Hey this is my first post here. I need some advice about animation technique. Not that it really matters but, I haven't done much 2D animation only 3D. I have shown some of my work to an animator who works at a great feature animation studio. One comment that he had was that my work looks very "pose to posey". I animate mostly using that method, but only in the beginning. I try to go into "straight ahead" mode after everything is blocked in. But apparently it still looks pose to posey when I am finished. I am wondering if anyone has advice on how to break that mold? How do I make things not so pose to posey?
Here is my latest attempt. I know it has lots of problems, but I would mostly like people to address the "pose to pose" problem.
Hi ‘bb’.
Let me start by saying that your animation shows a lot of real promise. Yes, it does have a pose-to-pose look but I would suggest your poses are very acceptable nevertheless. In my humble opinion, all that is lacking is a little more of 'overlapping action'... this will give a more naturalness to everything, bringing subtle and less predictable movements.
The principles of ‘overlapping action’ and the ‘successive breaking of joints’ (see my 'Animator's Workbook' for a fuller explanation) essentially base themselves on the premise that nothing ever moves evenly. The arm and hand may rise then come down again but it does so in a series of subtle movements... not all at once, not all in the same way. For example, take a hand/arm coming up to a pointing position. In actual fact the shoulder might rise slightly first, then the elbow, then the wrist, then the body of the hand then... at the very last moment... the finger. (Successive breaking of joints.) On the way down, a similar thing happens where again the shoulder leads, followed by the elbow, wrist, hand and lastly the finger. (Note: Specific actions may vary in accordance with other requirements but this is a 'generic' principle to always keep in mind when approaching this kind of thing.) This premise always gives a greater flexibility to everything... especially when applied to continuous movement of a series of related parent to child hierarchies.
Remember the heaviest and most solid aspects of a characters action will essentially lead most of the time. The lightest and most flexible parts of the character will tend to drag behind and catch up later. That is why ‘overlapping action’ especially is so important with (say) long hair and clothing. The body moves and the hair and clothes follow slightly later. Again, nothing moves identically, at the same speed and in the same way… it is all to do with density, volume, weight and flexibility.
Anyway, I hope this helps? Essentially your work is good... it just needs these little subtleties to make it 'great'!
Tony. :^{)}=-
Personal Blogsite:
http://blog.animaticus.com
"The Animaticus Foundation"
http://www.animaticus.com
Thanks Tony, what you say makes alot of sense. I am familiar with those principles of overlap and successive breaking, but obviously not familiar enough. I will really try to think more about what leads and what follows, and have those things hit at different times. In fact, just as I am writing this, a light bulb came on in my head. I can picture that really breaking up the motion and flowing better to and from poses. Thanks! Any other thoughts would be helpful too.
bbeckstead, I'd like to say you piece emotes well. It depends on where it's placed and how big a piece of the finished product it is. It lacks texture and lighting at this point as well. All those things are polish in my book, and depending on the production...it depends how much production cost is given each little shot like this. Sure you can add frames and subtities, but if it's only a glimpse on the screen is that where you want to put all your effort.
If this is going to showcase your skills go ahead and polish away. But in the end the editor is probably going to cut some of the subtilites.
But Tony's advice is great advice as far as making an animation seem more alive.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
On top of what Tony said about overlap and follow-through, it looks like you're having trouble with your curves not following smooth paths.
This is something typical to 3D because the software is calculating the inbetweens, whereas in 2D you have a lot more control over your ease-in and ease-out. It looks to me that some of the keys where the action shouldn't ease-in but keep flowing smoothly, the standard values of the soft you're using adds ease-in anyway. Which makes your movement less smooth and lets the poses come out more pronounced then they should. The software basically treats every key as a new pose and eases into it and out of it.
To give an example, if you have an arm swinging from left to right, you might add an inbetween-key to get a nice arc. Since the motion should keep consistent through this key, you wouldn't have ease-in or ease-out. If you're using TCB for example, the software will add ease-in and ease-out anyway, which makes that inbetween look like a seperate pose although it isn't. It might go unnoticed if you only have it once or twice, but if every key in your scene eases in and out where they shouldn't, you start to get a general feeling that something isn't quite right.
