What a nice topic! I am going to tell you a story...;)
The first animated movie I was involved in was a project I did with my mother, who was a visual artist. My father's contribution was building a simple animation stand. We had an 8mm camera that could do frame-by-frame as recorder. We used cut-out figures and moved them over paper. Very low-tech, but it has a story .It's about 4-minutes. We create a kind of script first with the length of the various scenes, etc., so we did plan.
We completed it in a few weeks over the Christmas vacation, finishing in the beginning of 1971. several years ago I had it transcribed to video and then more recently I put it on YouTube. As there is no dialog or narration I added subtitles for clarification. There is sound in the form of edgy electronic music that I created. There was no stripe on the film, so the music played via a tape recorder that could synch the projector. It didn't work too well... But, I like the project, not because it's very sophisticated, but because it shows that you can do things with primitive means. You just need the drive.
Anyway, for the brave, here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMiYs_2qIM.
I never expected to revisit animated films, because I was more into music. I was involved in a few animation projects as film music composer, so there was some animation in my life. It never became a career, and I eventually ended up in the IT industry...:crying:
Many years later, by chance, I discovered Flash and found that you could now do animation on your computer. Just like home studios for music you could have one for animation! Around 1999, I enrolled in a multi-media production class and was taught 3D-Studio Max. There was also a course in Adobe Premiere. I like to work at home rather than in a lab so I invested in student versions of the software and a Dell workstation. One of the student projects I did was a short computer-animated movie, called Water Worlds. It had a story actually and I remembered being complimented for that, that it was more than just "eye candy".
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqpeQ0IXjf0.
You're still there?
Besides a few student projects I didn't do much with 3DS Max. I guess I still dreamt of being a famous film composer... Anyway, I worked my way through a series of 3D animation software programs: Animation Master, TrueSpace, and then Poser. Poser was the first program I could do something with and I created one unpublished animation. Long render times, by the way...:doze:
Are we there yet? Almost...
In mid-2006, I came across iClone. I don't know how actually, but in August 2006 I bought iClone 1.52. Animations had to be done in a separate Motion Editor, so there was no real-time feedback and I didn't do much with the program.
Then came version 2 with everything built in, and so much easier to work with. From then on I started to create many tests, but it wasn't until 2009 that I made my first story-based animation in iClone. It was based on a radio play and about 25 minutes total...:w00t: Since then I have produced one or two movies a year, usually up to 15 minutes in length. But always with a story.
You can check out my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/zuijlen.
But why...:crazy: That's worthy of another post...:P