PLANNING
Because this is the first article, I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with probably the single most important tip most professional animators
are likely to give a student: PLAN YOUR WORK. Planning is probably the step most often missed by students, and at the same time,
it is probably the most essential tool in your entire animation toolbox, especially in the first few years of your animation life. You
should never sit down in front of your computer, animation disc or puppet, until you know exactly what poses you are planning to
use, when you are planning to use them, and why.
Before you begin any shot, it’s so important to study references, work out your thumbnails, and make your timing and acting
decisions on paper. This may seem like an “extra” step to some of you, but believe me, it will save you time in the long run and your
work will look so much stronger than it would have otherwise.
All of my best feature film shots are also the ones I spent the most time planning out. The shots where I got cocky and thought “Aw,
I know how to animate that, I’ll just sit down and do it” are, almost without exception, the shots that ended up being “okay,” but
never as good as they could have been. I’ll always regret missing the opportunity I had to make those shots special, but at least they
taught me an invaluable lesson: Planning Comes First, ALWAYS!
Tune in next time for some practical tips on how you can plan your shot!
OBSERVATION
Okay, so last month I was going on and on about how important it is to spend time planning your scene before you sit down in front
of your computer, your animation disc, or your stop-motion set. But HOW do you do that? What’s the best way to plan a scene?
Well, the first thing you absolutely have to do is OBSERVE.
Sounds simple, right? Well, it isn’t quite as simple as you might first think, but it will become second nature eventually. The important
thing to realize is that observation is not passive or casual. Observation is much more than simply “seeing” something interesting -
it’s ACTIVELY studying the world around us. Sure, a certain amount of curiosity is natural, but you have to take your natural curiosity
for noticing things and train yourself to crank that curiosity knob to 11 if you want to become an animator.
Let’s say that you see a little girl trying to feed her lollypop to a monkey at the zoo, and her mother grabs to stop her, knocking the
lollypop into the air where it sticks in the mother’s hair. Seeing that happen might have been funny, or maybe you felt bad for the
mother, or embarrassed for them -- either way it was probably pretty memorable. It’s something you might even tell your friends
about that night.
However, simply remembering and relating that overall story is not observation. An animator would notice SO MUCH MORE in that
moment than the mere fact that the lollypop got stuck in the woman’s hair. An animator will see the overlap on the girl’s hand as
the mother smacks the lollypop into the air. An animator will see the frightened expression on the girl’s face, or the way the monkey
reacted to the whole thing, or the frozen moment in time when the lolly landed in Mom’s hair and they both just freeze for an instant
as they realize their situation. The way Mom’s shoulders might slump with resignation, or maybe how the little girl tried not to laugh,
or maybe it’s even the way that their dresses spun in the wind as Mom picked up her daughter and hustled off to cut her hair in the
bathroom.
That’s observation, and it’s the single biggest animation tool you will ever have. Any time you see something interesting - be it the
bounce of a squirrel, the flutter of a feather, or the twitch of an about-to-cry eyelid - file those things away in a little filing cabinet in
your head. You never know what you will find helpful down the road, and the bigger library of observations you can build in your
head, the better equipped you will be to deal with any scene a director might throw at you. Not only that, but you’ll be able to come
up with scenes and actions that are not cliché and that feel real and ring true to an audience - and the reason the audience will
identify with the action or emotion you animate is because it’s something you’ve seen in your past, or in a film, or on TV, or even in
a mirror.
All strong animation starts with observation, so train yourself to do more than passively notice the world around you. Soak it up, file
it away, and start using the amazing things around you in your art! Your work will only become stronger and less cliché the more you
allow yourself to truly study the motions, actions, reactions, and emotions of those around you.
Next month we’ll tackle reference! In the meantime, if you want a fun observational exercise, hit a zoo or a park or a shopping mall
and just sit on a bench and watch people. You can even bring along a sketchbook to draw what you see and take notes, but the
important thing is to watch the people around you and truly study them.
Oh, and don’t forget to wear sunglasses so you don’t creep them out!
REFERENCE MATERIALS
We've been talking so far about the importance of planning. Last month we covered the importance of observation, but this week
we're going to get a little more practical and tackle the concept of reference materials.
There are many types of reference materials that will be invaluable to you as an animator. Photography, comic-books, live-action
movie reference, animated reference, and footage of yourself and your friends acting out a scene will all be incredibly useful as you
sit down to plan your shot. It might be the most practical and useful planning of all, in fact.
