Dr. Lili AnnSMM48001. Dr. Lili AnnSMM48002 Example of Animation

Dr. Lili Ann SMM4800 1

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Example of Animation


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What is Animation?• Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of

images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement.

• It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways.

• The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.

• A transformation is involved, what was still now moves.


What is Animation?


What is Animation?• Animation is any thing that moves on your screen like a

cartoon character. • It is the visual art of creating the illusion of motion

through the successive display of still images with slightly perceptible changes in positioning of images.

• Animation is the illusion of movement. • Animating = making something appear to move that

doesn’t move itself• Animation = a motion picture made from a series of

drawings simulating motion by means of slight progressive changes in the drawings

• The result of animation is a series of still images assembled together in time to give the appearance of motion


What is Animation?• To animate means to give life to an inanimate

object, image, or drawing

• Anima means soul in Latin

• Animation is the art of movement expressed with images that are not taken directly from reality

• In animation, the illusion of movement is achieved by rapidly displaying many still images or frames in sequence.


INTRODUCTION

• There are some principles of animation that can be consciously used in any scene.

• We should familiarize ourselves with them for both animation and animation-cleanup.

• The action in this scene is quite broad, making the principles easy to find, but they should be applied to subtle scenes also.

• Rarely in a picture is a character doing nothing- absolutely nothing.


INTRODUCTION• The purpose of studying and analyzing a scene like this

is to acquaint oneself with the possibilities in the use of the principles of animation.

• There are 28 principles, though there well may be more. • These are the tools of animation and should be

incorporated whenever possible. • Some of them are accidentally stumbled upon while

animating in an emotional spurt, but when the emotions are lax, knowing these principles will enable the artist to animate his scene intellectually, logically and artistically as well as emotionally.


INTRODUCTION

• Here is a list of things (principles) that appear in these drawings, most of which should appear in all scenes, for they comprise the basis for full animation– Pose and Mood – Shape and Form – Anatomy – Model or Character – Weight


INTRODUCTION

– Line and Silhouette – Action and Reaction – Perspective – Direction – Tension – Planes – Solidity – Arcs – Squash and Stretch – Beat and Rhythm


INTRODUCTION– Depth and Volume – Overlap and follow thru – Timing – Working from extreme to extreme – Straights and Curves – Primary and secondary action – Staging and composition – Anticipation – Caricature – Details – Texture – Simplification – Positive and negative shapes


INTRODUCTION• Between the late 1920's and the late 1930's

animation grew from a novelty to an art form at the Walt Disney Studios.

• With every picture, actions became more convincing, and characters were emerging as true personalities.

• Audiences were enthusiastic and many of the animators were satisfied, however it was clear to Walt Disney that the level of animation and existing characters were not adequate to pursue new story lines-- characters were limited to certain types of action and audience acceptance notwithstanding, they were not appealing to the eye.


INTRODUCTION• It was apparent to Walt Disney that no one could

successfully animate a humanized figure or a life-like animal; a new drawing approach was necessary to improve the level of animation

• Disney set up drawing classes for his animators at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles under Instructor Don Graham.

• When the classes were started, most of the animators were drawing using the old cartoon formula of standardized shapes, sizes, actions and gestures, with little or no reference to nature.


INTRODUCTION• Out of these classes grew a way of drawing

moving human figures and animals. • The students studied models in motion as well as

live action film, playing certain actions over and over.

• The analysis of action became important to the development of animation.

• Some of the animators began to apply the lessons of these classes to production animation, which became more sophisticated and realistic.


INTRODUCTION• The animators continually searched for better

ways to communicate to one another the ideas learned from these lessons.

• Gradually, procedures were isolated and named, analyzed and perfected, and new artists were taught these practices as rules of the trade.

• They became the fundamental principles of traditional animation 12 principles of animation


12 Principles of Animation1. Squash and Stretch - Defining the rigidity &

mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action.

2. Timing - Spacing actions to define the weight & size of objects & the personality of characters.

3. Anticipation - The preparation for an action.4. Staging - Presenting an idea so that it is

unmistakably clear.5. Follow Through & Overlapping Action - The

termination of an action & establishing its relationship to the next action.


12 Principles of Animation6. Straight Ahead Action & Pose-To-Pose

Action - The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement.

7. Slow In and Out - The spacing of in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing & movements.

8. Arcs - The visual path of action for natural movement.

9. Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design & the action.


12 Principles of Animation10. Secondary Action - The Action of an

object resulting from another action11. Appeal - Creating a design or an action

that the audience enjoys watching. 12. Solid Drawing - Knowing them can

dramatically improve one's ability to create good, strong poses and compose them with well crafted environments.


Principles of Animation

The 12 principles are mostly about 5 things: –acting the performance,

–directing the performance,

–representing reality through drawing,

–modeling and rendering,

–interpreting real world physics and

–editing a sequence of actions

“make characters that move in a convincing

way to communicate personality and mood”.


1. Squash and Stretch

• Considered the most important principle, it's about achieving the illusion of weight and flexibility with characters and, in general, any pliable material.

