Character Animation Theories And Principles

Anticipation & Overshoot

The most important thing to remember is that great animation doesn't happen from Point A to Point B, it happens at point A and Point B. Meaning that we must show the audience what is going to happen by anticipating the action (Point A) , do the action, then show the audience what just happened by overshooting the pose and settling back in (Point B). I'll use the principles of Squash and Stretch to demonstrate Anticipation and Overshoot.

Download the movie Anticipation.mpg (175kb)

You'll notice 4 balls. The ball on the far left has no anticipation or overshoot. It looks stale and lifeless and doesn't move in a convincing way. The ball in the Left middle has anticipation and overshoot. It anticipates the action by squashing (Pose A), does the action,... then shows the audience what just happened by overshooting it's next resting position (Pose B). We'll call this action the Short Bounce. It has character, moves in a convincing way, and keeps the audience's attention where we want it but it lacks exaggeration.

Exaggerated action is what makes good animation great. Study the Short Bounce for a while and practice the principles behind it in your own animation. It's VERY important to MASTER this action and principles behind it in your own character animation before moving on to The Long Bounce. You must know the basic rules before you can break them.

The next ball in the scene on the Right Middle is very similar to to the Short Bounce except that it breaks a few normal rules of physics by exaggerating the action. We'll call this the Long Bounce. It accelerates much more quickly than the Short Bounce, reaches it pinnacle quicker, shows the audience what it's doing, then finishes the action. Using this principle correctly and in the right spots can add that extra ummph and weight to your action. This is a technique for more advanced animators. Beginners should concentrate on learning how and when to use anticipation and overshoot before attempting to break the rules like this.

The fourth ball on the right hand side is a variation on the long bounce and adds an extra bit of action between Point A and Point B. Its action can be described as Point A to C to B. Instead of traveling in a straight line it follows a slight arc and is even more exaggerated. I call this 'putting the juice in'. For those animators that are more advanced, see how far you can push those extreme poses, then add a little flavor to it by doing something unexpected in between (Point C).

Overlapping Action

The next topic is overlapping action. The easiest way to describe overlapping action is, different parts of your character will move at different speeds and come to rest at different times; meaning... Break up the action. If everything on your character starts and stops at the same time it will look like it was animated on a computer (god forbid that should ever happen).

Download the movie overlap.mpg (175kb)

You'll notice two balls, one resting above the other. Play the animation As the animation plays notice that one ball comes to rest before the other or, OVERLAPS the action of the the first ball. Breaking things up like this is very important for achieving the illusion of life. Make sure your animation has little variations. If you have to repeat the same action three times in a row do each one a little differently.

Progressively Breaking Joints

Using the principle of progressively breaking joints is a way to get that snap, crackle and pop into your animation. This principle basically builds on top of the principle of Overlapping Action. It can most easily be described as a whip or a character throwing a football. First the upper arm rotates in an arc, then the forearm breaks or rotates in an arc and finally the wrist breaks and releases the ball

Download the movie Progressive.mpg (326kb)

You'll see two chains of boxes. Play the animation. The chain on the left bends and all the boxes rotate at the same speed. This is a nice effect but it isn't as dynamic and doesn't have the same appeal or, SNAP as the one on the right. Study the chain on the right. You'll notice that the first link in the chain begins moving before the others, then the second link breaks and begins moving and so on down the chain. Using Progressively Breaking Joints is a good method of emphasizing an action or grabbing your audiences attention.

Arcing Actions and Head Turns

Arcing Actions is a way of saying things don't move in a straight line. It helps to break up your action and give a natural feel to your character. NOTHING moves in a straight line. Even bullets have a slight arc to their trajectory.

Download the movie headturn.mpg (155kb)

Play the animation. Notice the head on the Left turns in a straight line. Even anticipation and overshoot can't help this fellow. Now look at the head on the right. It turns in an arc. Always be aware of your action's arc. It will make your character natural and believable and hopefully your audience won't notice you did it on a computer.

Once you feel comfortable with these theories try adding some character to a simple box or sphere. You'll see what I mean in this timidbox.mpg movie.

Character Animation Theories And Principles

Simple Method for creating Walk Cycles

Animating a walk, where do we begin. Well first we need a character. For today's lesson we're going to use Mr.Stickman. Next we need a clear and simple method of approaching walks in general. I didn't come up with the technique that follows. I gleaned most of this from Richard Williams book 'The Animator's Survival Kit'. If you find this tutorial useful I highly recommend you pick up a copy. We're going to use a pose to pose method to animate today's walk. At 24fps a walk will usually range anywhere from 8 frames per stride for a brisk pace, to 16 frames for a leisurely stroll. In order to be clear I'm going to animate at 24fps and make each stride 12 frames (march time).  Let's begin animating a walk with the contact poses. This is basically mid stride where the heel strikes the ground. Contrary to what you might think, this is the part of a walk that has the least amount of weight. It's the pose directly after this, or the down pose that sells the weight. We'll get to that much later. For now let's concentrate on this pose. Go ahead and pose every part of your character on frame 1. Make sure the forward leg striking the ground is straight (knee is not bent) otherwise your character may look like he's carrying a load in the back of his pant's. Also make sure you add a little vertical torsion in the hips and shoulders (i.e., twist the torso slightly). Now advance the time 12 frames (frame13) and do the the next heel strike pose. Remember to key everything on your character. The final heel strike pose will happen 12 frames later on frame 25.  It should look something like this.

