When I have clear sense to flow of force going into animating, I find that a scene would unfold much more at ease; the reverse happens when I don’t and tent to get lost especially during timing scene.
To illustrate in practice how sense of force affecting animation stage, here is a break-down of thought process for the kicking scene in previous post…
The underlying force here is casual and playful, without sense of urgency.
The scene’s movement is divided to 4 main phrases- anticipate, jump, kick and recovery.
Phrase 1- Soft force into anticipation; leading force is at left leg causing the compartments to follow in delayed manner. Drawing 2 in relation to 1 set up angle projection for downward arc.
Strength of anticipated force is reflected in distance of successive drawings within phrase and also helped determine amount of squash position at end point of phrase 1.
Phrase 2- Quick release into mid air; strength of phrase 1 and angle of lean in released drawing determines arc path of jump phrase. Lean drawing also controls distance of jump.
Leading force continues in legs at start of phrase 2, transferring to pelvis, on to upper body toward mid arc.
As momentum of internal generated force dissipated at mid arc, gravity takes over and structure descends in appropriate accelerated speed toward ground.
Since it is a casual force, left leg is more relax and hang looser during jump; while right leg is anticipating to kicking, beginning at mid arc; utilizing falling speed to build up kick strength; strength of kick is determined in amount distortion of leg.
Landing leg determines landing spot and does have limited adjustment capability to refine exact location of landing spot within downward path of arc.
Being an anticipated jump into kick, phrase 2 ends as character is falling and kick phrase takes over.
Phrase 3- Build-up force releasing into kick; highest degrees of distortion in forms occur in this phrase, with a wider range of distance between drawings, reflecting stronger force ‘feel’.
Phrase 4- As strong force is spent, character’s gesture quickly favored passive mode, slowing into no internal force; this pausing is reflected through a more relax angle of legs, arms, and body arc. And for this scene, it ends in mid air.
After this rough stage, I pencil test and assign exposure per drawing. In this scene, it is happened to be all in 1’s and 2’s, often the case in fast action. Extremes drawings and timing chart is to be determined in tie-down stage.
To sum up, without a sense of underlying force to guide me, my spacing sense, projection of arc, distortion of forms would not have fim root to build on, leaving way to texture of movements appearing to manipulated from outside in, like a marionette puppet.
Organic animation is very much common sense physics with a bit of poetic license.
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October 17, 2009 at 9:46 am
Janine Chang
Your blog is so helpful Mike!
Thank You!!!
October 17, 2009 at 4:27 pm
rainplace
Glad you’ve found Rainplace of interest
October 17, 2009 at 6:27 pm
David McBride
Wow, this is great. Thanks for posting.
October 20, 2009 at 2:32 am
Chan Ghee Leow
Thanks for breaking all these down
October 20, 2009 at 12:49 pm
rainplace
Thank you David and Chan!
Hope the breakdown make sense for you; it’s difficult to explain in words to something that meant to be explain in motion
October 22, 2009 at 2:25 am
Chan Ghee Leow
Mike, can I ask you something about keeping characters on model?
What I love most about your thoughts on animation is that it’s always driven by expression and the inner kinetics of the characters, which really makes a lot of sense to me. But with expression as the primary drive, how does one keep check of the character’s model? Do you ever sometimes stray too far from the model because you get too caught up in the expression, and subsequently ending up with strong animation on a character that’s off model?
I’ve found it hard to keep a balance between being on model (technique) without sacrificing expression. Or maybe it should be the other way round. I was hoping maybe you can shed some light on this.
October 24, 2009 at 9:30 pm
rainplace
Hello Chan,
Thank you very much for your frequent visits and interests in various post’s topics!
It really is a fine balance between being freely express in movement and stay on model. If one is very conscious with structures and forms, then the movement will stiff-up. It will take a bit of time to get use to, but if you think in term of the animated process of a scene is a building in layers. For me, it is a disciplinary skill to keep character’s volume in a fairly consistence basis.
But being human and not machine, there is likely inconsistency in volume, but the key is- long as the character volume and model appears consistent in motion, then thats what is relevant to me.
One way to stay consistent is to now and then refer to one designate drawing within a scene as a volume reference; another is to have a guide grid underneath scene to refer to in terms of character’s heights and relation to various compartments.
Often for me, first rough pass is to let the energy and emotion of scene unfold; making sure to only one thing- that character’s volume doesn’t strait too far off; a little is OK.
On second pass, i will then correct the model, but making sure that the model is contour to the initial force and emotion.
One other way of thinking along this regard, if you take a series of photo of yourself, you don’t always look the same in one single image; and if every drawing is perfectly ‘on model’ like a model sheet, it will certain to be very stiff and lifeless, just like a statue, no mater at what angle, it is perfectly the exact same. But then, we’re meant to appreciate scupture in diffirent way than motion pictures
In today’s world, we tent to put too much focus on the model sheet and reluctant to grant it variation on a theme, and letting it be free to express as needed; long as we don’t break the believability.
For example, Mickey Mouse in Sorcerer’s Apprentice, his hands often enlarge when he his giving command; by enlarging his hand, the animator point the viewers’ eyes to look at the hands, and other parts is supportive in certain cases.
Hope this helped a bit to generate some solutions on your end
October 25, 2009 at 10:22 am
Chan Ghee Leow
Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts on this topic. My hand drawn animation work in the past have often been stilted by too much emphasis on the character’s model. It makes sense that in the first pass, as long as the character’s volume is consistent, the correction of the model in the second pass should not pose too much problem (hopefully).
I can’t wait to try out this approach. Thanks again. Looking forward to your next post
October 28, 2009 at 2:22 am
Frederik Villumsen
Hey Mike and thank you once again for a very insightful post, always a pleasure and a challenge to visit your blog and try to fully understand what you write about.
I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now how you’d approach a much more subtle scene in comparison to one with a lot body mechanics. A dialogue scene for example in a shot closer to the character.
Your approach makes sense to me when it comes to a scene where body mechanics are the main focus and you through that can show a thought-process and will in the character.
However if you have a fairly stationary character acting through subtle gestures you’d have to put more emphasis on thought of the character right? Or would you still approach it the same way and let it unfold the as a scene with more action in the body?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the difference in approach to a subtle scene and one with action, should there be any.
Thanks again for taking the time to keep Rainplace a great inspiration.
October 31, 2009 at 3:52 pm
rainplace
Thank you very much for your thoughts Frederik! I’ll address your question in regard to spacing for stationary and soft force scenes on next post
Have fun animating in Ireland!!