Could tell me about how you keep your character from changing from drawing to drawning. Even tracing I get a little slop, but it is really bad when I try drawing different poses.
Practice!
Give yourself a few exercises and really force yourself to focus on keeping on model. Spend loads of time just sketching the character in different poses. You need to know the character really well if you want to stay on model.
A trick I got from a experienced hand was to take a model of the character--any sized image and place it under the page--then as you draw flip back and forth from it to reference the model.
It can be any size, almost any pose because you are not copying it per se, just using it as a reference point for proportions.
Make note of proportions of critical features, such as the size of eyes compared to the head, spacing apart, width of mouth, any offset shapes, tapering shapes or forms etc.
—
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Be sure you know what makes the character look like he or she does down to the last detail. How many heads tall, what specific shape is the head, is the arm tapered or straight, overall proportion, etc.
Do (or use) a very detailed model sheet or sheets to nail down all these details. Do some drawings of the character that aren't intended for the shot you're animating just to get familiar with how the character's put together.
If a particular pose is giving you trouble, step away from the disc and draw that pose in your sketchbook over and over until you get the drawing on model.
Wontobe, what stage of the animation are you at? If you are just at the rough animation stage, you really shouldn't worry about keeping the character on model. Just worry about the animation and posing of the character and keeping the volume of your character consistant. Once that's all done, and you are completely happy with the animation, then go back and clean up the drawings and put them on model. I keep a model sheet with a turn around of the character next to my animation disk when I do this, so like Ken said, I can keep looking at and refer back to it for reference.
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Close to what Ken said but when you get to the tight rough stage, you take your favorite Key, it may be an appealing pose, tighten it up and use that as your "control drawing", keeping beneath the drawings you are tightening-up checking volumes and proportions against that. Primarily, You needn't start cleaning up in sequence but you will eventually check volumes etc also by flipping in sequence...but the drawings are all going to have to relate.
I would sometimes have my control (my favorite pose) drawing and next I might do the first drawing ...and then the last...so now I know at least he starts and ends the same size....and then the key in the middle of the scene (with the first and last and control drawing on bot pegs) and then the key between the first and middle key...and then the key between the middle and last etc, etc....I pretty much cleaned up the same way always with a clean sheet over the tight rough I am cleaning-up. Oh yeh it's agood idea to erase the backs of your drawings so you don't transfer smudges.
Size problems happen alot in straight ahead animation if you don't check back to your original keys or when someone blindly cleans up; just successively puts down a rough, cleans it up, takes that off the pegs, puts down the next, cleans it up etc.....
Ok, I got. I am doing rough work on heads and they kept coming out different. I will work up a collection of roughs, keeping in mind those steps that you all told me to follow. Thanks.
Just to give you an idea of why you don't do clean-up right away:
I did some freelance Inbetween and Clean-up work for someone's personal project. She charted out how many inbetweens she wanted between her keys. I asked her if she shot out the animation first to see if the timing worked, cause I could tell by her charting 5 inbetweens between frames 10 and 35 that it wouldn't work. She said no, but it would work anyway. I said ok, because well she was the boss, and she was very good at paying me for my work. So multiple times she came back and asked if I could add more inbetweens between my inbetweens. I said sure, because well she's the boss and she was paying. But you can't just randomly add in more drawings, that will throw off the timeing. Oh well.
So it's much easier to throw out a a bunch of rough drawings that took you a couple of seconds to whip out and make your animation look right, than to get rid of a bunch of precious cleaned up drawings that you slaved over for days.
Just a tip. :)
Aloha,
the Ape
—
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Another helpful trick to inbetween individual body parts which don't alter a lot during movement but lay a certain distance apart is a technique called "shift & trace" - but it takes practise as well.
Let's assume you want to inbetween a head swinging from one side to another. Take the two keys for which you need to draw an inbetween and determine two or more "focal points" on both, like the tip of the character's nose, the corner of an eye etc. Then place both keys on your table's peg bar and turn on the backlight. Put a blank cel on top of the two keys and connect the "focal points" of the keys on the blank cel. Remember that everything moves in an arc! Then mark the inbetween's position of the focal points on that arc. (Usually the exact middle.)
Now tape the keys on top of each other so that as many of your focal points as possible match. On top of that you tape the cel with the arc and the marked inbetween positions of the focal points and match it to the focal points of the keys. Ideally, you should now be able to just trace the body parts which don't alter perspectively during the movement, or have an easier time to inbetween them because you've brought them closer together.
