfortunately I don't have any good tutorials on hand.

I would recommend elemental magic
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0240811631?pc_redir=1405436896&robot_redir=1
And the bitey castle guy has a good video series

The primary problem I see here is the water has no bounce to it, it hits the floor and spreads out.

If the water impacts it would bounce at an angle away from the source.

The actual fluid dynamics of getting strings and sheets to break into beads of water is secondary to getting the overall shape right.
Water cannot compress, it's volume stays the same. But every single point should follow a parabolic curve like a regular bouncing ball.
(Aside from surface tension and air resistance)

Knowledge of traditional effects animation like this is pretty hard to come by, so I'll start by apologizing because I don't know of anywhere online to learn this stuff.

The good news is that it's not too different from animating anything else, and a few years ago the first real textbook to get specific on the subject came out. Here's a couple of relevant pages to give you a sense of the thought process behind animating smoke effects: http://imgur.com/a/p2e2c

I can't scan the whole book, but I can give you an amazon link in case this is the kind of thing you were looking for: http://www.amazon.ca/Elemental-Magic-Volume-Special-Animation/dp/0240811631

Aside from that, downloading the video in a format that allows for frame-by-frame scrubbing and then flipping through the relevant frames, (which is a good study habit when animating anything), would be a good way of dissecting the mechanics of this particular smoke.

I don't know if any of this is what you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

This cigarette smoke effect isn't even good. Here, buy this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0240811631?pc_redir=1408029170&robot_redir=1