As a child I tried my hand at animation with a Super 8mm film camera. I made a few plasticine models, got a few tripod-mounted lights from dad's university and set up shop in his garage. Wow. What a painstaking process! 3 weeks later I had 1 minute of shakyjuddery stop-motion animation. But I was hooked.
For me as a kid the kings of animation were British TV animator Oliver Postgate (who created some wonderful stop motion like Bagpuss and Ivor the engine) and Ray Harryhausen who spent his career making stop motion dinosaurs and monsters in classics like Sinbad and the eye of the tiger. Today of course, I watch films like Avatar and Pixar movies and want to create visuals just like that. I wish!
Since my first attempts to animate all those years back, I've tried my hand at animation with more modern techniques - i.e. a computer and 3d animation software. My initial experiences were not that much different from my first attempts with a super 8mm film camera. Basically click here not very good!
The problem I had initially, was that I purchased a pretty expensive bit of software that was really a league above my understanding. It wasn't the best animation software in the world but it also wasn't the worst. The trouble was it didn't have the tutorials that an amateur like me really needed in the first stages of what is actually a steep learning curve. I persevered but made little progress then got a bit bored. Bad start. But I didn't give up.