IntroductionIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:03 | Hi! I am George Maestri and
welcome to 2D Character Animation.
| | 00:06 | Before an animator touches a computer,
they should know the basic principles of
| | 00:10 | animation, how characters move,
how they walk and how they talk.
| | 00:15 | In this course, I will show you how
to design and create characters for
| | 00:18 | animation starting with pencil
and paper and then in the computer.
| | 00:22 | I will show you how to make joints
that work and create multiple parts for
| | 00:26 | replacement animation.
| | 00:28 | After that we will look at Newton's laws
of motion and how those laws create the
| | 00:32 | principles of animation such as Squash
and Stretch, Overlap and Follow-through
| | 00:37 | and also show you how to get a
character walking and running.
| | 00:41 | Then we will move on to dialogue
animation, including how to read soundtracks,
| | 00:46 | rules for assigning mouth shapes
and the basics of acting to dialogue.
| | 00:50 | We will use both Flash and After
Effects for creating character walks and
| | 00:54 | lip sync animation in each of those applications.
| | 00:57 | So, if you're ready, let's get
started with 2D Character Animation.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:01 | Now while the title is mostly software
independent, we will do a little bit of
| | 00:05 | work with After Effects and Flash.
| | 00:08 | So, we will have some Exercise Files.
| | 00:11 | When you install the Exercise Files, just
go ahead and place them on your Desktop.
| | 00:17 | Let's take a look at the
rigs that we have for Flash.
| | 00:21 | Under the Rigs folder we have two rigs.
| | 00:24 | One is called Character_Rig.
| | 00:27 | Let's go ahead and zoom out here.
| | 00:29 | It's a 1930s kind of Fleischer character,
which we will use a lot, and we also
| | 00:34 | have another rig called Woman and
this is a more sophisticated rig and she
| | 00:41 | actually has mouths that can animate.
| | 00:43 | So, if you want to start animating dialog
you can do that with this particular rig.
| | 00:49 | So with these two rigs, we should be
able to cover most of the material that
| | 00:52 | we will be presenting.
| | 00:54 | Let's go ahead and take a look
at the rigs for After Effects.
| | 00:58 | We also have another rig called
Character and another rig called Woman.
| | 01:07 | So, with these rigs you should be able to
follow along with most of the exercises.
| | 01:12 | Go ahead and install your Exercise Files now.
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1. Creating Characters for AnimationDesigning characters| 00:01 | One of the more fun aspects of
character animation is actually designing the
| | 00:05 | characters themselves.
| | 00:07 | Now, character design is a whole
discipline into itself, so I am not going to
| | 00:11 | get into all the aspects of it but I do
want to talk a little bit about how we
| | 00:16 | should design characters for animation.
| | 00:19 | When I design characters, I tend to
sketch things out on pencil and paper.
| | 00:23 | This bear is a one example of that.
| | 00:26 | You can certainly design your
characters in the computer using a tablet.
| | 00:31 | However you feel
comfortable with sketching things out.
| | 00:35 | Now, when I design a character usually
what I do is I just open up my sketch
| | 00:38 | book and start drawing and
actually start playing around.
| | 00:42 | Now here are some simple sketches that I
have done for character design projects.
| | 00:46 | Here is some more and again, I am just
playing and trying to get a sense of what
| | 00:51 | the character is going to be.
| | 00:54 | Now, once I get a design that I like I
tend to explore it a little bit more and
| | 00:59 | I tend to draw it out and try different
combinations and once I hit upon a shape
| | 01:04 | or form that I like then I start
refining it into a more animatable character.
| | 01:10 | So, for example this one here
actually had a bit of an evolution.
| | 01:14 | So, here is the character that I
started with from my sketchbook, then I copied
| | 01:19 | him and cleaned him up a little bit as
well as changed some of the character.
| | 01:23 | Now, for example, his lengths here are
very short and so what was I lengthened
| | 01:28 | the legs a little bit so he would
have room to walk and then for the actual
| | 01:32 | animated character, the one that I
have actually finished, I even lengthened
| | 01:36 | his legs more. That's so he can walk more easily.
| | 01:40 | Now, other things that I changed here
was I had kind of like this hairstyle on
| | 01:43 | the character's head but
I decided to go with the hat instead.
| | 01:47 | So, as you can see your rough sketches
can be reworked and redrawn until you get
| | 01:52 | something that works really well.
| | 01:54 | It's really a process of refining the character.
| | 01:57 | Now once you have a sketch that you
like, one of the things I like to do is
| | 02:02 | create what's called a turnaround.
| | 02:05 | So, for example that bear that I
showed you, what I do is I create a front,
| | 02:09 | a side and a three-quarter view of the bear.
| | 02:14 | Here is another character with a turnaround.
| | 02:15 | Now one of the things I have done
here is I have actually drawn some lines
| | 02:19 | because when you animate a character,
you want the character to be of the same
| | 02:23 | proportions as they turn their head.
| | 02:26 | So one of the things I am doing here is
I am trying to make sure that the eyes
| | 02:29 | line up, the bottom of the chin,
the hair and the feet all line up.
| | 02:34 | So when the character actually turns
around, it doesn't shrink and grow and when
| | 02:39 | you start animating characters,
you really do need to pay attention to
| | 02:43 | proportion and here is the
final version of this character.
| | 02:46 | This is actually been drawn over the
original sketch in Illustrator and the
| | 02:51 | parts have been segmented out so that
we can actually animate the character.
| | 02:56 | So, when you are designing characters be sure
to pay attention to the form of the character.
| | 03:01 | Make sure that the character can be animated.
| | 03:04 | In other words, make sure that the
feet aren't too big, they pass below the body,
| | 03:07 | that sort of thing, and then once
you get a design that you like then go
| | 03:12 | ahead and create a turnaround of your
character, so you can see them from many angles.
| | 03:17 | This will help you significantly when
you go to actually animate your character.
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| Tracing characters| 00:01 | Once you've created your character,
you'll need to get it ready to animate.
| | 00:05 | This involves several steps.
| | 00:06 | The first one is getting your
character into the computer.
| | 00:10 | Now, if you've drawn your character on
pencil and paper, you can certainly scan that in.
| | 00:15 | If you draw directly in the computer then
just bring up your original design files.
| | 00:20 | Now, once you have the character in the
computer, you'll need to make a decision
| | 00:24 | as to how you want to proceed.
| | 00:26 | Do you want your
character to be vector or bitmap?
| | 00:30 | Now vector is something like Flash or
Illustrator where you draw outlines.
| | 00:35 | In fact let me show you this
bear here, in vector format.
| | 00:39 | So, what we do here is we just draw
individual outlines and the outlines
| | 00:44 | themselves define the shape of the character.
| | 00:47 | Now one of the benefits of vector
drawing is that it's resolution independent,
| | 00:52 | which means I can zoom in as far as I
want and I will never get pixilation and
| | 00:58 | this image will never break up.
| | 01:01 | Another important benefit of vector-based
graphics is that the file sizes are a lot smaller.
| | 01:07 | It's a lighter file format, which
is really important for things like
| | 01:11 | mobile content or Internet, where
you have to deliver the content quickly
| | 01:16 | over a network connection.
| | 01:18 | Now, one of the downfalls of vector
graphics is that it really is pretty much
| | 01:22 | limited to solid colors and gradients.
| | 01:24 | So the color palette might not be as
rich as a bitmap image, but if you want
| | 01:31 | your characters to look pretty much like cel
shaded characters, this will not be an issue.
| | 01:36 | Let me show you the same
character in bitmap format.
| | 01:40 | Here we are in Photoshop and I have
the same character up and you can see I
| | 01:44 | have just traced him in pretty much the
same way but if I zoom in, you can see
| | 01:50 | how I get pixilation.
| | 01:52 | You can see how this kind of breaks up.
| | 01:55 | So what you have to do with these sorts
of characters is you have to make them a
| | 01:58 | little bit bigger than your delivery mechanism.
| | 02:01 | So if you want to zoom in, for example,
you'll need to make sure that you have
| | 02:05 | enough bitmap resolution to handle
that zoom. But making the file bigger will
| | 02:11 | also add more density to the file,
which means it will make the file bigger,
| | 02:17 | make it harder to deliver.
| | 02:18 | So if you are going to do something
that's over the Internet, you probably
| | 02:22 | wouldn't want to go to something like
vector-based graphics but bitmap graphics
| | 02:28 | does have some advantages.
| | 02:30 | In fact, here let me show you a
character that I've done here.
| | 02:33 | Now, this is just a character that's
pulled from a classic Renaissance painting.
| | 02:38 | Back here, let me show you the painting here.
| | 02:40 | So what I did was I just took this
standard classic painting and then just cut
| | 02:44 | out the character and this shows you
one of the advantages of having a bitmap
| | 02:49 | image and that you can do
something that's very, very painterly.
| | 02:52 | This is something you probably wouldn't
be able to do in a vector-based package.
| | 02:56 | Now once we have the character in the
computer, the other thing we need to do
| | 03:02 | is we need to start breaking up the character
into multiple pieces so that it can be animated.
| | 03:09 | Now I've done this in
Photoshop using the Layers feature.
| | 03:13 | So, for example, I've taken the Snout,
the pupils and really every part of this
| | 03:19 | character including the head, the ears,
the belly and I have segmented it into
| | 03:26 | the parts that need to be animated.
| | 03:28 | A good example might be the arm.
| | 03:30 | So, for example, we have a separate
layer for the upper arm and for the lower
| | 03:35 | arm or the forearm. Same
thing for the legs and the feet.
| | 03:39 | So, I have a separate layer for the
foot and a separate layer for the leg.
| | 03:44 | So, this gives me basically a
puppet that I can bring into an animation
| | 03:49 | package and animate.
| | 03:51 | Let me show you the same thing in Illustrator.
| | 03:54 | Here is a character. As you can see
we've used the Layers feature of Illustrator
| | 03:59 | to segment her out into parts as well.
| | 04:04 | Getting your character ready to animate
involves bringing the original design in
| | 04:08 | and tracing it in either a
bitmap or a vector-based package and then
| | 04:14 | segmenting the character out into
individual parts that can be animated.
| | 04:20 | So, be sure to keep that in mind as
you design your characters, that they are
| | 04:23 | going to be broken up into puppets.
| | 04:25 | This will help your design process and
also help you to visualize how you're
| | 04:29 | going to animate your characters.
