DISQUS

shawn · 1 year ago

Awesome! Our first Guest Blogger! Thanks, Keith!!

shawn :)

Mike Walling · 1 year ago

Hey Keith, good advice! One thing I might add to this is, along with adding contrast like you talked about with smaller circles versus a larger circle for example,is your spacing. you can really play with your spacing as well to get nice fluid motion that looks more interesting as well as using it to create those nice ease ins and outs of course. One of the things I see missing a lot in reels lately is students/animators using consideration where spacing is concerned in actions. We will see a character go into an antic and then jump to the new pose but it will lack the illusion of that character using all his muscles to stop that movement before going into the next pose or action. We have to take the time to let our transitions and antics breathe a bit so that our characters appear to have blood, fat, bones and a thought process. I'm always telling my students that to get weight into the character they have to really pay attention to the timing, the spacing and building in nice overlap in the transitions. Then once they nail that they can then go into secondary motions for texture and more naturalistic acting etc. Otherwise the character just looks like a piece of plastic being pushed around with no soul.

Sergio Pablas recently told us, animating is not moving things around, animating is giving your character a soul. Of course there are exceptions right Shawn but its that illusion of life through thought process, reaction and action that we really start to bring something to life. I know I'm on a tangent here but I feel it is worth mentioning along with what you talked about Keith! Good stuff my man! Keep at it buddy!

Cheers!

-Mike

Copper · 1 year ago

To be honest, I'm still not sure what all this means.

I've heard the term "arcs" and "figure 8 curves" before, but I've never really seen it in action, so I'm a little confused on what they are exactly.

By the way, I'm currently studying animation in my free time, since there aren't any classes I can take around here in high school... just so know I'm not an AM student who hasn't been paying attention in classes.

I'm also learning how to use Maya, but I read (I think it was in the Tips & Tricks eBook) that you should bury your computer in your back yard, learn animation, then dig it up and animate... so in a sense, I'm kind of doing that.

John Paul Rhinemiler · 1 year ago

Great stuff! Is there anyway we could get some examples...ie. drawings or links?

Thanks

JP

Cinthia Fujii · 1 year ago

Hey Keith!
It's great to see you here! Thank you for the tips and for everything! You are helping me so much as my mentor and I have so much fun in the Q&A :)
I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet you, because I really like your work!
As you know, I'm trying to improve the arcs in my animations so talk about figure 8 curves is very interesting to me.

Thanks!

Cin :*

indra fansblogs · 1 year ago

Hello.. whether we could be friends and exchanged link?

Artur Montanari · 1 year ago

Hey, great article Keith! Always good to rimind about arcs and figure 8's, even in fast actions you can apply them.
And just to answer Copper's question about arcs and figure 8's, you did see them in action in any good animation so far. They go like this, if you track the wrist for instance in every frame, from one pose (say, frame 10) to another pose (frame 25), the wrist doesn't go in a straight line from one point to another on screen, it describes an arc and if you go foward to that, in a walk for instance, the swing of your wrist is describing a figure 8, if you track it every frame during the entire loop (from the pose your wrist is in front of your body to this pose again).
Hope that helps Copper and of course, anyone including Keith here can add to this information.
Thanks a lot for the great info so far!

Artur
XD

Dhar · 1 year ago

This is a superb addition to the blog style. Nice job, Shawn. And thank you Kieth for the tip. Mike, you make some awesome observations that, I believe, deserve its own blog.

Kei · 1 year ago

Hi, for Copper and JP and anyone else that is reading this, I just wanted to mention two books that, if you don't already have them, you should! Stop reading this and go immediately to your local bookstore or Amazon.com and order "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston; and "The Animator's Suvival Kit" by Richard Williams. Both of these books contain vast amounts of information regarding 'arcs' and the other 12 principles of animation.
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were Disney animation gods, and you really can learn a lot about the 12 key principles of physical animation by visiting this page:
http://www.frankandollie.com/PhysicalAnimation.html
Good luck!
Keith Sintay (your guest Blogger for the month :) )

Carol · 1 year ago

Hi Keith, thank you for the great tips. I remember you stress about this during q&a and this definitely helps alot with the animation.

Copper · 1 year ago

Thanks Artur and Keith!

I actually do own Illusion of Life, but I haven't got around to that section on arcs yet. It pains me to think of finishing the book, so I take my time.

And I was planning on getting the other book sent to my library once I was finished with Illusion of Life. No point in cramming everything at once, I suppose.

Once I find a way to watch movies frame-by-frame, I'll try and look for these arcs.

- jonah