How to use exposure sheets?

Another use for the x-sheets is to lip sync the vocals. You scrub the audio and time out exactly where each vowel sound happends on the sheet. This is pretty much the best way to properly lip sync the animation.

Doing this also helps if you tend to physically act out your animation before you start to thum nail or key out your scene. You can time out the actions a character makes based on what is being said, but when it's all layed out on your x-sheet it makes it much easier to time out your keys and breakdowns.

Finally, the last useful aspect of the x-sheet is that it helps you to create a map of the animation that others can follow if you are not the only person working on the scene. This is pretty much the reason why it has also been dubbed as a 'Dope Sheet'. Meaning that it's so simple, any dope can follow it.

The best written explanation I've seen on how to use the exposure sheet is in Dick William's book "The Animator's Survival Kit" . Dick really gets to the heart of why the exposure sheet is so important in organizing and controlling the timing of animation drawings . If you have that book then I'd advise you to re-read that section of the book . (there is also basic info. on use of an Ex-sheet in Tony White's "The Animator's Workbook" , and in Don Bluth's "The Art of Animation Drawing" , if you happen to have access to those books, in addition to the Richard Williams book. But Dick's book has the best, most complete explanation of proper ex-sheet management , in my opinion.)

I will try to give you some pointers or hopefully someone else will be able to chime in on the subject. At the moment I'm working on a project with a tight deadline and I won't be online very much over the next week or so .

Let's say you're doing a basic action analysis exercise ---
Use the Ex-Sheet from the very beginning of your scene . Say you time it out to be roughly 9 seconds long : the character enters scene struggling with a heavy suitcase, puts the suitcase down and collapses in a chair and settles to a final , resting pose, exhausted. The scene may expand or contract a bit as you get into it adjusting the timing , but for now assume you're going to do this action in 9 seconds. Fill out your ex-sheets from start frame to finish frame , on twos (that is on the odd numbers , 1 ,3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, etc. ) so you assume you will be animating on twos , but the ex-sheet will have blank spaces left open on every other frame line to add ones (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.) if needed in certain sections of the scene. Ideally you would use a stopwatch to time yourself acting out the scene : struggling with the heavy suitcase, set it down, collapse into the chair and settle. As you get a feeling for how long it takes you to do these actions (say 3 seconds to enter, 4 seconds to set down the suitcase and anticipate sitting down in the chair, 2 seconds to complete the action of sitting down and settle into the end pose) you should jot it down in the "Action" column of the Ex-sheet , making notes to yourself about what will be happening, maybe even doing quick little thumbnail drawings of the action. You should also be making small "thumbnail sketches" of what the character will be doing, attitudes, poses, etc. to work out ahead of time how you expect to draw it. The thumbnails are quick , rough drawings, worked small on purpose to keep you from putting in too much detail. These are planning, exploratory drawings to help you visualize how you're going to draw it in the final version. Again, these thumbnails could be drawn on the margins of the Ex-sheet in the "Action" column or on a separate sheet of paper, however you prefer to work. By pre-planning like this you should have a rough idea of where certain key poses will hit , so you know that you likely have Key poses at frame 11, frame 35, frame 71, frame 113 , and so forth . Lightly circle those numbers on the ex-sheet , so you have a visual benchmark of where your Keys are going to hit . As you animate you may find that you need to adjust your timing , so a Key drawing you thought was going to hit at frame 35 actually ends up hitting on frame 39 , and you will adjust the numbering on the drawings and the Ex-sheet. This is a good reason to use a light touch when first numbering your drawings and ex-sheet, so if you have to change the numbering a lot later on you won't have to spend a lot of effort erasing the numbers , if you kept them lightly penciled to begin with. Later when you finish filling out the Ex-sheet you can bear down harder on the pencil so the numbering is very neat and clear.

What I've written here is just very basic . There's so much more to it , but hopefully this will get you going and maybe someone else will have time to write more detailed information. Again, I'd recommend getting the Richard William's book "The Animator's Survival Kit" and really give it a close reading in the part where he explains how to use an Exposure Sheet and how to work out basic timing on an action.