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| Creating joints that work| 00:01 | When you are getting a character ready
to animate, it may be necessary to break
| | 00:04 | the character up into parts or segments.
| | 00:08 | Here I have a bear character and
it's actually built up of a lot of
| | 00:12 | different segments.
| | 00:13 | In fact, if you take a look at all the
layers of this character, you can see
| | 00:17 | that I have a separate layer for the snout
or the mouth, the pupils of the eye and so on.
| | 00:23 | So basically almost every different
part of this character is a separate
| | 00:27 | layer within Photoshop.
| | 00:30 | To make this more clear, let me show
you an exploded version of the character
| | 00:34 | and you can see when all the different
parts are spread out, how the character
| | 00:38 | is actually put together.
| | 00:40 | So, for example, we have a separate
layer for the snout of the character or
| | 00:45 | the mouth and also notice how the
arms are actually made into several
| | 00:49 | different segments.
| | 00:51 | Now this is actually a very important
thing to pay attention to is to how these
| | 00:55 | individual joints overlap.
| | 00:57 | Let's go ahead and take a closer look at
these and just see how these two joints
| | 01:02 | kind of fit together.
| | 01:04 | Notice how we have almost a semi-
circular outline on both of these.
| | 01:10 | Let's take a look at this
on our assembled character.
| | 01:12 | In fact, I am going to go ahead and
just turn off most of this character here
| | 01:16 | and we are just going to go
ahead and focus on the arm.
| | 01:19 | So, let me go ahead and zoom in
so we can see this very clearly.
| | 01:23 | If I go ahead and change my layer
options here you can see this is the point
| | 01:27 | where the two overlap and if I turn on
to the circle here you can see that it's
| | 01:32 | almost exactly a perfect circle.
| | 01:34 | Now this is great because when the joints
rotate, they are going to rotate along that circle.
| | 01:40 | I am going to go ahead and set this back here.
| | 01:42 | Let's just go ahead and take this
forearm and go ahead and rotate it.
| | 01:47 | Now if we make the center of that
rotation the center of the circle, it makes
| | 01:52 | for a very smooth rotation.
| | 01:54 | If this wasn't a circle, you might get
gaps or protrusions and that will cause
| | 01:58 | you to create additional little
pieces to patch it altogether.
| | 02:02 | So, trying to keep it all circular
| | 02:04 | makes it much easier
animate and much more efficient.
| | 02:08 | Let's go ahead and take a look at
another character here and this is actually a
| | 02:11 | much more realistic character
but the principles still apply.
| | 02:16 | In fact let's go ahead and take a
look at her arm and you can see that her
| | 02:19 | joints are circular outlines as well
but what I really want to show you is
| | 02:24 | how the shoulder works.
| | 02:25 | This is another very important joint.
| | 02:28 | So I am going to go ahead and turn off
this upper arm, so you can see what that
| | 02:33 | shoulder looks like.
| | 02:34 | You can see how it's almost in itself
a semi-circle and when I turn on that
| | 02:39 | upper arm, it all kind of matches together.
| | 02:42 | If I go ahead and select this arm and
rotate it again, I want to take the center
| | 02:51 | of this rotation and place it around
the center of that circle and you can see
| | 02:55 | how when I rotate this, the arm pretty
much works the way it should and that's
| | 03:01 | because the underlying geometry pretty
much matches how this is going to rotate.
| | 03:07 | Now, this also works for
other body parts as well.
| | 03:09 | Let's go ahead and take a look at
this character, which is very simple.
| | 03:13 | The outline between the shirt and the
hips actually follows this same rule of
| | 03:19 | keeping things circular.
| | 03:20 | In fact let's go ahead and turn off
that upper part of the body and we can just
| | 03:23 | take this lower part here and if we
rotate this and again, placing the center of
| | 03:29 | rotation right around the center of this
underlying circle here, you can see how
| | 03:34 | rotating this keeps everything together.
| | 03:38 | So as you can see if you try and
keep the underlying geometry based upon circles,
| | 03:43 | all of these rotational
joints will stick together.
| | 03:47 | So keep that in mind as you break
your characters apart into segments.
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| Working with outlines| 00:00 | Many of the characters you will
encounter will have outlines or ink lines around
| | 00:05 | certain parts of the character.
| | 00:07 | This is kind of a holdover from the
classic days of cel animation but it's
| | 00:11 | also a really good design decision
for a lot of characters because it makes
| | 00:15 | certain parts of the character pop.
| | 00:17 | For example, I have this character
here and he doesn't have any outlines.
| | 00:22 | If I add in some outlines, you can see how he
pops out from the background a lot more clearly.
| | 00:27 | So a lot of designers will put dark
lines in their characters but when you have
| | 00:32 | outlines or ink lines around your
character, it's going to add a second level of
| | 00:37 | complexity because when you bend the
joints of the character the ink lines will
| | 00:42 | have to follow and if you create
segments or puppet parts for your character
| | 00:48 | you have to design them so that
the ink lines flow smoothly.
| | 00:52 | Now here we have a
character with some ink lines.
| | 00:55 | Let me show you a few techniques for
getting those ink lines to flow smoothly.
| | 01:00 | Here is just the arm of that character.
| | 01:02 | So let's take a look at the elbow
joint to see how we can make these ink
| | 01:06 | lines flow smoothly.
| | 01:08 | The first way is to just make the
parts so that they kind of match up and
| | 01:12 | that the lines actually flow.
| | 01:13 | So for example if I take this forearm
and I move it off to the side you can see
| | 01:17 | how the ink line kind of tapers
out right here and right here.
| | 01:22 | This gives it space for this to
rotate against this underlying joint.
| | 01:28 | When I take this forearm here and I
rotate it, you can see how it actually kind
| | 01:34 | of moves against that underlying part.
| | 01:37 | Now one of the nice things about it
is that this overlapping line kind of
| | 01:41 | creates a nice little crease in the
elbow but you also can get some problems
| | 01:46 | here because you can't get little
separations between the ink lines where it
| | 01:51 | doesn't quite match up.
| | 01:53 | You can notice there is like
a little bit of a bump there.
| | 01:55 | So making the parts so that they
overlap like this is one of the methods.
| | 01:59 | The other method is to just
layer the parts differently.
| | 02:04 | So for example here I have some parts
and I have actually drawn these so that
| | 02:08 | the outlines pretty much go all the
way round and again, we are just looking
| | 02:11 | at this elbow joint.
| | 02:12 | So this outline goes all the way
round on both sides but this is actually
| | 02:17 | made up of two pieces.
| | 02:19 | It's made up of this piece and that
piece. In fact all of these are made up of
| | 02:23 | multiple pieces and when one of them
lays over the other, you have a line that
| | 02:28 | basically creates that outline.
| | 02:30 | So this underlying black piece is just
a little bit bigger and that's really
| | 02:34 | just a standard technique that a
lot of people use in Illustrator.
| | 02:38 | So, in order to make this work in
animation what we have to do is pop the
| | 02:42 | colored pieces up to the very top.
| | 02:46 | Now how you do this may depend upon
the type of animation package you have
| | 02:50 | but the general idea is to just
arrange this so you actually bring all of the
| | 02:56 | colored pieces to the front which leaves all
of the dark or outlined pieces in the back.
| | 03:02 | So now when I select just that forearm
and I rotate it, you can see how the line
| | 03:09 | actually moves pretty well.
| | 03:11 | So actually because everything is underneath
that line is always going to be underneath.
| | 03:16 | Now the one thing you don't get is
you don't get that crease in the elbow.
| | 03:20 | In fact let's go ahead and
take a look at the other one here.
| | 03:23 | Now with this one, because in the way
it's built, this black line is actually on
| | 03:27 | top of this colored piece but in the
other one it's actually underneath.
| | 03:32 | So you are actually going
to get a different effect.
| | 03:33 | Now this is much easier way to create
consistent outlines but you may not get
| | 03:38 | that kind of ink line that you
would expect in a drawn character.
| | 03:43 | So as you can see there are two basic
methods for getting outlines to flow.
| | 03:47 | One is to design the pieces so that the
outlines match up; the other one is just
| | 03:52 | to layer things properly so that the black lines
are all underneath and the colored parts are on top.
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| Accessorizing your characters| 00:00 | Another little technique that
animators use when dealing with joints is to
| | 00:06 | create accessories or little pieces of
clothing such as jewelry or gloves or
| | 00:11 | something like that that
overlap the intersection of a joint.
| | 00:16 | A classic example is the gloves
on a classic cartoon character.
| | 00:20 | For example, this character here has a
glove and when I actually go to rotate
| | 00:25 | this character, I can actually rotate
just the glove and so I don't have to
| | 00:28 | worry so much about the intersection
where that glove meets the wrist because
| | 00:34 | there is a big piece of
geometry there. It kind of overlaps.
| | 00:37 | This collar is another example of something
that can be used to overlap a certain joint.
| | 00:42 | So for example the neck doesn't go
directly into the shirt; it goes into the collar.
| | 00:47 | So now when I select all of these
pieces of geometry and I rotate them,
| | 00:53 | then again the collar kind of covers up
the intersection where the head and the neck
| | 00:59 | connect to the body.
| | 01:01 | Another example would be this woman here.
| | 01:03 | So for example I have got this arm and
we can have all sorts of problems
| | 01:07 | with these elbows in getting
everything to line up but one other things
| | 01:11 | you can do is just create a sleeve.
| | 01:14 | So for example here I have got this
piece of geometry here that basically is
| | 01:20 | just a sleeve that
overlaps the joint of the elbow.
| | 01:25 | So now when I go to rotate this elbow,
you can see it's completely covered up.
| | 01:29 | This is a trick that we
used on South Park a lot.
| | 01:31 | You will notice a lot of the characters
have these kind of half rolled up sleeves.
| | 01:36 | Another classic thing to do is to
create something like a piece of jewelry.
| | 01:40 | So for example this bracelet
here can cover up the wrist joint.
| | 01:45 | So when that rotates
again the joint is covered up.
| | 01:49 | So you don't have to worry so
much about the outlines coming up.
| | 01:53 | So now when you look at cartoon
character, you will notice why Yogi Bear or
| | 01:57 | Snagglepuss will have collars and
cufflinks and those sorts of things.
| | 02:01 | It's really just to cover up the
problem areas of a character and to make it
| | 02:07 | much easier to animate.
| | 02:08 | So you can use accessories and
different articles of clothing to create
| | 02:13 | characters that are much easier to animate.
| | 02:16 | So go ahead and pay attention to that
as you design and build your characters.
