Archive for November 2007
Another variation of overlapping action. This one almost combines the previous two assignments. This is another pendulum type swing, only this time the pendulum arm is a string and therefore can bend. This subtle change will effect the path of motion for the ball. At the two extremes of the swing, the ball is no longer pulling on the string to keep it taught, the ball is basically hanging in air for a beat. During this time the string gets a little slack, which itself is effected by gravity. So that slack starts to curve downward until the ball is once again moving downward and pulls on the string again making it taught again. Its amazing what you can convey with a circle, a line, and a little time isn't it?
Okay, so this is essentially the same concept as the last assignment. In the last assignment there was one object lagging behind the movement in another object, here however, one part of an object is lagging behind the movement of another part of an object. In this case its an piece of seaweed. The center of movement starts at its base, then the effect travels along the length of an object. This concept can be used in a multitude of other areas, like the wagging of a dogs tail, or the sway of a girls ponytail.
Rough
Here is the first step in the assignment. I first animated the spine of the seaweed to get the movtion and timing down before I jumped into animating the forms. From this simplified version though, you can see how this concept can be used in the wagging of a dogs tail.
Final
The movement is of course way too fast. I would have to go in and do quite a bit of inbetweens to slow it down to the speed what actual seaweed would move like.
Here the idea was that you have one large ball with a smaller ball hanging from it. The large ball travels across the screen and the smaller ball must then inherit that motion. In doing so, you have to take into account the ideas behind intertia. As the large ball begins to move, the smaller one wants to stay where it is, therefore it gets dragged behind a little bit. Once the large ball stops though, the smaller ball, now moving, wants to continue to move. It does so, while being limited by being tied to the large ball and by gravity. So the small ball is going to slowly come to a stop, more or less in a pendulum motion.
Here is a relatively simple exercise that utilizes the principles of key extremes, arc path of action, slo-in and slo-out, and repeating cycles. The ideas behind a pendulum swing can also apply to the movement of characters arms and legs, or anything that moves around a pivot. I had to do this exercise three times to find the right timing.
First Try
Here I purposely didn't follow the timing chart Brian provided in his book. He timed the action on twos, meaning he broke the motion down to take 12 frames to swing left to right, then doubled each frame to make 24 frames, or one full second. I thought if I did it on ones, a new drawing for each frame, I would have to figure out my own timing, which would force me to think things through more and understand things better. As you can see, the way I broke it down the pendulum tends to favor the two extremes for too long. It seem to hover, defying gravity, at the end of each swing. So that was no good.
Second Try
So here I went back and followed Brian's timing chart exactly, hoping to discover what I did wrong. While it did help me figure out where the timing was wrong, I wasn't exactly happy with his timing either. While the timing of the slo-in and slo-out feel right, the speed of the pendulum through the middle part of the motion feels too quick. Also note the more jerky aspect to the motion. Thats a result of animating on twos.
Third Times the Charm
(You are getting sleepy…very sleepy…)
Using the previous two tries, I found a way to breakdown the motion to have the right timing for the slo-in and outs and not speed through the rest of the swing. Instead of having the pendulum continuously pick up speed through the downward movement of the swing, I had it pick up speed, then maintain a certain speed through the majority of the swing. Then I just had the slo-in and slo-out at the very beginning and end of the motion.
Wow, this assignment was much tougher than I was expecting. The lesson I learned here is timing and spacing is EVERYTHING.
As you can see the ball is moving left to right in increasingly smaller arcs. The change in position of the ball along the arc frame by frame is what gives the illusion of weight and gravity. At the top of the arc the ball moves slower, they are closer together, because the energy pushing the ball up is losing to pull of gravity. As the ball begins to fall again, it picks up speed so the spacing becomes further and further apart. The bounce has a lot of energy which carries the ball upward quickly again, so spacing is still far apart, then it begins to slow once again due to gravity. At the same time, the motion left to right is also slowing over time until it rolls to a stop at the end.
The difficult part in this is finding that right about of distance the ball travels to give that constant and consistent motion. If you are off just a little bit, then the ball appears to hang or jump and its very noticeable. I had to redo this one a couple of times to get it right. It still isn't perfect, but the illusion is achieved and at some point you just have to move forward.
This assignment was to teach the principles of Squash and Stretch, Weight and Timing. As well as reinforce the idea of Slo-in and Slo-out.
Imagine a ball bouncing up and down, forever and ever. Never losing any energy in its bounce. Thats the idea behind this assignment.
The main idea to put across is that this ball is real, it has weight and it is affected by gravity. Gravity slows the upward motion of the ball as it travels upward, then it pulls the ball down at ever increasing speeds before the ball bounces back up and the process repeats itself. At the beginning of the bounce, the ball is moving the quickest, and therefore there is a large space between the position of the ball at one frame to the other. To give the illusion of it slowing down, the distance the ball travels compared to the frame before gets less and less. Then at some point the ball begins its journey back down. Now it is picking up speed, so each distance it travels becomes greater and greater, frame by frame.
If you pause the video, you should be able to go through it frame by frame using the arrow keys. This will allow you to see each drawing clearly, and you can better judge the spatial relationships from frame to frame. Also if you do this, notice the three frames at the point of contact with the ground. In the frames before and after contact, the ball is stretching vertically. At the point of contact, the ball is squashed. The idea here is to emphasive the action of the ball. At the frames before and after, the ball is moving quickly and we can exaggerate that motion by stretching the ball along its path of motion. The squash then really makes you feel that moment of impact where the ball is changing directions. This concept is vitally important in animation and is used all over the place in cartoons.