• Well executed, it brings liveliness to your animations. • There are many functionalities that can be used for this

purpose, from simple object transformations to mesh deformation and proper armature posing while animating.

• Using it simply means drawing or posing figures in deformed -- squashed or stretched -- poses. It can be applied to objects and creatures, as a whole or restricted to more flexible parts when under the action of gravity or some other pull or push.


Squash and Stretch

• A few examples: – A bouncing rubber ball squashes when it hits the ground, then stretches

back upon rebounding. – Facial expressions: – squash: in a big smile not only the mouth and cheeks move, we have

eyes squinting and more -- the whole face can be involved; – stretch: yell! With the jawbone open wide, the face gets longer, looking

stretched. – Gravity pushes all things down. Cloth, fat tissue and aged stretched

skin show this effect clearly. – A spring can be compressed; once freed, the released potential energy

makes it stretch past its equilibrium point, building some potential energy again. This makes it compress again... and so on, until all the added energy is dissipated and it comes to a rest.


• Squash: flatten an object or character by pressure or by its own power.

• Stretch: used to increase the sense of speed and emphasize the squash by contrast.

Note: keep volume constant!


Squash and Stretch

• Why?– The reasoning behind this principle is obvious:

many real materials are pliable, including but not limited to soft organic matter and anything rubbery or jellylike. This must be accounted for in more realistic drawings, paintings, sculptures and, as animators soon discovered, it's a vital effect when things start moving, because movement emphasizes any rigidity in a silhouette.


Squash and Stretch• So they started squashing and stretching in their

sequences of poses. The effect was heavily explored in sight gags (those short visual jokes sometimes involving pies), with character's arms, legs, necks or whole bodies extending almost to no end when pulled.

• Rubber Hoses and Circles– In its earlier form, squash and stretch was already

extensively used during the 1920's, in cartoon series featuring Felix the Cat or Betty Boop, to name the best known examples.


Squash and Stretch

• MAIN BENEFIT: improve the illusion of weight, volume and of the elasticity or hardness of each material.

• How?– The key detail that raised Squash and Stretch to a

principle is in fact quite trivial to understand:

– stretching does not mean enlarging

– squashing does not mean shrinking

• Again and again the volume must be preserved!




Squash and Stretch

• Stretch without volume preservation.

Stretch with volume preservation.


Squash and Stretch

• Pulling a cartoony arm to twice its length is fine -- hey, cartoon's natural laws allow that! The problem is doing so without thinning the arm to compensate. If something becomes extended along one of its axes, it must be compressed along the other two. Example: a rubber ball elongated in Z should be squashed in its X-Y plane accordingly, or it will seem that the ball increased in size.

• Not preserving the volume is one of the most noticeable mistakes an animator can make.


Squash and Stretch

• Squash and Stretch proved to work so well on the screen that animators felt like getting to the heart of it.

• They would use the effect whenever possible and kept on experimenting, overdoing it to amusing results

• One of the most important applications of Squash and Stretch is in facial animation, both realistic and cartoony.


Squash and Stretch

Smile shape: note the creasing and bulging.

Basis shape for a realistic human male face.


Squash and Stretch

• Cartoons, as we know, can have very pronounced squashing and stretching in exaggerated expressions.

• While realistic faces don't go anywhere that far, opening a mouth causes a slight head stretching -- we just need to be careful to do it properly.

• The mirror and pictures are always good references. • Squash and Stretch is not restricted to soft tissue and

rubbery things. • It's present in a different way in any articulated

system, be it mechanical or organic.


Squash and Stretch

• Consider a character walking or running. • Her joints bend her body, more notably at the

knees, as she throws her weight on the planted foot; then they stretch to propel her up and forward.

• If she jumps high, we clearly see her skeleton “squash” to prepare the move, then stretch to launch her into the air, squash again upon reaching the ground and probably stretch back to her normal height once she has finished the landing.


2. Anticipation

• Anticipating is how a body is prepared to execute an action. The more energy the motion requires, the more one has to anticipate for it. Example: to jump forward, we first bend knees and swinging arms back.

• It also means preparing the audience for each main action by adding another small action before it. Ex: raising the head before speaking.


Anticipation– This movement prepares the audience for a major

action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression.

– A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation.


Anticipation

• An action occurs in three parts: the preparation for the action, the action itself, and the termination of the action.

• Anticipation is the preparation for the action.

• Anticipation is an effective tool for indicating what is about to happen


GOOD BAD


Anticipation

Why?• Actions that do not demand much energy can be

carried out directly, like lifting a light object or waving at someone.

• But to perform those where more effort is needed, the body must build up momentum.

• The situation can be exemplified by a bow: the more stretched back it is, the farther it can launch an arrow.

• For the second function of Anticipation, the reason has to do with focus and attention.


Anticipation

• To follow what is going on in a movie or play, an audience needs frequent indications of where to look and what the characters are doing.

• Otherwise the story can become a tiring succession of unexpected actions and misunderstandings.

• This detracts from the experience, because it disturbs the flow, disperses and even annoys spectators.