One misconception that I often hear from students is that "using reference is cheating." Well, if using reference is cheating, then
99% of the world's top animators are cheaters! Nothing could be further from the truth. Using reference is essential, especially for
animation students, to finding the most believable and unique performance for your scene.
First, let's talk about some of my favorite reference photography for a second. Eadweard Muybridge's books can be a big help,
especially when learning about walk cycles and run cycles - both for humans and animals. My favorite, however, is the work of Dr.
Harold Edgerton. His book "Stopping Time" is incredible, and documents his work as he pioneers incredibly fast flash photography,
which allowed him to capture something at speeds upwards of 100,000th of a second. At these speeds, you can really truly see how
the principles of animation exist, even on a very subtle level, in real-world situations where you might have imagined they wouldn't
apply. Check out the squash and stretch on a golf-ball, or the way a baseball bat slightly bends as it whips around -- pretty incredible
stuff to examine. We use both Muybridge and Edgerton's work in our classes at Animation Mentor, and I'd recommend their books
to any animator interested in delving deeper into learning why the principles of animation exist in the first place.
Next up, we have one of the must underrated animation reference resources of all: comic books. If you're interested in learning
about dynamic posing, there is no better place to look than your local comic book shop. Check out some of Jim Lee's recent Batman
work, or J Scott Campbell's "Danger Girl." Comics are (and always have been) underrated in the "art community," but you would do
yourself a disservice by ignoring the work of some of the best comic book artists out there. Many of them come from an animation
background, such as Mike Kunkel, creator of Herobear (awesome!), and you can learn more about line-of-action and dynamic posing
by spending ten minutes in a good comic book than you can by watching hours of movie reference.
Live action and animated reference are next on my list, and these can be some of the most helpful. It's important, in my opinion,
to keep a solid reference library of films if you're going to attack this monster known as "animation." The pile of DVDs on my shelf
at home come in handy on every single show I work on. It's incredibly useful, for example, to be able to pull up some footage
from the olympics to study how someone throws a javelin if you're going to be animating a guy throwing a spear. If you're going
to be animating flying birds, what could possibly be more useful than spending some time studying the documentary "Winged
Migration?"
Finally the most important reference of all - video reference of yourself and your friends. If you have an action shot to work on, set up
a camera and get up and actually DO the action. Over and over and over and over. Do it until it feels natural. Film your friends doing
it. Get as much reference as you can - at least until you know for a fact that you've filmed at least one take that you think would work
well. Then it's up to you to study that take and glean what you can from it.
If you're working on a dialogue shot, that's a whole other ball of wax and can easily involve much more pre-planning as you attempt
to truly get into the character's head, getting to know your character's motivations, back-story, emotional state, etc. That's a whole
other ball of wax that we'll tackle someday down the road - for now, let's stick with this reference stuff.
The important thing here is that with all of these types of reference, you don't just look at them. Don't just look at the photographs.
Don't just flip through the comic book. Don't just watch the movie. STUDY these materials. Find what makes the poses so appealing,
or what maybe even makes a pose confusing or bad. You can learn from good *and* bad reference, so just soak up as much as you
can. If you're animating a bird, and you turn on "Winged Migration" and find the appropriate bird, watch it many times. Watch it in
slow motion. Frame-by-frame. Look at how the wings work, find the key poses that the real bird is actually using. DRAW them in a
sketchbook so that you remember them. Make notes to yourself.
Then when you get back to your desk, start applying the principles of animation to what you've just watched. This is KEY. Do **NOT**
just copy it. Copying reference verbatim generally results in a robotic lifeless feel. Your job as an animator is to take that reference
and apply your ART to it.
Remember - animation is an art. It isn't math. It isn't something where there is a formula that will work 100% of the time. But that
doesn't mean that you can skip over the essential step of planning your scene, and regardless of what the animation style you're
going to work in is, it's always helpful to examine the way that body mechanics and emotions play out in the real world.
Next time we'll talk about thumbnails, and I promise I'll be less wordy. :)
THUMBNAILS
Welcome back!
This month we’re going to talk about thumbnails (and as promised, I’ll be more brief!). So, what are thumbnails? Well, animators
often use the fingernails on their thumbs to animate with. If you use your thumbnails to click your mouse buttons instead of your
forefingers, you get a much better result.
Wow, was that the all-time worst animation joke in the history of animation jokes? I think it must be, though I’d also hazard a guess
that the “history of animation jokes” is probably pretty short.
Okay, so - for real now - what the heck are thumbnails?
Basically, “thumbnail” is a term used to describe a small “thumbnail-sized” drawing that describes a pose, an action, or an idea.
