Over
the past year or two folks have often
asked me how I go about my animation.
In recent months much interest has arisen
in various internet circles regarding
a method of animation that is called "pose
testing" or "pose to pose".
I recall first trying my hand at this
method of animating about 2 years ago
at the suggeston of Rick May, and have
found it to be a huge help in forcing
me to approach animation in a more sturctured
way. This has allowed me to produce more
animation that is consequently stronger
and more defined than anything I had done
previously. As the years have passed I've
come across others who have tried this
way of working and adapted some of their
ideas and techniques. In my circle of
influence we have our own little way of
approaching animation, and we call it
"pop-thru" animation. Sometimes
I'll refer to it as organized keyframing.
In an effort to try and share some insights
into this method of computer animation,
I write this article/tutorial.
Disclaimer
This
is not "my idea".
Many other folks have had a hand in the
maturation of this method. The techniques
I describe here are merely my adaptation
of this approach. And this technique is
always evolving. I am absolutely positive
that something I say here will not sit
well with some animators. Which is fine.
This is NOT an effort to say that this
is the ONLY way to animate in 3d, but
it is certainly a USEFUL way to animate
in 3d. If I suggest something that you
think is wrong or in error, or is a 'cheat'
or sloppy, then please feel free to send
me an e-mail outlining your thoughts.
I'm still learning this craft we call
animation, and I'm more than happy to
hear other's thoughts on the subject.
A
Little History & A Basic Definition
There
has long been two general schools of approaching
animation. Straight ahead and pose to
pose. Straight ahead is what it sounds
like: the animator just charges in and
starts animating in a very stream of consciousness
sort of way. This results in some genuinely
inspired animation that flows extremely
well. It also ends up in alot of dead
ends and wasted effort when the animator
realizes he's painted himself into a corner.
Pose to pose animation is also much as
it sounds, The animator picks some seminal
poses that, when timed correctly, capture
the energy and direction of the shot.
The animator then will go and create these
poses and hit the timings, working to
deliver the shot with structure. This
often times ends up with some of the most
powerful animation with very strong poses
and tight timing, distilling the animation
down to the very core of it's being. It
also often ends up looking stiff and mechanical
and very stilted when the animator isn't
careful to think about keeping things
alive.
In
CGI animation, often times folks fall
into two camps: realistic or "creature"
animation and cartoony animation. Pose
to pose, by it's strong nature, lends
itself very well to cartoony animation,
and straight ahead, due to it's fluidity
lends itself very well to creature animation.
But it would be a crime to say that
there the boundaries lie and never shall
they be violated. There's room for using
a pose to pose approach in realistic
animation, as long as the animator is
careful to loosen things up enough in
the end. Straight ahead animation works
wonderfully for cartoons. Just watch
some older Disney work to see this.
The
term pop-thru is a stop-motion
term that some of us have borrowed in
CG. In stop-mo, there's not much of
an "undo" feature, so the
animator would often do a quick 'pop-thru'
of their shot to get a sense for pose
and timing. They may do this a few times,
gradually revising their work til they
felt they had the performance down fairly
well. Then they'd go ahead and animate
their shot with the puppet. In CG we're
looking at doing things in a similar
way. But the beauty of doing popThru
in CG is that we don't need to treat
these poses as disposable. Rather, we
can use them as building blocks for
our whole work, adding to them as we
go til we at last have our animation.
The
Project and My Motivation
Here
is the final version of the animation
that we'll be studying after about 20
hours of work, including lipSync.
The
clip is about 8.4 seconds long. That
projects out to nearly 17 seconds of
halfway decent quality animation per
week. And that's one of my main areas
of focus. The adage is true, The best
animation you do is the one you finish.
At work we have a production quota of
18.5 seconds of approved animation each
week. For comparison our good friends
working on feature films often have
quotas ranging from 4-9 seconds per
week. In short, we needed to develop
a way for myself and our team of animators
to create alot of good footage quickly.
Additionally we wanted to allow the
director the opportunity to see the
thrust of the animation as soon as possible
so as to reduce the number of fixes
needed after the animation has been
submitted for approval. Thus the main
goals of this pop-thru method are to
animate
quality footage as quickly as possible
(it is a business afterall)
provide
the director a look at the animation
as early as possible.
A
side benefit is the highly organized
structure of the keyframe data, which
I will detail later. Trust me, it's
a huge help.
First
Things First
It
stands to reason that if you're going
to use the "pose to pose" method,
you need some poses.
Click the thumbnail for a full size look
at some thumbnail sketches I did before
starting the animation.
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There's
some thought that your thumbs need to
be locked down tight. That may or may
not be true. I find it's good to not
get too attached to my thumbs, but to
use thumb sketching as a stage of exploration.
I'm not looking to define my animation
exactly just yet. What I am looking
to do is explore different poses and
different pose combinations. It's alot
quicker to explore things in pencil
than on the box. But I came up as a
CGI animator. I have no notions about
the computer being an inferior animation
tool. So while I'll explore on paper,
I also allow myself freedom to not settle
on things until I get to the computer.
I think the computer can be a valid
place for structured, focused exploration.
It is, afterall, only a very expensive
pencil. Animators who don't feel comfy
on the box may disagree. That's OK.
God still loves you and I'm trying my
best to. :o)
An
interesting practice in some 2d animation
circles is to work through your thumbs,
and then put the thumbs away
in a drawer and never refer to them
again. The main thinking behind this
is to keep yourself from becoming a
slave of your thumbs, cutting off those
serendipitous gems that arise when the
juices are flowing while you're hip
deep in the performance. It's this kind
of thinking that I tend to follow when
doing my thumbs. Thumbs are great servants,
but hard masters.
Anyhow,
you can see how I broke down the dialog
trying to find the energy of the delivery,
marking out breaks. Then I just tried
a bunch of different things seeing what
I liked and didn't like. Then I kinda
set that page aside and got on the box
to see what worked best in the situation
I was in.
Second
Things Second
Here's
a quick look at my animation set up using
A/W Maya. I like to be able to have a
window to toodle around in,
as well as a locked down "look through
the camera" view so I can check my
arcs, lines of action and silhouettes.
And I'm also a big fan of the dope sheet.
A
few words about the dopesheet....
While
I came up as a CGI animator, my training
has had a pretty strong traditional
bent. I like the clarity of one frame=one
drawing with key drawings defining what
the inbetweens will do. The dopesheet
is a great way to see just keyframes
for objects.
No fCurves or channel curves to deal
with. I'm looking at just keys and time.
This is a key component (pun intended)
of what I like to call organized
keyframing.
