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| In
my first animation tutorial that I
wrote over three years ago, I outlined
a fairly common (but under-documented)
methodology for managing one's keyframes
in CG character animation. The point
of that tutorial was never to declare
that it was the only path to great
animation, but was merely a suggestion
for one way to approach your animation
in a sensible, organized fashion that
hearkened back to our traditional
animation roots. The thing that I
always felt I never properly addressed
was what to do after you hit the end
of that lesson? What takes merely
functional animation and elevates
it to excellent animation? How does
one get from good poses with fairly
decent timing to a natural flow of
performance that just draws the viewer
in? In short, how do you go from OK
to great? |
| Well, Smart Guy, How DO You Go From OK
animation to Great animation? |
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| Thinking
about it at the time, I had to honestly
admit that I didn't have all the answers
to those kinds of questions. While
I am in no way suggesting that I am
great now (trust me, I'm NOT), I've
gotten a lot clearer in my head about
some of those answers. Now here's
a fairly bold statement, but I think
it's true: For the most part, all
pose to pose based animation will
tend to feel the same. I've seen hundreds
of animation tests from people who
have adapted the p-2-p method for
their own uses. While they all generally
function, most feel about the same.
And when I looked at my own work I
realized that a lot of my stuff had
that same feel. Basically, I had stalled
on "OK". I needed to go
the next step to find that elusive
unique voice for each character, to
take my animation to the next level
beyond "OK" and start to
approach some of the really excellent
work I had come to admire over the
years. |
| Thanks for the Personal Testimony, But
You Didn't Answer the Question... |
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| After
a thorough analysis of my work up
until that point, and then another
analysis of of the work that I admired,
I started to note a trend. That trend
basically boiled down to this: I didn't
polish my work. I was happy enough
to get it into shape, to get the major
forms and timings figured out, but
I hadn't taken the time to really
work on all the little things that
add to the quality of a piece. After
more cross reference and study and
a fair amount of bouncing my work
and experiments off of other animators
who worked at top studios and picking
their brains for feedback, I came
up with a checklist. This Checklist
consists of a number of various areas
of the performance that I ask myself
to examine in my work. Some of the
questions I ask early on, while still
thumbnailing my poses. other questions
come much later in the game, after
I think I'm done and happy with the
work. But by far most of the questions
are asked again and again as I develop
the piece. The biggest advancements
in my work come when I began to methodically
go through my animation at various
stages and ask myself about the items
on my Checklist. These questions strike
at the core of my work, forcing me
to get my head out of the mere construction
of a skeleton of the animation and
into the realm of fleshing it out.
Often the answer to these questions
would require me to start over. |
| OK Sparky, So You Wanna Share Your Fancy-Dan
Checklist? |
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| For
every motion, pose, timing and action
on every character in your shot, you
need to ask every one of the following
questions. By going through the list
one item at a time and cross checking
every motion for the item, you’ll
find so many areas of weakness that
need attention. The struggle for many
beginning animators is that they don’t
even know which questions to ask,
much less how to answer them. Hopefully
this list will help you to begin asking
the right kinds of questions. It's
helped me a ton. It’s not exhaustive,
but it goes a long way to spotting
trouble before you save your file
for the last time and think you're
done. If only finding and implementing
the answers was as easy as asking
the questions. |
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| Check
to make sure your motions have good
clean arcs. Turn on trajectories if
your software supports them. If not,
get out your dry erase marker and
draw the arcs on your monitor. |
| 1. |
wrist-
you need to keep an eye on these
to fight that marionette feel |
| 2. |
elbows- if you're using IK arms,
then you absolutely MUST check
your elbow arcs |
| 3. |
feet-
track the heel & the toes
to see if you're getting clean
arcs on both |
| 4. |
head- the most obvious motion
hitches will show up in the
head. It's usually a torso problem,
it just shows up in the head
arc |
| 5. |
knees-
watch for pops and skips |
| 6. |
hips-
the center of mass is vital
to believable weight, so check
the hip arcs. |
| 7. |
ankles- |
| 8. |
props-
so many time we forget that
the prop the character is holding/using
is as important to the motion
as the character |
| 9. |
eyes-
when they turn, are they linear
turns? If so, add some arc. |
| 10. |
face
(lipsync)- make sure your face
doesn't linearly go from static
morph target to target. The
face needs to feel organic. |
| 11. |
tails-
way overlooked, and very tricky
to get right. |
| 12. |
check
break downs and make stronger
if needed- weak arc? Push that
breakdown pose. |
| 13. |
no
two motions should have same
arcs- feels very unnatural.