The first rule of thumbnails is, don’t talk about thumbnails.
Jeeeez. I just did it again. Second worst animation joke in the history of animation jokes. Sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.
Okay, the first rule of thumbnails is: LET THEM BE ROUGH.
They are SUPPOSED to look rough. They are not meant to be pretty pictures. Don’t spend (waste!) a lot of time making each thumbnail
look like a piece of art. Don’t waste time shading it in, drawing all the little details, etc. They’re meant to be fast and sloppy. The entire
point of doing thumbnails is that it saves you time.
How does it save you time? Well, if you do thumbnails as part of your planning process, then you can work through all of your ideas
BEFORE sitting down in front of the computer, and it’s inarguably much faster to doodle a little stick-man doing a pose than it is to
pose him out in the computer.
We use thumbnails to work through our ideas. To get past our first ideas (remember - your first idea is always the worst and most
clichéd idea. The first idea you think of is probably the first and most obvious idea that the audience will think of too!), and get on
to the ideas that count. The later ideas will be the good ones. They’ll be the most inventive ideas, and the most original. But to reach
those ideas, you’ll first have to work through the clichéd ideas, right? Thumbnails are, without a doubt, the fastest way to do that.
The quickest road to a great idea, then, is through thumbnails!
When you get a new scene, sit down and start doodling. Maybe it’s just poses. Maybe it’s working out full actions. Either way,
you’re quickly discovering what will work and what won’t, and it’s all on paper. Quick and dirty - that’s the way to do it. Use a stickman,
even. Many of the best animators do their thumbnails with what is essentially a stick-man. As long as you can see where the
character’s hips are, the angle of the hips, the angle of the shoulders, angle of the head, and the position of the limbs - that’s ALL you
need to know at this point, and you shouldn’t be worrying about any other details yet, generally speaking.
6
Copyright 2008 by AnimationMentor.com. All rights reserved. This ebook may not be reprinted or distributed in electronic, print, web, or other format without
express written permission.
So, the first rule is to stay rough, and the first *use* of thumbnails is to discover the best ideas for your shot.
The second use of thumbnails is to get fast feedback.
You can save yourself days of work (and a great deal of frustration) if you run your thumbnails past your lead or your director before
diving into the actual scene. Nothing is more frustrating than spending 3 days blocking in something that you think is great only
to find out, once the director gets a look at it, that you’re doing something he doesn’t like at all. It’s always a great idea to run your
thumbnails past them first, so you can save yourself the headache (and heartache!) of hearing the dreaded “start over” words from
your director.
The third use of thumbnails is to translate your video reference.
Filming video reference is great, but as we talked about last time, you can’t just coy it or you’re going to end up with a scene that isn’t
as alive as it could have been. Thumbnails are a great way to translate that video reference into poses and timing that are infused
with your knowledge of the art of animation. Sure, you can find some great posing and timing ideas in your video reference, but
that’s only step one. Whip out a sketchbook and start doing little stick-figure drawings of what you are observing (and STUDYING!)
in the reference you’re watching.
But as you draw those thumbnails, you can start to inject the principles of animation into them. Exaggerate the poses, push the lines
of action in the body, and make the poses more dynamic and forceful. You can also jot down timing notes, and maybe you can even
start exaggerating your timing at this stage. Right there in your thumbnails you can be making decisions about timing - give this
part a little more ease-in, make that part a little snappier, etc.
The goal, as far as I’m concerned, is that before you sit down in front of your computer, you have a piece of paper or an exposure
sheet that has dynamic and timed thumbnail poses, so you know exactly what pose will happen on exactly what frames. By the time
you have turned on your computer, every major animation decision should have already been made. Without exception.
If you work this way, I guarantee you will end up with stronger, more dynamic, more communicative, and more memorable scenes
than you would if you just sat down and started saving keys. Even better, I guarantee this entire planning process will save you time
in the long run.
I think, as a general rule, I probably spend about 20% of my time planning. If I have a week to do a shot, I’ll spend the first day
completely away from the computer. A two-week shot might get 2 days of planning. If I only had 2 days to do a shot, then maybe
I’d only spend 2 or 3 hours planning, but I would make the most of those couple hours. I’d spend it studying video reference, filming
myself and my friends, doing thumbnails, etc. I do that because I know without a doubt that by spending that first day planning, I
just saved myself a couple days (or more) worth of “noodling” the shot, and tinkering with it, trying to make it work.
Again, the best scenes I’ve ever done, and the ones I finished the quickest, are the shots that I spent the most time planning.
Over and out.
- Shawn
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz