In the old days of hand-drawn animation, life drawing was an essential skill for animators. Today, 3D animation is a blend of creative and technical skills, and life drawing is less important than it used to be.  However, it still helps to be able to draw to a basic level of skill, especially for creating thumbnail sketches which can be used to plan animation.  Nowadays there are many opportunities to learn animation online, at sites such as Pixelovely and Proko. You can also draw friends and family – models don’t need to be nude, and gesture drawing clothed models is just as useful for animation, and in some ways more practical, as most animated characters tend to be wearing clothing.
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