Summer 2010 Demo Here are the drawings and pencil tests from this assignment that I did with the students.
Day 1 (1 hour 15 min of drawing and 30 min of timing and pencil test) I took them home and scanned them in and did the rough timing in Premier. This is just my first pass through to block the scene out. and see if it's moving properly. There are a few secondary keys missing as well as some recovery keys along with all of the breakdowns and obviously all the inbetweens. Right now it's timing out to 9 seconds 10 frames at 30fps. I really should be shooting it at 24 fps but I just used an open project that I was working on previously that was at 30 fps. My next step is to go back over the drawings and resize them so that they're all back on model to the original key pose. I'll also add in the missing secondary keys and recovery keys and shoot a new test and adjust the timing a bit more (at 24 fps). Phrasing Each of these phrases or actions requires an anticipation before and a reaction or recovery after it. In my example here, the character takes a couple of short steps forward to position themselves over the sphere better. The first step will require a slight anticipation. In some cases you can blend the recovery of an action into the anticipation of the next move depending on what the actions are and what the timing or thought process of the character is. If there is no thought process required by the character, you can blend the two together. There is no simple answer or rule to when or how to use it, it's just a matter of the correct type of acting for the situation and the character. Act it out yourself and see when you pause and when you don't. Pausing the Character Make sure the hold is long enough to reflect any thought process that the character is thinking at that moment. If the character is thinking, "I wonder how heavy this is? I hope I can lift it." How long does it take for them to think this? Half a second? 4 seconds? Time yourself saying this in your head or out loud. How long did it take? That's how long the hold should be for. Animated Holds Day 2 (4 hours of drawing and about 30 min of timing and pencil test - total time to date: 6 hrs 15 min) 1) Strengthen the poses and put them on balance The balance issue was primarily because of the angle that I was drawing the animation during the lecture, I was shifted off to one side so the camera could see over my shoulder and this made me draw the characters on a bit of a slant, leaning backwards. I didn't notice it until I took a look at the drawings later when I got home. 2) Fix the shrinking and growing issues... mostly shrinking. 3) Add in the missing key poses for the anticipations and recoveries For the step forward at the very beginning, I actually started just straight ahead animating the walk. It was a bit tough to fill in after the fact because I had a start and stop position that I absolutely had to stick to. It was a little restricting as opposed to if I had done them in sequence from the beginning, I may have ended up with a slightly different end pose. 4) Add in a few breakdown poses to describe the broader actions more clearly 5) Add in a few inbetweens The Keys Here they all are. Here is the new pencil test with revised timing. Still not quite right, but closer.
It's running at 13 seconds now at 24 fps. I need to add in a bit more time at the beginning with an animated hold, the timing on the step forward isn't quite right, I need to add in the hand adjustment at the ball grab, I'll slow down the step forward with the ball and the lift up isn't quite right yet either. With these minor adjustments I'll probably end up around 17 seconds total, but if you subtract the two one second animated holds at the beginning and end, that's 15 seconds of animation x 12 drawings per second = 180 total. I have 40 keys done and 7 inbetweens so that leaves me with about 133 drawings left to complete. They seem to be taking me only 5 minutes each, which works out to 665 minutes or about 11 hours. Time to start drawing! Day 3 (2 hours of inbetweening and 30 min of timing and pencil test - total time to date 8 hours 45 min.) Once I shoot them, I'll retime the whole thing to correct all the little errors and then lock the drawings down and start numbering and adding the timing charts. This now leaves me with about 45 drawings left to do or about 2 1/2 hours. Here's the pencil test with the half inbetweens and the timing finalized.
