As an animator, you bring your life experience with you that is reflected in your work. Everyone brings something different. Animation, is an extension of reality and thus, you need to observe life around you. Look at how much time an old person takes to get up from the bench and how kids keep jumping around, how people's head never really stop moving, observe how people get curious about the person sitting besides them, how everyone turns to see a person when they enter in the waiting room and how different it is for a girl and a guy.
Observe how a cat behaves when you throw food at it or how a person reacts when he's barked at. As an animator it's your job to study movement, if you don't understand movement, you've got no business being an animator. I didn't say that!! For an artist, the real world is the best mentor. So, when you're taking your evening stroll, turn your head around and look at people, look at leaves falling and look at kids jumping, keep storing it in your head. Someday you'll get a shot and you'll wonder how to do it, that's the time you can just dig into the storage area and say, hey, i can make her tilt her head while talking like that lady at the store, and she can walk like my aunt.
Once you start seeing, you'll find how much really happens around us that we never cared to notice. life becomes so full. And yeah, there's a side-effect to this, i thought I'll share that as well.
YOU CAN"T SHUT DOWN THE ANIMATOR IN YOU
Your brain is always working, looking for new things and when you find something, you're so absorbed into it, that you forget that you came in with another person in the coffee shop. You never stop learning, you never stop thinking (I wonder if that's the reason all my hair is grey now) and you'll never stop enjoying life.
