How Do You Improve the Arcs in Animation?

FIRST THINGS FIRST:
Before you go crazy improving any arcs, you must know that you need to work from the root of your character outward (pelvis » spine » neck » head). A slight change in the arc of the root may result in a big change in the arc of your wrist.

There are may ways of improving your arcs so I’ve broken it down to a few sections.

DESIGN:
The beauty of animation is you are the one in control, so why not take control over your arcs. They don’t always have to be your standard arc. Different arcs can have different feelings. So here are some things I like to think about when designing my arcs.

• Arcs should not all be the same. Think of different patterns and how they relate to each other. For instance, if you moved through a squiggly arc and then into a smooth arc, you animation may start off feeling chaotic and then end feeling calm or fluid.


• Like any design, angular shapes and patterns have a rough, rigid and maybe even a negative feeling as apposed to a smooth shapes and patterns may have more of a fluid, organic or positive feeling.


• There needs to be at least three frames (3 points) to describe any curve.


• Arcs can have a thickness to them as well. For example if you move your hand through and arc and your fingers are spread wide at the beginning and in the end, but are close together in the middle that arc will have a feeling of going from thick to thin to thick. When doing this its important to remember volume and anatomy.

DRAWING YOUR ARC:
When I think I have an idea for my arc, I plot it out on my monitor with a dry erase marker (for flat panels I may use a sheet of acetate over the monitor). I first plot out my start and end points so I know roughly how much space I’m dealing with and then I draw my arc connecting the two.

Remember, the more detailed your arc is the more frames you will need. For example, if you wish for your object to follow along an “S” curve you will need enough points to keep it from looking like a “Z” curve.

SPACING:
I think the thing most often forgotten when it comes to arcs is the spacing along the arcs. It's not good enough just to make sure that every frame follows the arc, but the spacing along that arc has just as much value. If the spacing is done incorrectly your arc may or may not read.

As a starting point, I think of my spacing along an arc like the coils in a slinky. If you were to stretch out a slinky along an arc, the coils would be closer to each other at the ends and furthest apart in the middle. When you move through the slinky from the start toward the middle, each coil (spacing) gradually gets further and further apart until it reaches its furthest spacing in the middle. From that point, the coils (spacing) get closer and closer together. Like I said, this is just a starting point, your typical arcs ease out, and moves through a breakdown to an ease in type of spacing. Quite often I will see two random coils in the middle of an arc very close together unintentionally, and even though the object is moving through an arc it still appears to pop because the frames before and after don’t lend itself to that spacing.

DRAG, SQUETCH (Squash and Stretch):
When moving through an arc it's important that any drag, or squetching we do follows that path of action as well. For example, in your standard bouncing test, as a ball stretches on its descent the line of action of that ball points back up the arc where it came from.

MOTION BLUR:
This may be a bit unnecessary to talk about and may even complicate things a bit, but when you get to that big studio it matters. Motion blur is like 5-year-old playing connect the dots. It will only draw a straight line from point to point. It doesn’t know to arc in between the dots. So this may or may not be another factor to the design and detail of your arc.

Guest Blogger Nick Bruno

How Do You Approach an Animation Sequence Once You Have an Idea From the Storyboards?

When I get my assignment and kick off from the director, I usually spend a whole day away from the computer planning my shot. I refuse to lay down one key until I can see the whole animation in my head. Now I know not everything in my head may work during my execution, and I know some other things may evolve, but it's important to have a clear plan before messing around in the computer.

Here is my own personal checklist put into a rough sequential order. I say rough order, because different shots call for different things.

• Know the character(s) you are animating. Look at their model sheets for expressions. Read their character packet to know their arc (storyline) in the movie, and understand their personality traits and their limitations.
o Also understand the type of animal they are and how they move.

• Study the sequence - what is the pacing throughout the sequence. Think of the sequence as a roller coaster. What part of the ride does your shot fall on? Is it building to something else? Is it the peak before the fall?

• What kind of moment is it and what is the point of my shot? Happy, sad, calm, crazy, is it a reaction shot, or a bridge to another shot. In my opinion, this is the most often forgotten thing. There are many ways to nail a point, but there are even more ways to miss it, or overdo it. As animators, it’s in our nature that we want to do something awesome, fresh and new, and sometimes we tend to overdo some of those simple moments.

• Look at the storyboard panels. Amazing artists work long and hard on capturing each beat of a sequence. What I always find amazing, is that the artist manages to capture some of the most complex actions and feeling in just a few drawings. It’s that simplicity and clarity that we need to study.
o Keep in mind these guys and gals are really good at drawing, so we can also learn a lot from their drawing skills in how they design the character and capture the essence of that particular feeling they are going for.

• Toggle around the set. When you get your assignment, you usually get your camera and set along with it. I always find it very useful to toggle around in it to get a sense of the characters scale and what limitations they have within camera. For instance, you may find a tree is in the way, or that you only have enough room to move their head around. Whatever you find will help in planning your shot.