Day 4 (2 hours of inbetweening and 30 min of pencil test - total time overall was 11 hours 15 min.) Exposure Sheets (a.k.a. "X Sheets and/or Dope Sheets) Any time you have to animate a stagger, an animated hold or a cycle within a scene, you need to alter the sequencing of the drawings. It's not just a straight through shoot where you start at 1 and go through sequentially to the end. Having the exposure sheet clearly lays out where all the drawings go for each frame of the scene. Many students find this tedious and confusing when they first start to do it and often suggest that they can just remember it in their head or scribble it on a napkin or sheet of paper. The reality is, that once you get into a studio, you must use an exposure sheet, you can't get around it. That's just the way it's done. Studios often complain that many graduating students don't know how to use an exposure sheet and they must then spend time educating the student themselves. This is A) embarassing for the student, and B) a waste of time for the studio. Start using them now and you'll find that by the end of the semester you'll wonder how you could have animated without it. Here are a couple of pages from my scene:
On this first sheet which shows the first 30 frames, you can see the information that I have pencilled in: on the far right side towards the bottom you'll see "1:00" and "1:04". These are my notations for the "one second frame" and "one second 4 frames". (In Premier, the frames are counted as seconds + frames.) In the "EXP" column I have written in the numbers for the individual frames (I personally only number the odd frames to cut down on the amount of writing). If you look over towards the left side of the sheet under "Top" and "6" you can see my alpha numbering of the drawings and the frames that they are exposed in Premier. A is in frame 1 and extends to frame 21, then drawing A0 is in frame 22, A1 is in frame 24, A1A is in frame 28 and A2 is in frame 30. This reflects the placement of all the drawings in the timeline. "How did you know which frames to put those drawings in?" you might ask. I just stuck them in there and then played the scene back and asked myself, "Does this seem to be timed right?" If it wasn't, I would have moved the drawings around a bit, adding two frames here or 6 frames there to slow the action down a bit or shortening the number of frames to speed an action up. I just kept rewatching it and making adjustments until I was happy with the results. It really requires some very close study as you watch it over and over again. You get a sense of the cadence of the movements. In some cases, it can be very obvious when something is moving too fast or too slow. Sometimes just the difference of one frame can make something look better. Timing is more of a gut feeling as to whether it's working or not. Sometimes you can see it yourself and others you can't. That's why it's always best to have someone else with fresh eyes take a look at your pencil test. The downside to asking other peoples opinions is that they might not know what is right or wrong and they could give you improper feedback. Asking for multiple people to look at something can really mess you up because everyone will have their own personal opinion which can cover a whole spectrum of options. It's always best to get someone with experience to look at your work - that's what your instructors in school are for. In the column under "Bot" and "1" you can see the numbers that I've assigned to the alpha drawings. "A" now becomes "1". Next, as you look down the column you'll see that I've numbered every other space - 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, etc until I get to drawing "A0" which is numbered "4". "Why did you do that?" I did that because at the very beginning, I want to hold on drawing #1 for the 21 frames. Instead of just using drawing #1 by itself for the whole 21 frames (which would make the drawing look frozen) I will go back and trace off #1 two more times to create drawings #2 and 3. Then when I shoot them, I'll cycle them for the 21 frames. This will create an "animated hold" which will give the illusion that the character is alive and not "frozen" during that first second. I do the same thing a couple more times when I want the character to pause momentarily. You'll also notice between drawings "A1" and "A1A" I wrote the number "6". This is the missing inbetween that I still need to complete. I've gone through the entire exposure sheet and basically filled in every two frames with a number. Any place that there is a blank frame in the alpha numbering, means there needs to be an inbetween drawn in. On this second sheet which is from around the 5 second point, it gets a bit more complicated. This is just after the character has bent down to grab the ball and is adjusting their hands with the shoulder roll. You can see on the left side are the original key drawings from the demo (E) and the new keys I drew along with a couple of inbetweens. On the right side you can see the Premier time in seconds and frames. In the level 1 column are the new nubers for the drawings. As you read them down from the top you can see that they don't follow a sequential order: 51 then 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, then to 56, 59, 51, 52, 53, 59 then a blank frame which I accidentally wrote in 56 then erased it but forgot to write in the new number which should be 54. So why do these numbers jump around like that? The reason is that I wanted the action to pop between E2 and E1A 58 to 56 is the action moving backwards fast, then going from E1A back into E I needed a new inbetween and the next number available was 59. And as it just so happens, 59 was also the 1/2 position inbetween between 53 and 54, so rather than redarw the exact same inbetween, I just reused 59 and saved myself a couple of minutes of extra drawing. "Big deal", you might say, however, later on, an inbetween on something similar might take you 45 minutes to complete... that's a big savings in time if you can get it! After the Exposure sheets were filled in, I just sat down and completed the remaining inbetweens for the whole scene including the tracebacks for the holds. They took me about 2 hours total. Here's the final pencil test with the BG in as well.
There seems to be a few extra frames added in where the arms come down around the ball, which was not on my final pencil test and is probably a glitch in the encoding... just so you know.
|