In your scene you notice it especially at the end, between "...again" and "ever". Instead of having a nice smooth motion with an arc when he dips down and the up, it looks like every key grinds to a halt and then slowly picks up again. You notice poses where you shouldn't. It needs what you could call 'massaging' your key-values and curves, untill you don't see the key anymore, just the fluid motion going through it.
hope that makes sense,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
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While I'm ranting away, here's some more ;)
I've found that some 3D animators who haven't gone through the 2D process generally have problems understanding overlap and follow-through, simply because they never had to draw (or key) every single frame. They know it should be there but don't quite understand why.
It's always good to remember that the principles of overlap and follow-through come from Newton's First Law, which says that "an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force".
In physics you can describe it as follows :
Imagine you're on top of a moving truck holding a tennisball. If you throw the tennisball up in the air and disregard Newton's First Law, you would expect the ball to be back at the point where the bus was when it left your hand. Because of this law however, the ball will follow the bus with the same speed and in the same direction and fall back into your hand.
Also, it will fall into your hand and not shoot up into the stars because it is acted upon by an unbalanced force (gravity) and it won't keep falling because it is acted upon by a force greater than gravity (your hand).
In animation it would work like this :
Imagine a girl with long hair standing still. When she suddenly turns around her own axis, the unbalanced forces are the muscles in her body. Her hair however will want to stay at rest and therefore won't move untill the force of her head pulling it becomes too great and it has no choice but to move. Since the tips of the hair are affected by this force last, they will also start to move last. Ease-in would basically be the force of her headmovement gradually overriding the principle of inertia and the ever present counterforce of gravity.
When she suddenly stops however, her hair already is in motion and will -according to the First Law- want to stay in motion. So it will keep going untill it's stopped by both her head and gravity (which will slowly pull it down). Once again the tips of her hair will be the last to be affected. Considering the weight of her hair (low gravitational pull) and the fact there are no muscles to 'brake', you can assume that her hair will have more follow-through then her arms (which are affected by the same law, although not as extreme).
The heavier the object, the more force it will take to accelerate it, but also the more force it will take to stop it (imagine someone throwing a golfball and then a bowlingball at you; he'll have a harder time getting the latter to move, but you sure as hell will have a harder time stopping it once it is moving ;))
This also explains why non-intentional ease-in and ease-out looks strange. There is no way an object will ease-in or out unless some force is trying to stop it. With an armswing it will be at the start and the stop, but never in the middle (where the acceleration will actually be the highest).
Imagine the same bowlingball slowing down in mid air and then accelerating again. Same thing with a body, unless there's a force (i.e. muscle) influencing it.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
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Dave
Thanks for going into so much detail. You were right about me, I haven't animated in 2D before. What you say makes alot of sense, about unintentional ease ins and outs. So I think it is a matter of really going over the curves and looking for ways to help "hide" the poses rather than make them stand out. I hadn't thought about like that before. Thanks man, that made a little light bulb go on over my head! And all the stuff about overlap really makes sense too. Now I have to learn how to do it correctly, which is the hard part. Thanks for the tips. I will be posting something pretty soon that addresses these issues, and maybe you guys can help me out again.
Great posts Dave! I really appreciate your remarks.
What I think a lot of 3D animators forget is that the computer animation is still made up of individuals frames. Yes it's very easy to hit play and see what you have when it comes to your timing but you still need to go through the animation frame by frames and tweak the pose to make sure you are getting what you want on every frame so you motion shines. Yes it's tedious as hell but it's what separates the good motion from the really good stuff.
ed
Department of Computer Animation
Ringling College of Art and Design
Sarasota Florida
Glad to be of help :)
You're very close, just needs that extra pass to really make it shine and make everything you've done come together and work as a whole.
Also, don't overthink it now; once you know what drives your character's motions, it'll find its way into your workflow all by itself. Knowing the ingredients is one thing; understanding where they come from is another.
It makes for better grokking, as Smith from 'A stranger in a strange land' would say. You can never really see untill you know, and once you know you can't help but see.