Anticipation


Anticipation

• Main benefit: improve the representation of weight and other forces and draw attention to the main actions.

• Timing and anticipation are the two main ingredients for lively, believable (we can also say snappy, crispy) actions.

• How? Anticipations are animated as part of the work of keyframing poses for a character. If working “in layers” the animator can block (sketch) the main actions first and, on a second pass, add anticipating moves right before them.


Anticipation

• The anticipation goes in the opposite direction of the main movement: stretch back to prepare for throwing the arrow forward. Equivalently, with jumps it's: bow and arrow, crouch down to jump up; crouch down and swing arms back to jump up and forward.

• Anticipating for momentum: precede a main action with a smaller one in the opposite direction, just like it happens in real life.


Anticipation

• Here are some more examples with a possible anticipation for each given action: 1. swing arm down to cast a stone upwards, back to cast

forward; 2. in water, thrust body up to dive down; 3. move leg back or forward to kick forward or back,

respectively; 4. move elbow back, flexing the arm to punch; 5. all to the same side: rotate the hips, move shoulder and

elbow back, flexing arm, to give a stronger punch; 6. swing arm back to slap someone hard on the face.


Anticipation

• To get people to look at a chosen spot on the screen all that is needed is to have motion there.

• For instance, let's say we want people to see a character grabbing a small object. That is the main action. But to draw attention to it, we start with an anticipating move, like raising her hand above the object. At this point we “grabbed” attention to her, so she can go and take the object, properly witnessed by the audience.


Anticipation

• Anticipating for attention: precede a main action with a smaller one to attract and direct the audience's interest.

• An action occurs in three parts: 1.the preparation for the action - this is

anticipation

2.the action

3.the termination of the action


3. Staging• Staging is about presenting actions clear and effectively. • It involves how characters are posed, scene content,

cameras, lighting – everything that will help communicating to an audience the ideas contained in the film.

• Staging is the presentation of an idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear

Why• From its name it's immediate that this is another principle

brought from the art of acting. • After all, for the spectators, filmed action has constraints

similar to those found in theater.


Staging

• Watchers don't walk around inside the space where the story is happening, neither can they choose what they want to see there or even the best angle and distance for viewing and listening.

• The objective of Staging is to overcome the restrictions of the medium so that viewers can enjoy the richest experience possible, even if they have to watch it from a small 2D screen, with no control over the camera.


Staging

• An action is staged so that it is understood.

• To stage an idea clearly, the audience's eye must be led to exactly where it needs to be at the right moment.

• It is important that when staging an action, that only one idea be seen by the audience at a time



Staging

• There is an implied agreement between the audience and the storytellers: the first accepts to “sit and watch”, while the later should try their best to present well staged actions that everyone can follow.

• MAIN BENEFIT: communicate ideas from the animation as well as possible, with clarity, liveliness and intensity.


Staging

Lights– Good lighting is at least as important as good

modelling and texturing for the finished product. The difference between a well and a naively illuminated scene should leave no doubt about it.

– But it's not only about realism and visibility. Lights help set the mood of the scene and even of the characters, not to mention the many effects that can be created.

– Anyway, there are whole books devoted to this topic, as well as web pages and specific Blender documentation.


Staging

Camera– Good animation, presented with bad camera work, isn't

much better than a good adventure told by an awful narrator.

– Like happens with lighting, many things can be learned about cameras, from technical details to effective methods and tricks developed during a century of live action and animated movies, but basic knowledge can already improve your stills and sequences considerably.


Staging

Presentation – Which is the best way to show a given action?

Takes from far away to show the whole scene or close-ups? Steady, zooming in or out? In front, ¾, from above, below? Using a single camera for a long time or cutting from one to another frequently?

– The best configurations depend, obviously, on the action, the settings and the desired effects.


Staging

Motion – We have total freedom of movements in CG3D,

but it's not a good idea to overuse it with cameras. Wild camera movement can work well in certain passages, but abused it will distract and perhaps bother or even nauseate people from the audience.


Staging

• Camera movement: a good general tip is that it's fine to change and move cameras, but not enough to call attention to the cameras themselves. – pan left / right – tilt up / down – pedestal up / down – truck left / right – arc left / right – dolly in / out – crane up / down in any direction – zoom in / out – rack focus in / out


Staging

• One thing at a time – What works best is not to mix actions. First one thing

happens, then another, then another, not all at the same time. Dialogue is an immediate example: in general it's staged so that characters don't speak simultaneously. Otherwise viewers may have trouble understanding what was said and done.

– The exception, where multiple concomitant actions make sense, is when the intention is to show confusion and chaos in the scene, naturally.


Staging• Guidance

– Animators can and should guide the audience's eyes to each action “focal point” following the determined sequence of events: look at this, notice that, now this, now that, now the other thing, etc.

• Scene

– How to assemble a scene set? General guideline: do not add unnecessary things. This works well, placing focus on the action and the acting. Besides that, the fewer the (real or virtual) objects in a scene, the easier to manage the production.


