How Do You Animate a Fight?

How do you animate a fight? Do you animate both characters at the same time, or one and then the other?

This is a great question! As with any question regarding workflow, there's no "etched-in-stone" answer, just personal preferences and opinions...

However, for me, I'll tackle a fight scene with a mix of methods. My workflow would assume that you have referenced characters you can turn on/off, but you could also do something similar by importing one character into a scene, saving it, and then deleting him and working the other character for a while, re-importing that first character, re-saving, etc.

Basically, I would first do all my reference, study, and planning. Ideally, I'll already know the timing, actions, and fight choreography before I fire up my computer at all. I highly recommend careful planning in all scenes, as you all know, but especially for multi-character scenes with complex choreography. And if those characters are going to physically be interacting with each other? Holy moly - unless you've been animating professionally for quite some time, I really recommend some serious planning before stepping into that minefield.

A fight scene is about as complicated as you can get with physical action, because not only do all of your characters need to move believably, with solid body mechanics and weight, but they will need to each be reacting to the other - both physically and emotionally in the performance.

Obviously, with the complexity here, it's natural to wonder which character you should animate first, or how to approach this scene in the first place.

For me, I start with both characters at the same time, but would use a more limited blocking method to begin with. I'll have both characters in the scene, but I wouldn't block in every key and breakdown yet. Instead, I'll first block in any key moments where the characters interact (getting hit, kicked, throwing, landing, falling, facing off, etc), and otherwise I'd keep things really rough.

Once you have both characters roughed in - with a careful eye towards composition and clear staging - now you can ditch one of those characters and get to work really fleshing out one character at a time. They should generally be in the correct position, so you're pretty safe to really block them in and work out all your keys and breakdowns.

Once your first character is looking pretty good, it's time to bring in his opponent and check your staging. Make any necessary adjustments to get your second character repositioned or retimed to match your new animation, and then go ahead and hide or remove the first character.

The goal here, of course, is to have a scene that you can interact quickly with, and the more characters you have in a scene, the slower it's going to be to work with.

Get that second character fleshed out, and then bring back in your first character.

Now it's all about getting into the nitty gritty details of how the two are interacting. You'll probably need to keep both characters open during this phase, and really work out the precise contact points, timing, reactions, etc. This is when you'd really flesh out any constraints and physical interactions between the two.

That'd be my workflow - hopefully it's helpful!


Shawn :)

What Is Your Favorite Part in the Whole Animation Process?

I don't know that I have one favorite part....it kinda all blends together for me.

If pressed though I'd have to say I enjoy the blocking of a shot as you get to work out your poses and experiment a bit but at a fast pace in sketches or sometimes on the rig itself.

Second, I like the polishing of a shot, where you get to add those little details and nuances that really bring something to life. Especially working on a lot of realistic characters as I do you could tweek and refine for days...or weeks... So sometimes its nice to do something more cartoony that is more stylized than realistic just to mix it up a bit.


Guest Blogger David Breaux

Do All Animation Principles Apply to All Types of Animation?

Yes!

That's the short answer, but if there's one thing we've learned over the years here, it's that I can't just give short answers, so here's some rambling for ya...

Animation is an art, and what you're talking about (the principles of animation, such as arcs, overlap, path of action, etc) are the foundation of the ART behind bringing a character to life.

When you say "types" of animation, I assume you are referring to the different mediums of animation, such as CG, hand-drawn, or stop-motion. I'd even argue that performance-capture is evolving into its own medium, with its own set of challenges, nuances, and workflow necessary to turn performance capture into something that feels alive and entertaining.

All of these mediums are simply different tools that animators use to create their art. That's all they are - TOOLS. They are the means to an end for the artists, and the storyteller chooses whichever medium will best serve the story (or the producers choose whichever medium will best serve their pocketbooks, in many cases).

Do the principles of art employed by a good photographer (including lighting, shadow, angles, composition, exposure, focus, etc) change depending on their camera? Do they use their same knowledge of exposure and focus on a digital SLR vs. a traditional 35mm camera? Of course they do. They're an artist simply using different tools to tell the same story through their art, using the same exact artistic skills they've honed throughout their career.

