One
nice and easy way to get some loosening
up is to not have everything hit on the
same frame, which is contrary to everything
I have said so far.
But that organization served it's purpose
and now it's time to back off from that
rigidity. Up to this point, we have hit
our poses solid.
Every part of the body comes to hit the
pose at the same time. That's not natural.
So we need to shuffle things a bit. Here's
a look at some dopeSheet screen grabs
that show how I like to do this...
I'll
grant you that my approach is a bit formulaic,
but again, we're working outwards toward
our goal, from organized structure at
first into disorganized life in the end.
So for offsets I'll shuffle my head from
my spine and my spine from my hips to
have the torso of the body sorta flow
into a pose. Depending if I want the motion
to lead with the hips or the head will
determine which way I'll offset my keys.
Sometimes I'll shuffle some keys and things
will look awkward for a certain pose or
transition.
That's OK, I can shuffle them back for
that spot. It's a cheap way to get rid
of that robotic feel of pose to pose.
I'll offset the hand's rotation to occur
a frame after the hand hits in place.
Now this is assuming an IK arm set up
(as I used here).
Since the hand controls where the arm
will swing as well as the hand rotation,
it's a good idea to break this up so it
looks less like a marionette being pulled
by the wrists. Alot of folks don't like
using IK arms. I used to hate 'em, but
got used to making them look OK after
some work. I know Rick May is a fan of
the IK arm, for those keeping score at
home. As far as I can tell the key to
having IK arms look decent seems to be
in good breakdowns, careful observation
of arcs and offsetting hand rotations
from IK handle translation. If I were
using an FK arm, I'd offset the lower
arm a frame from the upper arm and the
hand a frame from the lower arm, allowing
the arm to have a sort of unfolding overlap,
the "successive breaking of joints"
kind of feel.
Again, with IK I'll do it with breakdowns
and offsets. In general, anyways. Again,
where it looked funky I'd step back and
not do it there. These are just cheats,
not rules. The only rule is the animation:
does it look good?
If yes, then the cheat is good. If not,
then the cheat is evil.
Oh,
one more thing, I offset both arm animations
to get rid of twinning in my pose hits.
Just in case anybody cares.
Here's
what it looks like after all that offsetting
and shuffling....
Smoother,
but not quite loose enough for what I'd
like this to be. By the way, this is about
as loose as it gets for us at work. After
this I'd be ready to run a smoothed fcurve
spline filter on the curves and be on
to lipsync and grabbing my next assignment.
The style of our show is pretty tight,
which fits the deadlines. For my own stuff
at home I sometimes like to explore loosening
things up a bit more.
Kill
Mr. Roboto!
Here's
where things get a little less formulaic
for me and I start to rely on experience
and a good eye for animation. The deleting
of keys.
Many
a young animator struggles with having
too many keys. Especially if they're
just going straight ahead. After awhile
they don't know what they're looking
at anymore (at least I didn't back then).
The solution for me was to key smartly.
But in the pose to pose world, the problem
is it can be TOO organized, things can
be too structured. What's needed is
some good old fashioned editing.
I
try and look at the spine mostly. I
found that alot of the rigidness in
my work comes from the spine being too
tight.
So I'll go in there and shuffle things
around, deleting keys and some breakdowns
here and there. I'll also try having
a lower spine control not settle into
the pose until almost near the end of
the hold. Sometimes I'll have the head
take
longer, or somesuch. This is the massaging
part of animation that is very difficult
to define as a step or a process.
So here's a look at a close up of the
dope sheet and the corresponding animation
change that goes with the edit.
It's
a very subtle effect, but when you do
this for the whole shot, it really starts
to loosen things up and defeating that
robotic feel. And remember, this is still
all with linear keyframes. There's no
ease in or ease out from key to key.
