Absorbing wisdom and advice from other animators may even inspire you to turn your passion for animation into a career. Learn what it takes to launch a successful career in animation!

Share a thing that you know on this field to encourage those with the passion to live the dream.
I hope one day we can assemble hundreds of freelancers from this thread to actualize a dope production.

Autodesk 3dsmaxTM
V-Ray
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Photoshop
Final Cut Pro
Adobe PremiereTM
Eyeon Fusion
Nuke

The list of softwares used in creating animation varies.Which is the best and easiest to focus on?
Contributions from gurus will be appreciated

None x the best.

The best is the one or two you can work with effectively.

Looks like you're a Compositor?

in..

nijabazaar:
None x the best.

The best is the one or two you can work with effectively.

Looks like you're a Compositor?

Great input Nijabazaar.. No i am not

The production pipeline of a typical animated short or a movie can be divided into three stages :
pre-production, production and post-production. We will be discussing these three key stages in detail.

Pre-Production
The first process in the animation pipeline, and also one of the most important, is pre-production. It begins with the main concepts which are initially turned into a full story, and then, once the story has been finalized, other things such as the script, shot sequence and camera angles are worked on.

Some major components of pre production are Story Boarding, Layouts, Model Sheets and Animatics.

...they also provide a visual reminder of the original plan; something that can be referred back to throughout the production.

Story Boarding
The Storyboard helps to finalize the development of the storyline, and is an essential stage of the animation process. It is made up of drawings in the form of a comic strip, and is used to both help visualise the animation and to communicate ideas clearly. It details the scene and changes in the animation, often accompanied by text notes describing things occurring within the scene itself, such as camera movements.

Not only can storyboards be especially useful when working in group environments (something quite common in the animation industry,) but they also provide a visual reminder of the original plan; something that can be referred back to throughout the production.


Layouts
Once the storyboards have been approved, they are sent to the layout department which then works closely with the director to design the locations and costumes. With this done they begin to stage the scenes, showing the various characters' positions throughout the course of each shot.

Model Sheets
Model sheets are precisely drawn groups of pictures that show all of the possible expressions that a character can make, and all of the many different poses that they could adopt. These sheets are created in order to both accurately maintain character detail and to keep the designs of the characters uniform whilst different animators are working on them across several shots.

During this stage the character designs are finalized so that when production starts their blueprints can be sent to the modeling department who are responsible for creating the final character models.