Staging

• Scene staging: do not put things in a scene just because you can or because they look cool. Each detail should have its role and help define the setting.

• Scene staging: a famous saying attributed to Charles Chaplin stated that he only needed a park bench, a cop and a beautiful girl to make a comedy.


4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose

• Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose are work methods for animators. They are possible answers for the “how do I animate?” question.

• Straight Ahead– This is the oldest one. It means animating sequentially,

creating pose after pose, frame after frame, "straight ahead", from the first to the last in a sequence.

– Its main characteristic is that while animating one has considerable creative freedom to choose how and where each pose will be.


Straight Ahead Action

• Straight ahead action is so called because an animator literally works straight ahead from the first drawing in the scene.

• This process usually produces drawings and action that have a fresh look, because the whole process is kept very creative.

• Straight ahead action is used for wild, scrambling actions where spontaneity is important.


Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose

• Pose to Pose– Following this workflow, the artist starts blocking out

(planning, sketching) a sequence, by defining the key poses in it and roughly estimating in which frame each of them should be. These poses, which are known as extremes, are created first.

– The remaining, "transition" ones -- called inbetweens -- can be done automatically by software interpolation, but for acceptable results, in particular to apply the principles we're studying and to remove the mechanical look of computer animation, further work is needed


Pose-to-Pose

• In pose-to-pose animation, the animator plans his action, figuring out just what drawings will be needed to animate the scene.

• Pose-to-pose is used for animation that requires good acting, where poses and timing are important

• Objects are built in a hierarchy, where each layer of the hierarchy has an associated transformation.

• Animation is then built up one transformation at a time from one pose to the next.


• For example, when animating a person walking, you would first set the pose position for the hips at the start of the motion, then you would adjust the hip translation for the end of the action.

• Then building upon this original pose, you would transform other objects in the model, until you had traversed the hierarchy.

• All of your actions must be well thought out, and the timing and poses planned so that even in the early stages, the action is clear



• Straight Ahead• Good points:

– very open for creativity during the keyframing work; – can result in more fluid and natural looking animation; – done for all frames in a sequence it totally eliminates

the use of computer interpolation; – a talented artist in a good day can achieve very

spontaneous and elaborate results; – specially good for fast, wild actions; – only after finishing the animator will know how the

scene ended up.



• Bad points: – it's easy to come to dead ends, where work may have to

be discarded and redone; – hard to make the character respect "marks": be

somewhere or grab something at a definite frame; – hard to create strong poses, well staged, solid and

appealing; – the resulting set of keyframes will probably be complex

and disorganized, hard to work with; – only after finishing the animator will know how the

scene ended up.



• Pose to Pose• Good points:

– more control over the results, easy to respect marks; – less room for pitfalls; – more work in less time; – the created extremes (plus soundtrack) can be used as animatic

for critique and corrections; – with planning, there's a better chance to come up with elaborate

poses and moves; – done every N frames or so, results in a clean layout of

keyframes, easy to work with; – randomness is played down.



• Bad points: – easy to result in “robotic”, dull animation; – less room for creativity while creating and key

framing poses; – randomness is played down. – requires proper planning, sketches



• Preparations• Animators must have a clear understanding of the

scene before starting, of course: where characters should begin and end, what happens in between and how they react to it, how long should the sequence take, etc.

• Besides the written story, storyboards and animatics can be great tools for reference and guidance.



• A simple “scene start-up kit” for an animator would include data files with the models (rigged characters, scenery, objects) and a soundtrack, at least with the dialogues, if any.

• During the work the animator will playback (parts of) the animated sequence to check how it's coming along and to correct any problem.



• Animating: Straight Ahead1.create initial pose at the starting frame;

2.insert keyframes for the created pose;

3.advance frame by one;

4.update pose;

5.insert keyframes for the updated pose;

6.go back to step #3, continue animating “straight ahead” until the last pose has been keyframed.



• Animating: Pose to Pose– Choosing the extremes in a sequence: it's up

to the animator to choose beforehand. Extremes should be the most representative poses, for example the start and end frames for each action in a sequence and the accents (emphases) of the recorded dialogue.



• Animating: Pose to Pose + Straight Ahead• Both have their advantages and problems. The

best approach, then, can be to mix them: • Hibrid method

1. start with Pose to Pose; 2. in one of next passes, maybe only for certain key parts

that don't look good with software interpolation, return and fill in between the already keyframed poses, animating straight ahead, substituting the interpolated data by new keyframes.



• Good points: – unites the best of both worlds; – avoids the main problems with each method when used alone; – can give a wealthy mix between tigh control and creative

freedom. – Pose to Pose is a good overall method, but Straight Ahead is

better for faster actions (so an animator may end up doing frame by frame on such parts);

– Straight Ahead is not a good idea for mechanical motion and anything that can be interpolated well with animation curves, for which Pose to Pose works very well.



• Bad points: • Actually, nothing not present already in the two

methods: – requires planning for the Pose to Pose part;

– it's probably slower than using Pose to Pose alone;

– gives a little more chance for pitfalls in the Straight Ahead parts, though probably in much smaller and easier to fix steps than when using Straight Ahead alone.



