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The Art of Inbetweening

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The Art of Inbetweening

Currently labouring over the clean-ups and inbetweens of my own animated scenes, I keep wondering why hardly any of the standard works on animation deal with that process. Inbetweening gets mentioned, sometimes explained, but none of the big books on how to I've read so far consecrate whole chapters to the subject, let alone talk about techniques etc. Bluth has a fair bit on the procedures on his website's Animation Academy section but it is not, among other things, included in his book on Animation Drawing.

Cleanup is a very time-consuming process. I can animate something in two hours and then spend up to two days on getting it in "screen shape", even if it's a simple two-seconds scene for TV - so I really wonder why this difficult and exact art doesn't get more exposure in literature. Is it because it seems less prestigious than animation itself, because of the somewhat thankless nature of the work, spending hours cleaning up others' drawings which eventually zip by in less than a tenth of a second?

I am sure some one could write an entire book on the subject. The examples I have seen this past week were just basic stuff. There was one YouTube that was very interesting, as he went back and forth with his clean up. Some of the lines were redrawn three or four times before moving on to another part of the drawing.

Then there is the issue of line weight, brushes, pencils and line shape... or is it tapper? I will see if I can find that video again.

There are a couple of PDFs on animation meat about cleanup, but you're right - it isn't really covered extensively in any of the books I'm familiar with.

are you redrawing, (tracing) scanned images once you get them on the computer for the clean up. or would this be to time consuming also or a direction you would rather not go in

If you were accessible to where I live, I'd be able to sit down with you and, in about an hour or two, show you how to clean up and inbetween like a pro.
I did 'tweens for years--probably years longer than I needed to or should have, but I had the skills drilled into me my several talented animators.
It really is one of those technical aspects of the craft that gets overlooked because its not as sexy as just animating, but learning it is essential to making animation look good.
I do caution beginners to be careful HOW they learn it though, because there are some methods out there that are really suspect.
I do remember walking into classrooms late at night at VFS, late in the programme year and coaching students on inbetweening on their final films--and to my dismay realizing that they had not been properly taught.
Juts showing them how to register the drawings properly was eye-opening for them.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Sorry, Tyree, I'm talking strictly traditional inbetweening here. Nothing digital.

I do caution beginners to be careful HOW they learn it though, because there are some methods out there that are really suspect.

I'm interested, which methods do you deem suspect?

I've heard from some that they consider shift & trace unreliable and I agree that in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing it can seriously mess a drawing up. I use it quite often, though, and so far I haven't had major problems with it.
I've also heard that apparently some consider it the ultimate skill test to use the backlight as little as possible - which personally I think is weapons-grade BS.

All in all I'd say proper judgement which method to use when is worth a lot. I don't shift & trace all elements, of course. With close inbetweens or simple shapes I rely on my visual judgement. I try to stay away from thirds unless the movement is broad and even. When thirds will work better I usually do one and use that and the last key to make the other third a straight 1/2.
Also, working on our current project doesn't require perfectly even lines, meaning we can concentrate on volume control rather than lineart quality. In motion and colour few people will pay attention to the latter anyway. Other than that, I'd say flip, roll and check constantly, mind the overall arcs (an area I still need to improve in), and the electric eraser is your best fiend.

when he said it was taking him quite some time to do clean up I assumed it was a more traditional method

I've heard from some that they consider 'shift & trace' unreliable and I agree that in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing it can seriously mess a drawing up. I use it quite often, though, and so far I haven't had major problems with it.
I've also heard that apparently some consider it the ultimate skill test to use the backlight as little as possible - which personally I think is weapons-grade BS.

Shift and trace is the method I used religiously, and I was trained to use it properly, by Bob Jaques of Carbunkle Cartoons.
The key is in how you register the inbetween to the keys.

The folks that do it wrong use the "corner method"--which is placing the inbetween pages corners 1/2 way between the key pages corners.
It doesn't work because not all sheet of paper in a ream are necessarily cut to the exact same dimensions. Its possible to have variance in sheets out to 1/6th of a inch, which is quite a lot. Early on, I was taught this method, but later tutelage showed me that is assumes a lot.