• Listen to audio. Listen over and over again. Try to listen for just the lyrical rhythm, then try to listen to the words and the accents, and what importance those accents have over those words.

• Draw from personal experience. Nothing paints a more vivid picture than picturing your own personal experiences. So if you’ve gone through a similar moment, draw from that.

• Thumbnails. Do lots of thumbnails. A lot of people tend to do only one thumbnail per beat in the shot. NEVER settle for your first thumbnail, no matter how in love you are with it. Explore several different variations of one pose. Its not just the pose you are looking for but what the pose looks and feels like amongst the other poses.
o After Milt Kahl would thumbnail out the full character, sometimes he would go in and do thumbnails of individual parts like hands and legs, trying to see if within those he can find a pose that gives the feeling he’s going for.

• Acting it out before a camera is really good too. It may help you see the performance a little clearer. For me, I use reference to see little happenings that I may not have thought of.

• Using movies as reference. If you can remember a scene in a movie that you thought captured the moment you are going for, study it. Find why it was successful.

• The 12 principles of animation laid out by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson.

• Some additional principles learned along the way:
- Pantomime: How would you get the point across if no dialogue available
- Texture to timing
- Rhythm of the dialogue: Use the rhythm to see how you lyrically move the character around.
- Show characters thought process
- Visualize patterns of movement within the 2D frame
- Reversals: Getting reverse curves in the body.
- Shot context: Achieving the purpose of the shot. Don’t overdo it!
- Contrast
- What is motivating the movement
- Silhouette and shapes in front of shapes. Think about color and patterns as well.
- Avoid tangents
- Develop a method of approaching your shot. How are you going to tackle the problem?
- Know what you want the audience to see and what not to see
- Direct viewers eye
- Control the head and eyes. The viewer focuses mainly on the eyes, catches the rest of the performance in their peripheral.
- Choreograph between characters
- Avoid twinning
- Don’t let the action overpower important dialogue.

• After my first pass of blocking I always analyze it using all of the principles.

Then you’re done! It’s just that easy! Hehehe.

Guest blogger Nick Bruno

What Are Splines? What’s the Best Way to Approach Editing Splines When Animating?

Before I go into this topic, I wanted to mention that I think Victor Navone provides some really good tips and tricks on his website
(http://www.navone.org/HTML/Tutorials.htm) for splining.

So go check it out! I’d listen to that before any of my nonsense.

So…if your still here, here’s my 2 cents!

I find that this is a particularly difficult topic to talk about. Mainly because everyone I know does it a different way. Some animators never look at their splines, some use lots of keys on their splines, and some use only a few keys and rely on weighted tangents. There is no right and wrong way. Teachers may try and tell you there is, but that’s only because they see it works for them and they might think everyone will enjoy the same success. Unfortunately, I’ve learned it doesn’t work that way. All that matters is what’s on screen, not how it looks in your graph editor. So be sure you find a way that works for you and use it, even if it makes no sense to anyone else.

When it comes to my workflow, I don’t look at my graph editor until my blocking is pretty much complete. I make sure that all the acting and action that is supposed to take place in my shot happens in blocking. I am personally unable to define actions through splining. So when I take my shot from blocking to spline, that is the first time I take a look at the spaghetti mess in my graph editor. Luckily, since I’ve already laid down a lot of keys in my blocking (key pose, breakdowns, ease in’s and outs, overshoots, settles), I can roughly see an overall direction that my splines are traveling in. For some splines, all I have to do is clean them up so that they flow nicely. But most require a lot of attention.

The thing that really helped me to understand my splines is thinking of them like a roller coaster ride and the spline is the track the cars follow on. It can be fast, slow, it can have a big building anticipation followed by a quick action, take sharp turns and stop abruptly. The track is mainly a smooth track and even the sharpest of corners are rounded. Rarely are there any arbitrary sharp angles or jittery textures. It’s because the cars have weight. If halfway through the ride the track hit a 90 degree turn, it would be like hitting a wall, and it would remove all feeling of weight. So would your animation. Weight effects everything, including how your curves start and stop. It takes some effort to get the cars moving and even more to get them to stop. Remember how it feels going up the incline and then having gravity catch up to you on the fall, and then remember what that track looks like. Your spline for that may look the same in Trans Y.

Some tidbits I’ve learned along the way:

I almost only use SPLINE tangents. Always making sure that the splines flow through and to eachother. Never overshooting, undercutting or slamming into each other.

Always zoom in close to see how they really look. Some curves look clean until you zoom in.

The heavier the object the smoother the splines may be.

Most actions can be represented by an “s” curving spline. Starts flat, has a little dip (antic) moves up a slope (action), overshoots, and settles down to its next resting place.