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| Creating parts for replacement animation| 00:00 | Replacement animation is another thing
to plan for when designing your character.
| | 00:06 | Replacement animations are really just
all those different parts that you can
| | 00:09 | swap in and out to make the
character appear so he is talking, blinking,
| | 00:13 | changing hand positions and so on.
| | 00:15 | For example, I have this bear but in
order to make him talk, I am going to need
| | 00:20 | a bunch of different mouths.
| | 00:22 | So I have our file here
with all the different mouths.
| | 00:25 | So for example I can take one of his
snouts and just replace that over the other one.
| | 00:30 | It will look like he is
opening his mouth and so on.
| | 00:34 | We also have replacement parts for the
blinks of the character as well as the
| | 00:39 | different hand positions.
| | 00:40 | So, really anything that you want to
switch out, you can just build that into
| | 00:45 | your character design file and use
those parts later when you go to animate.
| | 00:51 | Now, I actually have an
example of how this works.
| | 00:54 | I am actually using After Effects for
this particular character but you can
| | 00:58 | see how once I set up the mouths
properly you can actually step through them
| | 01:03 | one at a time and actually animate the mouths
and make that appear as though he is talking.
| | 01:08 | So, when I have actually designed this,
I have designed it so that the mouths
| | 01:11 | are almost exactly the same but just
the lower part of the mouth is changed.
| | 01:15 | In fact, let's go ahead and take a look
at this again in Photoshop and really,
| | 01:18 | what I did was I copied the mouth on
layers and then, I just redrew that lower
| | 01:23 | part of the snout to make
the different types of mouths.
| | 01:27 | So as you start building your
character, be sure to plan for replacement
| | 01:32 | animation and be sure to draw all the
parts that your character will need to
| | 01:36 | talk, blink, change hand positions, and so on.
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| Rigging hierarchies in After Effects| 00:00 | Once you have created your character,
you will need to set it up in an animation
| | 00:05 | program and get it ready to animate.
| | 00:08 | Now, there are a number of different animation
programs but let's look at a few as an example.
| | 00:13 | We are going to go ahead and look at
After Effects in this lesson and we are
| | 00:16 | going to take this bear that was
created in Photoshop and go ahead and get him
| | 00:21 | rigged and set up within After Effects.
| | 00:24 | Let's go ahead and open up After Effects.
| | 00:27 | So we are going to go File > Import
File and then we are going to select Bear.
| | 00:34 | Now we can here select it as cropped
layers, which is what we want to do, but
| | 00:39 | in some versions of After Effects if you
click through this menu, you can also do
| | 00:43 | the same thing here.
| | 00:45 | We want to import the composition as
cropped layers and click off Live Photoshop 3D.
| | 00:52 | Hit OK and what this does
is it will bring in the file.
| | 00:58 | You double-click on this one bear
and this is basically what we had in
| | 01:01 | our Photoshop file.
| | 01:02 | It also brings all the layers of the
Photoshop file into this sub-directory here
| | 01:09 | where we have each individual part and
then on top of that it's created this
| | 01:15 | composition which has everything
arranged exactly the way that it was arranged
| | 01:20 | in the Photoshop file including all
of these additional parts such as these
| | 01:26 | little snouts and all that sort of stuff.
| | 01:29 | So, we can go ahead and take these and
get rid of them because all we want to
| | 01:32 | work with right now is just
the main character, the bear.
| | 01:35 | So I am going to go ahead and select
all of these Lids and just delete them.
| | 01:39 | Select the snouts, except for this one
called Snout Closed, which is the one here
| | 01:44 | in the center of his face, and then
scroll down here and select these three
| | 01:49 | hands here and then just
go ahead and delete those.
| | 01:53 | Now when I am deleting them, I am just
deleting them out of the composition.
| | 01:56 | I am not deleting them out of the entire project.
| | 01:59 | Now once we have this cleaned up,
it's just a matter of linking
| | 02:04 | everything together.
| | 02:06 | We're going to link the hand to the
forearm, to the upper arm and then link that
| | 02:11 | to the chest and so on.
| | 02:12 | So we are just going to tie
everything together using After Effects'
| | 02:16 | Hierarchy function.
| | 02:18 | So I am going to start off with this hand.
| | 02:20 | In fact, I am going to zoom in here
so we can see this a little bit better.
| | 02:25 | Before I start working with this I want
to see this so I am going to clear out
| | 02:28 | the belly and the chest.
| | 02:30 | I am just going to hide those and then we are
just going to play with the hand and the arm.
| | 02:35 | Now one thing about the hand is you will
notice that it's defaulted to the pivot
| | 02:40 | point at the center and we really
want the hand to rotate around the wrist.
| | 02:44 | So we can do that by using this Pan
Behind tool and just taking this pivot
| | 02:49 | point and setting it right around the
center of where the wrist is and we can
| | 02:54 | just do a little test here in order to make
sure that it's rotating at about the right level.
| | 02:58 | In fact it's a little bit high here.
| | 03:00 | We can just tweak this.
| | 03:01 | This is just really a fine-tuning thing.
| | 03:04 | Once you have got it, you are good to go.
| | 03:06 | So that looks pretty good, okay and
now that we have the pivot point in
| | 03:10 | the right place, all we have to do
is link the hand to the forearm using
| | 03:15 | the Hierarchy function.
| | 03:16 | So all I have to do is click on
this little squiggle here and then just
| | 03:19 | highlight the forearm and let go.
| | 03:22 | I can also use the list here if I want
to. I can just link it here using the
| | 03:27 | forearm and now once I select the
forearm, you will notice that now the hand
| | 03:32 | moves with the forearm.
| | 03:33 | This is pretty cool. So we can just do
the same thing for this other part here.
| | 03:38 | We have just used the Pan Behind tool
and again, just move that pivot point up
| | 03:44 | so it's pretty much at the center of
this circular joint area here and then
| | 03:49 | once we have got that,
we just do a little dry run test.
| | 03:53 | Make sure that that arm is rotating at
about the right level and that's fine and
| | 03:58 | then once we have that, we can
link this forearm to the upper arm.
| | 04:02 | Now that I have the upper arm, again I
can just position that pivot point right
| | 04:08 | there at the shoulder.
| | 04:09 | Let's go ahead and see how that works.
| | 04:13 | Looks pretty good and in fact at this
point, I really do want to turn on the
| | 04:17 | chest and the belly so we can
see how this all works together.
| | 04:21 | Looks pretty good and then all I have
to do is take this right-upper arm and
| | 04:26 | then link it to the chest.
| | 04:30 | Then I can go up to the
chest and link it to the belly.
| | 04:35 | So, let's go ahead and fit this in
the window and you can see now how when
| | 04:38 | I have all of this together, his whole
right side of his body is all linked together.
| | 04:45 | Now, I don't want to have to go through
the whole thing but let's go ahead and
| | 04:48 | just open up the one that we finished.
| | 04:50 | So we are going to go ahead and
open up the project called Bear.
| | 04:55 | Now, once I have that you will
see how everything is tied together.
| | 04:58 | All I really have to do is select this
Rotate tool and you can see how the arm
| | 05:03 | is tied together and how we have got
the head pretty much in place and we have got
| | 05:08 | the body all working together.
| | 05:12 | So as you can see when you have
everything tied together in a hierarchy, you can
| | 05:16 | animate it a lot more efficiently.
| | 05:18 | You can animate just one part and the
rest will move with it and this is one of
| | 05:23 | the benefits of animating in After Effects.
| | 05:26 | But no matter what animation package
you use, you can see how things like
| | 05:29 | hierarchies can help animation significantly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging replacement animation in After Effects| 00:00 | Once you have the basic hierarchy set
up in your After Effects character,
| | 00:05 | you can set up replacement animation.
| | 00:08 | Now, how this is done is by just
swapping out the individual mouths that we have.
| | 00:15 | In fact, if I go back to the original
Photoshop file, you can see them all laid out.
| | 00:18 | I have all of these individual mouths.
| | 00:21 | What I need to do is be able to swap
those in and out to create the illusion
| | 00:26 | of his mouth moving.
| | 00:27 | In other words, we're going to replace
this mouth with one of these other ones.
| | 00:32 | We can automate that to
some degree in After Effects.
| | 00:36 | So let me show you how this is done.
| | 00:38 | When I brought in that Photoshop file,
you'll notice that we have all of them
| | 00:42 | still in these layers here.
| | 00:44 | So, for example, I've everything
that starts with Snout, Snout_Closed,
| | 00:48 | Snout_cons (consonant), Snout_E,
Snout_F, Snout_M, all of the different
| | 00:52 | consonants and phonemes that
the character will need to speak.
| | 00:56 | Now I need to bring these together into
a composition and then I can bring them
| | 01:00 | back into my main character.
| | 01:03 | So what I've done is I've created a
basic composition here, and actually it's
| | 01:08 | blank right now but it's just big enough to
hold all of those mouth objects that I have.
| | 01:14 | In fact, I can just take all of them
and highlight them, just Shift+Select them
| | 01:19 | and drag them into my Timeline here.
| | 01:24 | Once I have them here I need to make
sure that my composition is big enough
| | 01:27 | to hold all of these.
| | 01:28 | Now, I have nine mouths, 1
through9, and I have ten frames.
| | 01:33 | So that is exactly enough.
| | 01:36 | So the next step is to just animate
these so they animate one per frame.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and select all
of these layers here, and then I'm going
| | 01:46 | to slide them down so that
they're only one to frame long.
| | 01:51 | Then I'm going to go to Animation >
Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers.
| | 01:58 | When I hit OK, you'll see what happens.
| | 02:01 | It will sequence these layers
one per frame, pretty simple.
| | 02:06 | So I have my animation pretty much in place.
| | 02:09 | But I actually want this to
start with the closed mouth.
| | 02:12 | So I'm actually going to go ahead and
move this layer up and then just go ahead
| | 02:16 | and swap those, so it
starts with this Closed layer.
| | 02:19 | So what you'll notice is that as this
moves, that nose is kind of bouncing
| | 02:23 | around little bit. You can
see how it moves up and down.
| | 02:26 | So I need to align these to my master
frame, which is going to be my closed mouth.
| | 02:32 | So I'm going to go ahead and just
slide that layer so that it's all the way
| | 02:37 | across the timeline. You can see
how this is all moving against it.
| | 02:40 | So all I have to do is go one at a time
and just select these and then just move
| | 02:45 | them so that that nose lines up.
| | 02:47 | So just go a frame at a time and
select the underlying layer, make sure that
| | 02:52 | nose is pretty much
registered with that first mouth.
| | 03:00 | Really it's just not
going to take all that long.
| | 03:11 | We've got one more here.
| | 03:12 | Now once I have them aligned, I'm
just going to go ahead and slide this one
| | 03:18 | back on the top so that it's back to being
one frame and then we'll just do a quick test.
| | 03:23 | You can see how it's pretty much aligned.
| | 03:24 | It's bouncing a little bit, we can tweak
this, but for our purposes, it's good enough.
| | 03:29 | So now I have a composition that
animates over ten frames, all of them mouths
| | 03:35 | with a blank at the end.
| | 03:37 | So now I'm going to go to my main
composition here, I'm going to go to Bear, and
| | 03:42 | I'm going to take this mouth and I'm
going to keep it there for just a second
| | 03:47 | while I line up the new mouth
here, which is this composition.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to drag this in and drag it
over the original mouth to make sure
| | 03:55 | that I've aligned it.
