what rules are to be followed to be a good animator

[shahid_versatile]

hi,please give me some useful tips to improve my animating skills,and suggest me some softwares.

Thanks its completely my pleasure.

[wallyflasher]

http://www.leconcombre.com/board/flashtutorial/us/flashmaniacsquinzeus.html

[Noct]

Ugh...
It appears that man speaks French natively, and wrote that tut in English. Or it was converted, either way...not the easiest thing to understand. Apart from that, I don't find it to be that good of a tutorial anyways. He calls it an "animation" tutorial, but like one page is actually about animation, the rest is all about creating art in Flash.

Regardless, if you want to improve your animation skills, you study real life, not Flash tutorials. Granted, there are some great books out there on cartooning techniques that certainly apply to flash animation, but most of your "pro" animators go to the source. If you want to animate a fish, you watch a fish swim around all day, you don't look at other peoples drawings of fish.

Anyways, if you want some great free stuff to read, check out siggraph's educational section:

http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/

There is some fantastic writings on there from John Lasseter (pixar) that are more then worth a read.

[shahid_versatile]

hi,Thanx for your suggestions.Its really working.Actually,atfirst I dont know how to make a good start in animation.

[Babaloo]

Preston Blair's cartoon animation covers the basics, you can find it on the web.
A place to go is Chris Georgenes Keyframer site. He's a flash animator with broadcast production experience (Adult Swim's Home Movies and more). His forum is mainly dedicated to flash animators and fx.
a preview of Blair's
http://www.darlingdimples.com/?page_id=79

hope it helped you!:)

I have to add: to get starting in animation, watch the world around you and draw it until your fingers bleed....

[jbw]

Books worth getting:

Richard William's Animators Survival Kit
The Illusion of life:Disney animation

Also check out http://www.comet-cartoons.com/3ddocs/charanim/
whilst it appears to be for 3d, the principles are the same regardless of the tools you use.

As for software I would suggest you stick with Flash. Get the principles down and learn how to animate. Babaloo's suggestion of drawing alot is definately going to help.
Training how to use software is far easier than teaching someone how to animate properly.

And head over the cgtalk - you'll pick up alot from that forum!