There's an indication of weight in that walk, which is good, but the main joints don't move in arcs. I don't see a lot of construction under those ruffs so maybe what you should do is break the character into simple shapes and animate those, letting the shapes follow smooth arcs.
Nice start RU. The arcs work better if you take out the contact pose, the first pic I uploaded. I did a quick redline of your cycle with that pose taken out. The walk could still use the contact pose but you'll need to redraw it so everything works withing the arcs.
Actually I just watched it again with out the contact pose, and it works rather well. It looks like he's trudging through a swamp or snow or something.
Are you animating on twos or do you have it on threes? Just wondering.
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
"Two's" refers to the number of frames that a single drawing is on screen for. Two's, the drawing is on screen for two frames then the next drawing. Most animation is a combination of "One's" and "Two's,." At 24 and 30 frames a second, two's are really the fewest amount that you can get away with without it looking jerky. But you can have a drawing on screen for any number of frames you want.
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
"Two's" refers to the number of frames that a single drawing is on screen for. Two's, the drawing is on screen for two frames then the next drawing. Most animation is a combination of "One's" and "Two's,." At 24 and 30 frames a second, two's are really the fewest amount that you can get away with without it looking jerky. But you can have a drawing on screen for any number of frames you want.
Aloha,
the Ape
As a new guy here wanting to consume as much information as possible, I did a a bit more digging, that perhaps the poster will find usefull:
Motion Picture film runs 24 frames per second, meaning that to get full, fluid, motion-picture quailty action, animators would have to draw 24 cels for every second of film. This is an expense that most anime budgets can't handle (unless your name is Hayao or Osamu or Mamoru), and so shortcuts are taken in almost all cel-animated TV shows, many OAVs and even a few movies. Often TV shows are "shot on threes": every cel is held for three frames instead of one (i.e. the number of cels is cut in three). A show shot on threes would have 8fps animation, in effect. Depending of how much motion is in the scene, a show shot on threes really isn't all that noticably different from a show shot with full motion, and so is useful as a budget move. American TV animation is usually shot on twos and so is more fluid than anime, but to compensate for the higher cost they must sacrifice details. If a scene has little motion, it is possible to shoot it on fours, fives and more, as illustrated by some static talking scenes where the only thing moving is the mouth. But high-action scenes may have to be shot on twos or ones in order to adequately convey the sense of motion. "Shot on threes" is more an average than a constant rule.
Also, digging through the archives here, I found this thread:
This is good information to have on the front side, rather than 1/2 through a project!
As a new animator, I get a little fearful that I'm going to invest weeks and months of my life drawing, only to find out I did something wrong, or needlessly. For example, my plan was to have my project at 15 FPS, I may have to rethink that after reading APE's post.
Everytime I learn something new, it raises more questions. What if one wants to show his or her project to somebody on something other than a PC? Will the FPS and format they select convert over to DVD well enough, or will they experence some bi-product or artifacting that wasn't considored. Hmmm.
atomic68: When you encode MPEG2 for DVD, your movies will be converted to NTSC or PAL frame rate, so this should be considered when beginning a project. The 24 FPS in animation has been a standard because animation was originally viewed on film in theatres, so exposure sheets are set up at 24 FPS. Now with broadcast as an available medium you can plan for an animation to be 30 FPS (29.97 NTSC). So animating at 15 FPS will be in twos for broadcast essentially.
My heads full, may I be excused?
This place is like crack for me. I should be working, instead Im here, looking at animations, learning about FPS, and still trying what to buy for software.
Thanks for the help! Back to my 'real' job.... *sigh*
You should really get a good animation book that covers all this stuff. Look into the Preston Blaire or Tony White books. The new Tony White book covers the whole animation production from developing a story all they way through output. His first book and the Blair book are good for animators just starting out since they explain a lot of the animation principles and give you exercises to practice them.
On a side note. Frames Per Second (FPS) shouldn't be confused with Drawings per second. An animation running at 24 FPS with 12 drawings per second does NOT equal 12 FPS. The animation is still playing at 24 FPS regardless of how many drawings you put in. I think the example was; a show shot on 3's equals to 8 FPS. That's not right. You can hold a drawing for a second, that doesn't mean your animation is playing at 1 FPS.