| | 03:57 | Then I'm just going to go ahead and take this
one and I can either turn it off or delete it.
| | 04:01 | I'm just going to go
ahead and turn this one off.
| | 04:04 | So now I have the mouths. You can see
they're all animating, which is great.
| | 04:09 | The next thing I need to do is be
able to control that animation so I can
| | 04:12 | actually do lip sync or something like that.
| | 04:15 | So I'm going to keep this layer selected,
then I'm just going to go to Layer >
| | 04:19 | Time and just do Enable Time Remapping.
| | 04:23 | Now, what this does is it actually sets
up a situation where I can actually type
| | 04:28 | in the frame number.
| | 04:30 | And this frame number corresponds to
the frame number in this little animation.
| | 04:35 | So when I hit 6, it brings up frame 6,
which is in this case the Oh mouth.
| | 04:40 | So if I delete this final keyframe here
and just stretch this out, you can see
| | 04:45 | now all I have to do is just type in
the number or even use it as a slider and
| | 04:52 | you can just animate whatever mouth you want.
| | 04:55 | This is a great way to set
up this sort of animation.
| | 04:59 | And again, I still need
to link this to the head.
| | 05:02 | Now you can use this for mouths, but you
can also use it for a lot of other things.
| | 05:07 | In fact, I have a final
file that we can open here.
| | 05:10 | I'm just going to go ahead and Open
Project, and we're going to open this
| | 05:13 | file called Bear_Rigged.
| | 05:15 | That has pretty much everything set up.
| | 05:18 | So I've got the Mouths set up on this
Time Remap, just like we had before, but
| | 05:26 | I also have things like eyelids,
so we can actually blink his eyes.
| | 05:31 | I also have hands. So if you scroll
down, for example, to the right hand,
| | 05:36 | you can see how I can time remap
his hands so that he can actually make
| | 05:41 | different hand positions.
| | 05:43 | And again, this works for
a lot of different things.
| | 05:46 | So keep this in mind as you set up your
characters to get them ready to animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging with the Puppet tool in After Effects| 00:01 | For those of you using After Effects,
there's a really great tool that allows
| | 00:04 | you to puppet a character and
that's called the Puppet Pin tool.
| | 00:09 | It's available in After Effects CS3
and above. We're using After Effects CS4,
| | 00:15 | but they work identically.
| | 00:17 | What it does is it allows you to take a
piece of art and it allows you to deform it
| | 00:21 | using what are called Puppet Pins.
| | 00:23 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 00:26 | I have a special project here called
Bear_Puppet and it's just a little bit
| | 00:32 | different from the one that we've been working
with, in that I've merged all of the arm layers.
| | 00:37 | So, for example, this left
arm here is all one piece.
| | 00:42 | So there is no separate form
and there is no separate hand.
| | 00:46 | It's all one piece of art.
| | 00:48 | But I can still deform it and
animate it using the Puppet Pin tool.
| | 00:53 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:54 | So all I have to do is go here. This is
where the Puppet Pin tool is, select it,
| | 00:59 | and our cursor changes to a pushpin, and
all I have to do is lay down the points
| | 01:05 | where I want this object to deform.
| | 01:08 | So, for example, I'm going to go ahead
and lay down one at the shoulder, one at
| | 01:11 | the elbow, and one somewhere around the wrist.
| | 01:15 | Then that's all I have to do.
| | 01:17 | Now let's take a look at
what happens in After Effects.
| | 01:20 | When you go to your Timeline, you'll
notice here, the Puppet effect has been
| | 01:25 | added to this particular layer.
Get this all in one window so we can see it.
| | 01:31 | So in my left arm layer, under the
Effects, I have a Puppet Pin, and if you
| | 01:37 | expand this, you can see
here each pin has its own track.
| | 01:41 | In fact, as I select these,
you can see how they highlight.
| | 01:46 | I can also highlight them
using my Selection tool.
| | 01:49 | Now all I have to do is just grab
one of these points and move it.
| | 01:54 | You can see how it very nicely deforms its mesh.
| | 01:57 | So this can be a very nice way to do
character animation and get something that's
| | 02:02 | a little bit more fluid than you
would get with just standard joints.
| | 02:07 | Now the other thing about the Puppet Pin
tool is that the object still can be affected.
| | 02:11 | So, for example, I can take this arm
and I can still rotate it, and then if I
| | 02:15 | wanted to, I could go into
my Puppet Pins and move them.
| | 02:20 | Then as I move them, I still have the
master layer controls that I can use.
| | 02:27 | So when you animate, you really need to
decide where you're going to place your animation.
| | 02:32 | Are you going to animate the layer or
are you going to animate the Puppet Pins
| | 02:37 | or are you going to animate both?
| | 02:39 | In this particular case, something
like the shoulder you'll probably animate by
| | 02:44 | affecting the entire layer.
| | 02:46 | Then anything underneath it, such as the
elbow or the wrist, you would affect by
| | 02:51 | using the Puppet Pins.
| | 02:53 | So what I like to do is I like to keep
this top Puppet Pin stationary, so I can
| | 02:58 | lock it down to its point of
rotation for the master layer.
| | 03:02 | Then the ones underneath,
I can then use those for animation.
| | 03:06 | So those are some tips and tricks for
using the Puppet Pin tool and you can
| | 03:09 | certainly use that tool as you start to work
with characters and get them ready to animate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging Flash characters| 00:01 | Let's take a look how to set up another
character and this time, we're going to
| | 00:04 | set her up in Flash.
| | 00:06 | I have this woman character here.
| | 00:08 | Now, we're starting in Illustrator
so I can show you the workflow from
| | 00:11 | Illustrator to Flash.
| | 00:14 | What I've done is I've set this
character up very similarly to how I set up
| | 00:18 | the bear in Photoshop, in that I have
individual layers for all of the different parts.
| | 00:24 | These layers are labeled so
that I know what they are.
| | 00:28 | Once I have these layers and I can just
import those into Flash, and the layers
| | 00:33 | will come right up and then I can
start arranging things in Flash.
| | 00:37 | So let's go ahead and go over to
Flash and we're just going to go ahead and
| | 00:40 | create a new document and just do File > Import.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to Import to Stage and
then I'm just going to select this file
| | 00:49 | called Woman and hit Open.
| | 00:52 | Now all I need to do is make
sure everything is checked.
| | 00:54 | I make sure I have Convert layers to
Flash layers checked and I make sure that I
| | 00:58 | have Place objects at original position.
| | 01:02 | Then I go ahead and hit OK.
| | 01:05 | Now when this comes in from Illustrator,
you'll see what happens is that every
| | 01:09 | layer in Illustrator becomes a
layer on the Timeline in Flash.
| | 01:13 | Now this can be good, because it's
an easy way to select and organize things,
| | 01:17 | but the best way to animate
in Flash is to use symbols and also to
| | 01:22 | reduce the amount of layering.
| | 01:24 | So let me show you how to do this.
| | 01:26 | Let's go ahead and start with the head.
| | 01:28 | Now we have all of these
different layers here on the head.
| | 01:31 | In fact, let me go ahead and readjust
this here so we can see all of these at once.
| | 01:36 | So I'm going to go ahead and take
the hair, the hand and the hair front.
| | 01:41 | I'm going to take all of
these, turn those into a symbol.
| | 01:46 | So I'm just going to go ahead and
hit F8, and that creates the symbol.
| | 01:49 | I'm just going to call that Head.
| | 01:52 | Now this symbol has actually been
pulled from three different layers.
| | 01:55 | So when I create it, notice what
happens is that this Head layer is going to
| | 02:00 | kind of pop up to the front.
| | 02:02 | In fact, I think what it does is
that actually pops up to this Hair_Front.
| | 02:06 | What I can do now is just go
ahead and delete this and reinsert it.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to delete this Hair_Front.
| | 02:13 | In fact, delete the layer, go back
down to this one here I have called Head,
| | 02:17 | make sure that's highlighted, and then
just pull this symbol in and rearrange it.
| | 02:21 | So now I have all of my head
on one layer, which is great.
| | 02:27 | Now, this way of doing it actually
creates a layer for the hair and the head.
| | 02:31 | All of the objects that are on the head,
such as the nose, the eyes, the pupil
| | 02:36 | and so on, are separate.
| | 02:39 | So what we have to do is in order to move,
for example, the head, I just have to
| | 02:44 | select everything and then move it.
| | 02:47 | Now, another way to do this is to
make what's called a nested symbol.
| | 02:51 | So let's go ahead and just select all
of these and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 02:55 | make another symbol.
| | 02:57 | This symbol is going to be called Head_All.
| | 03:01 | What this has, as you can see here in
the description, the eyes, the nose, the
| | 03:04 | mouth and everything.
| | 03:05 | So what I can do is actually delete that
original symbol and again, just go back
| | 03:10 | down to Head layer and drop in this Head_All.
| | 03:13 | So now I have a head
where I can just animate it.
| | 03:16 | It's much easier to animate this than it
would be to animate individual objects.
| | 03:22 | So, for example, if I wanted to, I could
remove the pivot position here and then
| | 03:26 | just animate the head.
| | 03:28 | Now, if I wanted to animate something
within the head, such as the eyes or the
| | 03:32 | mouth, I have to double-click
on this and go into the symbol.
| | 03:36 | Now, when you go into a symbol in Flash,
what you do is you get an additional
| | 03:41 | secondary timeline, right
here, which has its own layer.
| | 03:45 | So, for example, I could create
another layer for the eyes or the mouth.
| | 03:50 | So, for example, I could do Insert
Layer here and I could take the mouth and
| | 03:55 | I could cut it just using the standard Cut
function, and then just paste it back in.
| | 04:01 | Now I have the mouth on a separate layer.
| | 04:04 | But when I double-click outside of this,
you can see it all goes back to this
| | 04:08 | original composition.
| | 04:10 | So, what we have here is
what is called nested symbol.
| | 04:13 | So you have a symbol inside of a
symbol, inside of a symbol, which is kind
| | 04:17 | of like a hierarchy.
| | 04:18 | You can see it's operationally a
little bit different, because they each
| | 04:20 | have their own timeline.
| | 04:21 | So when I go into this symbol, again
I've got this different timeline.
| | 04:27 | Now, we can do the same for just about
anything, such as the arms, the legs,
| | 04:30 | really any part of the character.
| | 04:32 | In fact, I have one that's already set up,
and let me just show you how that works.
| | 04:35 | So we're going to go ahead and open a file.
| | 04:38 | I have a file here called Woman.
| | 04:41 | This has a much simpler layering
and a lot of nested composition.
