Here are the drawings and pencil tests from this assignment that I did with the students.

Day 1 (1 hour of drawing and 30 min of timing and pencil test)
These are the key drawings that I did in the class demo. They're really rough and they shrink towards the end of the action, so it looks like the character is actually stepping back in perspective, which is a happy mistake. There are 19 keys here and they took about an hour along with all the talking and acting the movements out to the class. For this demo, I had the students come up one at a time and pose out each of the drawings. All the other students sat around the posing student and drew that pose for reference. I've done the same thing for other classes that I've taught - primarily for character design. This time I thought it would be neat to get the students involved in acting the action out.

I took the drawings home and scanned them in and did the rough timing in Premier. This is just my first pass through to block the scene out. and see if it's moving properly. There are a few secondary keys missing as well as some recovery keys along with all of the breakdowns and obviously all the inbetweens. Right now it's timing out to 7 seconds 12 frames at 24fps. I didn't have enough time in class to pose out the final action of placing the sack onto the box. I'll do that next.

My next step beyond that, is to go back over the drawings and resize them so that they're all back on model to the original key pose. I'll also add in the missing secondary keys and recovery keys and shoot a new test and adjust the timing a bit more.

Phrasing
Just like the Step Up/Step Down assignment, there are three "phrases" to the scene. A phrase can be described as an action of some sort. In this case, the first phrase is the character bending down to grab the flour sack. The second phrase is the character lifting the sack off the ground and the third phrase is the character placing the sack onto the platform.

Each of these phrases or actions requires an anticipation before and a reaction or recovery after it. In my example here, the character is standing directly in front of the sack, so there is no need for any movement other than the anticipation up before coming down to grab it. On the lowest part of the grab, I need to add in a bit more of an overlapping recovery. I just reused two drawings to get the build up to the lift, I'll also fix that by adding in a couple of different keys there, so it doesn't look repeditive. For the final action, I'll also need to add in the anticipation and final recovery. in some cases, you can blend the reactions and anticipation to the next move, it all depends on your timing and whether or not you want to add pauses between the major actions for a bit of a thought process. Act it out yourself and see when you pause and when you don't.

Pausing the Character
Speaking of "pauses", It's o.k. to have your character pause for a moment to collect themselves for the next phrase. Just be sure that you slow into the held key softly and add in any overlapping action that you can so the character doesn't appear to just lock into the pose suddenly with a jerk. Be sure the held pose is strong with the correct attitude and nice lines of action through the body. An awkward pose can make the hold seem unnatural.

Make sure the hold is long enough to reflect any thought process that the character is thinking at that moment. If the character is thinking, "I wonder how heavy this is? I hope I can lift it." How long does it take for them to think this? Half a second? 4 seconds? Time yourself saying this in your head or out loud. How long did it take? That's how long the hold should be for.

Animated Holds
It would be best, if you do decide to put the character into a hold, to do what is called an animated hold. This is where you trace back the key you want the character to be in, twice. Now you have three drawings all the same of the character in the held pose. You then shoot these three drawings over and over again for the length of the hold. When you trace a drawing, you can be as careful as you want to but you will never duplicate the original exactly the same way. When you shoot the three drawings in sequence for say 3 seconds, the lines will move slightly to create a bit of life to the action... or non-action in this case. It helps to keep the character from looking as though they've frozen solid. Don't be loose with these tracebacks - if you are the character will twitch rather than hold... which is not really a good thing.