That brings me to something else was said about anime. The ecconomy of drawing doesn't come from them shoting the show on 3's it really comes from them holding a drawing for seconds at a time. I was watching "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex," or what ever it's called, last night on Adult Swim. There were whole shots where there was no animation at all. Just poses of characters with voice over and the camera panned over the whole 10 second scene. Then for the action shots things would animate on 1's. So my guess for a 22 minute episode there was really only about 5 minutes of actual character animation done.
Sorry, I your brain might be over flowing now Atomic. :P
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
did you konw taht poelpe can sitll raed wrods eevn if the ltters are all mssed up, as lnog as the frist ltter and lsat ltter are in the rghit palce, the biran can "dceode" the ifnoamtoin.
Hopefully I proved my point with the last statement.
I think animation works the same way, as long as the information is there, the brain decodes, and makes sense of still images, and puts the information where the brain wants it. However, one should make a effort to make look right, to give the brain more import things to think about, like story.
This FPS thing is my new obsession. I will get the books, because, what I've been doing is drawing every other frame of a 30 FPS video (or 29.97) and showing at 15 FPS in my flipbook software. It looks killer so far, but I should probably educate myself a little further before spending another night drawing. I feel what I have been doing is not a wasted effort, but perhaps one would be wise to look afar and see the end from the begining.:rolleyes:
This FPS thing is my new obsession. I will get the books, because, what I've been doing is drawing every other frame of a 30 FPS video (or 29.97) and showing at 15 FPS in my flipbook software. It looks killer so far, but I should probably educate myself a little further before spending another night drawing. I feel what I have been doing is not a wasted effort, but perhaps one would be wise to look afar and see the end from the begining.:rolleyes:
If I understand you correctly, this would cause your animation to play at half speed. Can you not animate at 30 fps and watch it at 30 fps too? I think that would be the best.
Personally I feel you should animate at what ever the standard are for the industry. At least when you start out learning. So I'd learn at 24 or 30 fps. I prefer 24 fps. This way you get your timing and spacing all down to industry standards, and this will make you imployable. When you have your timing down pat, THEN play with the frame rates and break the rules.
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
If I understand you correctly, this would cause your animation to play at half speed. Can you not animate at 30 fps and watch it at 30 fps too? I think that would be the best.
Personally I feel you should animate at what ever the standard are for the industry. At least when you start out learning. So I'd learn at 24 or 30 fps. I prefer 24 fps. This way you get your timing and spacing all down to industry standards, and this will make you imployable. When you have your timing down pat, THEN play with the frame rates and break the rules.
Yes, I suppose I could, I'm trying to avoid drawing 30 Frames for one second of viewing. I think I have some reading to do, because yes, it's better to learn to do things the right way, or standard way before screwing around.
While I'm not trying to become imployable, I would like to be proper.
I think your understanding me, but to be clear, what I'm doing in the span of 30 frames of video is this:
1) Tracing every other frame of my video footage, frame 1, 3, 5, etc, etc.
2) Scanning these hand drawn images to my PC, dumping to flip book, and showing at 15 FPS, so the time is still right - 1 Sec video = 1 Sec. of animation.... like this:
Could I not also show my frames twice? 1,1,3,3,5,5 and so on, so I have 30 FPS, but I'm only drawing 15? I'll pick up one of the books you mentioned, I'm sure they cover rotoscoping and FPS. Plus, I would love to have some assignments to practice with. I'm trying to get what I have done so far to a decent size and format, so I can post it here to share, that will help you see where I'm coming from. I scanned the drawing as JPG, and huge, so I need to get those scaled down, and I have well over 100 so far, so I might have to resize and convert each one individually to get the size down.
Aloha, and Hang Loose!
\m/ <--Crude hang loose sign. :cool:
You are rotoscoping every other frame of video playing at 30 fps. So frames 1,3,5, etc. This is called "Two's." Each drawing is played for 2 frames.
Then you bring it into Flip book which plays your drawing at 15 fps. Flipbook puts a new drawing on every frame. This would be called "One's." If this plays at 15 fps it will time correctly to the original video.