| | 04:46 | So we can just go through how
it's ultimately going to be set up.
| | 04:49 | Now what I have is I have a
separate layer for each arm.
| | 04:53 | So, for example, if you select the left arm,
you'll see I have three different symbols.
| | 04:57 | So I have the hand, the
forearm and the upper arm.
| | 05:02 | You'll notice here I also
have these symbols here.
| | 05:05 | I have the forearm, the
upper arm and the head as well.
| | 05:09 | For example, within this head, I've got a
number of different things within this layer.
| | 05:15 | So this makes it much easier to animate.
| | 05:18 | So if I wanted to bend the arm, I could
actually select all of these symbols here.
| | 05:22 | Then if I wanted to, I could just
select the Multiple Transform tool here and
| | 05:27 | then just rotate the entire arm.
| | 05:29 | But if I wanted to rotate just a
little bit of that arm, again, I can just
| | 05:32 | select this and rotate it as well.
| | 05:36 | So this makes it almost like a
hybrid of nested symbols and layers.
| | 05:40 | You've got layers for each
individual part, but you also have within
| | 05:44 | those nested symbols.
| | 05:45 | So this is a good kind of way to
organize your scenes within Flash.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging replacement animation in Flash| 00:01 | Replacement animation in Flash is a
little bit different than After Effects, but
| | 00:05 | it actually follows the same simple
theory in that you create an animation that
| | 00:10 | has all of the different replacement
parts, such as the replacement mouths, and
| | 00:15 | then in your main
composition or your main animation
| | 00:18 | you just reference the
different frames of that sub-animation.
| | 00:22 | In this case, it's going
to be inside of a symbol.
| | 00:26 | I am just going to select this head
symbol here and we are going to create
| | 00:29 | replacement animation for the mouth.
| | 00:31 | So all I have to do is double-click on
this and then everything else grays out
| | 00:35 | and we can see we are inside that head
symbol and let's just go ahead and zoom
| | 00:40 | in there so we can
actually see the head itself.
| | 00:43 | In order to create this animation,
I need to insert the frames and then replace
| | 00:46 | the mouths one per frame.
| | 00:49 | So first thing I am going to do is I
am actually going to create a new layer.
| | 00:52 | So let's go to Insert Layer here and
I am just going to rename it Mouths, and
| | 00:57 | this is just going to be my layer where
I keep the mouths and it's actually going
| | 01:00 | to make it much easier for me organizing.
| | 01:02 | So I am just going to delete the mouth
off of this lower layer and select the
| | 01:07 | upper layer where we have the mouths.
| | 01:09 | Then I am just going to select my first
mouth, which is Mouth_mm or Mouth mmmm,
| | 01:14 | which is for the close mouth sounds,
and then I am just going to position that
| | 01:18 | and then I am just going to go ahead
and make sure I insert a keyframe here.
| | 01:23 | Now I have a keyframe for this one
here and all I have to do now is delete
| | 01:27 | this off and for the keyframe, I am just
going to go ahead and replace that other mouth.
| | 01:33 | It goes from on frame 1,
| | 01:35 | it's that mm mouth and on frame 2, it's
this Mouth_A and then all I have to do
| | 01:40 | is just keep doing that for each mouth.
| | 01:42 | So I have just insert another keyframe,
delete out the old mouth and put in
| | 01:48 | whichever one I want to replace.
| | 01:51 | So in this case, the Mouth_Ee.
| | 01:52 | So you can see how now I have got 1, 2, 3
and let's just keep doing that. Keyframe.
| | 01:58 | Now when I do this, I'd like to
actually have the mouths in an order, so that
| | 02:05 | goes from open mouth to closed mouth
and then maybe the consonants here.
| | 02:09 | So this is one more closed
mouth for consonants sounds.
| | 02:13 | So now we are going to just go
ahead and insert another keyframe.
| | 02:17 | So for example, I have consonant sounds
and now we can go into some of the more
| | 02:22 | specialty mouth such as the shape for
the F, and then delete that out on the
| | 02:29 | next frame, and then insert the mouth
for the L shape, which has the tongue
| | 02:34 | visible, and again you can
just scrub through these.
| | 02:37 | You can see how they work.
| | 02:38 | Now I am not really aligning these as
I work, but when you actually get into
| | 02:43 | production, you are going to go ahead
and make sure that these all line up, so
| | 02:47 | that they all animate quite well.
| | 02:49 | We are just kind of blowing these into
show you theoretically how to do this.
| | 02:54 | I think this is the last one,
the oooo sound for oooo.
| | 02:57 | So now I have eight different mouths.
| | 03:03 | Now each one is on a different frame.
| | 03:07 | So when I double-click off of this and
go back into my main composition, what I
| | 03:12 | have is I have-- let's go ahead and
zoom out just a little bit, there we go.
| | 03:16 | This head symbol here and if I will go
over to my Properties panel, you will
| | 03:20 | notice that this is
brought in as a Graphic symbol.
| | 03:24 | Make sure that it is a Graphic
symbol, not a Movie Clip or a Button.
| | 03:29 | So once you are in your Properties
panel and you have that head symbol
| | 03:32 | selected, I can go over to the
Properties panel and make sure that I have this
| | 03:37 | set as a Graphic symbol.
| | 03:39 | Let's go ahead and change it to
for example a Movie Clip, a Button.
| | 03:43 | When we go to Graphic symbol, you will
notice that you have a panel here called
| | 03:47 | Looping and what this does is this will
allow us to select what frame we want.
| | 03:54 | All we have to do is use this pull-
down menu here and it says Loop,
| | 03:58 | Play Once, Single Frame.
| | 04:00 | Single Frame is what we want,
so let's go ahead and select that.
| | 04:03 | Now all I have to do is just select the frame.
| | 04:06 | So for example, if I want the mouth
that is on frame 3, just hit frame 3 and it
| | 04:10 | goes to the Ee mouth.
| | 04:12 | The mouth on frame 2 is the A mouth.
| | 04:16 | The mouth on frame 8 is the oooo mouth.
| | 04:19 | And all I have to do is keyframe that
and then I can do replacement animation.
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| Rigging with the Bone tool in Flash| 00:00 | For those people who are using Flash
CS4 and higher, you can also set up
| | 00:05 | what's called an armature or a bone-
chain to help you animate complicated
| | 00:11 | joints such as arms and legs.
| | 00:14 | Now this is done using the Bone tool.
| | 00:17 | And the Bone tool is over here in the
palette, and it looks like a little bone
| | 00:21 | and what we can do is we can use this
to set up a relationship between all of
| | 00:26 | the symbols in a layer. In other
words, tie them together in a hierarchy
| | 00:31 | that can be animated.
| | 00:33 | So let's go ahead and zoom in on this
woman's arm and we're going to set up a bone-chain.
| | 00:38 | Now what happens is when you select this Bone
tool, it brings up kind of like a Drawing tool.
| | 00:44 | So what we're going to do is we're going
to set down the first point of this bone.
| | 00:50 | Now, this is very important that
we set this down at the right place.
| | 00:53 | This has to be at the center of
this kind of joined circle here, where
| | 00:57 | everything is rotating around.
| | 01:00 | The center point of this upper arm or the
shoulder is going to be right around here.
| | 01:04 | So I am just going to go ahead and click-and-
drag and you can see now I am drawing a bone.
| | 01:09 | It looks very much like the
bones that you'd see in a 3D package.
| | 01:13 | I am still holding down my mouse button
and now I am going to ahead and set this
| | 01:17 | point to the middle of that elbow and
again, I really need to position this
| | 01:22 | right at the center so that I
get a good rotation of that arm.
| | 01:26 | So this is my best guess as to where
that is at and then I can let go and what
| | 01:31 | that does is it creates a bone.
| | 01:33 | If I click-and-drag again, I can
create a second joint in that chain and
| | 01:38 | again, I am just going to set it down in the
middle of this wrist right here and let go.
| | 01:43 | Now once I have this, I have a joint
chain which now can be manipulated.
| | 01:49 | So if I select one of these joints,
for example, this forearm here, I can go
| | 01:55 | over to my Properties panel and I can see
all the different things I could do with it.
| | 01:59 | The first thing we could do
with it is affect the rotation.
| | 02:02 | So for example, I can turn on and off
rotation, so that I can just keep that arm
| | 02:06 | so it is locked, so it's always straight,
or I can constrain it so that it only
| | 02:11 | rotates through very specific ranges.
| | 02:15 | So I can just say it goes from -45
degrees to positive or I can make it even
| | 02:20 | bigger than that so that way the
joint doesn't turn around on itself.
| | 02:24 | Now, I also can do things such as
enable translation, in case you want to
| | 02:29 | move this joint along left or right or
something like that, actually move it off of its axis.
| | 02:35 | Now that can be really helpful if you
are doing something like animation for a
| | 02:39 | walk cycle or something like that.
| | 02:41 | Now, once you have all of these,
you can start to animate it.
| | 02:45 | Let me show you very quickly
how to animate such an armature.
| | 02:48 | Well, first thing I am going to do
is I am just going to go ahead and insert
| | 02:51 | some keyframes here.
| | 02:52 | I am just going to select
these frames and hit F5.
| | 02:55 | Now if you notice the armature itself is
created on its own layer and that layer
| | 03:02 | actually has a different way of in-betweening.
| | 03:05 | It's not the standard in-
between that you would have in Flash.
| | 03:08 | In fact, all you have to do is once
you have the frames in place is just move
| | 03:13 | the arm and it'll automatically animate.
| | 03:16 | If you notice here, a little dot
appeared and now it's just going to
| | 03:19 | automatically in-between.
| | 03:21 | Now this is very handy.
| | 03:22 | It makes it much easier to animate
these sorts of things within Flash.
| | 03:27 | So as you set up your characters and
get them ready to animate, be sure to
| | 03:31 | consider using bones and
armatures in your Flash characters.
