About This Blog + It's Blogger

Hello! Thanks for checking out my blog! My name is Justin Milgate, I am a 3D Animator and Illustrator currently living in Seattle.

There are 2 main reasons for this blog. First, I wanted a way to process my thoughts as I progress on my own artistic journey. Second, I wanted to share my knowledge and experience with others to try and encourage them on their journey.

The blog is titled Improbably Possible to reflect these two aspects. I never thought I would be a professional artist, let alone an Animator. Being an Animator was a dream of mine that seemed impossible, but like the door to Wonderland says, "nothing's impossible.". The most powerful gift I have received on my journey has been (and still is) the encouragement of my family, friends, and mentors. I hope to be an encouraging voice to future artists who are feeling that their dream is an impossibility. I want to say that if they continue working to develop their artistic skills and keep an open mind, that their dream, no matter how improbable, is still possible.

How can I do this? Well, I'm going to try by writing about my own roundabout journey, artistic concepts of both animation and illustration, as well as sharing other resources that have helped me along the way.

Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and please feel free to reach out and let me know what you have found encouraging from these posts. I'd be happy to connect on Instagram, LinkedIn or you can even get in touch through my website.

All the best

-Justin

Timing and Spacing Part 1: The Basics

For my posts discussing the 12 Principles of Animation, I want to begin with Timing and Spacing because I feel that this principle is a major building block of the art form. This principle has a lot of power in establishing the style of a shot as well as what will be exaggerated and highlighted. It is also a principle that can be a bit confusing at times. For example, I'm calling the principle "timing AND spacing" while it has also been called simply "timing", and I sometimes hear students talking about the "timing feeling off" when it seems like they are trying to call out the spacing. All this to say I feel there's a lot to unpack so I decided to devote two posts to this principle. In this post, I'll define the principle as I think about it and share some basic examples so that in the following post we can dive in a bit deeper but all be on the same page. So, let's define this principle. The first thing to note is that while it is conside...

The Other Animation Principles Of Motion: Newton's Laws of Motion

After discussing timing and spacing, I think it's a little easier to see how all of these animation principles really feed off of each other and overlap in many ways. So instead of focusing on them as separate principles, I decided to discuss the remaining motion principles as a group. They really are artistic definitions of scientific principles, a way for us to discuss and push reality while still basing our animation on realistic physics to ground our work and make it more believable. Starting with reality, we can look at science, then we will define and apply the animation principles. Obviously, I'm not a scientist so I will not try to get too technical, but I think it's helpful to look at the reality of motion. Specifically Newton's 3 Laws of Motion: (1) Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it (objects at rest will stay at rest until another force acts upon it, objects in motion will...

Animation: Introduction to the 12 Principles

As I'm going through my character animation course, I wanted to use this blog to share some of the things I'm learning. To establish a foundation for those future posts I think it's important to start with the 12 animation principles established by the early animators at the Disney studio. These principles are both technical philosophies and terminology that help animators speak to specific aspects of a piece of animation that are working and/or needing work. When used together the principles can help any animation be perceived as more harmonious and believable. While they are listed as separate pieces many overlap and inform the others. Recently, I heard Mark Oftedal put these principles into categories that I found very helpful. Group #1: MOTION - Squash & Stretch, Anticipation, Follow Through, Slow-In & Slow-Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing & Spacing; Group #2: TECHNIQUE - Solid Drawing, Pose-To-Pose & Straight Ahead; Group #3: AESTHETIC -...

Improbably Possible

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