Are there different technical details they need to learn, though? Sure there are! Each camera will work a little bit differently, the glass in the lenses will react differently to light, the functions, dials, and buttons will be placed differently, etc. However, learning the location these buttons and controls is easy compared to the years of dedicated practice and learning required to truly master photography.

Animation is exactly the same. Each medium has its own technical challenges and unique workflow, but the art - and more importantly, the principles behind that art - remain exactly the same.

Even if you only look at CG animation as an example, you could still compare it to the challenges our photographer faces when picking up a new camera. If you're newer to animation, you have maybe only learned one 3D animation program so far, and the idea of being thrown into an unfamiliar software package probably scares the pants off of you. But guess what? It's just like the cameras we discussed, and learning a new program will be nothing more than relearning the location of all the same buttons and functionality, which will essentially remain the same.

You'll need to relearn how to move your character, how to save keys, and how to edit those keys. These are software-specific methods you could learn in a matter of hours, or at worst, a few days. A trifle compared to the years necessary to master the fundamentals of animation.

Comparing mediums is very similar to comparing software packages. Each medium requires some serious dedication to learn the intricacies of that specific medium (you won't be able to do strong 2D animation until you master drawing, perspective, form, etc), but the fundamentals of the art remain exactly the same. The principles that take so much study and practice do not change between mediums.

Animation is animation, regardless of the medium or the tool. If you're new to this stuff, my advice is to choose your favorite medium, choose your favorite program/tool, and then just dive in and ignore everything else until you've mastered the ART. Then you can start fiddling around with different tools and mediums again.

The important thing as a student is that you learn the fundamentals of body mechanics and performance and storytelling. Once you have armed yourself with these skills, you can learn any medium or software package in relatively short order.

Shawn :)

What Does It Mean to Animate on 3s and 4s?

Sometimes we only need broad control, think 8s or 12s...but other times we require much more control for intricate actions.

Generally when animating on 3s and 4s you are dealing with more complex motion that needs to be broken down and controlled to a fairly tight degree.

Imagine animating a character dancing like Gene Kelly. The footwork involved can be highly complex as well as moving very fast. In order for us to block out that movement and include the proper key poses, you have to control it to a fine degree by setting keys 3-4 frames apart.

You are trying to keep the computer from splining too much so when keying fine actions like this you are only giving the computer the freedom to create 1-2 frames that are not specifically set by you. In traditional animation animating on 3s and 4s would take on a different meaning, though generally it would only be used in very limited animation, such as the Flintstones. Traditional limited animation would try to reuse a frame or parts of a frame of animation to reduce the amount of work necessary usually for budgetary or stylistic reasons. In CG it refers more to how often we key and object to define or control its motion.

Guest blogger David Breaux

What Is "Layered" Animation and How Does It Work? Is It Good / Better for Human Characters?

Layered animation generally refers to the idea of blocking in one part or section of the body at a time. One example would be animating the up/down of the hips in a walk first, and nailing down that timing since it's going to affect every other aspect of the walk. Once you have that, you could then do another "layer" of animation by animating the torso of the character. Maybe then you'd do the feet. Then the arms and wrists. Then the head.

All of those layers will combine to form one walk.

The trick here is to do it in such a way that the overall finished walk feels like ONE character. You want all these different "layers" of animation to come together to form one cohesive action, with the different parts of the body being driven, pushed, pulled, and rotated by the other parts of the body.

Our bodies are incredibly inter-related and connected throughout. You cannot do a big and fast arm motion without moving your shoulder, chest, head, and probably your hips and other arm.

There is nothing wrong with the layered approach, but it requires a very deep understanding of the way the body works together (something I often refer to here as "body mechanics") in order to have a finished piece of animation that feels like one cohesive body. It requires careful planning, reference, observation, and a fair amount of adjusting the different layers to work properly each other.

Personally, I use a layered approach when diving into a scene with a lot of action. If a character needs to walk a long way, climb something, and then jump down - I'll probably use the Glenn McIntosh "hide the legs" approach, which helps me not get too distracted when I'm working in a layered way. (If you haven't read my article about hiding the legs, you can read it here and then come back!)

