Offsetting the point when two arms reach an extreme keyframe is crucial. That value could be as small as three or four frames. The difference doesn’t sound like much, but will dramatically affect the look of your motion. This small separation takes away the robotic appearance that’s often encountered in digital animation.

Let’s say a character is cheering at the scoring of a touchdown. He thrusts both arms toward the sky as the player crosses the goal line. Offsetting the arms by a minor amount will remove the twinning aspect. Having the right arm hit at frame 15 and the left at frame 18 will assist in a more natural stopping of the character’s movement. (See Figure 10.)

To learn more about posing and staging, character animation, walks, tools of the trade and other topics of interest to animators, check out Inspired 3D Character Animation by Kyle Clark; series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford: Premier Press, 2002. 268 pages with illustrations. ISBN 1-931841-48-9 ($59.99) Read more about all four titles in the Inspired series and check back to VFXWorld frequently to read new excerpts.

Author and series editor Kyle Clark (left) and series editor Mike Ford (right).

Series editor Kyle Clark is a lead animator at Microsoft's Digital Anvil Studios and co-founder of Animation Foundation. He majored in Film, Video and Computer Animation at USC and has since worked on a number of feature, commercial and game projects. He has also taught at various schools including San Francisco Academy of Art College, San Francisco State University, UCLA School of Design and Texas A&M University.

Series editor and author Michael Ford is a senior technical animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks and co-founder of Animation Foundation. A graduate of UCLA’s School of Design, he has since worked on numerous feature and commercial projects at ILM, Centropolis FX and Digital Magic. He has lectured at the UCLA School of Design, USC, DeAnza College and San Francisco Academy of Art College.