Sense of gravity is very critical to the life of all-things animated. When sense of weight in animated performance is not found, regardless of how beautiful and well-drafted the drawings, viewers would instinctively lose interest.
Our senses of weight and gravity are Earth-based and from a human perspective; our creative imaginations is directly affected by this connection and reflect this understanding even when setting thoughts to imaginary and fantastical places.
Interestingly, each film is a world of its own with distinct condition to gravity (particularly to that world); however the sizes and shapes, their sense of gravity mirror not on the ‘actual’ but the ‘feel’ of real world, empowering impossible gravitational conditions to strive in animation- long as it ‘feels’ right.
Sights of life appear to us both visible and invisible; but what can not be seen do show themselves indirectly through interaction with things visible.
The animated form is the visible part and the air it breathes is invisible. I feel that a successful animated performance does subliminally reflect a sense of air that sustains the life.
By nature, all forms function within a given environment- a fish in water, a bird in the air, a mammal on land, a planet in vacuum of space…
It is very relevant to be aware of the environment surrounding the animated forms. Most often these elements are invisible and one tent to overlook their importance, but the feel of environment directly influences the movements of forms.
Imagine we take time to define a fish with definite graphic look, personality and temperament as essential to bringing this character to life; true, but that fish would not live if there is no water for it to swim in. The way this fish goes about its life, inheriting its physical outlook is partly affected by its environment- salt or fresh water, in stillness of a pond, stronger current of a stream, in open sea or by a reef with strong tidal waves.
Imagine yourself moving about on one fresh morning, then in a humid and muggy day, maybe inside a clustered room filled with smell of old antiques… Your movements are likely to have subtle variation reflecting the air and atmosphere you’re experiencing.
When animating, I make a point to sense the weather condition, time of day, feel of space, texture of air, atmosphere, etc. Subconsciously, it affects movements of the animated character.
Above a scene from a film that was not very good, but I was very grateful to be exploring sense of flight, brief moments up-close with falcon and beautiful memories of friends working together in this character unit. (Back then, I was not conscious to sense of atmosphere when animate.) And here, sketches of anteater.
When speaking of ‘life’ in animated movements, I would say it is in the delicate orchestration of speed in regard to forms weaving in and out between stillness and motion.
What dictate this ‘speed’ is the visible and invisible forces of energy we humanly experienced, reflecting a dance of mass and matters to the larger universal physics and consciousness.
At essence- the spacing between drawings and corresponding number of exposures translate to speed, variation in speed equal a degree of force, right force enabled the animated character to emerge to life!
(Animation doesn’t seem overly difficult or complex from this fundamental outlook- setting right spacing in succession from one image unfolding to the next; what really elusive is the animator’s ability to conveying the right speed for an intended force.)
When timing animation, I am in constant reminder to look for the feel of speed relating to form and the forces that caused it into motion.
Above, playing horses; and here, a memory from a recent trip to Salerno, a city by the sea in Italy.
There are two factors that control ‘speed’ in animation- the spacing between images and the number of exposure per image; the further the distance, the faster the movement corresponding to the number of frames an image is exposed.
These two aspects are directly intertwined; change the amount of one and the other is affected.
Most often, we take standard practices without truly inquiring how they came to be, only with understanding that it works just fine, such with the exposure of one’s, two’s or three’s.
Recently I became interested in the subtle differences, beginning with an observation that a drawing seems to have more weight in motion on three’s and taken less time for an action to unfold and yet still feel right.
For example, in a scene describing a character running and climbing through obstacles up a hill, it takes more screen time to describe the same action on one’s and two’s than on three’s.
One’s, two’s and three’s- each require different spacing sense, easing in and out of pose, timing and amount of exaggeration. (Take a comfortable movement on two’s and in-between them to one’s, the texture no longer feel the same; while it appears more fluid, it seems to have less weight.)
For me in the pursuit of fluid motion, one’s is best at faster speed and two’s for slower. . And because of this new understanding, I’ve begun to experiment with occasional use of three’s mixing with mainly one’s and two’s exposure to acquire certain textures in movement (something that I would not do before).
For experiment, you can take a look at Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (mostly exposed on one’s), Pinocchio (a mixture of one’s and two’s throughout), and Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (on three’s).
Here, a scene and the accompanying thumbnail from My Little World.
For me, one endearing physical nature of animation is a sense of fluidity in the animated movements. From a surface perspective, I would say it is in the look of a pose unfolding and the way it is timed. But then, there seem to be something further underneath…
In life, a fluid movement is seamlessly flow within the boundary of time. In film, it is broken to 24 fragmented images in a second. When projected, it recreates an illusion of seamless motion; but this illusion carries its own unique qualities.
It is standard practice that for best result in achieving comfortable degree of fluid animation, a drawing is to be exposed once, twice, and at most three times while depicting motion.
I used to think that highest achievement for hand-drawn would be animation all on one’s, but this notion has changed as I began to realize the different textures in degrees of fluid motion through film.
Because of the physical nature of film, there seem to be some certain connection to the feel of movements in relation to animation exposures of one’s, two’s and three’s.
It is very interesting to look at timing from this physical perspective and is just as much an important condition in the animated language.
(To be continue…)
Here, an image I made that became an inspiration for My Little World; and above, some animation from the work-in-progress film.
The eye sense movements in animation and arrived at an emotional response. When a movement is properly expressed, the animated form taken flight and naturally inherit a certain sense of ‘soul’.
For me, all efforts are to achieving this aspiration. But since life-senses are very intricate, they demand the creative eyes to be equally sensitive and highly critical to reading movements. Like in music the ear searches to find just the right pitch for a note, an animated movement goes through similar scrutiny; one slight frame different in speed can have a significant outcome.
On other thought…It’s interesting to take a step back to look at moments when the mind is lost in mist of creative process, probing and searching…they can be quite uncomfortable (I liken them to thoughts of brewing or fermenting to find an inner peace at such moment).
But however easy or difficult the creating process, a successful result would appear naturally effortless to viewers.
And on this one strand of thought- if I were to live life correctly, life too is effortlessly flow… (It seems I’m still way to go from being there.)
Above, this dance was originally a quick live demo for my friends at CalArts. I thought I would take time to tie down to completion for this post; little did I know it gave me so much hard time to arrive at a comfortable arm swing! (The struggle is evident in ghost images from clip)
While lost in this moment, my thought brought me to that ‘brewing’ feeling and reminded me of an image I’ve taken from Yellowstone…
The ‘time’ element in animation is slightly compressed and a bit faster than the real world, even to a very realistic-looking character design.
To arrive at a comfortable ‘feel’ in motion, the animated forms take less time to travel through space in animation as oppose to the same time-space condition in the real world.
For example, if we take the most expressive dance movement in live-action, then take careful tracing frame-for-frame, the result in animation will undoubtedly appear to lack certain sense of weight and sluggish in motion.
It is important to have a sense of these subtle differences of space-time because it is critical to our timing sense for animated performances.
This slight increase in degree of speed is adjusted pending on design styling of forms- the closer to realism, the slower the speed and the less exaggerated; the more caricatured or stylized, the faster the speed and the more exaggerated.
Being alive in this conscious universe, we are organic forms in constant motion, traveling through certain given space and time with measurements of hours, minutes to seconds. There seem to be a definite philosophical connection here to the single framing universe where time is broken down future to frames-per-second.
(Above, a scene I animated from Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant and some thumbnails in preparation prior to animating)