I rarely use linear knots.

I feather into almost everything. Even some of the sharpest hits have a little padding.

Most of the curves can remain pretty clean.

Rarely do things start and stop on the same frame. Break up body parts as well as rotational and translation values on everything.

If my curves for TransY and TransX interweave like a DNA helix I will get a circular pattern.

Guest Blogger Nick Bruno

What Steps Do You Go Through to Get into Your Characters Mind?

To really get into a characters head and really feel what they feel I ask myself a lot of questions. I’ve broken it down to my own personal steps.

Step 1: Draw from your own experiences

• When have you been in a similar situation?
• How did you feel?
• How did you carry yourself?
• How did you want others to perceive you?
• What were you doing?
• How were the people around you acting?
• What got you into that situation?
• What were you thinking vs. what you were saying?
• What environment were you in and how did that affect you? Example: A fight with a girlfriend in your living room will be different than at the library.

Step 2: Who is the Character Your Animating

• What is your characters personality?
• Where are they in their arc in the movie? Example: In the beginning they are weak but in the end they are powerful.
• How do they carry themselves
• If you could, can you equate them to an animal. Example: A shy person may try to hide themselves like turtle.
• Are they an animal? What are some physical or personality traits of that animal?
• Do you know anyone like that character?
• How does that character act differently to different people? For example, you may act differently around your friends than you would around your grandparents.
• Are they similar to any well-known movie icons? For example, if you had a confident character are they more like Indian Jones or Ace Venture. Both confident but completely different.
• Height and Weight. If your character is pregnant how may she walk differently through a crowd than say a non-pregnant woman of the same age and demeanor?

Step 3: What are the characters physical limitations

When if at all possible, do whatever you can that may physically force you to see the world through the characters perspective. If your character is blind, blindfold yourself, if they are short crawl around on your knees, if they walk with a limp put a tack in your shoe. Don’t do that for real that would hurt.

So many acting choices come from these limitations. For example, a man who is deaf in one ear will always lean toward you favoring his good ear.

Step 4: Act it out

This can also be the first thing you do. Nothing gets you in a characters frame of mind more than putting yourself in their shoes. Granted, nine times out of 10 you want to know and feel what they feel before you act it out, but act it out from a physical stand point. Recreating the situation/environment can tell you a lot. For example, if it’s a teacher in a classroom,they have desks and dropped pencils to maneuver around, so set up a few props and see how you move around that space. Then do it again later when you think you understand the character better.

Guest blogger Nick Bruno

Tips & Tricks on How to Make a Shot Stand Out

Before you try to make your shot stand out it's important to remember the type of shot it is, and its purpose. Some shots you don’t want to stand out, and sometimes a shot will stand out regardless of what you do, simply because of its place in the movie or what takes place.

There are a lot of good tips for this particular topic that you can find in any of your animation books. In books like the Illusion of Life you can find lots of tips on how to get the viewer to react, and how to come up with believable acting. But in an effort to provide something new, and being more of a cartoony guy myself, here are some additional things of my own.

Keep in mind that if you employ all of these it will probably be too much.

• THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IS FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT ANIMATION. Keep in mind that you have to know the rules to break the rules.


• Caricature to the extreme -- i.e. if a person jumps when startled, hold them in the air for an impossible amount of time. If they scream the jaw might drop to the floor.


• Push. Shapes, lines of action, poses, facial expression, timing, breakdowns, contrast. Go further than what we are used to seeing.


• Animate to sound effects in your head - sounds crazy I know. For example, if you are animating a character stretching and in your head you hear the stretching of a rubber band, how does that affect your performance?


• The Simile. Use a simile quite literally to define a performance. For example, if you were to say “when he laughs his stomach shakes like a bowl full of jelly.” Instead of just having the stomach shake up and down, I would animate it as if it was literally jelly.


• Use pop music to help define your texture in timing. I’m talkin’ about those horrible songs that you never want to admit to liking, but you find yourself singing in the shower. They are popular, because they are catchy; they are catchy because of their rhythm. Sometimes to shake things up a bit I will take a rhythm from a song I heard and throw it somewhere into my shot.


• Push your pose.


• Art as inspiration. I will often look at art and say if you had to animate to that style what would that look like. How would an animated Picasso move? If emotionally my character felt broken apart, that's exactly what I might try to do. Sleeping Beauty is a good example of art inspired animation.


• Off Model. This is a tricky thing to do, but if you do it right it can be effective. You can quite literally change the look of the character, like when Ren will sometime take on a more human facial expression. Or it can be more subtle, like when the Tramp mimics a human barking orders in Lady and The Tramp. One quite literally changes the look of the character and the other pushes the expression slightly more than you’re used to seeing.

Most of these I’ve learned by watching any Looney Tunes or Ren & Stimpy cartoon, so you should probably do that first.

Guest Blogger Nick Bruno