The trick, instead, is to use cross hairs that you draw onto the keys and inbetween to register the pages in order to shift and trace properly. I place them around the character so they will not conflict with the drawing itself. I draw them on the lead key and traceback the crosshairs onto the 2nd key and inbetween page from that key. I do NOT trace off the inbetween crosshairs from the 2nd key because of the inevitable generational deviation that is bound to happen once you start tracing off successive layers of paper. Every inbetween between those two keys has its crosshairs traced off from that first key.
I also make sure I have a supply of peg-hole reinforcing tabs to add to the peg-holes of all pages, in case they've deformed at all.
Using the crosshairs and arcs I can accurately shift and trace very subtle movements--which is what the method is ideal for.

The flip method can work with very broad inbetweens, with spacing on a inch or more between the keys-but its a practised art to do it well. I use a bit of a combo of this and shit and trace on broad keys, mostly because I want to police the volumes properly.
Its especially important when you have a timing chart with the 1/2 between two broad keys showing progressive tapers in/out of one of the keys.
If the 1/2 way inbetween has wonky volumes, the taper can exacerbate the mistake.

The reason for the shift and trace method is that its the easiest way to make sure the volumes are correct. If the animator provides breakdowns for certain parts of the action in the 'tweens ( and they should), then that can give you an idea of where to start the placement.

Of course, flipping and rolling the drawings when done is a good quality check, before you go off to do a proper pencil test.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

The trick, instead, is to use cross hairs that you draw onto the keys and inbetween to register the pages in order to shift and trace properly. I place them around the character so they will not conflict with the drawing itself. I draw them on the lead key and traceback the crosshairs onto the 2nd key and inbetween page from that key. I do NOT trace off the inbetween crosshairs from the 2nd key because of the inevitable generational deviation that is bound to happen once you start tracing off successive layers of paper. Every inbetween between those two keys has its crosshairs traced off from that first key.
I also make sure I have a supply of peg-hole reinforcing tabs to add to the peg-holes of all pages, in case they've deformed at all.
Using the crosshairs and arcs I can accurately shift and trace very subtle movements--which is what the method is ideal for.

Interesting variation. The way I learned was to choose at least three points on the character, the key positions of which would get marked on the inbetween sheet. Then those six points would be connected with a proper arc line and the middle or third position required for the inbetween marked on that. After that the points on all three sheets would be aligned and the sheets taped down, effectively moving the volumes to be inbetweened closer together. From there on it's mostly tracing. There's the danger of not estimating the distance correctly or not producing an accurate arc line, of course, but so far the process has worked for me for TV animation.
I admit I sometimes use the corners to verify my spacing isn't totally off, but to rely just on that would be catastrophically inaccurate. I didn't even know there are inbetweeners who consider it a valid method.
Anyway, I'll try your method once I've got my next batch of scenes ruffed out.

The PDFs on Clean Up and Inbetwening at "Animation Meat" are good basic material on inbetweening.

The new Walt Stanchfield books "Drawn To Life" vol. 1 and 2 will have some info. on clean up and inbetweening.

Don Bluth is offering online tutorials now , so he may have something .

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/index.php

Tony White's book "Animation From Pencils to Pixels" has some excellent material on how to do proper inbetweening, trace-backs, etc.

C.....- so I really wonder why this difficult and exact art doesn't get more exposure in literature....

Because there exists in traditional animation a caste system where these tiers of production are looked down upon; somehow lesser than key animation. Oh but no animator will admit it or may even be conciously aware. The last time I assisted (key clean-up, breakdowns) I was told I was good enough to be an animator but my drawing was good for assisting (being able to flesh out an animator's rough stickman). As one who had animated, I experienced the condescension of some animators first hand.
I remember more or less being jumped on for stating in a forum that I believed all these levels to be animation and that to do each job well one has to be animator. Now granted there exists in the system clean-up people who have a pretty line and forget to define the form or inbetweeners who always literally inbetween drawings and forget to inbetween the action but once upon a time there was just animation and then the task was broken up for the sake of production efficiency.

The short answer is key animator is the "sexier" position deciding the acting and action. The subsequent departments tasks are defined by what this frist level does but are just as important IMHO. So call me a commie;)

Heck, I've wished more time was spent explaining the opaquing process of old. Look at the beautiful golden age Disney cels and then look at the condescension there: ghettoizing women because it was believed they had an aesthetic not for animation, referring them as "girls". But anyone who has ever tried hand inking on a cel has found out you couldn't do it without being an artist.

Somehow the industry associated subsequent departments as meaning lesser.

