What's a Beat? Do You Have Any Tips on the Best Way to Find Beats in a Shot?

A beet is also a dark purple root vegetable that is great in salads. But seriously folks....A beat is a moment of time. It is often used to clarify phrasing in a shot, to give the viewer more time to understand the moment. It can usually last around 8 to 16 frames and is often a still moment. A beat can be a held pose or a moving hold at the end of a line to make the point. Or a pause in between lines to show thought process, internal dialogue, realization, or confusion. A beat is something that the audience can read because it is not lost with tons of fast movement. A beat is just a clear phrasing moment in the animation that tells you what the object/character is doing. Often, the word beat is used in animation like so: "You need a beat in there." Which essentially just means you need to hold a pose longer or have more time on a certain moment. Usually less then a second.

As for finding where you need beats in shots, look for moments that need to be quieter or read longer. These moments calm down what is going on, as much as possible around the eyes, since that is what the viewer usually wants to focus on. And if need be add a few frames to these moments to have more time to register the pose. Family guy is great for beats. They really draw them out. The movie Kung Fu Panda had many great beats, that allowed time to show the characters thought process. One pet peeve of mine is how so many animated movies are just quick cuts, line, cut, line, cut, and so forth. No moments of silence or thought process to be seen!

In general if you (or your mentor/supervisor) feel your shot is too fast and there is too much going on, adding a beat can help. If the shot is not too time constricted. Usually personal and student work you can play around with time as much as you want. If you are working at a studio and the shot has time constraints, and the director doesn't want to add more time, you have to simplify the animation to be less busy.

Cheers,

Guest blogger jmart (Jason Martinsen)

How Do You Include Anticipation in Your First Blocking Pass?

Wow. This is a tough question. The first thing you need to realize is that this is something that students and professionals alike all struggle with to some degree. The reason for this struggle is that animation is not only slow, but you have to keep your mind on the same goal as best you can, throughout the course of your shot. You need to have a vision for the shot, and then spend the time it takes to consistently and diligently move toward that vision without straying too far from it along the way. This is made even more difficult by the fact that your vision is most likely in your head.

The best way to include anticipation in your first blocking pass is to spend more time or effort in the planning stage. Draw thumbnails. Watch video reference. Make notes as to what will require anticipation, and write that down. If you try to keep it all in your head, you will probably forget some of it along the way, so make some notes on paper. Perhaps you need to act out your shot and study your own anticipation moves in the reference video.

The next step, in my opinion, is to get as much information into the poses on your blocking pass as you can. Try to come up with poses that not only describe an emotion or action, but also imply what has just happened, and what will happen next. This isn’t easy, and if you have a chance to watch a really talented animator at work, you will be amazed at how they can keep all of this in mind as they pose out their first pass. It truly is an art form. It usually requires a very detailed pose on each of the key blocking frames, right down to the fingers and the toes. Getting a good, solid first blocking pass will tell your director not only what is there, but what will be there when you are done, including the anticipation you are searching for.

But don’t stop there. Keep anticipation in mind as you add or refine your breakdowns. A lot of anticipation is in those breakdown poses, so really nail those crucial transitional poses. And keep your initial vision intact the entire time. Only if the director redirects you should you change your mind. Don’t let your inner dialogue send you down the wrong path.

Happy Animating!

Animation Mentor Staff

What Is the Best Piece of Animation Advice You Have Received?

Wow. This is a difficult question to narrow down. I don't think there is one thing that one single person has told me that has helped me more than anything else. Everything I have learned from countless different people over the years has been beneficial to me in different ways. If I had to narrow it down I guess actively pursuing feedback has been the most beneficial thing I have done.

When I started working on my first feature film Ice Age: the Meltdown, most of the feedback I got was from the director and supervisors only. My work only began to grow and improve when we started doing pre-development on Horton. I had made more friends by then and I would stop by and see what other people were up to, what kind of ideas where floating around. The animators would get together in small groups and brainstorm fun ideas for different characters in the movie. It was a very exciting and eye opening time to be at Blue Sky. Everyone was forgetting about their egos and just listening to one another. When production finally started I had a completely different way of approaching a shot. I would get a shot kicked off, and after the sup or director gave his take, walk around to several different people and ask if they had any interesting ideas for it, BEFORE I started doing anything. Then I would do thumbnails or reference for it, often using others to help with reference. After narrowing down the reference and ideas, I would show a few animators the options to see what they liked. Then the best would be shown to the director and he would make his notes.

Once I did start animating, I would constantly get an animator feedback that was well suited for this type of shot or stage I was at to help. Nick Bruno and Mark Harris were great for coming up with comedy and crazy ideas. Melvin Tan was always full of gold for posing and breakdowns, and Hans or Juan Carlos helped me personally many times with adding subtle beats while splining. At one point or another I had asked for advice from every person in the department. Of course the directors and supervisors always had great feedback but every other artist around you may contribute great advice too. My best shots were the ones full of other peoples’ ideas.

I believe a shot can be a group project, a work of art that gets better with each person that puts his mark on it. Although at the end of the day you are the one doing most of the work, the final result should be a team effort. I was lucky to have a great talented team that felt like family. I know not every studio has that situation, but there are always people that can help. And you don't always have to go to who you think is the 'best.' One of my favorite stories I've heard about was when Glen Keane started at Disney, he said Ollie Johnson told him how important it was to show work or poses to others for help. Shortly after he started animating, Ollie knocked on his door and asked Glen to help him with a pose Ollie himself was struggling with and set down a "perfect drawing of Penny" for him to somehow improve. Glen proceeded to, in his own words, mangle the drawing, but Ollie still thanked him for his ideas and walked out. Whether or not Glen actually helped him is not the point, the point is Ollie was willing to go anywhere for assistance.

Now go show someone your shot!

-Guest blogger jmart (Jason Martinsen)

What Are Some Tips on Putting Force into Your Poses?

Yikes - that one's pretty tough to try to cover in a blog post... My mentor Wayne Gilbert actually wrote up a very interesting article quickly discussing some of the more important aspects of internal and external forces, so I'll point you to his article from one of our newsletters back in March of 2008:

http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0308/feature_geek.html

The most important thing for putting "force" into your poses is a careful study of weight, and how the position of weight will affect (and either help or hurt) the action. For example, if a character is pushing against a wall, you wouldn't normally have that character push with their butt either above or behind their feet, because they aren't going to get very much "force" going through their arms. With the butt behind or directly above the feet, the character is pushing merely with the strength of their arms and shoulders, which isn't going to be very much.

However, if they put their hands against a wall or object, and then put their butt (their center of gravity) in FRONT of their feet, well now it's a whole new story! Their weight wants to fall down, right? If you lift up both of your feet, what happens? You'll be on the ground in no time. Well, if your weight is way out in front of your feet, trying desperately to fall to the ground, and the only thing that is holding you up now are your hands against the wall, well guess what?!

Now all of your body weight has become a force that is pushing up through your spine, through your shoulders, and into your arms, and *against* the wall! That's potentially hundreds of pounds of extra force that weren't being pushed against the wall when the center of gravity was above or behind the feet.

This is just the tip of iceberg when it comes to force, but that's a very simple illustration that Wayne used back in the day to help me start to understand that when doing pretty much any action, we choose the most efficient and lazy way to create the most powerful forces, in order to most easily accomplish whatever the task at hand may be.

We use the weight of our bodies to get the best "bang for the buck." We use our weight to start walking, run faster, punch harder, throw further, and lift higher. Any study of internal forces has to begin with learning how and where we choose to place our weight in relation to whatever the action at hand may be.

Hope that help someone! Thanks again for coming by!

Shawn :)

What Is Locomotion? Could You Provide some Tips on Locomotion?

This is a huge topic to cover with one post. Locomotion is the means or effort of moving your character through the scene under his own power. Any movement being done like walking, running, crawling, swimming, skipping, dancing, climbing etc is locomotion. And locomotion is dependent on gravity and weight. And will change in space, underwater, in wind, with inertia, friction or if the character is hindered by restrictions, baggage or injury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_locomotion

The mechanics of locomotion and how you break it down totally depends on the character. A dog, a bird, and a human all will move completely differently, and a human like Ms. Incredible moves a lot different then Edna Mode due to proportions. And that is the same movie! First you need to get reference on what you have to move. If its a human, act it out yourself. If the character is very heavy, put on a backpack, if you can't perform how you would like, maybe a friend of yours can help.

If your character is not human, find the most comparable reference you can on the internet, movies or real life. A good place place to find animal reference is at the zoo. When you find good reference watch it over and over, and frame through it to find out how the weight shifts, and the hips and shoulders move, and the tempo of the movement.

When you actually begin animating, try to simplify. There was a shot of Horton moving though the jungle and the animator animated a simple sphere going up and down to get the timing of the body, then once he liked it, he copied the curves to the body. Then layer on top of that. If the character is simply walking or running start by creating a cycle to help yourself get started. There is a ton of info out there in books and online on how to animate walks and runs. If the character is acting while moving about the screen space, don't focus only on the mechanics of the foot placement, instead work on the key poses hitting the acting beats you want. It can be helpful to have the legs in FK or making them invisible while you pose out the body, head, and arms. Once you hit your acting beats then place your feet underneath taking the proper steps or weight shifts, you can layer on some hip shifting, more up and down with each step without taking away from the acting you have achieved.

