Critique

[AnimatedTdot]

Hey guys, im new on here which is obvious but im looking for some
feedback on my animation and what I can do to improve it. This video
is an animation I did in Flash. Thanks. Enjoy!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z29wsaq6TpM

[Josh Wedlake]

Heya,  This mailing list is really for critiquing full character animation shots, rather than cutout flash.

But seeing as lots of kind people have helped me out along the way, I've taken the time to type up some of my notes, collected from advice given by various people over the years, to help you out.  To some extent this is personal opinion and others will have different ways of working so don't take it as gospel.

 

First of all style:  One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was to move away from cutout animation and try drawing.  Cutout animation is only good really for making limited animation fast - its a real struggle to make decent full character animation in cutout.  In cutout animation poses typically end up being very weak as you never really have to think about posing, and the restriction of the media prevents you from working with proper three dimensional poses.  Composition is also very flat and dull.  Limited animation is fine for a certain type of work, but you'll never get noticed for character animation, and the work will rely heavily on dialogue (as for example Hana Barbera cartoons do) or on a fast paced story line (for example the Simpsons), and unless these are really great, you'll have people turning off very quickly.  Try sitting through the whole of the Beatles film, the Yellow Submarine and you'll see what I mean about limited animation failing to hold attention.

 

Drawing is so important, not necessarily for image making, but as proof that you can observe correctly.  People often say they can't draw, but really the problem is that they can't observe, and if you can't observe, then you stand no chance at all of being able to critique your own work and will constantly be relying on others for advice.  If you can hold a pencil and draw a straight line, a circle and a square, and you are capable of tracing, then there is no problem with your drawing facility, but rather with your observations.  The word animation literally means breathing life into something, and so, no matter how far away from realism your style might be, its still essential to reference back to real life.  Draw lots of poses from life to practice (search http://www.posemaniacs.com/ if you can't find anywhere to go to lifedrawing).  Also drawing from video or photographs is fine - and is a great way to check how accurate your drawing was (crit everything yourself first).  Pick a scene of your favourite film and break it down into key drawings as if you were rewriting the storyboard.  Where I'm at college now, the RCA, we literally have more drawing classes scheduled than anything else at all, and they're compulsary for pretty much every subject taught here.  Draw from music to help capture a mood, literally draw everything you want to capture in your animations as it will be a way to proving to yourself that you've processed and understood what you want to capture.  Also physically get into the poses that will be in your animation - feel where the weight is, what aches when you hold the pose for too long, if you're off balance, which way will you fall?  Is the pose natural, would moving a limb make it more natural.  How does the pose make you feel - commanding? subservient? confident? vulnerable? open? etc.

 

Act out the scene a few times trying different things, then record it when you're confident you know the scene so well you can act it as if it was real (ie without any trace of your 'acting' showing through).  The director Bresson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bresson ) used to get actors to repeat scenes hundreds of times until he felt they weren't showing any acting - he referred to his actors simply as 'models' who had to follow instructions rather than invent on the spot every time.  You should know the action inside out before you even begin to animate.

 

Working from the video draw thumbnails of every single frame. (see rainplace for more info http://rainplace.net/?p=383 ).  These can be very rough to start with, but by drawing every single frame, not just the keys, you start to learn how long each action needs to be in terms of frames, and also you note the flow from one key to the next (Shamus Culhane used to use this method as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamus_Culhane working frame by frame drawing very fast so as not to loose track of the flow).  If you can't imagine the movement or draw it out from memory without looking back to notes, it will really slow down your animation.  I find that making a neat summary of what I've learned really helps afterwards - here are some examples from my own notes.

http://linetestjournals.blogspot.com/2011/09/animating-dogs-breaking-into-gallop.html

http://linetestjournals.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-key-dogs-walk-animation-notes.html

http://linetestjournals.blogspot.com/2011/07/dog-slow-walk-animation-reference.html

Once I've finished going through stop frame, I'll play the reference back on loop at real time speed and try to tap the rhythm of the keys (footsteps so on) as if I was learning the beat of a song.  If its lipsync, rather than working with a dope sheet with phonemes, I personally prefer to speak the dialogue with my finger on my top lip and my thumb on my bottom lip, feeling when my mouth is most open and closed (the most important part visually), and then on a second pass, where it is widest or narrowest.

