11 second club helpful hints-Acting It Out

11 second club helpful hints-Acting It Out

Acting Reference

http://kylekenworthy.blogspot.com/search/label/Acting%20Reference

Film Reference for Animators

http://www.filmref.blogspot.com/

Plan Plan Plan out!!

I used not to take so much time on planning before...just only because I could not stop myself from "I WANNA ANIMATE!! LET ME USE COMPUTER!! YEAH!!" feeling. but this time, I spent SO MUCH time on planning. I did everything that I had learned as planning like, thumbnail, video reference from the internet and shooting a reference by myself. I spent almost whole 2 days without actually animating (oh wait, planning is actually the most important part of animation...). and turned out my blocking is much better than I usually have at that point. I planned out until

I know how he acts throughout the shot. I know every key pose. I know how the timing should look like.

so what I gotta do rest at that point is just to execute what I have planned. Another my personal tip from this experimental blocking is that

I can chunk them into some big pieces so that I can go into the shot more carefully and specifically.

AnimSchool -- Selections From Animation Principles Lecture

Looks Awesome :D

a summary of animation tutorial by Jacob Patrick

• What is animation? -----Animation is all about bringing a life to the scen
• Characters need to look believable
• Take note!!----take note from your teachers, senior animators and friends. write them down spefically, frame number etc...
• Use Video Reference!!
• 80/20 rule----80% of the whole work finishes by 20% of the time and the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time.
• Look direction----not only eyes but also the brows changes the shape to indicate where the audience is supposed to look.
• Order of event-----ex) eyes go first and then brows go up and heard turns...need to be specific before go into computer
• Mouth arc-----mouth also draw arc when we are at polishing stage we need to look carefully all those stuff
• Holding one pose-----Do not change each pose until the character need to change it with reason
• When to blink-----do not have the character blink at random, characters do blink with reasons
• Act it out-----step away from the computer
• Use your SHOULDER ------most of the time, characters move their shoulder than we are thinking
• How much anticipate-----big movement need to have big anticipation (equal with the movement itself)

Animation Tutorial Video

Beauty of Imperfection

I kind of wanted to remind myself this idea constantly, so I was studying it from some of the animation clips on youtube.

He is trying to find the hole to slip into the jacket but it seems he couldnt find it once so he is fumbling a little bit. I guess there's a lot more to learn from this awesome shot but to me, this fumbling looks really great accent in timing.

The mouse is trying to escape from his hand but he stopped, I think this is one of the imperfection. And also he switched his hand left to right when he holds the mouse (I guess I shouldn't say imperfection but more like NOT simple efficient movement). At the last, the mouse it still trying to keep grabbing his shoulder and gives up.

Great Glen Keane's shot. After the boy blows his nose, he is still rubbing his nose. The mother missed to catch him when he jumps from the edge of the bed. Even before that, she seems not to realize the boy is climbing on there and shows her little surprise.The boy is trying to get out of the bed and moving around after he's caught by his mom. When she is trying to find his toy behind the pillow, she couldnt find it smoothly and look at how she moves left leg. Awesome.

All those little accent movement and acting are supposed to be decided by the situation, character and some more other elements. This gives not only variety of timing but also illusion of life.

Hold me tight!

I have been studying timing and spacing theses days especially, and one thing I notice that "HOLD" is really important to make contrast in timing (which is not something "WOW NEW INVENTION!!GENIUS!!" tutorial just a basic principal but Sean just told me we need to go back to basic once we learned everything)

Here's my clips from my animation test...

I think it's fairly OK...for me, looked slightly same rhythm, beat..pon,pon,pon...something like that. I wanted more contrast, something that BREAKS my good boy timing. So far, the timing is like that.

the last timing was not same as other two poses but still same for me, I wanted more clear contrast, Having said that, I still liked the transition timing, one pose to another. So what i did was to change the "HOLD" timing, not "TRANSITION" timing.

Now the timing for looks more like...this!

I liked that, and I will go with this timing. Yes, one thing I noticed from this was, when we need to change the timing, we have to think two different timing. "HOLD"and"TRANSITION"timings.

When we have two poses like this, we have to think the timing. We have to think timing carefully because timing and spacing is everything in animation. I used to only have one question before...

How long does it take one pose to another?

but sometimes it's really difficult to put variety of timing in animation because the character's action needs to be physically correct, otherwise we are going to lost believability. Audience doesn't believe this character is alive. So what we can change then is...hold!! Here's another question to myself.

How long does it hold until the next movement?

Now I have a lot of different options when I think of timing, and I remember some animators said "HOLD" is really important to show character's thought process. I will need to consider every time. I will hold this idea tight not to forget!!

Sulley's Take

Sulley's Take animation test, I animated this test by referencing in Sulley's take from Monsters, Inc. When he noticed someone's behind him and was trying to see what it is. This is really really great example for me because this is exactly what I was trying to get, variety of timing.

One of the things that I learned from this test was, great timing is not perfect. What I meant was the beauty of imperfection, look at when he is trying to see by turning his head to left, I can see his thought like (No!! not this way, something is the other way!!) . So he made made mistake, he was supposed to turn his head to right at the first place. So this is NOT perfect (or I should say the most practical) acting, BUT this is natural!! Imperfection is really natural and that what brings life to the characters. No one is perfect in real life.

From timing point of view, it is like we are playing some music instrument and suddenly stops, makes a mistake or change the beat...not perfect...but if this is a jazz improvising, how cool is it to do something like that?

I set the bar for myself, this quality of timing is the bar...no animation coming from myself anymore with boring timing. By the way, I think this way to test was really good for me. I didn't just rotoscope all the frames, instead, I had drawn all the key poses from the original clip, then I put them in the computer. From that point, I didn't watch the original clip so much. I just made animation by myself, created timing. I watched the original just only when I wanted to see some more breakdowns, (not only to copy from it but to study how to have the character move properly). Funny thing is though, my timing turned out faster than the original, but looks to work well, I think I was using different rig and this guy is not as heavy as Sulley for sure that's why he is supposed to move faster than Sulley and works well.

The Pen Is Blue Scene - Liar Liar Movie (1997) - HD

Reference for my animation test...I found out I should study a lot from live-action...maybe starting from Jim Carrey?

Walks and Runs from Robin Hood

uhh this is awesome!! I love the arranging the beat they are not animated with just one beat even just a walk cyle...yeah this is absolutely music

I will animate Robin running and changing his clothing scene in 3D for practice

‪キングカズじゃなくキングルイになりたい。

‪I Wanna Be Like You - The Jungle Book (1967)‬‏ - YouTube

キングルイいいわー。タイミング神すぎでしょ。そうそう、これダウンロードしながら思ってたんだけど、自分の中で神ショットを集めて、自分だけのリファレンスリール作ろうかなと。１５分くらいとかでも。明日ショーンにこのアイディアを言おうっと。うちのアニメーターみんなで出し合ってでもいいし、ショーンが個人的にっていうのでいいし。ジャングルブックで言ったら、モーグリが木登りするとこもいれるかな。俺なら。