The first two areas of focus were the actions occurring at the beginning of the shot. I found an interesting take toward the end of my video that involved me turning halfway around while standing in place. This felt natural and was an excellent way to reveal the character. In addition, it was a unique way of performing the action. I combined this move with a yawn from an earlier take on the tape and began the process of sketching some thumbnails of the action. Figure 8 shows the results. With this initial pass, I literally tried to replicate the posture from the reference video to get a good starting point.

[Figure 8] A few sketches from my thumbnailing pass.

If you look closely at Figure 8, you’ll notice some timing notes associated with each drawing. This is a terrific opportunity to begin formalizing some of the keyframe locations. If necessary, I’ll use a stopwatch to help make decisions. More than likely, I’ll modify these at a later stage in the production, but they give me a reliable foundation when I start setting keys in the computer. Now back to drawing.

After completing the sketches for the stretch and yawn portions of the shot sequence, I started working on the approach, positioning and sitting in the chair sequence.

Continuity
Continuity is critical in filmmaking. It ensures consistency of all the major elements throughout the film. Directors, producers, writers and designers strive to develop unique environments and personalities in their productions. They associate colors, lights, actions and emotions to those settings. Those elements must maintain some uniformity throughout or the audience will easily get lost.

As an animator, the primary focus is motion, and the most critical continuity for an animator is the matching of action and poses between shots. The character must maintain a similar gesture and position relative to camera as it cuts in, out, and around the scene. This is especially important when two shots need to correspond exactly. Such is the case with the short project discussed here.

Figure 5 shows the series of shots. Shot one involves the stretching motion, shot two is a match cut to the character’s face, and shot three has him sitting in the chair. In reality, it’s one action with three different cameras. For the action to flow effectively, the character must maintain continuity as the camera cuts into the face, and then back to the full body.

To learn more about animation blocking 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. 266 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.

Series editor and author, Kyle Clark (left) and series editor Michael Ford.

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.