Hello animators!I got a great question from Sagar Kadam, who asked what the most important things to keep in mind when posing a character might be.
The most important thing to look for in a pose would be a strong line of action, if it is an action pose. If the character is mid-action, such as pushing/pulling something, fighting, running, jumping, etc -- in any of those, there should be a really clear line of action, especially in your key poses. A single line that describes the force moving through the body and the momentum of the movement, ideally a line running through the entire body, and hopefully into an arm and/or leg. The stronger, longer, and more connected this line is, the more dynamic and strong the pose will feel.
If it isn't an action pose, then you should probably be more concerned with making sure the pose clearly describes an attitude or emotion. You should be able to tell, from one static frame, whether the character is sad, happy, angry, shy, embarrassed, nervous, excited, or afraid. In these cases, it is OK to sacrifice a strong line of action in order to strengthen the emotion, at least in my opinion, although it's often possible to craft a very communicative pose while still retaining a nice line of action. However, showing us the internal thought process should be the priority in these types of scenes...
Hope that's helpful...
Thanks for the great question, Sagar!
Shawn :)
10 comments:
Great info!!
Here Here!
I toiled away in the industry for years as an inbetweener and moving up through the studio was starting to look implausible. Then one lunch break an animator friend of mine dropped by my work station while I was practising some sketches, looked over my shoulder and said, “You know Ian, its all about Line of Action.”
Everything changed, my poses came to life and suddenly I was a contender for promotion. Now years later I still consider line of action in every single pose I make. I also love to consider the journey a characters Line of Action will have within a scene, how it will change from key pose to key pose, it has its own little story almost every time.
YAY for Line of Action!
Great stuff as always!
I got a question though, Shawn. Say i hav my shot blocked out with breakdowns and the poses have a proper Line of Action.
Now how much do u worry about the Line of Action for the frames that the computer will inbetween. Do you tweak an inbetween by dropping in a key to get the Line of Action u want? Or do you tweak in the Graph editor?
I mostly have trouble in this part and cant help but drop in a key. But it always comes back to bite me. Yikes!
thanx
Hey Ian, u r just inseperable from posts on Line of Action.. :)
no offense. keep rockin and posting more stuff on your blog.
cya
-Chetan
Hi Chetan!
Yup, you definitely have to be careful with the line of action during the breakdowns and inbetweens, and can't let the computer do too much for you!
Sometimes I'll fix the line of action with a key, and sometimes in the graph editor. It doesn't matter much which you use - I'd say to use whichever is most comfortable for you -- the important thing is that the motion looks exactly the way you want it to look! Don't let the terrible computer inbetweening dictate the end-result of your animation! :)
Thanks for stopping by!
shawn :)
holy moly!
that was super fast.
thanx alot.
Nice tip about the inbetween!
Does it end on having key on every frames sometimes? Is it okay to do that? It's like drawing every frame like on 2D animation I guess. Sometimes, the computer doesn'T want to do what I want, so I say: You'll do what I want!! And put key everywhere... but I feel it's too messy after that...
Hi Shawn ,
Great Information . . thanks . .
My name is Mahesh . . I'm Animation Student . . I'v doubts , will you help me please. .
I dont understand the exact difference between Stereotypical Characters and Archetypical Characters , Negative Stereotypical , . . .i'm confused Please Help . .
hey Grejotte
i know exactly what u mean..
i had to redo a few of my animation exercises coz of this.. there were keys everywhere n when i would get some suggestions i wudnt know what to do.
fortunately, thanx to cool friends and forums and blogs such as this. i learnt that i faced that problem because of lack of plannin which would lead to bad keys and breakdowns. once i started paying attention to them, the no of keys that i had to put reduced considerably. most of the times wen i put a key is for rotation problems that maya gives.
would love to hear from Shawn on this.
ciao
-Chetan
Yes Chetan, I have a lot of rotation problem too! And yeah, I don't plan a lot, using the reason: "don't have time" (yes I know I should do it to actually save time... ) I try to plan poses at least, doing thumbnails, but I don'T plan the timing. (I have to get over this lazyness...) Maybe it's because I am not sure how to plan timing properly... I remember at school when I was studying 2D, we had exposure sheets, and we planned on that, but at this time, I wasn't aware of the importance to plan timing yet.
Hi shown,
Thanks for "Posing" post..
It's Great n solves my some Problems on Posing...
I am Vinay Gaikwad, animation student, I got one question though,Shown,..
How U plan your Animation, when u got a scene to animate, what important things to keep in mind to planning a scene??....
Please answer me....Thanks.
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