5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

• Follow Through– When a character stops moving, any appendages

attached to its main body will not halt immediately. Ex: a dog with loose skin and flews, tail and fallen ears. As it comes to a sudden stop, its looser parts keep on moving for a very short while, each stopping at a different time.

– That's Follow Through: the continuation of movement that happens with the looser parts (appendages) after the main body has stopped.


• While anticipation is the preparation of an action, follow through is the termination of an action.

• Actions rarely come to a sudden and complete stop, but are generally carried past their termination point.


• For example, in throwing a ball, you put your hand back, that's anticipation, it's the preparation for the throwing action itself.

• Then you throw the arm comes forward for the main action.

• Follow Through is then the arm continuing past the normal stopping point, overshooting it and then coming back.

• The arm has continued or "followed through" on the action it was doing before returning back to rest.


Follow Through and Overlapping Action

• Overlapping Action– Back to the example of the dog: while it was running,

its looser parts also had some freedom to move on their own, they do not stick to the body. When the dog changed direction, these parts continued on their previous line of motion until the were pressed against its body or pulled by it.

– Overlapping Action is the superimposition of motions of the carried parts over those that carry them.


• Overlapping Action is an action that occurs because of another action.

• For example if a dog is running and suddenly comes to a stop, its ears will probably still keep moving for a bit.

• Another example, if an alien is walking and it has an antenna on it, the antenna will probably sway as a result of the main body motion.

• This is overlapping action. • It is caused because of the main motion and overlaps on

top of the main motion.



• Drag– Tired of being used in our examples, the dog

decided to quickly go somewhere else. As its main body and four legs started to move, those same looser parts took a little while to follow. They “dragged” behind the rest.

– Drag is what happens with appendages of a body when it starts to move: they take a little time to accompany the movement.



Action Main BodyFollow Through Stops

Overlapping Action Changes direction

Drag Starts moving



• MAIN BENEFIT: improves the illusion of weight, making distinct the different parts of a character or object: how heavy, soft or loose each one is.

• Five main categories that were identified: 1.Character with appendages (loose clothing,

long hair or ears, antennae, etc.) will have these parts still moving for a short while after the torso has stopped.



2. Bodies don't move all their parts at once. They stretch and squash, parts turn, pull and push working against each other. When one stops others may still be moving, like arms swinging after the trunk has halted. To clearly show a character's attitude and feelings her head, shoulders and trunk may stop at the same time, since those are the parts an spectator "reads" to know how they feel. Other parts may take longer to reach their "rest position" for the current pose -- remember, we're talking about settling down at each pose, not final, complete stops.



3. Parts with more tissue like cheeks, bellies, etc. can move noticeably slower than the bones beneath them. This is called "drag" and, well executed, it helps a lot making shapes look solid and organic, life-like.

4. This is fun! In another sense, "follow through" can also refer to what happens to a character after an action. It deserves its own subsection, check it right after this one.

5. The Moving Hold.


6. Slow In and Slow Out

• Slow-in means slowing down the speed of an action when reaching a main pose. Slow-out means accelerating again upon leaving a main pose. So with both the movement should be: – slower in the frames closer to an extreme: right

before reaching it and right after leaving it; – faster in between two consecutive extremes.


Slow In and Slow Out

• Examples: • When standing up we start slow, catch speed and

then slow down again as we straighten up. So if the extremes are the two poses: sitting and standing, we have slow-out of the first and slow-in to the second.

• A ball thrown up: slow-out as the hand starts pushing against the ball and slow-in as the ball is reaching its maximum height before falling back.


• Slow in and out deals with the spacing of the inbetween drawings between the extreme poses.



• MAIN BENEFIT: soften the actions and make them more natural.

• Frame by frame• If we are animating all frames of an action, instead

of leaving inbetweens for the software to interpolate, we add Slow-out and Slow-in much like traditional animators have done for many decades: create more inbetweens closer to the main poses and less farther away.



• FPS: the more frames an action takes to complete, the slower it is, naturally: at 24 fps, a hand going from open to closed in 24 frames represents 1 second of animation, while using 48 frames it takes 2 seconds to close. Thus, we can vary the pace of movement by using less or more frames for a given part of an action. Using more right after a main pose we have slow-out; right before: slow-in.



With interpolation curves– If we use animation curves to interpolate between extremes,

we can vary the speed of any part of an action by directly editing the curve's control points. Knowing how is a fundamental ability for CG animators.

– Note: with animation curves, the way to set the speed of movements is to change the type of curve (constant, linear, Bezier spline) and directly edit its control points. The more vertical a piece of the curve is, the faster the action will happen there. So perfectly horizontal pieces represent objects at rest in relation to the attribute controlled by the curve (position, rotation, scaling, etc. etc.).



Fast-in, fast-out• To show that a character or object is accelerating, we can

avoid slow-in and slow-out of a pose, and go for “fast-in and fast-out” transitions.