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|
|
2. Principles of AnimationThe first law of motion| 00:01 | Anyone involved in animation needs to
understand how objects move and the way
| | 00:06 | that objects move are
defined by the laws of motion.
| | 00:10 | Now these laws were developed a couple
hundred years ago by a man named Sir Isaac
| | 00:16 | Newton and he has three
fundamental Laws of Motion.
| | 00:20 | So, we are going to go through those
and see how they apply to animation.
| | 00:25 | Now Newton's first Law of Motion in
his own words was "a body persists in its
| | 00:31 | state of being at rest or of moving
uniformly straightforward, except insofar as
| | 00:38 | it is compelled to change
its state by force impressed."
| | 00:41 | Well that's 17th century English.
| | 00:44 | So, let's just go ahead and state this
in just regular plain old English and the
| | 00:49 | first part of this law is an object that
is not moving will remain still until a
| | 00:55 | force acts upon it, and the second part
of this law is an object that is moving
| | 01:02 | will not change its velocity
until a force acts upon it.
| | 01:07 | Now the fundamental point of this law is
that you need force to put something in motion.
| | 01:13 | So, let's take a look at this in practice.
| | 01:16 | Now, here we have an object at rest.
| | 01:18 | It's just a simple ball.
| | 01:19 | Now in order to get this moving we need
to apply a force and once that force is
| | 01:27 | applied, it will start to move that
object from rest and then accelerate it.
| | 01:33 | In fact, let's just go ahead and
play this and see how it works.
| | 01:35 | So, once the force is applied,
it starts pushing the object and moving it.
| | 01:42 | Now the longer the force is applied,
the more the object accelerates and
| | 01:46 | the faster it goes.
| | 01:48 | Now, the second part of this law is an
object that is moving will not change its
| | 01:53 | velocity until a force acts upon it.
| | 01:57 | So, let's go ahead and take a
look at an object that is moving.
| | 02:00 | Now when an object is moving with no force
applied, it moves in equal steps per unit of time.
| | 02:07 | In fact I have marked these out.
| | 02:09 | So as this object moves, you can see that
it's moving equal distance per unit of time.
| | 02:15 | Now, once we apply a force to
that it will change its direction.
| | 02:21 | Now, let's look at this with a force applied.
| | 02:24 | Now the ball is moving in a constant direction.
| | 02:26 | Now as soon as the force is applied
here, the path of the ball changes.
| | 02:33 | So, it continues to move
forward but the force pushes it in a
| | 02:37 | different direction.
| | 02:38 | So again, the object will not change its
velocity or its direction until a force is applied.
| | 02:45 | So typically, an object in motion will
tend to stay in motion until a force is
| | 02:50 | applied and an object at rest will
remain at rest until a force is applied.
| | 02:56 | Now the important thing to remember
about this first law is forces create motion.
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| The second law of motion| 00:00 | Newton's Second Law of Motion
concerns the mass of objects and
| | 00:04 | their acceleration.
| | 00:06 | What the law states is "the change of
momentum of a body is proportional to the
| | 00:11 | impulse impressed on the body and
happens along the straight line on which that
| | 00:17 | impulse is impressed."
| | 00:19 | Now in regular English what that
means is a force applied to an object will
| | 00:24 | accelerate it in a straight line
and the equation for that is F=ma or
| | 00:30 | Force = Mass times Acceleration.
| | 00:34 | And with that equation we can
derive two additional points.
| | 00:37 | One is more force accelerates the same
mass faster and more mass requires more
| | 00:46 | force for the same acceleration.
| | 00:49 | So, if something is bigger it's
going to require more force to move it.
| | 00:53 | Or if you use more force on something,
you are going to accelerate it a little bit faster.
| | 00:57 | So, let's take a look at this.
| | 00:59 | Here we have a simple ball and
the red arrow indicates a force.
| | 01:05 | So, as the force is applied to the
object, the object will accelerate, which
| | 01:09 | means it will move a further
distance with each unit of time.
| | 01:13 | So, the first unit of time it will
move this far, the second unit of time it
| | 01:19 | will move this far, then
this far, then this far.
| | 01:22 | So basically, it's going faster and faster
and faster, the longer the force is applied.
| | 01:28 | So, as the force is applied, the
object will continue to accelerate.
| | 01:33 | So, let's see how this looks.
| | 01:37 | Now, the other part of this is that
the amount of acceleration depends upon
| | 01:42 | the mass of the object.
| | 01:44 | So, let's go ahead and bring
in a bigger, heavier object.
| | 01:48 | And let's apply the same force to that object.
| | 01:51 | When we do this you will see that this
object doesn't move nearly as fast and
| | 01:56 | that's just because it's heavy.
| | 01:58 | Now this may be common sense, but what
this does is it indicates the weight of
| | 02:02 | an object. How fast that object can
move with any given force will tell the
| | 02:08 | audience how heavy that object is.
| | 02:11 | And this is very
important for character animation.
| | 02:16 | If you want a big character, you are
going to have to move him a little bit
| | 02:19 | differently than a light character.
| | 02:21 | Now, let's take a look at another thing here.
| | 02:24 | If we increase the force on the mass,
so in other words, this large red arrow
| | 02:29 | means a bigger force,
| | 02:31 | you can get that same acceleration.
| | 02:35 | Now another thing with force and
acceleration is that acceleration can also
| | 02:40 | become deceleration.
| | 02:42 | So, for example in this case, we have a
force that is applied to this object and
| | 02:48 | half way through we take away that
force and add in the opposite force.
| | 02:52 | Now, what this will do is it will
basically reverse the effects of the original
| | 02:57 | force and decelerate it until it's at a stop.
| | 03:01 | Now, if we continue with that force, it
will then continue to accelerate it in
| | 03:06 | the opposite direction until
another force slows it down.
| | 03:11 | So, let's go ahead and play this.
| | 03:14 | So again, forces can accelerate or decelerate.
| | 03:19 | Now, when you have an object that has
no force applied to it, again you are
| | 03:25 | going to get steady motion.
| | 03:27 | You are just going to get
equal distance per unit of time.
| | 03:31 | The only time an object will
accelerate or decelerate is when a force is
| | 03:36 | applied and that force will accelerate or
decelerate that mass according to how heavy it is.
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| The third law of motion| 00:00 | Newton's third law concerns how objects
interact with each other, how they can
| | 00:05 | transmit forces from one to the other.
| | 00:08 | In Newton's words, the law is "to every
action there is always opposed an equal
| | 00:14 | reaction, or the mutual actions of two
bodies upon each other are always equal
| | 00:19 | and directed to contrary parts."
| | 00:22 | Now more simply stated it is for
every force there is always an equal and
| | 00:27 | opposite reaction or some people say
for every action there is always an equal
| | 00:34 | and opposite reaction.
| | 00:36 | When an object pushes another object,
it gets pushed back in the opposite
| | 00:40 | direction an equal amount.
| | 00:43 | So, let's go ahead and
take a look at how this works.
| | 00:46 | Here we have a simple pendulum,
which just rocks back and forth.
| | 00:52 | Now, when I add in an object for it
to hit, what's going to happen is that
| | 00:57 | pendulum object is going to transmit
its momentum as a force onto this object.
| | 01:05 | But this object will also push
back on the pendulum and decelerate.
| | 01:10 | So, what is this force doing? This force
is actually pushing against it, so it's
| | 01:14 | going in this left to right direction,
so it's going to push back in the
| | 01:19 | opposite direction and decelerate it.
| | 01:22 | Now, this force is going to push against
this stationary object and accelerate it.
| | 01:27 | So, let's see how this works.
| | 01:29 | So basically, it accelerates the
ball that's sitting there and stops
| | 01:35 | the pendulum, because it's
decelerating or accelerating it in the
| | 01:39 | opposite direction.
| | 01:41 | Now another way to look at this is by
something as simple as pushing a ball.
| | 01:46 | So, we have this hand and as this hand
contacts the ball, they push against each other.
| | 01:52 | Now, if the ball is really heavy, the hand
is going to kind of resist and squash there.
| | 01:59 | Now, if we can bring the hand back
and give it more force, we can overcome
| | 02:04 | friction and get the ball moving.
| | 02:07 | Now, when we put Newton's laws together,
we have a very simple case of the bouncing ball.
| | 02:14 | Now, we have the force of gravity,
which acts equally on every objec, and what
| | 02:20 | it does is it pulls objects down.
| | 02:22 | So, this red arrow is the force of gravity.
| | 02:25 | Now, when this object hits the
floor, we have the opposite reaction.
| | 02:30 | In other words, the floor or the ground
pushes against the ball in the opposite
| | 02:36 | direction, which causes
the ball to go skyward again.
| | 02:40 | But as we can tell, the force of
gravity is still pushing down on the ball so
| | 02:45 | it will eventually slow to a
stop and start coming down again.
| | 02:49 | So let's go ahead and see how that works.
| | 02:51 | So, the ball has accelerated down and
then decelerated to a stop and accelerated
| | 02:58 | down again and when it hits the floor,
the equal and opposite reaction of the
| | 03:02 | floor bounces the ball.
| | 03:06 | So, that's a very quick physics
lesson in Newton's Laws of Motion.
| | 03:11 | So, as we go through the rest of the
chapter, we will see how these Laws of
| | 03:14 | Motion apply to character animation.
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| Using slow in and slow out| 00:01 | Animation principles are the laws
of motion as they apply to animation.
| | 00:06 | In other words, Newton's
laws translated for animators.
| | 00:10 | Now, all of these were developed in the
1920s and 1930s, mostly at Disney, but
| | 00:15 | they apply to just about any
type of animation you want to do.
| | 00:19 | Over the next few movies,
we're going to take a look at these
| | 00:22 | animation principles.
| | 00:23 | Now, these are slow in and slow out,
which concerns the acceleration and
| | 00:29 | deceleration of objects.
| | 00:31 | Arcs, which is the paths that objects
move through space, Overlap & follow-through,
| | 00:38 | which is how systems of objects
start and stop their motion,
| | 00:43 | Squash & stretch, which is something that's
familiar to those who like cartoons, but it
| | 00:47 | also helps to convey weight and volume.
| | 00:51 | Then Weight itself, which is the relative
weights of objects in the scene and how they move.
| | 00:57 | Finally, we also have Anticipation,
which is getting objects moving and the
| | 01:03 | motions required to gain momentum.
| | 01:05 | Now all of these we'll go through, but
let's go ahead and start with the first one,
| | 01:10 | which is slow in and slow out.
| | 01:13 | Slow in and slow out is basically a
restatement of Newton's second law of motion.
| | 01:18 | That means that objects
accelerate and decelerate as they move.
| | 01:24 | Now again, it's Newton's second law,
which is Force = Mass x Acceleration.
| | 01:30 | Now, in an animation context, this
means that slow in and slow out will smooth
| | 01:34 | out or soften your action, so things
will come toward abrupt halt and jar the eye.
| | 01:40 | They'll slow out, things will be easy.
| | 01:42 | Anyone who has used animation curves
or Bezier curves or ease curves will be
| | 01:47 | familiar with slow in and slow out.
| | 01:50 | But let me go ahead and show you
how it works in an animation context.
| | 01:55 | Let's take our standard situation of
a ball that has a force applied to it.
| | 02:01 | Now, as the force is applied, the ball
accelerates and when a counter force is
| | 02:07 | applied, the ball decelerates.
| | 02:11 | In animation lingo, that would
be it slows in and it slows out.
| | 02:16 | Now, if we continue adding that force,
it will slow in again and get moving in
| | 02:22 | the opposite direction and then slow out.