Weave the arc lines like a tapestry
of interesting motion. |
| 14. |
cross
arcs and overlap for interest |
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| Make
sure you’re being strong with
your lines. The difference between
an OK pose and a great pose most often
lies in the line. |
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Have you pushed your line so
it reads clearly? |
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Is
your line interesting? |
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Is
your line strongly concave or
convex? |
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When
going from one pose to another
can you invert your lines for
stronger contrast? |
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If
all you had was one still frame
to show for this pose, is your
line of action capturing the
kinetic energy of your character
like a good illustration would? |
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| Find
a part to emphasize by scheduling
it's late or early arrival. Offsets
help keep things loose and let your
character breathe, combating the common
"pose-move-pose-move" feel
of most Pose-to-Pose animation. |
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Check
for twins. Shifting one arm
by a frame or two is not fundamentally
addressing the issue of twinning.
You need more than that. |
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Does
it fit for you to offset the
hand from the elbow? The elbow
from the shoulder? |
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For
this move should your arms lead
the torso or do they follow
it's weight? |
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For
this move should your hand lead
the arm or follow it's weight? |
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Does
your upper torso move independently
from your hips? |
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For
this move, should the head lead
or follow? |
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Have
you seen if offsetting your
rotation keys from the translation
keys adds any life to the character?
How about individual rotation
channels from each other? |
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Do
your fingers each move independently
from the other fingers? |
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Should
your fingers flow after the
hand or stay tight to it? |
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Is
this the right place to use
the offset (aka "pixar")
blink? |
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| What
a LOT of pose-to-pose animation suffers
from is the dreaded "hit &
stick". You need to find a way
to get that out of your animation
while still keeping strong clear poses
and clean timing. |
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Are
you overlapping too much? Is
it too soft? (mushy) |
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Are
you not overlapping enough?
Is it to o hard? (sticky) |
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Are
your motions distracting? (poppy) |
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Does it feel like your ease
outs are too linear? (robotic) |
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Will
this move benefit from the successive
breaking of joints? |
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Do
your body parts overlap with
believable physics? Are the
hands too slow (heavy) or too
fast (light)? |
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Don’t
blindly trust overlap or lag
plug ins… check each frame
for accuracy. |
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| One
of your primary tasks as a character
animator is to manage your tension,
your energy build up and release.
Each character will build & release
their energy in a very different way.
And even given different circumstances
you character will build & release
energy differently. |
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Does
the size of the anticipation
match the speed of the subsequent
action? |
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Does
your character flow well from
one thing to another? Should
they? |
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Does
your character's body language
and gestures' energy match tone
& energy of the dialogue? |
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Look
for ways to build texture into
a shot- building across phrases
and releasing. Not every pose
or move is the same length. |
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Move
your character around on their
feet to keep them believable.
Nothing says "I'm not believable"
like frozen feet. |
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Does
the energy of your character
keep building up during hold
when appropriate? tip: if the
pose hit didn't have an extreme
with a recoil, but is rather
meant to build energy for release
(like an anticipation hold)
then you'll keep growing the
energy up into the pose, like
a long ease into the extreme. |
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Does
the energy of your character
keep settling with gravity during
hold when appropriate? tip:
If the pose hit had a settleback
after an extreme, you'll generally
want to keep the held energy
settling into gravity. |
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| You
need to keep things moving at a natural
flow. If your shot feels dull, look
at your pose holds and your transition
timings. I'll bet you $20 that all
your holds are about the same length
and all your pose transitions are
about the same length. |
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Are
you motions too even across
the shot? |
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Are all the motions too fast? |
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Are they too slow? |
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Do
you have an appropriate mix
of fast moves verse slower ones? |
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Be
aware of the appropriate speed
for a given set of appropriate
actions. |
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Mix
up the pacing of motion. Fast
flurries followed by long simmering
holds. Great contrast. |
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Don't
make every move the same speed
& flavor. |
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Favor the anticipation or the
breakdown or the ease out. Meaning:
think what works best for a
given action- slow in/fast out?
Or fast in/slow out? Or even
in/out but fast breakdown in
the middle? |
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What
would Character A move like
compared to character B? |
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