The plus side of this is that when the
time comes to start adding ease in and
out by switching the fCurves over to spline
interpolation and then filtering the tangencies,
you're not in for any surprises. Oh, one
last thing here: I took the time to really
tweak the whole hip/weight transfer flow
in the part where he kicks the fallen
tablet out of the way. This again is something
that you just need to use your animator's
eye to spot and fix. This is the place
where I try to address anything that really
needs fixing, before going into spline
curves.
F-Curves,
away!
Now
I'm ready to switch the fCurves from straight
linear interpolation to a spline interpolation
with edited/filtered curve tangencies
at the keyframes.
Here's a quickie peek at the curves for
one control object...
What
this is going to do is really smooth out
alot of the remaining jerkiness of the
animation. Pose hits have ease to them,
transition breakdowns have some flavor
besides straight through. There's no surprises
here, I'm not really adding anything new,
but I'm taking what I already have and
applying this neat smoothing to it all.
It's like icing on an already pretty tasty
cake. The trick is to not violate the
extremes as they have been defined already.
Spline interpolation by default tends
to overshoot the holds, really making
things sloppy. So I try and keep the holds
pretty tight with a minimum of overshoot,
while the keys in the middle transition
areas are pretty smooth. Now if I wanted,
I could go through each control object
and delete select keys in the middle of
curve transitions to make things smoother,
and I may yet do that for this piece.
Generally if I want to loosen things up
even more I'll do it in the fCurve editor
by deleting some frames along the curve
that are hitching the motion a little
bit. But by and large the amount of return
for that amount of effort will be minor.
Still, if you want the absolute best animation
you can get, then that's a step worth
taking in my opinion. Like I said, I didn't
do that for this piece as it is seen here.
Here's
the motion with the spline ease curve
interpolation...
The
animation of the body is pretty much done
here. Like I said, I could go in and tweak
it more. Since this is a personal clip
and not for work, I may. That's the nice
thing about personal pieces, no deadlines
and no quotas. Well, sometimes no deadlines.
I did 3.25 minutes of animation in 7 weeks
for my short film "Lunch".
As you can see, THAT had a deadline and
this method helped me meet it. :o)
The
Final Result (well, final enough anyway)
And
one last look at the final with lipsync
and eye/facial animation....
I'd
go into the eye and lipsync animation,
but that's another subject in and of itself.
Suffice it to say, there's some little
cheats I use there as well, but nothing
earth shattering.
Comparison
Shopping
For
the ultra curious, I have made a side
by side comparison of the preview animations
as they progressed. The way it works is
this:
pop1
vs. pop2
pop2
vs. Linear
Linear
vs. Cleaned Up Linear
Cleaned
Up Linear vs. Linear Offset
Linear
Offset vs. Splined Curves
Splined
Curves vs. Final Animation
So
there you have it, one guy's way of
working through animation. As stated
earlier, I'd welcome any feedback or
discussion.
Sharing techniques and methods can only
help us all. I don't pretend to be the
world's greatest animator, nor to impose
that my way is the right way. But folks
have expressed interest and I figured
it couldn't hurt to open up my brain
and share some of how I work to get
my job done and still try and make halfway
decent looking stuff.
Thanks
for stopping by and taking the time
to go through all of this.
3DTotal
Advertisement - We need your support!
Special
Thanks:
To
those who's feedback has made my stuff
better through the years:
Mike Comet, Mark Behm, Rob Dollase, Ron
Smith, Tim Lannon, Rick May, Chris Bailey,
Victor Navone, Doug Dooley, Ethan Hurd,
Angie Jones, Steve Talkowski, John Goodman,
Julian Love, Bear Weiter, Wes Houghton
and a host of others I'm probably forgetting.
Thanks also to my wife Kim, bless her
heart she puts up with me and this silly
idea of being an animator for a living.
Poor girl could have married a dentist....
About
the author:
Keith
Lango is an assistant director/animation
director for the "3-2-1 Penguins!"
children's video series
produced by Big Idea Productions in Chicago,
IL. Keith has also produced/directed a
number of award winning short films and
has been an avid student of the art, craft
and profession of animation since 1993.
He also hopes to age well like a fine
cheese.