If you now put the Flipbook animation on "Two's" you will have to change the playback to 30 fps for it to play correctly. If you keep it at 15 fps, your animation will now play half as fast.
I think thats what you're doing. Am I right?
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
You are rotoscoping every other frame of video playing at 30 fps. So frames 1,3,5, etc. This is called "Two's." Each drawing is played for 2 frames.
Yes, So, I'm rotoscoping 1 sec of video (30 Frames), frames 1,3,4, etc, for a total of 15 drawings. Check!
Then you bring it into Flip book which plays your drawing at 15 fps. Flipbook puts a new drawing on every frame. This would be called "One's." If this plays at 15 fps it will time correctly to the original video.
I'm using a free program called "Monkey Jam" which is a simple but effective Flipbook program. I tell you this, because their may be a actual program called "Flipbook", I don't know. Anyway, yes, I scan the 15 drawings, and play at 15 FPS, to keep the timing the same as the video.
If you now put the Flipbook animation on "Two's" you will have to change the playback to 30 fps for it to play correctly. If you keep it at 15 fps, your animation will now play half as fast.
I think we've got each other now! If I'm hearing you, and I think I am... if I convert to 30 FPS, I will need to show each of my drawings TWICE:
1,1,3,3,5,5, etc etc. - If I go this way, I'm animating on "Two's" verses the first way at 15 FPS, which would be "One's".
GOT IT! *WHEW*
If I'm hearing you, I'm okay, and haven't wasted a bunch of time drawing... I can keep rotoscoping every other frame, and just show two frames, and be able to animate at 30 FPS, and this a standard. Correct?
Yes, I know Monkey Jam and yes, there is a similar program called "Flipbook."
And now to confuse people even further, and well... because I didn't feel like working. :D The first gif is Ru's walk with out the contact pose animated on 2's. The gif on the right is the same walk cycle but I added inbetweens so it's animated on 1's. Both are playing at 24fps.
I just had an "A-HA" moment. It's great to talk about this stuff, and grasp it. It another thing all together to see the example. The GIF's really help put it all into perspective. Thanks for including those!
BTW, I ordered two books, one by each author you mentioned, got a steal on ebay- looking forward to reading more.
And by the way....
You guys who do this for a living, Kudos!
I envy you.... what fun!
-RU- Thanks for starting the thread, I hope you have been following along through and learning some neat stuff, as I did!
There's an indication of weight in that walk, which is good, but the main joints don't move in arcs. I don't see a lot of construction under those ruffs so maybe what you should do is break the character into simple shapes and animate those, letting the shapes follow smooth arcs.
I am with Jabberwocky on what he said and you can make smaller files. Take a look at all the options you application gives you when you save you work.
Nice start RU. The arcs work better if you take out the contact pose, the first pic I uploaded. I did a quick redline of your cycle with that pose taken out. The walk could still use the contact pose but you'll need to redraw it so everything works withing the arcs.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Actually I just watched it again with out the contact pose, and it works rather well. It looks like he's trudging through a swamp or snow or something.
Are you animating on twos or do you have it on threes? Just wondering.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
thanks for the comments guys!
Animated Ape: Wow yeh it does work really well without the contact pose, I know i messed up that drawing, his head was back too far.
Yeh I was thinking of maybe having him walking on a glue-like surface, with it sticking to his feet lol but i never got round to it!
