Advice
 

Hey everyone, i'm in need of some good advice. In the following year i'll try really hard to learn how to do animations. I want to learn how to make 3d animations for commercials and I want to learn how to do as mutch as my boss would want. For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV8yf...rom=PL&index=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsLXQEeLiI0&feature=fvw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P9CFcMkg18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhFtWkqyrl0

I already know some of the software i should learn to use from the video descriptions of these videos.
I'm absolutely sure that if I want to become a movie animator/ commerical animator I need to learn:
Adobe After Effects, Maya, zBrush or Mudbox, Adobe Photoshop.
But are there any others, would I need for example stuff like Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere?

i was under the impression that an animator just animates (someone correct me if i'm wrong), so no modelling, texturing, rendering, lighting, rigging, and compositing for you... i don't know if dynamics falls into the area for animators

so i don't know why you'd need zbrush or mudbox when they are sculpting tools
and i don't know what after effects and photoshop would be used for since they are compositing tools if it's 3d animation

i would think you'd want stuff like motion builder, face robot and knowledge over physics and scripting and match moving.

however, i think if you're on your own then you'd need to know something about rendering, rigging, scripting, lighting, and compositing as well as animating.

i dunno... depends on who you have with you to help you out

Re: Advice
 

those are all pretty bad examples, as there is not much animation in them (except for the game one, but the game artists would have animated it, not commercial people. it will just be edited together.)

Here is an advert done at my work recently. The animators animated and the fx people did the dynamics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDHWTN41Lk
As an animator you wont do any modeling or what not. With things like the cubes forming the logo (in your examples) I would think one or two people would have done the whole thing.

whoah I really thought that an animator has a knowledge of all these things. What I wanted to ask really is what tools were generally used to make this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsLXQEeLiI0&feature=fvw (just an example).
Oh and do you think that I won't be able to get a job where I can both make models, dynamics and animate all together? Oh and I want to know if it's possible that only one guy made that animation?

edit: Would the name "3d artist" suit the job I want to get ready for better?

lots and lots of people will have made that trailer.

you can be a generalist if thats what you want. I think perhaps do a bit of everything until you know what you want to specialise in (if anything).

first of all, animation for ads, broadcast, and movie are a little bit different. also, if u are gonna be workin in agencies for broadcast animation, u'll have to know more than just animation part, like chirone said. also u'lll have to confirm if it's just 3d animation that ur boss wants or if he wants 2d too. what ever it is, u'll have to learn 2d animation if u want to enter the world of animation, as 2d animation is whr you learn the real animation and its principles/uses etc etc etc. likewise it'll make ur work much more refined and good looking. after effects/photoshop are used in 2d animation- as far as i know, after effects is used mostly for 'graphical' animations, or say 2d animation. But u can't ignore the 3d part of after effects and photoshop's latest versions either!!!

u can check my (studio's) animation clips/videos too, just to get the idea of wht maybe the difference in ad based and fully 3d animations.

thanks guys, that's what I wanted to hear.