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any tips for timing storyboards?

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any tips for timing storyboards?

I'm in the process of creating a storyboard and animatic for a short I'm planning. Are there any 'rules of thumb' when it comes to timing your scenes? Like how many frames it takes for each new scene to register, and how long you should pause for effect? What's the average scene length?

My idea is that I cut together an animatic in flash, and then I'll go through and adjust the timing for each scene till it seems to flow right. It's already getting a bit on the complex side, and I'm beginning to realise that my sense of timing isn't the greatest... What I didn't realise is how boring it gets watching it over and over trying to get a sense of if it's working. It probably won't have too many different shots and camera angles for the sake of simplicity, but at the moment, I think the pacing may be a little slow. Maybe it just seems slow since there's no animation at the moment. I can't really tell. What's the best way to approach this? Should I leave the fine tuning till I get the animation done? :confused:

i would sit there with a stop watch and imagine the action taking place in the shot. start when i start and end it once ive played the action out in my head in the shot. then do the same to the next one and so forth..

i have only done one animatic though, And there was dialogue that helped me know when to move to the next.

good luck. im curious to know what other people have to suggest.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

Fine tune as much as possible now (it's the cheapest time to do it). There will most likely be timing left to do after you start animating, especially when you're just learning the process. There's always some editing that goes on after the animation has started, even with the professionals.

Couple things that can help figure out timing:
-Add some defining drawings to help define important action points (a punch, a character sitting down, etc.)
-Do some basic cut out animation (you don't even necessarily need fully articulate arms and legs, just simple characters you can slide around) in the animatic for complex actions and defining how long a character takes to do something
-Keep it simple. You need to be able to change things quickly and easily.
-Record some audio for important actions, especially any dialogue. If you know what music you're using, now's a good time to start using it.

Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com

Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight

those are great tips kdiddy! i am finally learning how important the planning stage is. and to that end, how important good storyboard/animatics are.

what i've been doing, just for fun, is watching short (30 second) clips of movies or animations that i like, and then roughing a quick animatic straight in flash of the scene from memory. then i watch the clip again and tweak the timing of my fake animatic to match. if you do this a few times, you might start to internalize that sense of pacing.

has anyone else tried this? post em! hehe.
-pete

i prefer working on the basis of dialogue. fitting the dialogue over the action and making sure its what we had in mind. making sure the stop watch is in correspondence as well.
this way if there is any changes to make you can do it right at this juncture.

Timing and pacing is one of the most hardest things to nail down. Like the others said, if you have dialogue or music put it in now, and this will dictate quite a bit of your timing. The more drawings you have the easier timing out your animatic will be. Make all your "Golden Poses" nice and clear, then you can quickly rough in more of the key poses. Try to get as much of your timing down now. You don't want to waste time and money animating too much, or have to re-animate a shot because it was way to fast.

When you get to the animation stage, rough out the animation with your golden poses, keys, and breakdowns. These are the drawings that you are doing to definatly need to have, so get the timing nailed down at that point.

Good luck.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

The "Bluthian" stop watch approach has already been mentioned. However, in his book on storyboarding he also mentions that timing to music alone tends to make scenes too long.

Thanks for all the suggestions. They're all helpful, particularly about the need for important poses to describe the action. I don't have a handy stopwatch at the moment; there are programs you can get on the internet, but mostly I've been going through and thinking "2 seconds there, 4 seconds there, etc" and looking at my wristwatch. I was starting to wonder if maybe there could be some theory behind the pacing of it. But I will get a stopwatch soon.

To give you an idea of what I'm trying to do, first of all there is no dialogue in the film. There will be some music, though I haven't picked anything yet, and I'll probably go with something fairly low key and unintrusive. For a good portion of the film, the cental character is travelling from left to right. This is bothering me, since I'm not sure how to stage it. I reckon I'll cut between shots of him walking in a fixed position against a moving background, and shots of walking from one side to the other, but I'm having trouble finding any sort of logic between endless treadmills and repetitive scenes of left to right. All I know is at the moment, in animatic form, that stuff looks fairly dull. Animation and music will probably help, and maybe I can squeeze in a few background gags. I was hoping there might be some sort of rule of thumb, like don't show a treadmill for more than 5 seconds or something like that. Shows like the Simpsons that have dedicated 'animation timers', I'm sure they have lots of little tricks for different types of scenes.

Later on in the film, there's some comedic bits. they're not in the animatic yet. I think they could be pretty funny, but if I get the timing wrong on these, they could easily fall flat. I've seen a lot of short films where they don't quite get the message across, and after all the effort that goes in, it can be a real shame.

if you have various shots of one type of action, make sure you throw some different camera angles in there to keep it from getting dull.

You just need to keep it timed with the pace of the mood. If its a slow pace, dont make it too fast, if its a faster pace dont make it to slow. If he is sulking down the block its slow. If he is angrily marching to somewhere it is a bit faster.

once you get started you will notice some of your worries going to rest.

acting out your animation works well for comedic timing. I imagine it in my head. the pauses, the action. i act it out and time it with a stopwatch. If me falling to the ground 5 times, after pausing in mid air, to make sure it feels right gets me a "nice timing" from the teacher, then thats what i will do.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

I have timed a number of storyboards and I share your feelings of frustration. For a long time I sensed that timing the action drawn in the storyboard is not enough. There appears to be a large gap between the detail in the storyboard and the finished animated scene.
I then read about the "workbook". This stage is an intermediate stage between the storyboard and animation. In this stage dedicated artists draw those "golden poses" one of you guys mentioned. These drawings are then used in timing the action.
Chuck Jones used to make these drawings himself for the short films he directed. I haven't applied this technique yet. My producer doesn't understand the richness and subtlety the workbook can add to the animation.
Moving to another point, I also do animatics. I use After Effects and the story board images. I seperate the elements I want to animate using masks. The process is time consuming and can be boring especially if you are the director and everybody wants a piece of you and the producer wants to discuss a million little things with you at the same time you are compiling the story reel.
I think the fastest way is the stopwatch method. But even with that method the "golden poses" will be useful. I still haven't got the hang of this method, but I think if you use a video editing program that allows you to drop markers while playing could be more useful than a stopwatch in the timing process.

Now I have a question. Are feature films timed in the same way? The process is very time consuming. Maybe the timing for features is less "concrete" than for shorts. I'd like to know.

Moving to another point, I also do animatics. I use After Effects and the story board images. I seperate the elements I want to animate using masks. The process is time consuming and can be boring especially if you are the director and everybody wants a piece of you and the producer wants to discuss a million little things with you at the same time you are compiling the story reel.

You're wasting a lot of time perfecting something that should amount to slapping a bunch of sketches together. Forget about the masks. If you need elements to move around it'd probably be quicker to redraw them or trace them and scan them in separately. Scanned pencil drawings can be slapped together with a blending mode (Screen or Darken I think, sorry it's been a little while since using AE). After Effects is a little cumbersome for editing, just because every edit requires a re-render. I'd suggest using an editing program like Premiere or Final Cut instead (you can also do some superimposition stuff in their as well).

Watch the pencil tests from any Disney films, for instance, and you'll see it's just a bunch of scanned and super imposed images (not that your animatic should be full on articulated animation, but the point is a pencil test is about quick feedback). It should be light and quick process, more concerned with the timing and composition than the quality of the finished art.

Producing solidily ok animation since 2001.
www.galaxy12.com

Now with more doodling!
www.galaxy12.com/latenight

You should go to the book store and look for "Storyboarding" by Wendy Tumminello. The book is published by Thomson & Delmar Learning and is part of the "exploring" series. As I have posted in a different thread, this books is desigined for use in a class room. I am up to chapter four and I think this is an excellent buy.

You should go to the book store and look for "Storyboarding" by Wendy Tumminello. The book is published by Thomson & Delmar Learning and is part of the "exploring" series. As I have posted in a different thread, this books is desigined for use in a class room. I am up to chapter four and I think this is an excellent buy.

hey cool, you're plugging my storyboarding teacher's book. I didn't know it had gotten published already. I think she used some of my drawings in there.

http://ben-reynolds.com
Animation and Design

I actually went ahead and ordered an analog stopwatch off ebay. I think it does 1/10s of a second, which should be close enough for me since I generally work on 1/12 second. It's actually pretty close to the same make and model as the stopwatch in the Bluth animation book. It should arrive some time soon.