And...uh...what do you mean by twos or threes? :P
"Two's" refers to the number of frames that a single drawing is on screen for. Two's, the drawing is on screen for two frames then the next drawing. Most animation is a combination of "One's" and "Two's,." At 24 and 30 frames a second, two's are really the fewest amount that you can get away with without it looking jerky. But you can have a drawing on screen for any number of frames you want.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
As a new guy here wanting to consume as much information as possible, I did a a bit more digging, that perhaps the poster will find usefull:
Motion Picture film runs 24 frames per second, meaning that to get full, fluid, motion-picture quailty action, animators would have to draw 24 cels for every second of film. This is an expense that most anime budgets can't handle (unless your name is Hayao or Osamu or Mamoru), and so shortcuts are taken in almost all cel-animated TV shows, many OAVs and even a few movies. Often TV shows are "shot on threes": every cel is held for three frames instead of one (i.e. the number of cels is cut in three). A show shot on threes would have 8fps animation, in effect. Depending of how much motion is in the scene, a show shot on threes really isn't all that noticably different from a show shot with full motion, and so is useful as a budget move. American TV animation is usually shot on twos and so is more fluid than anime, but to compensate for the higher cost they must sacrifice details. If a scene has little motion, it is possible to shoot it on fours, fives and more, as illustrated by some static talking scenes where the only thing moving is the mouth. But high-action scenes may have to be shot on twos or ones in order to adequately convey the sense of motion. "Shot on threes" is more an average than a constant rule.
Also, digging through the archives here, I found this thread:
http://forums.awn.com/archive/index.php/t-3230.html
This is good information to have on the front side, rather than 1/2 through a project!
As a new animator, I get a little fearful that I'm going to invest weeks and months of my life drawing, only to find out I did something wrong, or needlessly. For example, my plan was to have my project at 15 FPS, I may have to rethink that after reading APE's post.
Everytime I learn something new, it raises more questions. What if one wants to show his or her project to somebody on something other than a PC? Will the FPS and format they select convert over to DVD well enough, or will they experence some bi-product or artifacting that wasn't considored. Hmmm.
NICE Job -Ru-!
-Ru-: Sweet pencil test.
atomic68: When you encode MPEG2 for DVD, your movies will be converted to NTSC or PAL frame rate, so this should be considered when beginning a project. The 24 FPS in animation has been a standard because animation was originally viewed on film in theatres, so exposure sheets are set up at 24 FPS. Now with broadcast as an available medium you can plan for an animation to be 30 FPS (29.97 NTSC). So animating at 15 FPS will be in twos for broadcast essentially.
My heads full, may I be excused?
This place is like crack for me. I should be working, instead Im here, looking at animations, learning about FPS, and still trying what to buy for software.
Thanks for the help! Back to my 'real' job.... *sigh*
You should really get a good animation book that covers all this stuff. Look into the Preston Blaire or Tony White books. The new Tony White book covers the whole animation production from developing a story all they way through output. His first book and the Blair book are good for animators just starting out since they explain a lot of the animation principles and give you exercises to practice them.
On a side note. Frames Per Second (FPS) shouldn't be confused with Drawings per second. An animation running at 24 FPS with 12 drawings per second does NOT equal 12 FPS. The animation is still playing at 24 FPS regardless of how many drawings you put in. I think the example was; a show shot on 3's equals to 8 FPS. That's not right. You can hold a drawing for a second, that doesn't mean your animation is playing at 1 FPS.
That brings me to something else was said about anime. The ecconomy of drawing doesn't come from them shoting the show on 3's it really comes from them holding a drawing for seconds at a time. I was watching "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex," or what ever it's called, last night on Adult Swim. There were whole shots where there was no animation at all. Just poses of characters with voice over and the camera panned over the whole 10 second scene. Then for the action shots things would animate on 1's. So my guess for a 22 minute episode there was really only about 5 minutes of actual character animation done.
Sorry, I your brain might be over flowing now Atomic. :P
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Ru, can you repost your cycle without the contact poses so we see how it looks?
did you konw taht poelpe can sitll raed wrods eevn if the ltters are all mssed up, as lnog as the frist ltter and lsat ltter are in the rghit palce, the biran can "dceode" the ifnoamtoin.
Hopefully I proved my point with the last statement.
I think animation works the same way, as long as the information is there, the brain decodes, and makes sense of still images, and puts the information where the brain wants it. However, one should make a effort to make look right, to give the brain more import things to think about, like story.
This FPS thing is my new obsession. I will get the books, because, what I've been doing is drawing every other frame of a 30 FPS video (or 29.97) and showing at 15 FPS in my flipbook software. It looks killer so far, but I should probably educate myself a little further before spending another night drawing. I feel what I have been doing is not a wasted effort, but perhaps one would be wise to look afar and see the end from the begining.:rolleyes:
Animated Ape did a quick redraw without the contact poses on the first page :)
If I understand you correctly, this would cause your animation to play at half speed. Can you not animate at 30 fps and watch it at 30 fps too? I think that would be the best.
