Thumbnailing is a necessary step prior to animating. While its essential purpose is the same- to search for a clearer understanding and provide an insight to scene’s unfolding, the approach to thumbnailing is very personal and based on one’s temperament.
In early days, I often sketched out little thumbnails that would unfold like straight-ahead animation, and then proceed to animate; (above, example from Rescuers Down Under). While I’m very clear to where I should go, I often find myself wanting to force the animation drawing into a certain gestural position because I happened to really like the way some thumbnail scribble looked; often, they might be out of path with the at-hand animation, adding complication to the unfolding movement.
But most destructively, the animation drawing somewhat become a copy of the thumbnail blown-up. The trouble then- is that while the thumbnail really looked alive and fresh, the animation drawing looked rather stiff, confined and robotic, being a copy and lost a generation of critical liveliness.
To adjust this situation, I’d worked out the unfolding in thumbnail, but then put it away, letting the animation unfold as it should, only refer back to be reminded of the established phrasing of scene; (below, an example from Iron Giant).
Slowly, I find that in keeping closer to the initial intended force in a scene, I put lesser energy into defining thumbnails, just enough to give me a clear state of mind to approaching the animation stage, letting the raw energy appears as very rough first pass; (here again, another example from Iron Giant).
Feeling and working a scene out by acting and mimicking the intended movement becomes more and more a preferred practice for me; the thumbnail became less and less define; (here an example from Osmosis Jones).
Nowadays, I most often skip the ‘drawing’ thumbnail altogether; acting out a scene and allow the rough first pass as both- a thumbnail and first pass animation.
For me, ‘organic’ force is rather elusive and does not want to be boxed-in; we each find workflows to best translate this elusive force as intact as possible to arrive at end result.
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March 27, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Sung
Mike,
Thanks for documenting your growth as an animator. I’m excited to see what kind of an animator I will become.
March 27, 2011 at 6:39 pm
rainplace
Hello Sung, happy animating and look forward to seeing your film very soon
April 4, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Patrick Semple
Thats an awesome post. I love seeing artist’s process especially when they show how it evolves. Thank you for sharing this.
April 4, 2011 at 3:52 pm
rainplace
Thank you (as always) Patrick
April 6, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Ethan
Hi Mike,
I know some animators like to take their thumbnails and blow them up on the xerox. They cut them out and paste them to the animation paper and use that for their first pencil test. Have you ever tried something like that?
April 6, 2011 at 8:43 pm
rainplace
Hello Ethan,
Yes I am aware of the way you’ve mentioned, though I don’t use this workflow myself. This way works best if you’re approaching from a more pose-to-pose perspective and searching for storytelling extremes.
The reason why this way is not working for me is that- the thumbnails, while illustrating clearly how things might unfold, the thumbnails themselves do not directly relate to each other (like the way animated drawings must).
Basing on these blown-up, path of arcs, amount of exaggeration, squash and stretch might not corresponds perfectly and one often ended up forcing the flow of movement into suggested thumbnail positioning…which is certainly a bit off themselves.
The differences in spacial positioning might appear small, but it is in that very delicate spaces that organic animation come to be.
You can override and correct that, but it is much harder to let things flow when something is already there and very influencing visually.
Hope that helps