 

Once I've internalised my reference and planned out my keys either as thumbs, or ideally as full size sketches (I tend to block in 2d, even though I'm animating in 3D as it gives me a much better grasp of how the poses work and really helps to record it in my memory, which I don't think I get in the same way if I do my blocking in 3D), then I start to animate.  Even if you hate disney style animation, you can't ignore the 12 principles of animation which are present pretty much in any movement.  Disney chose certain aspects to exaggerate (notably squash and stretch and appeal), and certain aspects to ignore (I always feel that their staging is particularly dull and straightforward), but if you pay a farily even amount of attention to all of them, you'll be heading for life like animation.  The summary on wikipedia is really no replacement for the full version in the illusion of life  which is definitely worth a read .  You should really know these principles off by heart and be applying them all at once without having to think about them.  Its not good enough just to be able to list them, but actually do all of them.  Its easy to find examples of them all in animation, and the disney book has great illustrations which go through each principle, showing it visually - copying some of the drawing sequences from that book made a big difference to me.

 

I wouldn't start to animate a scene before you know whats going to happen in it, and have planned it out, at least in terms of major poses and keys, in thumbnails.  I know some people like to feel their way through without thumbnailing first or doing a rough blocking pass, but usually I find this costs a lot more work, and makes the edit much harder.  At the very least you need to know how one shot connects to the next, so you have to have a sort of target pose to reach by the end of the shot.  If you choose to go straight ahead, then I'd strongly recommend using a type of pop-through technique, where you work out timing on a separate rough pass (either with live action stills or quick sketches), then animate straight ahead, but aim to hit the poses on the times you planned out.  Ie if you know you have to hit a contact position on frame 9, and its a fast walk, then you're going to need to be around the up position on frame 7... ie you work backwards from the key you need to hit to work out how close to it you need to be on the frame you're currently drawing.  That way you get the nice flow of straight ahead, but none of the unpredictability.  A lot of stop motion guys at college now work by shooting live action then effectively reducing it to keys and treating it as a pop-thru pass.

 

Once I'm done, if I'm not happy with the result I have a big troubleshooting checklist.  There are tonnes of books out there for learning animation methods, but noone really tells you what to do when it doesn't work.  Start with the big questions first...

 

CHECKLIST:

 

Staging - are the characters in the right places which would naturally make sense, and which would communicate the emotional situation as best as possible (ie are the above or below the camera line if they are dominant or suppressed respectively).  The staging can have a big effect on the length of a shot - ie do the characters have to walk way to far before we see any action?  is it ok to cheat this? (for a great example of cheating staging see 2mins30-2mins40 in Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-cOMy9k-6s Ivan walks about 500 metres in the space of half a second but the audience accepts it because its done for emotional effect, and happens across a cut - see Edward Dmytryk's seven rules of cutting for when its acceptable to do this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_editing#Editing_techniques).  If your staging is wrong you might have to reanimate the shot - get it right in the thumbnail stage if you can, but obviously check it with timing.

 

Composition - much like staging but in 2d screen space (whereas staging is in 3d set space).  Hit the key actions on the third guides, use leading lines in the set to focus the action to a specific point.  Are limbs cut off awkwardly by the cropping of the shot in a distracting manner.  Do the visual shapes the characters make communicate well and integrate into the background well.  Check your title safe area - make sure nothing important happens outside it.  People will be drawn towards areas of high contrast in brightness - check the animation most thoroughly there - also consider if the composition causes strobing problems - movements which are too fast and in high contrast colours (for example I had a black wing sweeping across the screen over a white background very fast, and it just flashed/flickered due to the extremes of brightness).

 

Readability - can the audience tell whats going on - show the shot to someone who hasn't seen it and isn't an animator and ask what they just saw.  Closely linked to this is silhouettes.  If you're working in an overly graphic or cartoony style which lacks clear definition of volumes, check that the shot works in silhouette and that you can tell whats happening from the silhouette.  Be careful though that working in silhouette doesn't cause you to choose a dull flat disney composition every time.  Use it more if you're communicating something crucial.  In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky argues that as a director you must leave things ambigous and not spoon feed the audience as if they were stupid.  Stories are more interesting and exciting if the ambiguity that you create is not so much random, but offers an alternative plot line.  You should also expect a degree of competance from your audience - there is a brilliant Werner Herzog (I *think* its in Werner Herzog eats his shoe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd6rUo7Htso ) where he talks about the problem of visual illiteracy in audiences today.

 

Line of action - work backwards from your finished animation into sketched lines of action - are the lines what you were aiming for? can you reinforce the pose better? does the line show either 1. where the force is - if the character is static AND/OR 2. where the character is moving to/from if its in motion AND 3. what the emotional state of the character is?  is it possible to get all three of these elements into your line of action without compromise OR would you be better to focus just on one for this scene.  IE if the emphasis is on acting rather than locomotion then it might be better just to use the character's line of action to show depression/elation rather than the weight on his feet.  Has the timing given enough time for the pose to read  - Eric Goldberg taks about attitude walks in his Crash Course book - where he adds eases around the contacts - the keys- which most express the attitude of the walk through the pose.  If the line of action is right, check the pose - if I'm working in 3d and I have trouble with a pose I'll draw a copy of it by hand.  If I have trouble drawing it, then I know its probably an unnatural pose - I try to draw something else then put that in.  Remember even if you're working in 3D every frame is ultimately a drawing - the audience sees every frame for an equal amount of time - its no good getting just the keys right.