| | 02:24 | So if we play this, you would
see basically slow in and slow out.
| | 02:30 | Now, if we didn't do slow in and slow out,
it would look as though the ball had
| | 02:34 | hit a brick wall at the very end of this.
| | 02:37 | It wouldn't slow to a stop
and then get going again.
| | 02:40 | It would just hit that brick wall and
then just move in the opposite direction,
| | 02:43 | which isn't really a very natural way of motion.
| | 02:46 | Now, there is a situation where
something will hit essentially a brick wall
| | 02:50 | and get moving in the opposite direction,
and that is when a ball is bouncing or
| | 02:55 | an object is basically
recoiling off of another object.
| | 02:59 | In this case, the issue is that it's
actually under the control of one force.
| | 03:05 | So when I have a bouncing ball, what
happens is the force of gravity starts
| | 03:09 | pulling down the ball and it accelerates.
| | 03:12 | Then when it hits the ground, it recoils
or the momentum of that object changes,
| | 03:19 | and then it moves upward, but the force
of gravity is still pulling down on it,
| | 03:23 | so it again slows out.
| | 03:25 | So, we have a slow in and a slow
out, but we also have a bounce.
| | 03:30 | Let me play this one more time,
slow in, bounce, slow out, and so on.
| | 03:38 | Okay, now playing with spheres and
balls is great, but let's go ahead and put
| | 03:42 | this into an animation context.
| | 03:45 | So here I have a part of a character, an arm.
| | 03:49 | So what exactly is moving this arm?
| | 03:52 | Well, we have two muscles.
| | 03:54 | We have a biceps and a triceps.
| | 03:57 | The contraction of those two muscles is
what is moving the arm in either direction.
| | 04:03 | So when the arm is moving up, it's the
biceps contracting, and when the arm is
| | 04:08 | moving in the opposite direction,
it's the triceps contracting.
| | 04:12 | So what the muscles do is
they actually generate force.
| | 04:16 | So as the arm starts to
bend, the biceps contracts.
| | 04:21 | By contracting, it actually pulls on the
forearm just above the elbow to accelerate it.
| | 04:28 | You can see by this graph
that it actually is accelerating.
| | 04:32 | Then as the force weakens, it decelerates.
| | 04:37 | And again, in the opposite direction,
we have the force of the triceps
| | 04:40 | activating and it accelerates
the arm in the opposite direction.
| | 04:45 | Again, as that force fades,
the arm slows to a stop.
| | 04:49 | So when we play this, you can see
that we've got an acceleration, and then
| | 04:55 | another acceleration, or in animation
lingo, we have slow in, slow out, and then
| | 05:01 | again, slow in and slow out.
| | 05:03 | Now the important thing about this
is that any motion you have with your
| | 05:08 | character is going to be based
in the muscles of that character.
| | 05:12 | What causes a character to
move is that character's muscles.
| | 05:16 | The muscles provide force, and by
providing force, they will accelerate,
| | 05:21 | decelerate, or slow in and slow out all motions.
| | 05:26 | So as you animate your character, keep
that in mind, and use slow in and slow
| | 05:30 | out for all motions of that character.
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| Arcs and smooth motion| 00:00 | The concept of arcs is another animation
principle you need to be aware of when animating.
| | 00:07 | Now, arcs basically means that
natural motion follows in arc.
| | 00:12 | Anything that moves through nature
typically moves along a curved arc of some sort.
| | 00:18 | Very rarely do things move in
straight lines through nature.
| | 00:22 | Usually straight lines are caused by
mechanical action rather than natural action.
| | 00:28 | Now, what causes an arc is one of two things.
| | 00:32 | The first is in-balance forces.
| | 00:34 | So if we get a force coming from one
direction and a force coming from another
| | 00:38 | direction, the sum of those two forces will
typically pull an object in a curved path.
| | 00:45 | The second reason things move in an arc
is because we can have pendulum motion
| | 00:50 | which is that an object is pinned in
one direction or another and it has to
| | 00:54 | follow an arc because it's
moving much like a pendulum.
| | 00:59 | Let's go back to our standard bouncing
ball, which is one example of something
| | 01:02 | that moves in a straight line.
| | 01:03 | If the ball is falling straight down,
it will tend to fall in a straight line.
| | 01:08 | Now, remember that in this instance
we only have one force acting upon this
| | 01:14 | object, which is the force of gravity.
| | 01:17 | So that's why it moves in a straight line.
| | 01:20 | But typically in nature we don't
have just gravity moving an object.
| | 01:23 | Either the object has a direction
that it's following, it has wind.
| | 01:27 | There are all sorts of things that
affect the motion of an object and very
| | 01:31 | rarely does something
move exactly straight down.
| | 01:34 | So in this case we have
basically a two-dimensional motion.
| | 01:38 | We have an object moving
in more than one direction.
| | 01:42 | We have more than one force acting upon it.
| | 01:44 | So I've graphed this out, so we
have the falling motion of the ball but
| | 01:49 | we're adding in just a constant linear
motion as if the ball was thrown in a direction.
| | 01:55 | So we have two force vectors or
two forces acting upon this ball.
| | 02:01 | We have one that's pulling it straight
down and one that's pulling it to the right.
| | 02:06 | So when we play this, you'll see that
the ball actually follows in arc and
| | 02:11 | if you want to see this a little bit
clearly, I've ghosted it so you can see that
| | 02:17 | this is actually moving in an arc.
| | 02:20 | Now, the only reason that this moves
in an arc is because we have multiple
| | 02:23 | forces acting upon the object and the sum
total of these forces moves it in an arc.
| | 02:30 | So let's take a look at this in
a character animation context.
| | 02:34 | Again, if you have multiple forces
acting upon an object, it'll move in an arc.
| | 02:39 | In this case, we have a character
who is moving from one pose to another.
| | 02:46 | So, as she moves from one pose to
another, her legs relax, her body drops down
| | 02:51 | because it's under the force of gravity,
and then she kind of stands up again and
| | 02:56 | regains her composure.
| | 02:58 | But if you notice we actually have
multiple forces acting upon this character.
| | 03:03 | So, if we just look at the hips,
we have the force of gravity pulling down,
| | 03:08 | but we also have the force of the legs pushing
it to the side, very similar to our bouncing ball.
| | 03:16 | In fact, I've graphed this out as well.
| | 03:19 | So let's go ahead and follow this red dot.
| | 03:21 | So basically she moves down and to the
side and then back up and to the side.
| | 03:27 | And the sum total of this is just a small arc.
| | 03:31 | So again, even in character
motion, things move in arcs.
| | 03:34 | So let's go ahead and just play this
at speed so you can see it. A very quick
| | 03:37 | motion but it's still an arc.
| | 03:41 | Now, the other reason that things move
in arcs is because of pendulum motion.
| | 03:45 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 03:46 | Now, what pendulum motion is, is that
you have a weight that's pinned at the top,
| | 03:52 | very much like the
pendulum on a grandfather clock.
| | 03:55 | In fact, let's go ahead just play this so
you can very easily see how a pendulum works.
| | 04:01 | So again, I'm going to go ahead and
ghost this and when you see it ghosted,
| | 04:05 | you can see that again
this is moving in an arc.
| | 04:10 | And it's pretty obvious because it's
pinned, so it actually has to move in a
| | 04:13 | circular arc, not even a
parabolic or any other sort of arc.
| | 04:18 | It's basically a circular arc.
| | 04:20 | Now, this works very similarly
to the joints of a character.
| | 04:25 | So, when we actually move that arm, you can
see that it's actually moving along an arc.
| | 04:29 | In fact I've gone ahead and added
another red dot to this so we can actually
| | 04:33 | see how this moves.
| | 04:35 | So the hand is actually
tracing an arc through space.
| | 04:40 | So, as you interpolate or in between
your animation you want to make sure that
| | 04:44 | the objects that you're
animating move along an arc.
| | 04:47 | A lot of times you'll just move
something from one place to another and the
| | 04:51 | computer will in-between it and when the
computer in-betweens it, it typically
| | 04:55 | in-betweens in a straight line.
| | 04:57 | So you need to be conscious of arcs and make sure
that you include them in your character's motion.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding overlap and follow-through| 00:01 | Overlap and follow-through is
another very important animation principle.
| | 00:06 | Now, what this means is that
not everything moves at once.
| | 00:11 | In other words, things take a while to
get moving, which is slow in and slow out,
| | 00:17 | but also when you have systems of
objects, in other words a character with many joints,
| | 00:22 | that not all of those
joints will move at the same time.
| | 00:27 | You may get part of your character
moving before another part of your character.
| | 00:32 | Now, this is really just based on
Newton's laws of motions again, which is
| | 00:36 | objects at rest tend to stay at rest
and when they tend to stay at rest
| | 00:41 | it creates what's called drag which means
things will drag behind other objects.
| | 00:47 | And on the opposite side, objects that
are moving will tend to stay moving so
| | 00:52 | they won't follow through.
| | 00:54 | So let's see how this works.
| | 00:57 | Here I have a simple ball on a string
and I'm going to create a force at the top
| | 01:03 | of the string that's pulling it to the
right and then on the opposite side I'm
| | 01:08 | going to create a force in the other
direction pulling it back to the left.
| | 01:13 | So let's go ahead and animate this.
| | 01:15 | And as you can see when I'm pulling the
string at the top it really doesn't look
| | 01:19 | like it's a ball on a string.
| | 01:20 | It looks more like a solid mass and
that's because I'm not animating my drag and
| | 01:26 | my follow-through on that ball.
| | 01:29 | Now, when I pull on this ball here with
this force, this part of the system is
| | 01:36 | going to want to move first.
| | 01:38 | This heavy weight of the ball is
going to want to stay in place.
| | 01:43 | So this is going to drag behind.
| | 01:47 | So, as this force pulls the string forward,
the ball itself is going to hang back.
| | 01:53 | So, what I could do is I can go to
about halfway through this cycle which is
| | 01:57 | here is about frame 10.
| | 01:58 | I've cycled it 20 frames forward, 20
frames back and then I'm just going to go
| | 02:03 | ahead and rotate this
ball back to simulate drag.
| | 02:07 | So, now when this ball moves completely
forward, you can see how it's wanting to
| | 02:13 | stay in place, and I'm already getting
a sense of weight and a sense of drag.
| | 02:16 | Now, on the opposite side, we can
basically move it in the other direction to
| | 02:22 | get a sense of follow-through.
| | 02:24 | So now what I have is I
have something like this.
| | 02:27 | So, now the ball is basically
dragging and then following through.
| | 02:32 | You can see how this gives a much
better sense of natural motion and a
| | 02:36 | better sense of weight.
| | 02:37 | Now, we can take this one more step
further where we have systems of joints.
| | 02:43 | Now, these are very
similar to the joints on an arm.