Basically, I'll create a new layer in Maya, add the legs to it, and hide that layer. Now I've got a floating legless character. I'll grab that character by the root or whatever it is that moves the character but not the legs, and animate just that thing through the whole scene. I'll work on just that root node until the general timing is worked out as far as where that character will be, when the general up/downs will be from the footsteps, etc.

Then I'll leave the legs hidden, and pose the upper body (torso, arms, head, etc), knowing in my mind or from my thumbnails how I'll eventually want the legs to work in that pose. Remember - this is all largely planned out ahead of time, and I'll know 100%, at least in my head, what that pose is exactly going to look like when it's finished. I'm not "exploring" at this phase, I've already made most of my animation decisions and am simply inputting them into the computer.

Last, I'll turn those legs on, and the leg animation is much easier than normal now, since their movement and timing is completely dictated by the body animation whose timing I already am happy with. If the leg is about to hyperextend, then that simply means it's time to lift it up off the ground and do a step. There will obviously be a bit of back-and-forth here, touching up the timing and placement of the hips to make sure everything is just right, but overall this method has served me well for action shots.

The whole point of the method above is to block in the part of the body that will define the movements of the rest of the body (the hips and torso), as well as whatever part of the body audience will see most - you do that FIRST, in the layered approach.

For any scene where the character stays generally in one area of the frame - smaller actions, acting, etc - in those scenes I'll do a pose-to-pose approach where I'm posing out the whole body and saving a key on every possible controller on those key poses and breakdown poses.

In my opinion, the layered approach is far more difficult for newer animators, and my advice to anyone who hasn't been professionally animating for a few years already would be to stick with the pose-to-pose approach, using heavy reference, research, thumbnails, etc.

However, I will say that for more advanced students or professional animators, the layered approach is worth trying to see if it's something you connect with. Be extra vigilant, however, that the end result doesn't feel like a bunch of disconnected body parts that have been animated individually! You want one cohesive character as your end result, and don't give up until you have it!

Shawn :)

How Do You Mix Snappy Animations with Non-snappy, Realistic Actions?

I would like to know about how to mix snappy animations with non-snappy, realistic actions. How do you time out when to put snappy actions and when not to?

You should use snappy animation as a contrast to more realistic animation to keep movement and timing interesting... thus keeping your audience engaged in what you are doing.

Be careful, you can go too far..... you don't want to destroy the sense of realism say in a creature because you push the snappy aspects of its motion too far.

Make sure you maintain a sense of weight and watch your spacing so it doesn't get so your individual frames don't start strobing on you.

Try putting snappier actions where greater forces or impacts happen... Also use them to show a light fleeting character, say a squirrel or sparrow....

Remember how your character moves says a lot about there physical as well as mental states.

Guest blogger David Breaux

Do You Need a Formal Education to Get Work as an Animator?

Do you need a formal education to get work as an animator? Does it help if you have a college degree?

Note: A college degree can be very helpful (and often essential) in securing a work visa when moving from one country to another. The below article is primarily meant for animators looking for work in their home country, or countries where they are free to work. :)

I hear questions like this a lot, and usually tend to avoid answering them on the blog because the answer sounds so self-serving as a co-founder of an online school, but I hear it so often that I guess it deserves a spot on the ol' tips and tricks blog...

First, I'll say this: having a college education is great. It sure doesn't hurt you in any way, may open your mind to new artistic avenues you may not have found otherwise, and a degree does at least show that you have the tenacity to finish a challenging task that you started.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for college graduates.

That said, at least in the US and at most major animation studios worldwide, your chances of being hired as an animator are dependent entirely on your demo reel, your interview, your reputation, and your geographic location for certain countries or studios.

I would say that 95% of the time, the recruiters and animation supervisors couldn't care less where you went to school or if you finished. What they care about is that your demo reel is jam-packed with jaw-dropping animation and that you will be easy and fun to work with.

Some schools enjoy a very strong reputation which does help recruiters stand up and take an extra bit of notice, and I'm proud to say that Animation Mentor has become foremost among them. Having AM or another well-respected animation school's name on your demo reel can help get that reel into the right hands or get the recruiter to pop it into the dvd player, just as a strong credit-list on a resume will help move your reel to the top of the pile. However, there is no school you can put on your resume that will even slightly overshadow poor animation on your demo reel.