 

Pacing - is essentially timing, but on the scale of the edit - is the story moving too fast or too slow.  If you're working with a three act structure have you spent enough time on each of the setup, the problem and the resolution?  Have you given the audience time to adjust to the shot (half a second of wasted screen time per cut).  Digital editing encouraged whats known as frame f*cking which is when the editor replays a sequence of shots over and over, each time removing a frame at a time from one shot until the shot is as short as possible.  This is obviously used mostly for action movies, but the disease has spead so that aversage shot lengths for feature films are now in the region of 4-10s rather than 20-50s in the Steenbeck editing machine days - obviouly when manually splicing film, frame f*cking was a much more laborious process so editors tended to cut long rather than short, and now the reverse is true.

 

Timing - this is where you really need to go back to your reference to check, or start tapping out beats on the desk.  Unfortunately the timing from live action and from blocking doesn't necessarily always translate across to animation.  If the timings wron'g, then why is it wrong, don't just start shuffling keyframes randomly, try to quantify where your mistake was so you don't make it again.  Push the timing from real life - there are many example in live action films where timing has been deliberately contorted for dramatic effect (in the French Connection the car chase was shot undercranked by Owen Roizman - ie in fast motion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#Car_chase , and throughout the Mirror, Tarkovsky dips in and out of overcranked shooting - ie slow motion, but often barely noticeable - the best example is towards the end of the movie when the boy is waiting alone in the dark room http://www.reverseshot.com/article/mirror )  Try timing to music if you have no dialogue to work with - in the French Connection all of the edits in the car chase sequence are time to beats of Santana's Black Magic Woman.

 

Spacing - relates closely to timing, but has more to do with poses.  Are the poses spaced close enough together to carry the eye from one to the next?  If the spacing stays relatively uniform between consecutive frames then you have smooth flowing action.  If on the other hand the spacing varies dramatically you probably have sharp choppy movements which might not be what you want?  Frame by frame spacing might be too subtle to see errors (ie at the inbetween level), maybe consider the spacing between draing or poses on twos, or between consecutive keys.  Big changes in spacing indicate a big change in momentum (either a large force OR a light object), wheras small changes in spacing indicate a small change in momentum (a small force OR a heavy object with a lot of momentum).  A change in momentum requires energy - where did the energy come from (someone pushing something)? or was energy lost (something hitting into something coming to a stop)?

 

Arcs - related to spacing - do the traces of the end of the limbs sweep out smooth arcs AND are there enough frames to make the arc noticeable?  If you're moving from point A to point B over 1 frame you can only go in a straight line - its impossible to go in an arc.  If you go in 2 frames, then you can at best go in a triangular motion.  If you have say 5 frames to get from A to B, then you have 5 small lines (or chords technically) to join together to make an arc.  If you have too many frames and your object moves too slowly, then viewers won't notice the arc at all, but if you go too fast there won't be an arc.  you can reinforce the shape of the arc with follow through - leaving things trailing in the arc.  Check the arcs from the camera view.  Draw the shape of the arcs over your background - do the shapes fit nicely in the composition of the background element, or do they clash?  Consider the motion paths that your characters leave behind as parts of that composition - think of the vapour trails left in the sky by aerial acrobatics, or the stripes on a frozen lake from figure skaters - the motion is ultimately beautiful because of the arcs it produces.  Laban would expand motion further into three type: spoke like, arc like and carving.  if an arc isn't appropriate would a spoke or carve fit better?

 

Eases & acceleration - an ease can be used to emphasize a key - ie to spend more time around that key, or just to provide a sense of acceleration from one key to the next.  Don't confuse acceleration and speed.  Check the easing between your keys - something heavy will need a bigger ease, something light might not need easing at all.  What caused the ease - is it related to a force, or to a visual hold?

 

Forces/Leading Limbs/Weight.  Forces set a structure into motion, or stop the motion - ie. forces allow a motion to be changed.  Weight keeps a motion going (ie gives something momentum) and pulls it downwards.  Remember that weight never takes a break and will start tipping a character over as soon as a leg is raised.  Don't just consider how weight works in a walk or a jump, think about more complex motions aswell.  A skateboarder can move forward to some extent by weaving from side to side - they lean off balance, their body tips forward gaining speed, then they steer back the other way bringing their board underneath them.  A surfer on a day with bad waves does a similar motion pumping the board from side to side, and by weaving he turns his weight into a forward motion.  Weight doesn't just pull things down, its a key element in moving forwards.  Without gravity, even if our feet were somehow stuck to the ground, we would be shuffling rather than walking and would have to do a lot more work to pull ourselves forwards.  By leaning off balance we give ourselves forward speed.  Leading limbs - check which limb moves first - does it draw the eye to the right place? is it the natural limb to move (a dog will usually start walking with one of its rear legs first because in terms of phase difference the rear legs are a half cycle ahead of the front legs)? 

 

Secondary action relates to the leading limb.  if the leading limb is the first thing to move, try to work out the chain reaction of what move next - I move my foot, but really the leading limb is my upper leg, then my lower leg follows and my foot drags behind.  Working up the chain, my uppper leg no longer has support on the ground, my hips drop on one side and this propagates up my spine - my upper body adjust to move my weight over my other leg and you get counteranimation around my neck and shoulders to keep my head level - all one after the other, all time offset (ie overlapping action).  If you combine secondary action and follow through you get successive breaking of the joints.  Follow through happens in space (ie following the path), but also in time (one thing after another).  The way our bodies move is like any structure (say a tower of cards) one thing affects the next.  Check what is deliberate movement (independant action) by the character, and what is movement due to forces, or secondary action.  When I started out I found the different terms of secondary/independant/overlapping act & follow through all confusing and for the most part treated them as one thing, but realising that there are in fact four separate ideas to look for was a big help.  Don't confuse any of the different types, and make sure you've covered all of them.

 

Squash and stretch is self explanatory for cartoons, but check you've maintained volume.  What is the direction of the squash (in line with the stopping force) or the stretch (following the shape of the drag)?  For rigid objects you can use squash and stretch in forming the pose without actually squashing or stretching the actual anatomy of the character.  for example a stretched pose might be if you stand up on tip toes with your legs and back straight and your arms above your head and fingers reaching as high as you can - without distoring the limbs you still get the idea of a stretch.  A squash might be a crouch - imagine you've jumped from a great height - you don't squash elastically like a ball, but rather you crouch to absorb the force and spread your libs sideways somewhat.  Consider the squash and stretch to work on the bounding box of the character.

 

With aniticipation you need to check the SIZE of your anticipation and the LENGTH - again two separate things - don't talk about a big anticipation, be specific - is it a big movement over a short time for example?  In general if the action is physically large, then the anticipation will be physically large.  If the action is physically small, then the anticipation will be physically small.  However if the action will take a long time then the anticipation will be over quickly (so as not to bore the audience, or tire the character - for example someone about to run a marathon doesn't have a dramatic anticipative movement before the start the race).  vice versa if an action is going to be over very quickly (eg someone hitting a baseball with a bat) the anticiaption needs to be long to give the audience time to read it.  The size of an anticipation is proportional to the action, wheras the length of an anticipation is OPPOSITE to the length of an action.  Sometimes surprise is key though and giving the audience no warning at all is the best option.

 

Finally I check that the character hasn't 'broken' the model or the rig in any way - I do this last because I don't want to be animating around problems, rather I animate as best I can, and hope it works, and if it doesn't I'll try to fix it on the model rather than by fiddling with the animation.  Check details like eyes and stiff fingers - hands can be really expressive.

 

Only once I've gone through all of this stuff, is it then time to ask someone else for crits.  Really its so important to be able to spot errors in your own work rather than relying on others to spot them for you.  The easiest way to spot mistakes is to have a logical way of looking for problems (I use this checklist I've typed up which has most of my common mistakes in), and also to have another way of looking at your work.  If you struggle with a drawing then looking at it from a different angle or mirrored to see whats wrong.  If you're working in 3D and you've already seen the problem pose from all angles then draw that pose by hand and you'll soon discover whats wrong by reconsidering the pose in a different medium, or at the line of action stage.  Reference everything and don't rely on reference other people have given you - discover it yourself from videos and sketches - that way it'll stick much better in your memory.

 

Hoe this helps - was good to type up my own rough notes just to recap my workflow.  Hopefully I'll neaten these up into a blogpost soon now I've gone to the effort!

 

cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

--
Josh Wedlake
http://www.joshwedlake.com/flipbook

[Stephanus Pretorius]

Thank you for email, Josh.

 

I recommand best book for Crash Course book (Eric Goldberg). Eric's book helped very well to me, how to draw the movement of the body by using poses, keys and inbetweens. Look at my website link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-7krs_H1A

--

I am 2D/CGI animator and work in Adobe (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash). I am a freelance animator.

 

Ek is 'n 2D/CGI animeerder en werk in Adobe (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop en Flash). Ek is 'n vryskut animeerder.

[Thomas Martin]

Thanks for the advice sorry to have put Flash cut out animation in a traditional animation forum. When I start animating traditionally I will keep your suggestions in mind. Thanks.