It's difficult to explain. If anyone knows a website with visual aids for the process, please link to them, won't you?
I heard some inbetweeners call this method "cheating" but I can assure you I learned it from a guy who was head of cleanup at Don Bluth's Ireland studio.
Jabberwocky, that sounds like a pretty good method (I think...). I can almost visualize it, but I'd love to see a visual version of your description, just to be sure I get it.
Yeah, at Otherspace we've done quite a bit of cleanup of drawings once the sketches are complete. It's almost all done in Photoshop, actually; each sketch is a layer, so we just switch layers on and off to get a feel for how closely the images match.
Of course, there is such a thing as being too adament about keeping on model. Sometimes going off model every once in a while adds an extra spark to the animation. Rod Scribner at Warner Bros. was the master of this technique, which is why he's one of my all time favourite animators of all time. :cool:
However, there is a fine line between "off model wonderful" and "off model crap". Make sure your animation falls into the first category when it's off model.
—
Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle.
Of course, there is such a thing as being too adament about keeping on model. Sometimes going off model every once in a while adds an extra spark to the animation. Rod Scribner at Warner Bros. was the master of this technique, which is why he's one of my all time favourite animators of all time. :cool:
However, there is a fine line between "off model wonderful" and "off model crap". Make sure your animation falls into the first category when it's off model.
Amen.
I worked at a place that was absolutely fanatical (dysfunctional in their understanding, if you ask me) about on-model...but of course the model sheet cannot account for every expression. Many a great animation drawing was sterilized by bringing it "on-model".
In my earliest experience, if a drawing had appeal, "off model wonderful" you call it, it was incorporated into a new model sheet.
Heres a link to some inbetweening info from animation meat. Its what Jabberwocky was explaining about earlier . Jabberwockys point i think is illustrated in step 9 of the info.
You're right, it explains the principle. Shift & trace is about matching two or more significant points on each key and the inbetween that is to be drawn. The inbetween drawing is then constructed around those points. But be warned, it requires accuracy to do. Slight mistakes can make the whole thing go awry.
I am using Painter currently and I am having a little trouble with it. I keep having to it the undo button because I am not getting the line the way I wont it. At this rate, one rough cel takes me an hour and the drawing is only a very simple line drawing.
Practice!
Give yourself a few exercises and really force yourself to focus on keeping on model. Spend loads of time just sketching the character in different poses. You need to know the character really well if you want to stay on model.
A trick I got from a experienced hand was to take a model of the character--any sized image and place it under the page--then as you draw flip back and forth from it to reference the model.
It can be any size, almost any pose because you are not copying it per se, just using it as a reference point for proportions.
Make note of proportions of critical features, such as the size of eyes compared to the head, spacing apart, width of mouth, any offset shapes, tapering shapes or forms etc.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Be sure you know what makes the character look like he or she does down to the last detail. How many heads tall, what specific shape is the head, is the arm tapered or straight, overall proportion, etc.
Do (or use) a very detailed model sheet or sheets to nail down all these details. Do some drawings of the character that aren't intended for the shot you're animating just to get familiar with how the character's put together.
If a particular pose is giving you trouble, step away from the disc and draw that pose in your sketchbook over and over until you get the drawing on model.
Wontobe, what stage of the animation are you at? If you are just at the rough animation stage, you really shouldn't worry about keeping the character on model. Just worry about the animation and posing of the character and keeping the volume of your character consistant. Once that's all done, and you are completely happy with the animation, then go back and clean up the drawings and put them on model. I keep a model sheet with a turn around of the character next to my animation disk when I do this, so like Ken said, I can keep looking at and refer back to it for reference.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Close to what Ken said but when you get to the tight rough stage, you take your favorite Key, it may be an appealing pose, tighten it up and use that as your "control drawing", keeping beneath the drawings you are tightening-up checking volumes and proportions against that. Primarily, You needn't start cleaning up in sequence but you will eventually check volumes etc also by flipping in sequence...but the drawings are all going to have to relate.
I would sometimes have my control (my favorite pose) drawing and next I might do the first drawing ...and then the last...so now I know at least he starts and ends the same size....and then the key in the middle of the scene (with the first and last and control drawing on bot pegs) and then the key between the first and middle key...and then the key between the middle and last etc, etc....I pretty much cleaned up the same way always with a clean sheet over the tight rough I am cleaning-up. Oh yeh it's agood idea to erase the backs of your drawings so you don't transfer smudges.