Because there exists in traditional animation a caste system where these tiers of production are looked down upon; somehow lesser than key animation. Oh but no animator will admit it or may even be conciously aware. The last time I assisted (key clean-up, breakdowns) I was told I was good enough to be an animator but my drawing was good for assisting (being able to flesh out an animator's rough stickman). As one who had animated, I experienced the condescension of some animators first hand.
I remember more or less being jumped on for stating in a forum that I believed all these levels to be animation and that to do each job well one has to be animator. Now granted there exists in the system clean-up people who have a pretty line and forget to define the form or inbetweeners who always literally inbetween drawings and forget to inbetween the action but once upon a time there was just animation and then the task was broken up for the sake of production efficiency.

Speaketh the truth, my friend.......ooooohhhhhh ....ooooooh, speaketh the truth!

I too, can mirror, support and confirm this, because I have worked under some of the very same roofs as the Man of Graphite(tm). Indeed, I have been handed some of his scene folders to assist upon, back in the days of Yore ( them Yore days, maaaan....hella fun they were! Should we share the scars and bite marks with the youngin's?).
I have also experienced this "caste system" at work, and in a couple of cases the animators not only took upon this bias against other departments in the production pipeline, they revelled in it.
I can remember a couple of jobs where a couple of animators tried to shovel the bulk of the work onto the assistants ( who were doing clean-up and 'tween's) by leaving it to them to define the volumes and put the characters on model. So much so that these jokers were "completing" about 50 scenes a week, while the inbetweeners were barely able to complete 2 a week.
A few surreptitious whispers into the ears of management put the kibosh on that, tout suite.
Fortunately, that was as bad as I ever experienced it, but I have heard stories from colleagues of far worse shenanigans.

Heck, I've wished more time was spent explaining the opaquing process of old. Look at the beautiful golden age Disney cels and then look at the condescension there: ghettoizing women because it was believed they had an aesthetic not for animation, referring them as "girls". But anyone who has ever tried hand inking on a cel has found out you couldn't do it without being an artist.

I tried this once, and just for myself, not on a job.
Painted just a couple of cels and realized the skill needed to do it productively was beyond me. The people that did this back then ( yes, it was still being done in the first half dozen or so years of my own career) are true craftsmen. Theirs is as meticulous an art as any other in the field of animation.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

The short answer is key animator is the "sexier" position deciding the acting and action. The subsequent departments tasks are defined by what this frist level does but are just as important IMHO. So call me a commie;)

Wouldn't dream of it. The studio for which I work is quite liberal when it comes to responsibilities. There are hierarchies, of course, and some people are regarded as 'better' at some tasks than others and get employed accordingly, but everything is manageable and everybody talks to everybody when their areas of responsibility overlap. At the beginning of the year I was mostly assisting, now I'm animating and cleaning my own scenes, after that maybe I get to animate some more or join the Flash cleanup team - as long as there's work the people who can do it will get asked to do it. We also get all kinds of people - people from film schools like me and some colleagues, interns with no animation experience at all, former Disney animators and so forth.
The system works because the studio is small - the products aren't. Right now we work on a Christmas short for one of Germany's biggest broadcasters, simultaneously there's a series for the international market in production, last year some of the animators got to work on some feature film footage that will be released this June and so on and so on. I get my share of production experience, it's been putting food on the table for almost two years now - I can't complain.

Because there exists in traditional animation a caste system where these tiers of production are looked down upon; somehow lesser than key animation ...

...but once upon a time there was just animation and then the task was broken up for the sake of production efficiency.

Yes, this is quite true. And sometimes people who were very capable of being animators in their own right were kept "down" as Assistants because the Sr. Animators did not want to lose a valuable "right hand" . A good assistant is highly valued ,but at the same time that caste system does also imply that it's not as "important" a position as rough animator.

The good ones know and appreciate good clean up. (see attached) .

As a follow-up:
We have started production on our new series of shorts and I'm on the Flash clean-up team. I was able to pick up the necessary basics in a matter of days so for the moment I'm good with the medium I work in. The animation design and technique also favour digital production methods: the characters are very stylised and not too detailed and the animation is broad and snappy, using next to no straight inbetweens and a lot of hold layers. Here's an example of the overall style from the company's pitch pilot:

http://www.jep-animation.de/Bereiche/movies/rudolf.html

(Note: the pilot was actually cleaned using ink on paper with digital compositing only.)