• A bouncing ball is a perfect example of where to use both slow in/out and fast in/out: – at the high part of the movement, the ball is going up and slows

into the top pose, right before coming down (using slow-out); – at the low part it comes fast into the bottom pose, where it

collides with the ground, and also goes fast out up again.


7. Arcs

• This principle is about motion paths. • In nature most motion describes curved, arced

trajectories in space, not straight ones, which are more characteristic of mechanical movement.

• The visual path of action from one extreme to another

• In nature, arcs are the most economical routes by which a form can move from one position to another


Arcs

• In the real world almost all action moves in an arc. • When creating animation one should try to have motion

follow curved paths rather than linear ones.• It is very seldom that a character or part of a character

moves in a straight line. • Even gross body movements when you walk somewhere

tend not be perfectly straight. • When a hand/arm reaches out to reach something, it tends to

move in an arc. • The head rotates in an arc like fashion. That is if a characters

head rotates from left to right, at the halfway point, it should actually be dipped or raised slightly depends on where it is looking.


Arcs

• Examples: – Plants, from leaves, like blades of grass to bamboo and

branches attached to large trunks to whole trees, sway in the wind or when pushed or pulled. Having one end attached to the plant or the ground, they arc.

– Articulated creatures like us vertebrates move our parts in arced paths, too, since joints are made to rotate.

– objects thrown in the air fall in parabolic trajectories when gravity is the only relevant force acting on them.

– counter-example: pistons are mechanical devices that move straight up and down inside cylinders


Arcs

• Using properly arced paths results in more life-like motion. Viewers notice something strange about an animated head turn that follows a straight horizontal line, even if they are not aware that a real head will dip or raise slightly when turning.

• To bend, straighten or rotate our arms, the joints at the shoulder, elbow and wrist must rotate. Similarly with the legs, not to mention how our spines move.


Arcs

• The reasons come from Physics (living in curved space-time) and the resulting way that most natural things are constituted. A pendulum serves as a simple illustration of arced (in this case circular) motion caused by one end of the moving part being connected firmly to a base and the other free to move. That can be related to body articulations and, in plants, to stems and branches.


Arcs


8. Secondary Action

• Secondary actions are those that characters perform as complements to the main ones they are executing.

• For instance, a character may be walking – this is the main action – while also swinging arms back and forth, whistling or mumbling, checking his pockets or what time it is at his watch, turning his head to look at the sides of the road, yawning or shivering.

• These are all examples of secondary actions.


Secondary Action

• Thinking about character movements, the primary ones are those where the main action being expressed is concentrated, like the mouth area when talking or the legs when walking, while secondary actions involve some of the remaining parts of the body in each case.

Why• To enrich the scene, adding life and personality

and emphasizing the main action.


Secondary Action

• Secondary actions can clearly differentiate any two characters performing the same main action or a same character in two distinct states of mind or of physical health.

• A secondary action is an action that results directly from another action.

• Secondary actions are important in heightening interest and adding a realistic complexity to the animation.

How?Physical• The body is a system, working as a whole. • A forced walk may be restricted to the lower half,

but a natural one will have the whole body moving, in general

• A secondary action is an action that results directly from another action.

• Secondary actions are important in heightening interest and adding a realistic complexity to the animation.

Dr. Lili Ann 108SMM4800


Secondary Action

• Psychological• Noticing it or not, people express feelings and

thoughts through (secondary) actions while trying to do what they need to (primary, main actions).

• While the latter can be direct consequences of someone's decisions earlier in the story, the secondary movements are able to give an immediate account of how a person feels at a given moment and, judging more carefully, what kind of personality she probably has.


Secondary Action

Working in layers• Working in layers means attacking the whole

sequence not from start to finish at once, but iteratively, in passes.

• Example: working pose to pose, the extremes should be created first, then secondary, follow through and overlapping actions can be added in the second or at later passes.

• Fine tuning comes last.


Secondary Action

• Imagine someone walking, a normal healthy and determined walk, no hint about feelings or thoughts. That's the main action.

• Whatever secondary actions are added will indicate what is going on and which kind of character this is: 1. just walking, legs move but the rest of the body just follows, arms at

rest, no expression 2. looking frequently to the sides, snapping fingers, shaking head 3. whistling or smiling, looking around cheerfully, arms swinging 4. smiling but shrugging 5. trembling, vigorously rubbing arms and hands, putting hands in

pocket, stooping a little 6. scratching head, grimacing, talking alone


9. Timing

• Timing refers to how events are distributed in time.

• In nature it's greatly varied, though always limited to some specific range, naturally.

• Being good with timing is a crucial ability for animators, that requires study and experience.

• Timing, or the speed of an action, is an important principle because it gives meaning to movement.

• The speed of an action defines how well the idea will be read to the audience

• Something like an eye blink can be fast or slow. If it's fast, a character will seem alert and awake. If it's slow the character may seem tired.

• Cartoony motion is usually characterized as fast snappy timing from one pose to another.

• Realistic tends to have more to do about going between the poses.

• But both require careful attention to the timing of every action.




Timing

WhyBecause it is all-pervasive:

– The very basics of frames, keyframing and interpolation curves have direct relation with it.

