Check list while animating

Hey howdy !!! Now i will be discussing about some important things that every animation must have in the scene to make it look real and lively.This is like a small check list . you can make this as one of the pass in your work flow. Very soon i will be posting my way of approach to a shot which shows my work flow. Ok then lets start.


TWINNING :

In posing it is important that you avoid twinning as much as possible. Like, never pose in such a way that any body parts are symmetrically posed.Suppose in a jump let one hand come a little later than the other which gives some sense and life in the animation.As no two body parts are symmetrical and move at the same time and same way. Don't let both the hands move the same way from one pose to other as it looks unreal and leads to dull animation.

Most of the animation theory one comes across propagates the notion that twinning stuff is always BAD, and if you have twinned actions then you will have seven years of bad luck, and shame will besmirch your good name. Why is it seen as bad? Well, it can be a holdover from people's blocking, or by paying little attention to the forces driving an action. Having Cedric hit his pose with all his twinniness(tm) going on makes him look mechanical - as if a robot control system were driving the movement rather than an organic brain operating body parts under gravity. The slower the movement, the worse twinned movements can appear, too. Yikes!


ARCS :

All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.

All human actions result in arcs.This is because there are 3 categories of skeletal joints in human body namely - ball and socket, hinge and irregular. It is because of these joints that a human is able to move a particular body part in a certain direction. All these movements occurs in an arc without distorting or losing its proportions.

When animating if we are not maintaining arcs, the animation of the character seems mechanical and robotic. As mechanical things do not maintain arcs in its motion, they are robotic and move linearly. So you should always be sure about checking the arcs all the time to make the animation look real and lively.



MOVING HOLD :

Moving hold is one of the most important aspects in CG character animation. It nothing more than an ease. It is about holding a pose for few frames . That is just duping the Pose after few frames to establish a hold and adjusting the pose slightly setting into the flow of the animation.If you doesn't adjust the pose and leave it as the same , i stops dead and doesn't move ,it just dies for some reason. So we have the pose moved slightly which syncs into animation and held for some duration. This gives life into those frames and makes the animation alive.