Personally I feel you should animate at what ever the standard are for the industry. At least when you start out learning. So I'd learn at 24 or 30 fps. I prefer 24 fps. This way you get your timing and spacing all down to industry standards, and this will make you imployable. When you have your timing down pat, THEN play with the frame rates and break the rules.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Yes, I suppose I could, I'm trying to avoid drawing 30 Frames for one second of viewing. I think I have some reading to do, because yes, it's better to learn to do things the right way, or standard way before screwing around.
While I'm not trying to become imployable, I would like to be proper.
I think your understanding me, but to be clear, what I'm doing in the span of 30 frames of video is this:
1) Tracing every other frame of my video footage, frame 1, 3, 5, etc, etc.
2) Scanning these hand drawn images to my PC, dumping to flip book, and showing at 15 FPS, so the time is still right - 1 Sec video = 1 Sec. of animation.... like this:
Could I not also show my frames twice? 1,1,3,3,5,5 and so on, so I have 30 FPS, but I'm only drawing 15? I'll pick up one of the books you mentioned, I'm sure they cover rotoscoping and FPS. Plus, I would love to have some assignments to practice with. I'm trying to get what I have done so far to a decent size and format, so I can post it here to share, that will help you see where I'm coming from. I scanned the drawing as JPG, and huge, so I need to get those scaled down, and I have well over 100 so far, so I might have to resize and convert each one individually to get the size down.
Aloha, and Hang Loose!
\m/ <--Crude hang loose sign. :cool:
Ok, lets see if I got it now.
You are rotoscoping every other frame of video playing at 30 fps. So frames 1,3,5, etc. This is called "Two's." Each drawing is played for 2 frames.
Then you bring it into Flip book which plays your drawing at 15 fps. Flipbook puts a new drawing on every frame. This would be called "One's." If this plays at 15 fps it will time correctly to the original video.
If you now put the Flipbook animation on "Two's" you will have to change the playback to 30 fps for it to play correctly. If you keep it at 15 fps, your animation will now play half as fast.
I think thats what you're doing. Am I right?
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Yes, So, I'm rotoscoping 1 sec of video (30 Frames), frames 1,3,4, etc, for a total of 15 drawings. Check!
I'm using a free program called "Monkey Jam" which is a simple but effective Flipbook program. I tell you this, because their may be a actual program called "Flipbook", I don't know. Anyway, yes, I scan the 15 drawings, and play at 15 FPS, to keep the timing the same as the video.
I think we've got each other now! If I'm hearing you, and I think I am... if I convert to 30 FPS, I will need to show each of my drawings TWICE:
1,1,3,3,5,5, etc etc. - If I go this way, I'm animating on "Two's" verses the first way at 15 FPS, which would be "One's".
GOT IT! *WHEW*
If I'm hearing you, I'm okay, and haven't wasted a bunch of time drawing... I can keep rotoscoping every other frame, and just show two frames, and be able to animate at 30 FPS, and this a standard. Correct?
Thanks Ape, your the best!
\m/
Yes. Yes. YES!!
We are clear.
Yes 30 and 24 fps are both standard frame rates.
Yes, I know Monkey Jam and yes, there is a similar program called "Flipbook."
And now to confuse people even further, and well... because I didn't feel like working. :D The first gif is Ru's walk with out the contact pose animated on 2's. The gif on the right is the same walk cycle but I added inbetweens so it's animated on 1's. Both are playing at 24fps.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
I just had an "A-HA" moment. It's great to talk about this stuff, and grasp it. It another thing all together to see the example. The GIF's really help put it all into perspective. Thanks for including those!
BTW, I ordered two books, one by each author you mentioned, got a steal on ebay- looking forward to reading more.
And by the way....
You guys who do this for a living, Kudos!
I envy you.... what fun!
-RU- Thanks for starting the thread, I hope you have been following along through and learning some neat stuff, as I did!
~Adam
\m/