It's really ALL about your demo reel.

I would say 90% of whether or not you get a job is based on your reel. The other 10% is your reputation, interview, and geographic factors. I would say your college degree will affect the job position at major animation studios in the US by roughly 0%.

Which I guess brings up the question of whether or not you can learn animation without a formal animation education at all.

The answer is yes - you can learn animation without going to school for it, but you better be remarkably naturally talented, heavily plugged in to a lot of animation resources, and willing to spend three or four times as long learning this stuff. It can certainly be done, but without a mentor or solid animation curriculum being taught by very experienced animators, it's going to be slow-going to the point where most people will give up before reaching their goal.

Animation is unbelievably intricate, to the point where a lifetime of study will still only scratch the surface of this stuff, so if you have the option of attending a school, I'd strongly recommend it as long as their animation program is well-respected and you will have teachers and mentors with a lot of experience actually working in the field.

If that is simply not an option, then the next best thing would be to plug yourself into some online animation communities such as CG-CHAR, the 11-second club, and so forth. Find people who you can get feedback from (and give feedback TO, which is JUST as important to your education!). Pick up some great animation books, find some free characters you can work with, and create a disciplined schedule for yourself that will push you and give you the time and opportunity to practice, practice, practice!

At the end of the day, that animation job is going to based almost entirely on whether or not your demo reel knocks their socks off, and they most likely won't care a bit whether or not you have an official college degree.

You can take it from me. I'm a college dropout.

Yup, that's right - I don't have a degree either. I saw that my college wasn't teaching me what professionals were telling me I needed to know in order to work as an animator, so I got the heck out of there, found a mentor (thanks Wayne!!!!), and got to work learning this art the way it's meant to be learned.

Anyway, if you want to be an animator, you know what you really have to do? Animate. That's it. Everything else is just helping you do that one thing better and better, but the key is to sit down and ANIMATE. Bring a character to life, and then do it again, and then do it again, and then do it again. Each time, the character should feel more and more alive, as you learn from your mistakes and successes.

I won't pretend that trying to do this on your own will be easy or fast, or that Animation Mentor wouldn't accelerate your learning by an incredible margin, but there are self-taught people out there who animate circles around me, so it's certainly possible!

Whatever you choose to do, know that you don't have to spend a fortune on a degree to succeed in this business. What you need is a demo reel that will stand out above the crowd with perfect body mechanics, dynamic scenes, emotional and communicative acting performances, and entertaining and memorable scenes!

There are many paths that can lead to that demo reel, and it's up to each of us to find the path that best fits our own needs and time-frame. For some of you, spending the next 6 or 7 years learning on your own is a fine pace, and that's great for the few of you who are naturally gifted enough and disciplined enough to pull that off! For others, you need something more immediate and guided, such as one of our experienced mentors eager to pass their knowledge along to the next generation of animators.

Each of these are merely different paths, hopefully leading eventually to the same result.

Wherever you guys happen to be on that path, best of luck, and I hope you're having half as much fun as I am with this animation stuff! :)

Shawn :)

My Shot Is Giving Me Trouble and I'm Getting Frustrated. Any Tips on What to Do in This Situation?

Those pesky, meddling shots!! No matter how long you have been animating, we all have those weeks when we just aren't feeling it or we are dealing with a shot that makes us feel like we are losing our minds. The worst thing to do is to get frustrated and to beat yourself up about it, although that is usually my first response.

When I'm dealing with a headache inducing shot, I will put the shot aside and work on another shot. Getting some time away from a troublesome shot is good. My frustration may have been fueled by my jumping into the shot too fast. Some time "away" allows me to think it through a bit more, to clear my head and to return to the shot with new eyes.

Other times I will have a buddy check out my work, letting him know where I'm stuck. Fresh ideas from a coworker is a good way to get your creative juices recharged, because let's be honest, animating is very taxing on the creative juices.

In the movie Meet the Robinsons, I really liked that they applauded failure, because as they say in the film, if we don't fail we can't improve. We all want to be the best we can be, but we can't be afraid to make mistakes. Every shot we do, we learn a little something new, even if the shot was a huge success or massive failure.

Guest Blogger Ray Chase