Now that we have the contact poses set let's start breaking it down by adding the passing poses. Go to frame 7 and pose every part of your character in a passing pose. Make sure to keep the shoulders and hips in opposition to each other and drop the shoulder and hips laterally (i.e. curve the torso slightly, see below). It should look like this.

Now are walk is starting to take shape. Once you get this far the rest is a breeze. As long as the contact and passing poses work you can do just about anything you want with these break down poses and it'll work. For now we're just going to animate a generic walk. Let's break it down further by adding the actual weight bearing pose or down pose between the contact and passing poses (frame 4). The forwrd knee drops and bends, the head shifts forward and the Hips and shoulders tilt. It should be something like this (don't for get to key everything on you character or one pose might wind up affecting a pose you've already worked out).

Now we'll add the striding or up pose between the passing and contact poses (frame 10). This is where your character bounds upward and begins to fall farward. The hips begin moving back toward the centerline so the body will be ready to catch it self with the opposing foot.

We're almost finished. Now it's time to go back and inbetween everything. In your curve editor you'll want to smooth out any nasty bumps or ledges in your curves. You'll also want to make sure you've got a nice steep hard edged curve for the heel striking the ground. At this point the walk is pretty much finished. I like to go through and off set keys on overlapping joints to loosen up everything and give it a more natural feel. Also make sure frame 1 and frame 25 match up perfectly. When you're all done you should wind up with a nice looping walk cycle between frame 1 and 24 (frame 25 is a repeat). Here's what it looks like.

And this is what it looks like in motion.

Using this technique anyone can acheive convincing walk cycles of all types. Now that you've completed a faily generic walk why don't you try animating the following types of walks.

A sneaky walk; a feminine walk; a Strut; a sad walk; a drunk walk; a goofy walk; ect

Good luck and Happy animating

Simple Method for creating Walk Cycles

Pinscreen

In the early 1930s, engraver Alexandre Alexeïeff, a Russian émigré living in France, decided to go into filmmaking. Wishing to make films with an aesthetic faithful to the line and shading of his engravings, he invented a new type of device: the pinscreen.

The pinscreen consists of a white screen pierced by hundreds of thousands of pins that can slide back and forth, each in its own hole. When lit from the side, each pin casts a shadow, and when all the pins are pushed out, there is total darkness. But when pins are pushed in, their shadows are shorter, and the black become grey. When pins are pushed all the way in, they do not cast shadows and the white screen can be seen.

In 1933 Alexeïeff, with the help of his partner Claire Parker, completed Night on Bald Mountain. In 1943, exiled in North America, Alexeïeff and Parker made En passant for the NFB, where they had been invited by Norman McLaren, a great admirer of theirs.

NFB animators continued to be interested in the pinscreen, and in 1968, musician Maurice Blackburn, one of McLaren's regular collaborators, made a brief foray into directing with a short experimental film titled Ciné-crime. For this film, with its extremely complex concrete soundtrack, he used a smaller version of the device.

In 1972 Alexeïeff and Parker were invited back to the NFB. By this time, the NFB had acquired a full-sized pinscreen, and the two artists gave workshops to train a group of filmmakers. McLaren seized the opportunity to shoot a documentary, Pinscreen.

Their visit had a major impact on the future of the process. It had long been thought that the pinscreen would die with its inventors, but then Jacques Drouin decided to use it for his films. In 1974 he made Trois exercices sur l'écran d'épingles d'Alexeïeff. Then, two years later, he came out from under Alexeïeff’s heavy shadow to express his own tone and style with Mindscape.

After the success of Mindscape, Drouin introduced a technical innovation when he coloured his images by filtering his light sources in Nightangel (1986), co-directed with Czech Bretislav Pojar. This film marries two techniques, as Pojar's puppets play out a story against changing pinscreen backgrounds. Drouin continued his aesthetic research in his next three films: Ex-child (1994), A Hunting Lesson (2001) and Imprints (2004).

Pinscreen

Pixillation

Norman McLaren coined the term pixillation for the stop-motion animation technique that consists in shooting, one frame at a time, characters or objects whose movements are controlled entirely by the filmmaker. He used this technique in Neighbours (1952), a powerful antiwar fable, then in A Chairy Tale (1957) and Opening Speech (1961), two films in which the story turns on the refusal of an everyday object (a chair and a microphone) to behave as expected.

The origins of pixillation go back to the "trick films" using special effects that marked the early years of filmmaking. Examples are some of the tricks of Georges Méliès, the famous El Hotel electrico by Segundo de Chomon (1905) of Spain and Le mobilier fidèle by Roméo Bosetti of France (1912).

More than any other animation technique, pixillation is closely bound to reality. The interaction of actors and objects in a three-dimensional setting introduces a series of references to reality. This has an influence on the choice of subjects dealt with in films that use this technique. It is no accident, for example, that McLaren made his most political works with this process.

Robert Awad made judicious use of the technique, in combination with others, in his parodies of documentaries, The Bronswik Affair (co-directed by André Leduc, 1978) and Amuse-gueule (1983). Yet it was Leduc who made most frequent use of pixillation at the NFB. In three films—Tout écartillé (1974), Monsieur Pointu (co-directed by Bernard Longpré, 1975) and Chérie, ôte tes raquettes (1976)—he explores the technique's potential for fantasy.

The theme of Tout écartillé and Chérie, ôte tes raquettes is the frenzy of the modern world, a theme that Roland Stutz explored further in his Taxi, illustrating a song by Claude Léveillée, a film that exploits the speeded-up effect obtained with pixillation.

Pixillation