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THE ANIMATION WORK PROCESS - PART 1

• Daily Practice

• Research

• Visualize

• Analyze

• Thumbnails

THE ANIMATION WORK PROCESS - PART 1

Each individual animator probably has their own personal, individualistic way of approaching their scenes, you know those quirky things like locking themselves in their room, turning out all the lights and lying down under their animation desk with a sketch pad while listening to ABBA. Well, not all animators do this but there are two common ways of handling a scene. These are very general guide lines and are not to be taken as absolutes. There are many variables involved such as lipsync, the number of characters in the scene, the type of shot and the action taking place within the scene.

The first method is Analytical.

When you:

1) receive the scene and read through the storyboard,

2) talk the scene through with the director. Find out what the context of the scene is in relation to the scenes just before and the scenes after. What is the mental motivation of the character, the physical motivation?

3) If there is lipsync, listen to the track to find out what the intonation of the character is, what is the attitude.

4) Then take the scene and act it out. Act it out in front of a mirror, in front of a video camera, in front of a friend or by yourself. Try acting the scene in a number of different ways with different timings or different accent points.

5) Hyper analyze the whole scene.

6) Draw thumbnail sketches of the action.

7) Make any revisions necessary and then

8) rough animate.

The second method is Gut Instinct. (I actually made up this term). Now by this I don't mean that you're just winging it and hoping that some magic pixie dust will fall on your blank pages and the scene is animated. You still have to go through most of the basic steps outlined above in the Analytical method, pretty much up to step 3.

Step 4 is to lock yourself away and think the scene through in your head and then

5) rough animate based pretty much on your gut instincts.

The visual output is usually quite distinct. Animators who use the Analytical method usually have fairly clean key drawings due to the fact that they've worked the scene out in rough thumbnails already. Animators who use the "Gut Instinct" method usually work fairly rough and sketchy.

* It should be noted that this isn't an absolute statement and doesn't apply to every animator's work habits.

Try using the following points and adjust them to your own work system.

Daily Practice

Study through observation and research, draw, mentally visualize actions, draw, practice thumbnails until you arrive at a solid ability to shorthand your character, draw, draw, draw. As you gain experience through your drawing, you can allow your subconscious to search for various entertainment and expression possibilities. The more you practice the more you may learn about your character. This added knowledge may help in your approach to the storytelling and characterization.

Research

Be sure to focus on the basic principles of animation that are called for in the scene you are animating. Take notes in the lecture classes, follow along with the demonstrations yourself. Review your hand outs on the assignment and as questions if you're unclear about anything. Look for examples of the action you're doing in animated films, live action, and in real life. Act out the action yourself and analyze what your body is doing. Ask someone else to do the action and watch how they interpret it. Incorporate the basic principles involved into your research and your understanding of the action desired.

Visualize

We all have the ability to mentally visualize something. It isn't something that creates a solid image inside our head, rather it is more like something you can't quite grasp, it's almost there but not really, sort of like a ghost. When you close your eyes and think about something, let's say Bugs Bunny standing cocky, chewing on a carrot, you should be able to almost see it as a negative image. Since your eyes are closed all you see is black. Any image will have a white line to it. If you practice doing this visualization exercise, you will get better at it over time but it does take concentrated practice. The best time to do this is when you're all by yourself without any distractions and you can close your eyes and shut out the outside world for about 5 minutes. Can you think of any time during your day that you can do this? You might say that you don't have the time, you're just too busy, however, you , like most other humans do spend about 5 minutes a day in the bathroom sort of just sitting around... if you know what I mean. This is the perfect time to practice your mental visualization exercises. Mentally visualize the action and assess the entertainment value of your approach. How could this action be best staged?

Analyze

If the scene has dialogue, get a cassette of the soundtrack and listen to it for the emotional range required. Act the scene out to get a feel for what you want to do in the scene. Begin drawing your thumbnails.

Thumbnails

Thumbnail sketches are a way of shorthanding your drawing. It's far better to spend a few minutes doing these quick rough sketches to break down the action taking place rather than a lot of time drawing the character animation full sized only to find out that the animation posing doesn't work. It's time that could be better spent. Sketch to solve staging, action, and sequencing problems. Arrive at a plan for your keys.

After listening to the soundtrack, decide whether to play with it or against it. Usually, there are five major poses in the average scene - sometimes more, sometimes less. In analyzing the dialogue of a scene, listen for the emotions in the delivery of the lines. Be sensitive to the slightest nuance in the delivery as this can make a huge difference in the outcome of your character's acting. Also listen for the specific rhythm of the delivery. It is the animator's job to be purely analytical at this point. It is crucial to analyze the forces necessary to visually capture the energy of the delivery.

Focus on the silhouettes of each pose. Analyze the overall path of action through which the character moves in that scene and draw the path on the same page as the thumbnails. Study the exposure sheets and see where the major accents are. Block out only the major accents on the sheets.

Next Tip: THE ANIMATION WORK PROCESS - PART 2