– The Physics of motion: objects with different masses and the external forces applied on them define specific velocities for each event based on a number of variables.

– Each creature has its own timing, down to how each part moves. This varies with specific characteristics, health condition, thoughts, emotions.

Timing

– Not only characters speak in different timings according to the above reasons, it also depends on the language they are speaking.

– Lastly, timing is involved in all aspects of a production: budget, complexity, duration of each scene and of the whole film, synchronization of images and recorded dialog, etc.



Timing

• With timing we can demonstrate personality, thoughts, feelings, state of health and peculiarities.

• Finally, the very mood of the scene can be determined and played with by variations in edition, camera movement, music, voices and sound effects, etc.

• Timing is everywhere.


Timing

How• Basics• The more frames a (part of a) movement takes, the

slower and smoother it will be on-screen. And vice-versa: the less, the quicker and crisper.

• Varying the timing of successive (pieces of) actions is the key to fluid, believable and interesting animations.


Timing

Weight• Timing alone can be used to determine the weight

of two colliding objects.• Without considering other factors: the slower an

object moves after being hit, the heavier it seems to be in relation to the one that hit it.

• A heavy character will have slower movements than a lighter one, in general.


Timing

Estimate

• How does an animator know how long an action should take? How many frames for a step on a walk cycle or to walk or run across a given distance? How many for an eye blink, a yawn, a jump? We need this kind of information all the time...


Timing

• Studying references, like movies, is one way to improve your overall sense of timing and also to solve a quick doubt.

• In some cases, you can perform the motion yourself and guess or time it -- we're talking about motion as complex as an eye blink, not roundhouse kicks, here!


10. Exaggeration

• Exaggeration means what the name suggests: going beyond expected limits.

• It can be applied to drawings (models, in 3D), sounds -- and story, exaggerating in the personalities, physical and mental abilities, situations or, more generally, the natural "laws" governing a cartoon's universe.

Exaggeration

• Exaggeration can be used in animation with great results.

• EssenceHowever the key to proper use of exaggeration lies in exploring the essence of the action or idea, understanding the reason for it, so that the audience will also understand it. If a character is sad, make him sadder; if he is bright, make him shine; worried, make him fret


Exaggeration



Exaggeration

Why• In the Illusion of Life it's mentioned that Walt

Disney asked animators to come up with exaggerated, wilder but still more realistic material, which confused them until it became clear that Disney wanted an exaggeration of real life, instead of something more surrealistic or simply impossible.


Exaggeration

• Exaggeration is on the essence of humor, so it's just natural that it was used in comic cartoons. And soon they learned that it could work very well in animations, better than very realistic, watered down actions. In fact, the main reason for it to become a principle, was that some exaggeration made cartoons look more lively than action traced from live action footage.

• People also have always liked to overstate features and achievements, good and bad happenings. So we might just end this saying that we like to exaggerate.

Exaggeration


Exaggeration

• A scene has many components to it including design, action, objects and emotion.

• Exaggeration of every element in a scene creates a feeling of uneasiness in your audience.

• Everything is distorted and unrealistic. • Find a balance in your scene. • Allow your audience a grounds for comparison of

the exaggeration and by so doing, the whole scene will remain very realistic to them



11. Solid Drawing

• Solid drawings are those with interesting, well proportioned shapes and good sense of weight and volume.

• Just as there are principles of animation, drawing also has its own, taught at drawing art schools and books.

• MAIN BENEFIT: create visually deeper and appealing animations with improved sense of weight and balance.


Solid Drawing

Why• Simple. Not only modelling, but also lighting,

texture, effects, composition and – specially relevant here – posing can benefit tremendously from basic knowledge about drawing principles.

• The old advices given to animators back in the 1930's are just as relevant today, for any animation medium: are your drawings tridimensional, solid, interesting? Do they have weight, deepness and balance?


Solid Drawing

How• Weight

– When characters make some effort, the animator needs to clearly show with posing that they seem to feel it, not only with facial expressions, but possibly with the whole pose, depending on the difficulty of the task.

– A character lifting something heavy with one arm, for instance, must be posed counterbalancing to the lighter side to reflect the struggle


Solid Drawing

• Silhouettes• What makes a pose interesting? A good silhouette

has a lot to do with it, for sure. And what makes an interesting silhouette?

• Clarity • To clearly show an action we can and in general should

use silhouettes that communicate well to the audience. That is part of good Staging. For example, placing the camera behind one of the characters in a fight is not the best way to show what is going on, we won't see the punches and kicks and whatever.


Solid Drawing

• Deepness • Silhouettes should have a tridimensional

quality. This involves proper posing and camera placement.

• Twins

• Symmetries in how parts of a character are posed, with one side mirroring the other.


12. Appeal

• Appeal is the visual quality that makes characters (and objects) attractive, interesting, stimulating.

• It's not restricted to beauty and goodness, though. • A monster or a villain can and should also be

appealing to the audience.• Where the live action actor has charisma, the

animated character has appeal.

Appeal



Appeal

• Audiences like to see a quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, communication, or magnetism.