Size problems happen alot in straight ahead animation if you don't check back to your original keys or when someone blindly cleans up; just successively puts down a rough, cleans it up, takes that off the pegs, puts down the next, cleans it up etc.....
Ok, I got. I am doing rough work on heads and they kept coming out different. I will work up a collection of roughs, keeping in mind those steps that you all told me to follow. Thanks.
Just to give you an idea of why you don't do clean-up right away:
I did some freelance Inbetween and Clean-up work for someone's personal project. She charted out how many inbetweens she wanted between her keys. I asked her if she shot out the animation first to see if the timing worked, cause I could tell by her charting 5 inbetweens between frames 10 and 35 that it wouldn't work. She said no, but it would work anyway. I said ok, because well she was the boss, and she was very good at paying me for my work. So multiple times she came back and asked if I could add more inbetweens between my inbetweens. I said sure, because well she's the boss and she was paying. But you can't just randomly add in more drawings, that will throw off the timeing. Oh well.
So it's much easier to throw out a a bunch of rough drawings that took you a couple of seconds to whip out and make your animation look right, than to get rid of a bunch of precious cleaned up drawings that you slaved over for days.
Just a tip. :)
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
Another helpful trick to inbetween individual body parts which don't alter a lot during movement but lay a certain distance apart is a technique called "shift & trace" - but it takes practise as well.
Let's assume you want to inbetween a head swinging from one side to another. Take the two keys for which you need to draw an inbetween and determine two or more "focal points" on both, like the tip of the character's nose, the corner of an eye etc. Then place both keys on your table's peg bar and turn on the backlight. Put a blank cel on top of the two keys and connect the "focal points" of the keys on the blank cel. Remember that everything moves in an arc! Then mark the inbetween's position of the focal points on that arc. (Usually the exact middle.)
Now tape the keys on top of each other so that as many of your focal points as possible match. On top of that you tape the cel with the arc and the marked inbetween positions of the focal points and match it to the focal points of the keys. Ideally, you should now be able to just trace the body parts which don't alter perspectively during the movement, or have an easier time to inbetween them because you've brought them closer together.
It's difficult to explain. If anyone knows a website with visual aids for the process, please link to them, won't you?
I heard some inbetweeners call this method "cheating" but I can assure you I learned it from a guy who was head of cleanup at Don Bluth's Ireland studio.
Jabberwocky, that sounds like a pretty good method (I think...). I can almost visualize it, but I'd love to see a visual version of your description, just to be sure I get it.
Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com
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www.galaxy12.com/latenight
Yeah, at Otherspace we've done quite a bit of cleanup of drawings once the sketches are complete. It's almost all done in Photoshop, actually; each sketch is a layer, so we just switch layers on and off to get a feel for how closely the images match.
Of course, there is such a thing as being too adament about keeping on model. Sometimes going off model every once in a while adds an extra spark to the animation. Rod Scribner at Warner Bros. was the master of this technique, which is why he's one of my all time favourite animators of all time. :cool:
However, there is a fine line between "off model wonderful" and "off model crap". Make sure your animation falls into the first category when it's off model.
Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle.
You can also read the first 18 pages of my next book for free at this link: The Hap Hap Happy Happenstance of Fanny Punongtiti
Amen.
I worked at a place that was absolutely fanatical (dysfunctional in their understanding, if you ask me) about on-model...but of course the model sheet cannot account for every expression. Many a great animation drawing was sterilized by bringing it "on-model".
In my earliest experience, if a drawing had appeal, "off model wonderful" you call it, it was incorporated into a new model sheet.
I agree. Just like shows like Ren & Stimpy where drawing "wonderfully off-model" is part of the style.
Heres a link to some inbetweening info from animation meat. Its what Jabberwocky was explaining about earlier . Jabberwockys point i think is illustrated in step 9 of the info.
All the best!
potter
http://www.animationmeat.com/pdf/featureanimation/10Steps.pdf
You're right, it explains the principle. Shift & trace is about matching two or more significant points on each key and the inbetween that is to be drawn. The inbetween drawing is then constructed around those points. But be warned, it requires accuracy to do. Slight mistakes can make the whole thing go awry.
I really like Potters web link, thanks. A lot of really great advice that I am putting to use. Thanks to all of you.
I am using Painter currently and I am having a little trouble with it. I keep having to it the undo button because I am not getting the line the way I wont it. At this rate, one rough cel takes me an hour and the drawing is only a very simple line drawing.