performance animation

yeah, I thought so =\

scattered> I've never read that one, I'll have to look it up. I've only encountered ebooks at my school's library and didn't know you could buy them. Where can I go to buy Timing For Animation in ebook form?

Try www.blueportal.org or www.ebookportal.org, you can get por nada!

This might be one of the books you're talking about having read, but Timing for Animation can be purchased in e-book form for 1/6th the cost of hardcover...making it basically 5 bucks, and is a nice overview.

This is where you need to forget about the books, and start studying from real life.
The timing you get in books is for very basic things like walk cycles, and maybe a broad, very common kind of reaction. Essentially that's just "animating".......moving something.........but there's little to no emoting.

Now what you need to do is study people, or animals, for the nuances of their movements, the natural timing they have that conveys their inner thoughts. If you want to convey personality, you HAVE TO get inside the characters head--not just move them, but know what they are doing and why. Where you find the answers is up to you, because its now all about what YOU bring to the performance.
Welcome to the steep part of the mountain.

Arright, if we're going there, yah...past books, for me at least, "timing" was esoteric unless it broke down to one of two things.........observing how things actually time out, and observing how the same action with different timing affects the audience understanding of the mood/character/personality of the individual carrying out the action.

If I had a nickel for every question I had that could be answered with "experience"......Timing would've earned me a lot of nickels =)

Ken's absolutely right, but there's a passage in Illusion of life that sheds some light on timing and inbetweening. Frank and Ollie talk about having two key drawings, one with a head centered and one with the head off to one side, and what types of actions would result with different numbers of inbetweens. It starts off with getting hit by a brick and ends with stretching a sore muscle (if memory serves).

It won't answer your specific question, but it's worth looking at.

It is definitely the steep part of the mountain, and just when you think you're nearing the summit, it becomes obvious that it's just a plateau and there's another climb ahead of you. Clip in, and start climbing... :D

When I was inbetweening for Bob Jaques and Kelly Armstrong, they showed me that keys don't always need 1/2's for inbetweens. Sometimes you need a 1/3, or 2/3 in between, or something even more pronounced. Limiting the 'tweens to just 1/2's and increments of 1/2 ( 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc) is just too limiting.

Likewise, things like a head and body might be timed out on 1/2's, but arms or legs, might be on a different timing all together. It means doing more breakdowns before you inbetween--in essence the breakdowns become sub-keys--and taking things from there.
I can recall scenes with overlapping action that was all different timings--and all done for specific effect.
It takes a lot of planning and observation to master this--hence the steep mountain.

Unfortunately, my strategy is basically drawing out key poses and adding inbetweens halfway until the timing looks right.

Personally, I try to make sure the timing is right with just the keys alone. Then, adding the breakdowns and then the inbetweens just smooth out the action. I got this from one of my teachers at animation school. He said once "If it doesn't work with keys, it won't work when it's inbetweened." I base my work on that bit of advice.

There's the book "Acting for Animators" by Ed Hooks. It doesn't go into animation, but it's more about finding the personality of a character. It's a pretty small book and an easy read. There are some really good gems in there. Other than that, just what Ken said, look at life. Don't look at animation. Animation is already a characture of life so it will be a characature of a characature. Watch good movies with good actors and directors.

Aloha,
the Ape

The face will be the primary source or personality thru its expressions, with the body supporting it in pose.
My suggestion is to take a character that is already established but hypothesize some expressions for it that it normally wouldn't show.
For example: Jafar mustering a fart, Belle in lust, Batman laughing, Stitch getting all kissy etc....and work them out according to their established personality.
Batman wouldn't bellow out a belly laugh or a guffaw, and Belle is quite reserved.........Stitch is usually quite agressive, so a kissy mood would probably be over the top etc. so you'll really have to think hard about how the character would react AND how to solve the dilemma.
Little things like eye and eyebrow movements set up internal processes, with broader motions defining more conclusive internal decisions.
Jafar might look quickly from side to side to see if the coast is clear, then narrow his eyes in glee as he farts, and then possibly gape them wide as it turns out to be bigger than he thought. A kind of self-amusement moment.

What makes things like this read for the audience is the associations to it--combine with the in-character emotional consistency. Jafar would NEVER fart around another person, but alone.........who knows. Batman is a stoic 99.999999% of the time, but he's human too--and his "image" is forefront to him at all times. If the audience can associate to these performances then the character lives--and when that happens the rapport deepens.

You can go the Stromboli route and move the character constantly, or you can go the "anime" route and hardly move the character at all.
The choices you make...........well, this is what they pay us for.

Jafar mustering a fart

There's an image I'll never get out of my head... :D

It's funny that you say that, because my reply was going to center on that part too. I saw it in my mind and it occured to me it might be a good idea to talk about visualization. Getting it from the movie playing in your head to the actual drawings...I'm seriously considering keying it out this weekend lol

There's an image I'll never get out of my head... :D

I pick 'em carefully..........vvvvvveeeerrrrryyy carefully........

And I do need to experiment more with overlapping action.

One animator who was great at overlapping action was Virgil Ross. Some of his best work can be seen in the film High Diving Hare (by Friz Freleng c. 1949). The part where Bugs puts a door at the end of the diving board and Yosemite Sam tries to break through it is the scene I immediately think of. :cool: