Do You Have Any Special Techniques Using Inverse Kinematics (IK) in "Freehand Animation" When the Hands are Free From Other Objects?

First, it is important to understand some of the differences between IK and FK. When you are animating an arm in FK, you first move the shoulder, then the elbow, and then the wrists. That's more or less what we do when we move our own arms. So, all and all, FK seems a bit more similar to the way we move, with the movement starting on the shoulder. The process of animating an IK arm is very different; instead of starting the movement from the shoulder, you will work in the inverse direction. You position the wrist wherever you want it to go, and the rest of the arm kind of goes with it. Both ways of animating are perfectly fine, and, for example, when animating a character dancing, walking, or running, you can certainly achieve good results with both IK and FK.


The important thing here is to keep in mind that a realistic movement of the arms will mostly start on the shoulder. This is somewhat easier to achieve with FK, because you will will work from the shoulder down. However, it can be a little tricky with IK – the very method of animating with IK, positioning the wrist first and having the rest of the arm following it, will make it look like the hands are always leading the movement. Your job as an animator is to make it feel like the shoulder is leading, even though you are positioning the wrist first.


Another important point is that when you are animating a human body, all the body parts need to feel interconnected. When you move the spine, the arms will also move. When you raise a hand up in the air, the spine will move as well. Again, this is somewhat easier to achieve with FK. If you have the arms in FK and you move the body node the whole arm – including the wrist - will go with it, so we perceive the arms as being connected to the rest of the body. With IK arms, the movement of the spine will not automatically affect the position of the wrist. You will move the body node and the wrist will be stuck in place. Because of that, sometimes we can have the feeling that the arms (wrists) are independent from the body.


So, if you are animating with the arms in IK, you have to try your best to convey the feeling that the movement is rooted on the shoulder, and it is not the hand that is leading the movement. Basically, you have to fight the IK, and animate the wrist and the elbow just like a real arm moves. You will need to position the hands making sure you move the elbow in a way that will sell the idea that the root of the movement is in the shoulders. It is really, really important to pay special attention to the elbow and also the clavicle and chest when you are working in IK. My advice is that you study the movement in question, in your own body and also looking at reference, making sure you understand what is the relationship of shoulder/elbow/wrist for the particular scene you are animating. Then try to get the same relationship going on your shot, even though you are positioning the hands first.


The other important point is to not leave the hands stuck in space while the rest of the body is in movement – a very common error for beginners. That's what we call an “IK-ish look” – for example, let's imagine that a character steps to his right side and reaches out for a glass of water. You will have the shift of weight, the spine/torso moving towards the right, the step, and then the right wrist moves towards the glass of water... but if you forget about the left wrist... the left wrist will be stuck in space as if it is glued to the air. If this happens even for a couple of frames, it will look unnatural; people never have an experience where their whole body moves but their hand gets stuck in mid-air! So, if you have the arms in IK, you have to fight the “IK-ish look” by selling the idea that the movement of the hands is rooted on the shoulders; by making sure the the wrist feels connected to the rest of the body; and by not having the wrists stuck in place while the rest of the body moves around.

Guest Blogger Raquel Rabbit

What Keeps You Motivated When working on a Long, Tedious Animation Project?

There are a lot of things that help me to stay motivated, but first and foremost - it's the people around you. I don't think I ever went through a day at ILM and didn't laugh. It doesn't matter how tedious a shot or project can be, the atmosphere is always fun and everybody around you is there for support. You know that you're not alone.

I also listen to a lot of music and movies while I work. Usually I pick movies that I'm very familiar with so it's not distracting me from the actual work, but it provides a comfortable and pleasant background noise. Usually they are movies from my childhood, like the classic Star Wars trilogy, or Back to the Future, The Goonies, Big Trouble in Little China, etc.

Since our projects usually only last a few months and not years, a long project is never really that long. It might feel like it, but there's always a next project lined up that you can look forward to.
And if all of that fails, you just have to remind yourself that no matter what, it is your job to do the best you can, so suck it up and be professional. :)

Guest Blogger Jean-Denis Haas

What Did You Do Differently in Your Animation Studies That Made You Stand Out?

After I got the fundamentals down, I turned my focus to acting. I mean, acting is what we do, so why wouldn't I study it seriously like any other professional actor?

I started by studying Stanislavski. I have a book of his that has a bunch of assignments in it. Like...go to your bedroom and pack a suitcase. Now, pack the suitcase like you're going off to war. Now pack it like you're trying to leave your lover who just stepped out for a moment and you want to be gone before he/she gets home. Now pack it like you're being evicted. Stuff like that.

I also spent some time at the Lyric School of Acting in Vancouver, BC. It's interesting how similar my first animations were to my first live acting assignments. For starters, my hands were way too busy, and I would just stand there waiting for my line. But eventually we started working on subtext, backstory, and ways to really own your character. I recently read a quote by a screenwriter that went something like, "I wanted the audience to get to know my character quickly, so I had him pull a used paper filter out of the coffee maker, rinse it, and reuse it."

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

I'm at the Student Level. How Many Hours Should I Practice? How Many Hours Do I Need to Work at a Professional Level in the US?

This is another difficult question, because the answer is different for everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes, on average, 10,000 hours of practice and study for anyone to become truly proficient at something.

For myself, I just added up on a calculator all the time I spent studying/practicing animation in school (including stuff like figure drawing), time with my mentors, and animating on my own. I added all of that up, and it turns out that my animation education time before landing my dream job at ILM was 18,400 hours.

That might sound daunting, and it clearly took me more than the requisite 10,000 hours, but really we're just talking about 5 years of focused studying in order to have a reel that got me into ILM. I have no idea if that's average, fast, or slow, but we're all going to have different speeds as we study and absorb this animation stuff.

I would guess that the number of hours "necessary" to excel in animation would be radically different from one person to the next. I think the actual number of hours is irrelevant -- what matters is how much you can focus on animation.

For me, especially during the 4 years where I was focusing the most on learning this stuff, animation was my life. If I was awake, I was animating. That literally isn't really much of an exaggeration. I wasn't going out much with friends, I didn't have a girlfriend, I was missing movies I had been excited to see, I didn't get to play the video games I wanted to play, etc. Animation was my life.

Maybe that isn't always the healthiest way to approach something, but it's probably the fastest, and certainly works.

I know not everyone has the option of focusing their whole day on animation - you have families or non-animation jobs and other responsibilities. Well, my advice then is to just focus as much time as you can. If all you can do is 5 hours every night after your kids go to bed, then start spending those 5 hours animating or studying animation.

5 hours a night is 1,780 hours per year. If you manage to squeeze in an extra 10 hours each weekend, then you're talking about 2,300 hours per year, and suddenly that 10,000 hours doesn't seem so far off!

I wish animation was something you could learn in a few months, but it just isn't. It's an endlessly complex art that takes a lifetime to master, and that first 10,000 hours will only get you to the tip of the iceberg. Luckily for us, the rest of that iceberg is a ton of fun to spend that next 100,000 hours exploring!

Hope that helps!
Shawn :)

Guest Blogger Shawn Kelly