December
2002 Update: Since first
posting this material, I have adapted
and grown in my own animation workflow
and quality expectations. I wanted
to reflect some of these lessons learned
in this online article. Since it was
first posted this article has been
used in schools, universities and
animation programs around the world.
Additionally it has been noted as
a resource for animators in animation
studios and game companies and translated
into a few foreign languages. In light
of the responsibility of portraying
information accurately, I have endeavored
to update this article with the things
I've learned since first writing it.
You can see the updates in blue, as
I've written here.
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 suggestion of Rick May, and have
found it to be a huge help in forcing
me to approach animation in a more
structured 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.
Update:
If you want to take your animation
to an even higher level, you're going
to have to do more than just the straight
forward steps outlined in this article.
The techniques employed here will
yield OK results for TV or video quality
work. For something along the lines
of feature film level of work, your
deadlines will allow you to spend
more time in the final massaging of
your motion, as well as exploring
different possibilities with offsetting
the motion of certain parts of your
character. Not every body part moves
the same speed, so the simplistic
offsets and breakdowns employed in
this article are going to leave you
short of the goal in something as
highly defined as feature film quality
animation. So while this article does
include some useful techniques, it
is by no means the end of the conversation
when it comes to producing high quality
animation.
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.
Update:
It needs to be said that the single
greatest challenge to employing a
pose-to-pose method as tightly as
it is outlined in this article is
that of keeping things from being
too stiff. One of the greatest techniques
for combating this stiffness is to
break down your character's motion
on an object by object basis. Starting
from the hips out (the age old "layers"
method) you need to look at your motion
for arcs, consistency, hitches, glitches,
force etc. By focusing on a single
body part at a time, you force yourself
to scrutinize every moving part of
the body in order to work out all
the kinks that a simplistic use of
the pose-to-pose method can introduce.
The second biggest challenge introduced
by a simplistic use of the pose-to-pose
methodology is a sense of everything
hitting at the same time, or evenness.
Simply offsetting the left arm a frame
from the right does not significantly
address the evenness issue. Instead
you need to think more about what
emphasis you want to place on which
particular body part. It may serve
the animation best to have a particular
arm hit 12 frames before the rest
of the body settles into a pose. Or
it may serve it best to have the arm
trail the rest by 18 frames. Or perhaps
you want the head to lead the transition
into a new pose and will start the
head turning a good 10 frames before
the torso follows. Or whatever. You
have to think about the motion in
a broader context than simply hitting
a pose. Often the most powerful idea
in animation is to choose a point
of emphasis. Whatever doesn't ride
along with the rest of the body is
going to call attention to itself,
and that is a very powerful technique
that wasn't discussed in the original
format of this article. Which is why
I feel the need to address it here
in an update.
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. And 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 until 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 until 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 uickly.
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 ubmitted for approval. Thus
the main goals of this pop-thru method
are to:
a.
animate
quality footage as quickly as
possible (it is a business afterall)
b.
provide
the director a look at the animation
as early as possible.
c.
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.
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.
What is Organized Keyframing?
Just
what it sounds like. The goal is to
arrange all your keys in an easy to
edit, easy to read fashion. The one
draw back of straight ahead animation
is that keys tend to end up all over
the place. As time goes by and the
work progresses, the keyframes get
messier and messier to deal with.
Need to shuffle a pose at the director's
request? Fine. But which keys define
that pose? What if you did fCurve
bias editing to get that particular
ease in that he liked? Now the difficulty
lies in finding the keys and editing
the fcurves again. With popThru pose
to pose, much of this is difficulty
is bypassed.