• A weak drawing or design lacks appeal. • A design that is complicated or hard to read

lacks appeal. • Clumsy shapes and awkward moves all

have low appeal.



Appeal

Why• Things that are uninteresting have their space, but

are only “things”, without personality. • They don't capture interest, viewers don't care

about what will happen to them. • If the heroes have no appeal, who will waste time

watching their adventure? • And if the villains are not appealing, things are not

much better, because scenes devoted to them in the film become bothersome.


Appeal

HowAppeal means anything that a person likes to see.

This can be quality of charm, design, simplicity, communication or magnetism.

Appeal can be gained by correctly utilizing other principles such as exaggeration in design, avoiding symmetry, using overlapping action, and others.

One should strive to avoid weak or awkward design, shapes and motion.


Appeal

It's important to note that appeal doesn't necessarily mean good vs. evil.

For example, in Disney's animated classic "Peter Pan", Captain Hook is an evil character, but most people would agree that his character and design has appeal.

The same goes for Hopper in "A Bug's Life". Even though he's mean and nasty, his design and characterization/personality still has a lot of appeal.


Appeal

• Baby face • Nature is wise, it makes babies look irresistibly

cute to adults. We feel like taking care of them. And it seems that people that preserve some of this beauty in their grown-up faces are also appealing because of that. Well, it has worked well for Disney. And for mangas and animes that feature the superdeformed style.


Appeal

• Coolness • This is harder to define. It's almost as if it is

something in the air, but from time to time a new or revamped style takes many people from a group by storm and defines what is trendy. This happens with clothes, music, visuals, etc. and in some cases, once the fever goes away, more than a few look back and think “oh, what was I thinking!?”. But anyway, while it lasts, it works very well, not to mention that some are better than others (or aren't them?).


Summary

SQUASH AND STRETCH• This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to

a character as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions. How extreme the use of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required in animating the scene. Usually it's broader in a short style of picture and subtler in a feature. It is used in all forms of character animation from a bouncing ball to the body weight of a person walking. This is the most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.


ANTICIPATION• This movement prepares the audience for a major

action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation. A comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation such as a pitcher's wind-up or a golfers' back swing. Feature animation is often less broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.


STAGING• A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience

the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in telling the story. There is a limited amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the overall story. Do not confuse the audience with too many actions at once. Use one action clearly stated to get the idea across, unless you are animating a scene that is to depict clutter and confusion. Staging directs the audience's attention to the story or idea being told. Care must be taken in background design so it isn't obscuring the animation or competing with it due to excess detail behind the animation. Background and animation should work together as a pictorial unit in a scene.


STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION• Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and

works drawing to drawing to the end of a scene. You can lose size, volume, and proportions with this method, but it does have spontaneity and freshness. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size, volumes, and proportions are controlled better this way, as is the action. The lead animator will turn charting and keys over to his assistant. An assistant can be better used with this method so that the animator doesn't have to draw every drawing in a scene. An animator can do more scenes this way and concentrate on the planning of the animation. Many scenes use a bit of both methods of animation.


FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION

• When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction. "DRAG," in animation, for example, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly. Example: When Snow White starts to dance, her dress does not begin to move with her immediately but catches up a few frames later. Long hair and animal tail will also be handled in the same manner. Timing becomes critical to the effectiveness of drag and the overlapping action.


SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN• As action starts, we have more drawings near

the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next pose. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the surprise element. This will give more snap to the scene.


ARCS• All actions, with few exceptions (such as the

animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.


SECONDARY ACTION• This action adds to and enriches the main action and

adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character. The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward leaning. The leg action is just short of a stomping walk. The secondary action is a few strong gestures of the arms working with the walk. Also, the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the same time with tilts and turns of the head to accentuate the walk and dialogue, but not so much as to distract from the walk action. All of these actions should work together in support of one another. Think of the walk as the primary action and arm swings, head bounce and all other actions of the body as secondary or supporting action


TIMING• Expertise in timing comes best with experience and personal

experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Most animation is done on twos (one drawing photographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one drawing photographed on each frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used during camera moves such as trucks, pans and occasionally for subtle and quick dialogue animation. Also, there is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation. Studying movement of actors and performers on stage and in films is useful when animating human or animal characters. This frame by frame examination of film footage will aid you in understanding timing for animation. This is a great way to learn from the others.


EXAGGERATION• Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or

extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to look natural. The same is true of facial expressions, but the action should not be as broad as in a short cartoon style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal. Use good taste and common sense to keep from becoming too theatrical and excessively animated.


SOLID DRAWING• The basic principles of drawing form, weight,

volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life. You transform these into color and movement giving the characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space. The fourth dimension is movement in time.


APPEAL• A live performer has charisma. An animated

character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest. Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a main theme. Over the years, the artists have learned that to produce a feature there was a need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of artwork throughout the entire production. Like all forms of story telling, the feature has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

Documents

Dr. Lili AnnSMM48001. Dr. Lili AnnSMM48002 Example of Animation