Anticipation, Action and Reaction!

This weeks principle to remember comes from Bill Tytla, "Any animation consists of anticipation, action and reaction."

Oh, and the second half of Devastation Double Week starts now!


Devastation with a dramatic flair.

Half way through the Devastation!

Here's the rough concept animation of this weeks 2 bouncing balls assignment.

The second half of devastation double week starts tomorrow!



Here's this weeks Tiki themed daily sketch group entry.


(original)


(reduced size)


(wallpaper version)

Redid this weeks first devastation pose to match the color theme of the rest,



and revised last weeks pose with a little more bend of the "fiving" elbow, and a different shadow.

Keep it consistent and believable!

Everywhere you look it's more devastation!

Find what makes you excited and do that!

Will the devastation ever stop?

Tangents, Translations and the Graph Editor.

It really was a great class tonight with Scott Lemmer. He again harped on keeping it simple and really focus on making short easy to read scenes that are really polished and animated perfectly. The best thing he talked about tonight though was Tangents, Translations, and the Graph editor.

The Graph editor is an amazing tool. Once you have your initial keys (poses / preset positions) set up it's where you go to really get a scene to look animated.

If you leave a scene with just the default computer set animation, it will look robotic, almost piston like, so you have to make movement flow and that is done by sculpting a beautiful translation.

There are 3 main translations translate y, translate x, and translate z. As I'm not an expert I can only really speak to the first 2. Translate y is how an object moves vertically, and translate z is how an object moves horizontally.

Now in the case of the bouncing ball you want your animation to look real. So a ball doesn't simply go up and down at the same speed and angle from start to stop. It decreases in speed and height as it moves further from the start. So that means our translation has to do the same.

So we have to keep our keys reflecting that and our tangents have to accent the same thing. There are a few different options for tangent settings, Weighted / Unweighted, and flat, splined, linear, clamped and plateau. For a bouncing ball though you want your animation to show the accent of the bounce.

So for the Translate Y you want to break the tangents and I like to free the tangent weight and get a nice sharp almost V shape for the keys where the ball hits the ground. For the highest part of the arc you really want to stretch out your tangent to get a nice round shape. Again you want every bounce to gradually decrease in duration and size so that if you were to take a ruler from the top of the first bounce every arc would touch it all the way to the last bounce. Then play the animation and make sure it feels like what you want.

The Translate Z is a little bit trickier. It tracks how far and how fast the ball will go. So you want to start it out with a harsher angle and have it level off to give it that gradual feel. This can be done by adding in a few keys or angling the tangent lines to give it a soft L like shape.
Lastly you have to set up how far you want the Z to translate and how much of an angle you want to give it by adjusting the height and the width of the line. In the end, you should have something that looks like what you were orginially thinking, or referencing.

Too much Devastation!

What it is and what it does.

Prolonging the Devastation!

Had a great video Q and A with Derek Osborne today. He talked a little about the bouncing ball and contrast. Basically he broke down the bouncing ball and it came down to everything is based on the principles of the bouncing ball. The hips and the shoulders move like a bouncing ball. I think one of my fellow students, Ed Sutherland summed it up nicely though, just keep in mind what it is and what it does. I think that can be applied to anything in drawing and animation! Thanks for the inspiration.

La la la

Finally had a few free minutes to post the cleaned up version of the Preston Blair style squirrel frolic!

(click to enlarge!)

The devastation continues