How to Not Waste Your Time

I'll lay it out right now: don't bite off more than you can chew. In terms of resources and needs, you already have Blender, which was free. I assume that you have a computer available, of course. The only other resources you're going to need to mine in order to do some animation work are time and concentration. Obviously you'll need time because, well, things take time to do. More importantly though, you're going to need concentration. Animating isn't the easiest thing in the world, and you'll do much better if you can approach it with a clear head and no worries. Forget the tortured artist shtick—give me someone who is on the ball. In order to keep this within a reasonable scope, we're going to limit ourselves pretty drastically. We'll be animating a single character, in a single shot, within a simple environment. And it's going to be short. Maybe fifteen seconds, tops. While you work through this book, you can choose to do the exact project that I'm working on, or come up with one on your own. A good choice might be to follow the book once with my project and then branch out once you're more comfortable. If you want to do your own from the beginning, try to stay within the guidelines I've just expressed.