And after digesting that bit of philosophical shizzits; try to get a hold of McClaren's 'Pas de Deux'. Nothing can explain how motion flows in nature like that short can. :D
keep us posted,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Hey Ed I think you bring up a really great point. The first time that I heard of this idea was when Bobby Beck referred to the frames in the computer as drawings. (He says some great stuff on the cg-char forums.)That made me think about how important each frame can be. I don't think I fully understand that, but I am starting to. I think it is so easy to just forget about some of those in-betweens and just let the computer do it for you. But the deeper that I get into this arform of animation, I have found that that is just not acceptable. Before I couldn't tell the difference, but I am starting to see it now. My eye is becoming more trained and I am starting to notice floaty computer in-betweens. I know I am just scratching the surface now though. I wish I could see animation through the eyes of some of you guys that have many years of experience. It is funny, when I first got started doing 3D animation, I thought it was very different from 2D. But the more I learn about 3D, it seems that it is more similar than different from 2D. The bigger issue is "animation" and the choice of 2D or 3D is just a differnt medium to produce it.
Dave- I am trying to find Mclarens film, it looks great.
When I left school I was lucky enough to go to work at Blue Sky Studios. The animation directors there were so great and I learned so much there about nick picking animation. They would sit there and watch your work, scrub through it frame by frame and finally say "this needs to be two frames shorter" or "this frame isn't working" and I thought they were nuts at first. But everytime I went and change those couple of frames things always improved.
Also if you use Maya using fcheck on a really slow frame rate is great and or just watching the playblast being created is a great way to see how the individuals work in conjunction with each other.
ed
Department of Computer Animation
Ringling College of Art and Design
Sarasota Florida
Hey guys I wanted to post a work in progress to see if I am on the right track here.
Sneaky.mpg (1.8 MB)
I hope you can tell what's going on. The blue guy is sneaking up on the sleeping green guy. He yell BOO and scares him to death. And at the end the blue guy will be laughing, but I haven't got that far yet. I still have yet to address any real finger or facial animation, and I haven't done much with the green guy at all. Any crits would be helpful. And also tell me if there are parts that are looking "pose to posey", I am trying to fix that.
I liked it! Specially the fall, it was very funny. Just thought the blu guy could move his arms down a little, specially in the end. They just keep hanging up all the time, he was posing like a T-Rex :)
I was thinking of how much funnier it would be with a few sound effects! Maybe I could do it for you after you're finished.
danielpoeira.org
hmm you still have the same problem. It seems you tried to fix the problem by taking out every ease-in and ease-out in your scene; killing most of the arcs in the process. That's not gonna do it.
I attached a few pics to explain. In the hop it looks like your movement goes straight from key1 to key2 to key3 without arcs or eases. In this case however you'll have ease-in as gravity slows him down and ease-out after he hits the high point and gravity becomes strong enough to start pulling him down. His movement will also go over an arc and not in a straight line. The only place you wouldn't get eases are on key5. Or anywhere between the other keys. Say that you add a key between 1 and 2 to get a nice arc (call it an inbetween-key, since it's meant solely to improve the movement, not set a new pose), then that key wouldn't ease-in or out but just keep going.
It might be clearer in the graph. Your keys should look somewhat like the red graph, easing in and out of key1, 2 and 3. Any key you set inbetween those main keys will look like the inbetween-key in the green graph. The curve doesn't change while going through it, unlike you get with the main keys. If you delete the inbetween-key your curve won't be any smoother, just follow a slightly different path.
The way it is now, I think your curve looks more like the keys I noted in the green graph, with curves suddenly changing directions, very little arc and sudden pops as keys break the curves.
Hope that makes it a bit clearer.
It takes a while to get used to it, so don't worry; at one point or another we were all banging our head against the wall trying to figure this crap out. It gets easier. :)
Btw what software are you using?
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
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Daniel, thanks for your reply. Yeah, the end is not finished yet(or really even started). Thanks for your offer on sound, I will probably take you up on that!