Ed Hooks had a good tip on locomotion and acting. What is driving the character's personality? Is he very agitated or irritable and stiff, and his eyes darting around? A character like that will be leading with the head, his center very high in the body, and moving quickly, sharply, attentive. Or is it a strong masculine character? This characters center is in his chest, and animation should suggest a slow confident pull with a strong solid movement. A female character trying to seduce, maybe in the hips. A very jolly, fat character, his belly. These are all stereotypes but you get the idea. But thinking about that as you animate can help pull more personality out of the movement. It should be about mechanics but driven by personality.

And if all is lost, taking a couple body mechanics classes at AM will help!

Happy animating!

Guest blogger jmart (Jason Martinsen)

Can You Provide Some Tips on Showing Characters Thought Process?

Great question! Yeah, there really isn't anything more important than showing thought process (or rather, showing *changes* in though process) when it comes to having a character feel truly alive! It's the internal thoughts that drive everything we do, from the timing of our overall gait and movements to the glances of our eyes.

You could come up with a thousand ways to show thought process in a character, but my favorites are these:

1) Blinks.

I've talked about blinks a lot here and elsewhere, but one of the most important uses of a blink is specifically to show thought process. The timing and speed of blinks can radically change the way we perceive a character's inner turmoil (or lack thereof), and thus radically change the way they seem to be processing information. A ton of blinks will feel as though the character is going to cry, is nervous, uncomfortable, shy, or possibly relieved after a big buildup; while very little to no blinking will either feel dead, stoned, worried, angry, or just very intense.

So, blinks can certainly convey an overall emotion, but what about thought process? Well, if a character shifts from no-blinking to rapid blinking, then we are seeing one of the most obvious physical manifestation a radical change in their thought process. Perhaps they were extremely worried and then relieved at the result.

2) Eye darts.

Very similar to blinking, changes in eye direction (and the speed/timing of these changes) can also describe thought processes. As someone is presented with a challenge or decision, they will very often dart their eyes around a bit as they consider and weigh their options. It's almost as if they are reading an imaginary list of possible choices! You can observe this in any of your friends or family, and layering this stuff into your animation is one of THE best ways to bring your character to life.

Keep in mind, though, that eye darts (changes in eye direction) are NOT random, and should have meaning. Either they are looking for something, at something, or it's being driven by internal thought process. Our eyes don't just drift around for no reason at all unless there is something wrong with us...

3) Overall timing changes.

Any time the overall rhythm of a character's movement changes, we are going to feel a shift in their thought process. A decision has been made, an emotion felt, a memory reclaimed... All of these internal thoughts can heavily affect the way anyone moves, and again, seeing this happen in a scene can once again truly make a huge difference in how alive the characters feel!

Thanks for coming by the blog! Thanks for the great question!

Shawn :)

What's the Importance of Eyelids in Animation?

Yikes - the eyelids are a big subject! Here are some quick tips that come to mind:

1) The lids follow the eyes.

As the eyes look around, imagine that they are pulling the eyelids along for the ride - particularly the upper lids.

2) Overdone Lids = Muddy Animation!

Remember, don't go too bananas with your character's eyelids. You want them to help strengthen the expressions and emotions, not distract from them. You're generally better off keeping them subtle unless the eyes are bursting open into a comedic wide-eyed expression or something major like that.

3) The lower lids are not used much!

There are times when you do want to animate the lower lids, and certainly emotions where you may raise them a tiny bit to help with the expression (suspicious, confused, etc), but other than that those emotion-specific instances, you'd probably only really need to animate the lower lids when the character is blinking (nowhere near as much as the upper lids, though), smiling (real, not fake), squinting, looking up (bring them up with the eyeball a bit), or possibly for anticipation to an eye-widening or change in thought process.

Hmm, now that I look at it, maybe they *are* used a lot! ha ha ha

Shawn :)

Animation Mentor at Vancouver Education & Career Fair

Animation Mentor will be at the Vancouver Education & Career Fair tomorrow, Feb. 3, 2009. The fair, which is the largest career planning event in British Columbia Canada, will have smeinars and exhibits to help people develop or change their career paths.

If you're interested in learning more about Animation Mentor's program and are in the Vancouver area, please come visit our booth! We'll tell you more about the online character animation program in person.

Happy Animating!
Animation Mentor Staff