ragz' blog: 2009

stretch and squash

It is about the stretch and squash principle.Even though everybody know about it, i just wanted to post it as i found it interesting and thought it might help some animators solve their jumps. Don't forget to fully extend the legs (or whatever the character uses... arms?) during the lift off and to extend the limbs before the touchdown as well (unless there is a specific reason for NOT doing it).

Squash

Stretch and full leg extension

Another leg extension before the touchdown

And squash again

Lines on Polishing!!!

"If the blocking is correct and your breakdowns are in place, the polish phase should only enhance the animation, .... It's not there to change the [overall] timing."

Polishing your shot should not change the overall timing and idea of your acting choice, body movement, etc.

One of the things I spoke about then was the need to treat the body as a connected whole — when the head moves, for example, the chest and shoulders are going to move, too. Without this nuanced connectedness, almost any movement looks unnatural.

polish rule number one: Polish simply takes time.

Rule number two: polish is subtle. If it made a huge difference, then it wouldn’t be polish, it would be animation.

The key to efficient polish comes BEFORE the polish phase. So first, do good animation.

Polishing takes forever when you’ve animated without really making a commitment to what you’re animating. It takes forever when you’re not completely clear in your mind what you want for that scene. You need to start with good, clear ideas.

Got these tips and notes on polishing from Kevin Koch.

More notes by Andrew Gordon. I hope I'm allowed to re post those tips. If not, I'll take this post down immediately.

General Polish Tips…

1) Plot your arcs on body parks such as the wrist.
2) Pay attention to your patterns
3) work on your physicality - re reference a move if needed...
4) Get your contact points working well (for ex: foot squashing when it
contacts ground)
5) Make sure you are starting and stopping your character properly
6) break up twinned poses
7) Fingers? are they animated?
8) so on and so on..

Facial polish stuff....

1) Avoid even timing on the jaw
2) Slow in and Out
3) Watch the corners of mouth
4) Arc corners and jaw in dialouge
5) Compress closed mouth shapes
6) Overlapp fleshy parts of mouth
7) Don’t forget to animate the cheeks where needed.
8) Layer in Squash and Stretch
9) Do close-up records for detail
10) anticipate shapes
11) Don’t over complicate brows
12) Remember how the eye works
13) Get those eye blinks looking good.
14) Don’t have those lids hit a wall
15) Change shapes on eye direction changes
16) Use the brow in conjunction with the eyes

Lot much happening in mah life these days...

Arun trying hard to push something into my brain!!!

Hurrayyyyyy!!! i started taking master classes from Arun Anirudhan [APK] on pre-production. Arun is the pre-production supervisor here and i thought i'll take advantage of him as much as i can. I' am having fun with the pencil , giving myself some stress which i' am enjoying to the core along with my modeling supervisor Chitralal as my classmate. It's been fun with chitra, we have fantastic compitition between us though he is leading the way giving me tough time as i' am damn bad in drawing.But no worries , i know I'll pick up.

fun time with chitralal

I know i should have taken these classes long back which would have helped me a lot finishing my shots more fast and easy. I was looking for this kinda training from past few year, when ever i was struck with some thumbnailing problems struggling hard for some strong poses ,which pose to block, what energy should my pose have and all those stuff. But now i got the right guy to learn from. we are discussing about everything about animation ,but this time in a traditional way. Hearing a lot about strokes,anatomy, thumbnails, posing, line of actions , shilloutes , angles ,contrast what not.

And finally....

Toy Story trailer

click on the pic

Chuck Jones drawings

All these great Chuck Jones drawings use the basic animation drawing principles, yet they are all uniquely his style.

Construction, line of action, negative spaces inside and outside, clear staging, opposing poses, contrasts, organic...everything good

Some folks think that learning good basic drawing is a style. It isn't. The style is what you lay on top of the solid foundation - once you have one.

Tired eyes !!!

The process of working through a shot is a tough one. Much of the creative stuff occurs just after launch. It is here that acting choices, filming reference, thumbnailing and key-posing are hammered out, leaving the rest of the time allocated for revision, detail and polish, and it is here that familiarity comes with a set of blinkers. Once you've got them on it makes it hard to see things that would once have been obvious, like pops, spacing issues, even some acting choices not working so well!

Given that an animator has probably looked at one shot thousands of times when they reach those final stages, it's good to have some tricks to help see the work with fresh eyes. Here are some:

- Look at the shot at half speed -
Spacing and weight issues really show up when slowed. This way brain has time to pay attention to all of those little details you put in!

- Flip the shot horizontally -
If your movie playback doesn't support this, you can always go all old school and simply hold up a mirror to the screen, for the result is the same. Looking at the shot this way is cool for personally I find that I uncover balance issues with my poses in this way? Have I been posing with my head tilted to one side? I don't know, but this helps fix it.

- Turn off bits of the character -
Arms and legs can be be and flappy and gesture-y, distracting you from the movement of the core parts like bodies and heads. Turn them off! Now you can track the important bits free from all that gesticulation!

- Take a break -
I always find that a five minute break does wonders for my ability to see what's not working. I will sit back down and my desk and wonder what I was thinking of, just 10 minutes ago! Whee!

- Someone else's opinion -
Probably pretty obvious, but this is absolutely the best thing you can do to improve your work! Animation is a collaborative thing, and your work will be all the better for having some new eyes on the work...

Woo!

Inspiring lines

Line i got inspired by.

Animation is 90% preparation and 10% execution

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

“Actors will give them the voice, but the Animators give them their soul”.
It’s a little cheesy, but it’s true.
-Carlos Saldanha

Have interest in things other than animation. It will give you more choices when you are animating.

"Talent is less important in filmmaking than patience" - Terry Gilliam

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

Focus on solution, not the problem.

To inspire and to be inspired is essential to how you work.

There is no end for any art...

Extreme exaggeration

Heights of exaggeration.

Contrasts in proportions = exaggeration = cartoony = funny.

Thank you, thank you. But these are not my words i just borrowed them from John K.

All this is just the beginning of the cartoon

It just cuts to Daffy walking. He was not part of the pan, it's a jump cut that you would ever notice.

This walk is rife with tension, animated by Izzy Ellis. It's a double bounce - which is usually used to make a character seem happy. Something about this walk though is anything but bubbly or happy.

It seems like Daffy was expecting the world to come to an end.

And Daffy looked so different . He was more angular, scrawny and his poses were dynamic and really communicated what he was feeling - new more specific feelings. He's waiting for something that must be more important than life itself. What was it?