Morning (Practical Lesson)
Today we started by receiving Light boxes, then Stephen started to talking about straight ahead animation and Key to Key animation.
Straight ahead animation is by beginning animating a key pose of a character and continuing drawing the create a motion.
Key to key / Key framing animation is the most popular animated method used in the industry. By drawing a character doing an action, you plan a beginning, middle and endframe with in-betweens, then filled them.
Stephen started out, to explain that animation industry, is almost divided between these two methods (Straight ahead and key framing). But a really good animator sees the best of both methods and creates their own method. Stephen went on explaining more about animation and one animator that we (the class) should check out is called “Winsor Mccay”. I really didn’t know who that was but I was curious, since Stephen talked to highly of him. Stephen also mentioned how this animation course, we should be self critical, question everything that we did. Why we did it? What does the work should look like? How did you do it? Why did you choose that method of doing? For me, I’m always self critical about my work, I was taught to self evaluate in college, so I’m used to it. After that inspirational talk that Stephen gave, he explained about the Light box, which I was super excited to work with. Stephen also explain about animator use a special kind of paper. Animation paper is 45 gsm (grams per square metre) and normal printer paper is 75 gsm (grams per square metre), both kinds of paper is fine, but animators normally use 45 gsm. After a while, we when to studio B where we had normally the other kind of light boxes, with peg-bars.
Our exercise was to make a key to key animation of legs walking drawing. We started out by taking seven or more paper and draw a horizontal line on each one. After that, we start by drawing on one piece of paper, three circles one representing the hip, one the knee and the last one being the heel, that’s key frame 1. I can’t forget to number each page. Then, we picked the next piece of paper and that was key frame 7, where we drew the same leg but in a different position, the feet was on his tipi toes and the rest was all stretch out. After, that we have to decided where the middle key frame is going to be (break down position). To find the break down position, you draw a time chart. A time chart where an animator normally indicates how many drawings are going to be in between the key frames, that how you find the break point position. In case of the bending knee, the middle frame (break down position) is 4. You put a new piece of paper on top of the key frames 1 and 7, label that page 4. Drawing the knee by eye, you will try to pin point the middle position of the movement and draw it.
Explaining this makes me really happy and excited to learn more, since this are what real animators think and act. By flicking through out the pages, you can see if we were satisfied with it. That flicking method, brings me secondary school memories, where I used to doodle on different pages to create a little animation.
It’s important that you have the break point figured out, so you can draw the in-between. By placing the page 1 and 4 on the light box, in the same way as before try to find the haft way of the in-between just by eyeing, this in-between (‘tween) is going to be page 3. Also, we have to make another ‘tween (in-between), but this time on the light box, put page 4 and 7. So, you can call the new page 5.
Until now, I don’t have any problems, I have all the pages, but Steven explained this would be enough to produced a scene. However, to make the animation go smoother and to look more natural, we are going to use the last frames, called (sometimes) Cushions. There’s is no need to explain the whole process here, since it follows the same bases as the other. Put page 1 and 3 on top of the light box, then drawing by eye you got the Cushion page 2. Repeat this process with pages 5 and 7 to create the cushion page 6.
For this I was really proud of myself and very happy, I mad a key frame animation. Since it was my first time trying this, it didn’t come out that good. But there’s always room for improvement.