Dave, you were right. My curves look more like the one in green that you showed. I really appreciate you taking the time to show me that. When you explain it so clearly, it makes me think "Duh, why didn't I do that already?" You have quite a good eye. It looks like I need to do the bouncing ball tutorial again. I will go back in and try to apply that principle to each part of my character, especially the hips. I will try to spend more time on the curves too. I think that I get ahead of myself too easily. Thanks again for your help. I will have an update soon.
Oh, and I am using Maya.
Bummer; I only know Max and Lightwave. It should basically be the same though.
I'd suggest starting with pelvis, spine, and head. Once you get those right it'll be easier to tweak the arms and get the right feel for them.
Also, while you're in your file anyway you might wanna lose the pose at the end where he lifts up his leg and arm (right after the wave). It's not necessary as anticipation and it looks too mechanical. If he did a move like that he'd step backwards, not forwards after he lifts his leg. The rest of the poses and timing look okay, but that one kinda jumps out.
And feel free to tell me when you want me to stop bitching. ;)
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Hi Dave.
I for one don't ever want you to stop 'bitching' on this forum! (s)
Please keep up the great work. You're contributions are more than welcome... and incredibly enlightening! Over the next few weeks I'm about to start my first 3D sequcence for the new film I am making and your suggestions are extremely valuable to me.
Thanks again...
Tony. :^{)}=-
Personal Blogsite:
http://blog.animaticus.com
"The Animaticus Foundation"
http://www.animaticus.com
wow awsome
i love it.. looks very real, bbeck :D
nicely done :rolleyes:
Please join my new websites :D
www.EvanIslam.com
Thanks, evan for your comment.
Dave, please DON'T stop bitching! You are helping me tremendously.
Thx guys,
It's hard to tell over the internet if people are going :cool: or :rolleyes: or :mad: behind their screen.
Tony, your book was the first one I read when I first ventured into animation, I believe it was brand-spanking new at the time ('89 or '90 I believe). It sent me off to a flying start at a time when I had no clue what animation was about. I doubt there's a single studio on this planet that doesn't have a copy in their library. I'm happy to be able to give something back. Good luck with the movie. :)
bbeckstead, I get email-notification whenever this thread is updated. I'll be happy to keep commenting anytime you post an update. Feel free to ask questions or show stuff.
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Ok here is an update.
update
I have been working on the arcs and ease ins, and outs on the blue guy. I have only been refining up to the time when he says "boo" to the sleeping guy. Everything after that is still rough. I wanted to see if I am on the right track. Is this an improvement? Any other comments or crits are welcome!
Much better! :)
The body has a much more natural flow to it now. You're definately on the right track.
You wanted me to bitch, so lets move on to the feet ;). Right now you got what you could call a case of 'sticky feet'. Meaning that the feet stay on the ground until the IK makes the knee pop, and then all of a sudden they jump up. A bit like they're pulling away from a magnet. The knee going from bent to straight to bent causes a little 'pop' every time. The model's not doing you any favours either, as it makes it very noticable.
You'll see in the frames I attached : first the foot goes up, pretty much stays there for a frame while the knee pops over the IK limit and then pops back out of it the next frame. What you'd want is the foot to slowly go up (so in frame 2 it would be a little bit closer to frame 1 then to frame 3) straightening the leg to be at a position inbetween 1 and 3; and then when the leg is straight have it almost at the IK-limit but without going over it -to avoid popping (keep the leg straight though).
The second attachment shows a similar problem. In the first frame his right foot is still off the ground, although it's posed as if it's on the ground. Then when it hits the ground in frame 2 it rotates up instead of down, and in the next frame pops back down.
You might also wanna get his heel down more on frame 3 and following, as his bodyweight is suddenly pushing them down.
hope that helps
cheers,
~D
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy [i]-Tom Waits
[/i]
Whew! I am relieved to see that I am on the right track with the ease ins and outs problem. Thanks for helping me with that. Now I have to take care of those crazy IK problems. Good eye for seeing that Dave, I can tell what you mean. The pics are very helpful. This level of refinement is really what I am looking for! I appreciate your input. I will update as soon as I can.