Online (for FREE) the best basic info. on using Exposure Sheets is on Tony White's old website . (that site is now gone, but preserved on the Internet Archive . I would suppose that Tony's new site The Animaticus Foundation will eventually have these tutorials restored, but for now you'll have to use the archived version of the old site) .
Most of what I was hinting about above is written out more succinctly in Tony's tutorials ---

[B]Tony White Basic notes on Exposure Sheets and Charting

Tony White's notes on Ex-Sheets PART 1
[URL=http://web.archive.org/web/20051023070541/www.tonywhite.net/lesson015.htm]
Tony White notes on Ex-Sheets , PART 2[/URL][/B]

Don Bluth's site has a little explanation of proper use of an ex-sheet , but it's technical information about how to fill it out , not so much about timing . Still, it's online and free , so check it out :

http://www.donbluth.com/xsht.html

Brian LeMay has some good basic info. on the work process in animation :

http://www.brianlemay.com/Pages/tip.html

Hi EustaceScrubb. (Great name by the way... it sounds so much like a character from Dickens!) :)

Anyway, yes, I will eventually be putting all my previous tutorials up on the Animaticus Foundation website. I have had the busiest workload ever this year and am currently suffering from both fatigue and backlog. However, it won't be too long before I get round to it.

In the meantime, thanks for resurrecting the old ones from the dead! I agree that Dick gets to the core of dopesheet management in 'The Animator's Survival Kit' (THE 'bible' for every animator, I my opinion!). I tried to give the potted version in my own 'Pencils to Pixels' book.

Back in the 70's when I was Dick's personal assistant it was my responsibility to fill in all Dick's dope sheets and production folders for him, where there were gaps. He was very hot at insisting that this 'paperwork' was always done prior to (as well as during) the animation process and so we were all conditioned to make sure we attended to this at all times. (He would check unexpectedly from time to time!) This applied whether we were assistants or director/animators in our own right. I most definitely instill this process of thinking into my students work asap. It has become an automatic process with me now as I couldn't even begin to draw without doing all these 'admin' duties first. It frees me up so much creatively to know that all my structural thinking has been done first.

Anyway 'ES', thanks again for visiting the desktop and for your comprehensive contribution. :)

Best wishes,

Hi EustaceScrubb. (Great name by the way... it sounds so much like a character from Dickens!) :)

It's from C.S. Lewis, actually, but , yes, sounds rather Dickensian .
Lewis's book "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" opens with the line :
"There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it ."

Anyway, I really appreciate the tutorials you had on your old site and I'm glad to hear (as I had guessed) that you will be reposting them on your new Animaticus Foundation site. I was happy to find them still available via the Internet Archive so I could recommend them to Germania9.

I mentioned "The Animator's Workbook" in passing above as an additional resource to Dick's book , but I neglected to mention your more recent book "Animation from Pencils to Pixels" , so I'm glad you brought it up on this thread. For Germania9 or anyone else that is interested , I would also highly recommend Tony's "[B]Pencils to Pixels : Classical Techniques for the Digital Animator" .

[/B]That book is also an excellent resource and covers a lot of material , with particular emphasis on bridging the gap between the classical pencil & paper approach to new digital tools like Cintiq tablets and animation software.

--------
my 'blog:
http://inklingstudio.typepad.com

After all that info, Eustace, I just wanna know this one thing:
When's the best time to jot down on the X-sheet?
Before I can even start drawing out the frames?
or While I'm drawing the frames?

1.)[U] Before.

[/U]and

2.) During.

First: figure out a rough timing of the shot you're going to animate, based on acting it out while timing yourself with a stopwatch or metronome . If your shot is to be animated to a pre-recorded dialogue track or a section of music you will know the exact length before you fill out the ex-sheet.

Fill out your entire Ex-Sheet , on twos (odd numbering), from start frame to end frame , before you start animating.

Secondly, as you animate you will be making adjustments to the Ex-sheet , so you're also writing on the Ex-sheet while you are animating . It's a living document , adjusted as needed to shape the timing of your animation.