Animators by day Animation teachers by night.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Animation Workout.


Your animation muscles are just like any other muscle in your body. They need exercise so that you can make them stronger and less flabby. I love animation and I love animating and the thing I do most outside of work is an animation workout. It’s easy to do and doesn’t take a lot of time. Many of us get caught up in animating huge acting assignments or even longer pieces of pantomime animation. I think these types of assignments are useful and necessary on a reel, but sometimes I think a quick workout can really be more beneficial to your overall success. What I mean by a quick work out is I take one principle of animation or two and create animation to focus on them. I generally just use a prim box or sphere, that way I’m not tempted or distracted by complex humans characters. Remember the goal here is just to focus on one particular thing and animate it really well, polish the crap out of that box so much the corners become rounded. For example lets say I wanted to focus on Overlap. I could easily create a prim box, parent another prim box to it and I’ve got a rough stand-in for a chest and an arm lets say. With this built I’m off and working out my overlap. Turn the box and have the box arm overlap not that hard or is it?

Slow-in and Slow-outs no problem create a prim sphere and just have it move from one side of the screen to another and back again or have it move around the screen slowing in and out of certain key positions. Quick and easy. Want to focus on Drag create a prim box moving up and down and around the screen picking one corner or edge of the box to lead while the other end drags behind.

None of these are going to go on your reel, but hopefully you’ll get a better understanding of the animation principles. That way you can put them together in a more complex piece of animation you would put on your reel. You’ll also get a better understanding of how to use your tools. You might focus one time trying to animate the slow in and slow out of a ball moving around just with the graph editor with just keys at your main poses. Or you might animate something in stepped mode animating every frame so you get a better understanding of spacing and how that relates to the graph editor. Maybe you have a problem with things strobing all the time in quick moves. This is a perfect way to help figure out to solve that problem. Without the pressure of an acting piece or pressure from anything you are free to experiment and mess up and try again because they don’t take very long, and no one is going to see them. Just like working out it’s the end result we are working towards.

Dr. Stephen G.

27 Comments:

Blogger Brian "My Fault" Nicolucci said...

This is an awesome post Doc G. It is so easy to get wrapped up in complex rigs and multiple appendages and end up missing the point of what you might be trying to accomplish in a particular shot. Doing small exercises like this, that are so simple, really help focus. I've been doing something similar the last few months and the help has been immeasurable.

10:21 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you very much, Stephen G! man, this is such a great idea, and very awesome stuff! Perfect for sharpening up before the semester starts, right!?

1:54 PM

 
Blogger Freddy Burgos said...

Great post! This is something that I've been thinking about, except I was leaning towards some kind of single gesture or action (a person standing up, picking up a cup, shifting weight, etc.), but not longer than a couple of seconds This sounds better though, especially for people that are extremely busy throughout the day with not much free time, but want to keep those anim skills sharp.

2:24 PM

 
Blogger DJ said...

terrific post!

2:34 AM

 
Blogger BrandonBeckstead said...

Thanks so much for sharing this idea! It shouldn't sound like a new idea, to do a simple workout......but it is to me! Very inspirational seeing the way you Dr.'s think sometimes. Great post!

8:22 AM

 
Blogger Alex M. Lehmann said...

Well spoken! I completely agree... and it is a lot of fun. I think I will implement one principle a day kind of a thing until I am sick of it. Great advice! Thanks so much, Dr. G.

Lx

10:15 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks a ton Dr.!!! thess post have been just amazing!! Awesome advice am on to!!
David ;)

11:36 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can be the personal trainer and yell at us to "PUSH THAT ARC, DAMN IT"

2:39 PM

 
Blogger Henk said...

Thanks for suggesting this. I actually had gone back to bouncing a ball. The idea to expand this and target an area you wish to improve in, thats just superb.

2:02 AM

 
Blogger david a said...

You know this post got me thinking about animation exercises and I ended up connecting a few ideas. I posted this on the AM forums so here is a short version:

Powerful Moments
I love photography and recently I saw a photo get critiqued that reminded me of a lecturer going:
Everything within a film/story is like a hologram. If you were to cut a hologram into a half, or a hundred pieces, you would have an exact replica of the entire original uncut piece. Case in point, everything should (and usually does) reflect the entire story that's being told.


Well a daily critique at RadiantVista (awesome photography website) revealed (at 7:19 into the critique) an awesome photo where everything in the pose (the baby grabbing for a Christmas ornament, the woman holding him) all reflected the story. Everything, even the innocent pose of the hands and their faces. It's quite an awesome pose (well it is real!) and the critique highlighted a lot about what makes a good pose. I thought all of this was great for animation. Figured I would share it as I had a small epiphany.

Here's the link,
http://media.radiantvista.com/download/radiantVista_dc_080125.mov

8:49 PM

 
Blogger Splinebender said...

Thank you for this post! Right now I’m creating a complex shot to put on my reel and I believe taking some time to do some quick - focused animation will keep me sharp. Great idea!

SH

8:54 AM

 
Blogger Vincent Gorman said...

thanks for the great post, very helpful for the pick me up days of animating

8:26 PM

 
Blogger Tobias Schwarz said...

simpe is good!

6:14 AM

 
Blogger Doron Meir said...

Good idea.

9:13 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

Just recently found this blog, really awesome stuff, thank you so much... seriously
im 26, i hope thats not too old to start trying to get into a major studio to do animation work. i did the third exercise and that was a lot of fun!!
can someone shoot me a response?, when i parent cube 2 (arm) to cube 1 (torso) i rotate cube 2 but it becomes distorted... what am i doing wrong?

7:47 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

nvm on that last post, i just ended up using a few bones and looks to work

8:15 PM

 
Blogger Christine Y. Chong said...

I feel like i should go back to my bouncing ball after looking at this...

9:46 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

well,its a pretty old post so i don't know
if you get a notice,but i have a question about
the second clip in your post,the drag thing...

i accidentally ran into your er..spline blog
thingy,which I'm not quite sure yet what its
about,and i don't know you,i do notice by the
number and fan club nature of the comments
you are quite popular for some reason..so
excuse me if i accidentally say something
stupid(i have a gift for that,regardless of
circumstances)

anyways,i study animation,and I'm
self taught,so whenever i run into something
i cant figure out myself,i try asking the
person responsible,it rarely happens,so
i don't ask a lot

so i was looking at your floating box and
after 2 days of staring at it and copying it
emmm...i don't get it.
like,i cant reverse engineer it,so i wanted to
ask(may i ask),did you use any reference
for it,and of what..i cant think of lots of
stuff that float like that,and it doesn't move
like a feather,so what where you pretending
the box was?
the only condition i can apply on other
stuff correctly out of looking at your box,is
the up and down spacing,of something
that is caught above an unsteady gust
of air and the changes when the air stops
supporting it and leaves it to gravity

but the rest,like the direction and way
it rotates,i cant seem to figure out,like,
if i needed to animate something similar
but a bit different,i cant find any laws
and conditions i can apply, so,how did
you go about it figuring the correct
rotation?

thank you
and sorry for the long post,didn't find any
contact details...

12:42 PM

 
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