fps and walk cycle

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By wallywood77 | Monday, June 23, 2008 at 7:43am

fps and walk cycle

Hi,
I'm finally at the stage in production where I'm putting together the walk cycles for my main characters (actually, wrote in very few walks altogether and thought it would be smarter to get those out of the way first since I've never done them before.)

I'm using Richard William's book as well as a few good online tutorials as guides and just experimenting right now.

Question: what's a good frame rate? I've read that 15 fps is good, but I've seen some tutorials that use 24fps. I've seen a couple of tutorials that use 12, but that seems kinda slow to me. And 24 seems like it might be tons more work. My stuff is just going to go online (I'm animating mainly in Flash, doing post in AE and will probably save the end result as a streaming quicktime file.) Originally, I thought I'd release it ultimately (if people like it) on DVD, but have decided to solely focus on online (and mobile downloads.) Is 15fps fast enough?

Also, any walk cycle tips?

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

Wally

Thanks.

Mon, 06/23/2008 - 11:15am

(Reply to #3) #2

wallywood77

thanks! right now, I guess I'll keep it at 24... and thanks for the tip re: muybridge. i'll definitely check him out..

Tue, 06/24/2008 - 8:55am

(Reply to #4) #3

Animated Ape

24 fps is standard film rate. I'd suggest animating on 24. It's easier to brake down in halves than 30 fps. You can do it on 12fps, just think of it as half of 24. The only thing is that at 12 fps you have to animate on ones, and the problem with this is that you now can't smooth things out on ones if you have to. So 24fps on twos = 12fps on ones.

Aloha,
the Ape

—

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Tue, 06/24/2008 - 9:32am

(Reply to #5) #4

wallywood77

thanks everyone! 24 it is.

Tue, 06/24/2008 - 1:10pm

(Reply to #7) #5

tyokio

I worked with 24 fps a lot but I've been told that its not the correct format to work with when making a PAL video. I was chatting with my tutor about my university animation and I was mentioning I was working with 24 fps in 2s so If I wanted a movement to move faster or smoother I can alternate between 1s and 2s. he then gave me a puzzled look and asked "why are you working with 24fps? the standard rate is 25 fps." which to me sounds a bit mad really because you cant devide 25 by half, you can divide it by 5 but thats about it.

He was a film tutor though so perhaps that applies more to the film side rather then the animation side of things. I did have a tutor look at the time line in flash seeing that I had mixed 1s and 2s and they then said "I saw some one else do that too... why dont you use just 1s?" then walked away.... my head hurt after that. I should have explained it to them but I was just far too gobsmacked that a tutor of animation would ask such a thing.

on topic now, yeah 24 fps is the best one to go for. I start animating with 12 fps in flash to make sure the movement is right and then I inbetween the nessesary bits to increase the frame rate to 24.

William Wright, its you! the hero of KVATCH!

Wed, 06/25/2008 - 2:16pm

(Reply to #9) #6

Rasheed

I wish that the revival of animation and the animation industry had done more to create interest in different kinds of animation and to get people to understand and appreciate the medium and I'm very disappointed that this doesn't seem to be happening.

For that to happen, a lot of education has to be done. For starters, that animation isn't just for kids. Furthermore, if you have to explain to people why something is so wonderful, they often lose interest (because of the explaining). I'm afraid high quality animation, just like high quality music will always be a specialty item.

Jay for iPod earbuds! ;)