| | 02:45 | We have two balls on two strings.
| | 02:48 | So, if we animate this, you can see
how the first ball looks like it's on a
| | 02:53 | pivot because it's
dragging and following through.
| | 02:56 | But the second one isn't and so it
again looks stiff or we can just change this
| | 03:02 | again by creating more
drag and follow through.
| | 03:05 | Now, remember the object wants to stay at rest.
| | 03:08 | So, when we take this second ball and
this one goes forward, this is obviously
| | 03:13 | wanting to stay down and wants to stay here.
| | 03:17 | So, all we have to do is just animate this down.
| | 03:20 | Now, as this moves forward it's wanting
to stay in place and then it's going to
| | 03:25 | again drag in the other direction here.
| | 03:28 | Again, on the opposite side it's going
to want to continue its motion, an object
| | 03:33 | in motion wants to stay in motion and so on.
| | 03:38 | So, we basically get
something that looks like this.
| | 03:42 | And again, I'm just animating drag and
follow through for the second object.
| | 03:47 | Now, if we have a system like this
it's actually very similar to a common
| | 03:52 | character animation problem
and that is the joints in an arm.
| | 03:57 | The joints in an arm if they're not
under muscular control will actually do the
| | 04:01 | exact same drag and follow
through that we just animated.
| | 04:05 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 04:08 | As you can see this is giving a very
natural motion to the arm and it's just
| | 04:13 | the exact same problem that we had before,
except there is one little glitch in this animation.
| | 04:19 | Let me go ahead and scrub
forward and see where it is.
| | 04:22 | Now, here it looks great but now
when it starts moving in the opposite
| | 04:25 | direction, you can see right here
the elbow is moving way too far back.
| | 04:30 | The arm just simply doesn't bend like this.
| | 04:34 | So we do have to take it to account
the mechanical limits of the arm and so
| | 04:40 | I've animated this in this one and you can
see how now we have a much more natural motion.
| | 04:44 | So as it moves back I can just keep
it lock straight and that's more of a
| | 04:49 | natural motion for that arm.
| | 04:51 | And simply by doing this we have a
very natural motion and again, this is all
| | 04:57 | just based on the laws of physics.
| | 04:59 | A body at rest wants to stay at rest,
which creates drag, and a body in motion
| | 05:04 | wants to stay in motion,
which creates follow-through.
| | 05:07 | So as you animate your characters,
remember to pay attention to drag and
| | 05:11 | follow-through in the joints of your characters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating overlap and follow-through| 00:01 | Overlap, follow-through and drag
play a big part in almost every type of
| | 00:04 | character animation you are going to do.
| | 00:07 | Even something as simple as moving a
character's arm will have a lot of overlap,
| | 00:12 | follow-through and drag.
| | 00:14 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:16 | Here I have a simple character and I
have animated her arm raising up and down
| | 00:21 | over the course of about 20 frames.
| | 00:23 | Now as you can see, the arm is moving,
but all I have done is I have rotated the
| | 00:28 | arm at the shoulder.
| | 00:30 | I really haven't included
the other joints of the arm.
| | 00:34 | And when I do this, it looks very mechanical.
| | 00:37 | It doesn't look natural at all.
| | 00:39 | Let me play it one more time.
| | 00:42 | You can see how the arm looks really stiff.
| | 00:44 | In order to give this more fluidity,
we need to start animating the joints of
| | 00:49 | the arm and incorporating some
overlap, follow-through and drag.
| | 00:54 | So, let's go ahead and focus on her forearm.
| | 00:57 | Now as it raises up, this arm is
actually going to be fairly stiff because
| | 01:01 | remember the elbow does
not bend back too far at all.
| | 01:05 | So, if I bend the elbow back like
this, it would be very unnatural.
| | 01:09 | So, what I am going to do is I am going
to keep the arm stiff until she gets up
| | 01:13 | to the top of her shoulder
rotation, which is at frame 10.
| | 01:18 | Now as she lowers the arm, this
forearm is going to want to stay in place.
| | 01:25 | So, it is going to drag behind.
| | 01:27 | So, I am going to keep that dragging
about a few frames, so I am going to go
| | 01:31 | here to about frame 13, and so now you
can see the arm breaks because we are
| | 01:36 | having some drag here and we can even
drag it behind even a little bit further
| | 01:42 | and then as she relaxes her arm,
this will actually drag behind.
| | 01:48 | So, this isn't going to settle until
a few frames after her shoulder stops.
| | 01:53 | So, her shoulder stops at frame 20.
I am going to go two frames forward to that
| | 01:58 | and then just settle in her forearm.
| | 02:00 | So, now I'd get something like this and
this is actually a much more fluid motion.
| | 02:07 | But this is only one of two joints in the arm.
| | 02:11 | We've got the elbow but we
are still neglecting the wrist.
| | 02:17 | So, let's go ahead and
animate the wrist as well.
| | 02:19 | So, all I need to do is as her arm
comes up, we are going to actually create drag,
| | 02:25 | because this wrist actually will bend
down, and we can actually drag this behind.
| | 02:30 | So, I am actually going to drop her wrist down.
| | 02:33 | So, now as she moves up, you can see
already we are getting a much better motion.
| | 02:38 | So, as it bends up, we can do this
and then as it comes down, again
| | 02:45 | it's going to drag behind.
| | 02:48 | So, it's actually going to
kind of flip up like that.
| | 02:50 | So, now we have this motion and we can
even accentuate that a little bit more.
| | 02:57 | Now, notice how we are getting a nice
kind of an arc just in this arm itself.
| | 03:03 | If you actually drew the arm as an arc
you are almost getting it like a blade of
| | 03:06 | grass blowing in the wind or something
like that and again this just shows how
| | 03:10 | arcs play a role in animation and this
is also what's called a line of action
| | 03:16 | and the line of action plays a big part as well.
| | 03:18 | So now, as this wrist settles in,
again we want to settle it in just a little
| | 03:25 | bit later than when the arm settles in.
| | 03:27 | And I am actually going to push that
back to about frame 23 or 24 and now
[00:03:32.4 4]
we have something that
looks a little bit like this.
| | 03:35 | Now you can see that gives a
much better sense of motion.
| | 03:39 | But we still have to consider the
character's weight and balance, because when
| | 03:44 | the arm is straight out like this, we
have a very heavy weight out here trying
| | 03:49 | to pull the character to her right.
| | 03:53 | So, in order to compensate for that,
she kind of needs to lean to her left in
| | 03:58 | order to balance out.
| | 03:59 | So, when you put the system out of
balance, the whole system needs to
| | 04:03 | readjust to stay in balance.
| | 04:05 | So, I am actually going to take her
torso or her shirt and I am going to animate
| | 04:12 | that to give her a better sense of balance.
| | 04:16 | So, as she comes up and has her
maximum extension at frame 10, I am actually
| | 04:22 | going to rotate her a little bit to
the side here and that's just to give her
| | 04:27 | a sense of balance.
| | 04:28 | So, now I am getting her entire body into the
animation and it's looking a lot more natural.
| | 04:35 | And again as she comes back down, I
am going to settle her body back into a
| | 04:40 | more normal position.
| | 04:43 | Now, as the body comes up like this,
we also have another pendulum here.
| | 04:47 | We have the other arm and the other
arm if it's relaxed is actually going to
| | 04:52 | act like a pendulum.
| | 04:54 | So, let me go ahead and animate that as well.
| | 04:57 | So, we are going to take the left arm
and I am going to animate a little bit of
| | 05:02 | rotation here as well.
| | 05:03 | So, as it comes down, this is actually
going to rotate out, just again, just to
| | 05:08 | stay fairly vertical.
| | 05:11 | So, now we have got, she is
going out and then coming back again.
| | 05:18 | So, now the animation is complete.
| | 05:20 | We have not only added follow-through
and drag to create realistic arm motion.
| | 05:26 | We have also shifted her weight a bit
to create a realistic sense of balance.
| | 05:31 | So, let me play this one more time.
| | 05:34 | So, as you animate your characters,
pay attention to drag, follow-through.
| | 05:39 | Try and get a wave action in your arms and
also pay attention to your character's balance.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding squash and stretch| 00:00 | Another very important animation
principle is called squash and stretch.
| | 00:05 | Now what's squash and stretch does is
provides the illusion of weight, that your
| | 00:09 | character has mass, and it can make
characters look a lot more elastic or
| | 00:15 | rubbery or cartoony if used to extreme.
| | 00:19 | Now there are several ways
to create squash and stretch.
| | 00:22 | The first one is to squash the joints.
| | 00:25 | In other words bend the knees, hunch
over the spine so that the character looks
| | 00:29 | a little bit more squashed and then
straighten everything out to stretch them
| | 00:34 | and this will give a very
natural illusion of weight.
| | 00:37 | If you want to go a little bit more
extreme or a little bit more cartoony,
| | 00:41 | you can also squash the shape.
| | 00:44 | Now doing this creates much more of
an elastic or rubbery effect to your
| | 00:49 | characters and really what you are
doing is you are actually altering the
| | 00:52 | shape of your character.
| | 00:53 | Now when you squash the shape, you
need to make sure you maintain volume.
| | 00:58 | In other words, don't try and shrink
or grow the volume of your character.
| | 01:03 | If you do that, you will lose
the illusion of mass and volume.
| | 01:07 | So let's take a look at how to do
squash and stretch on this simple sphere.
| | 01:12 | Now, if we want to stretch
something, we can actually just scale it.
| | 01:17 | Now, if I want to, I
could scale this vertically.
| | 01:20 | But as I do you can see that
it actually increases in volume.
| | 01:25 | If I scale it this way, then I
also need to scale it in the opposite
| | 01:30 | direction to maintain volume.
| | 01:33 | So let me show you how that works in animation.
| | 01:38 | As you can see now this
looks like it's being stretched.
| | 01:41 | Now, if we go in the opposite direction,
again the same thing applies, that if
| | 01:47 | you scale something down in this
direction, you need to stretch it in the
| | 01:52 | opposite direction to
create that sort of squash.
| | 01:56 | So let me go ahead and play that.
| | 01:57 | So you can see how this ball
seams to maintain the same volume.
| | 02:02 | Now the same thing applies to a character.
| | 02:06 | If I wanted to squash and stretch his
character, I can do it just by altering
| | 02:10 | his shape or his volume.
| | 02:11 | So for example, if I brought him up
this way to stretch him, I would have to
| | 02:15 | bring him down this way to kind of
squash him in that direction, or the
| | 02:19 | opposite, which would be to, if I
squashed him down, then I would have to squash
| | 02:26 | him out that way as well.
| | 02:28 | Now another way to squash and stretch a
character is to just move the joints of
| | 02:33 | the character or to actually
just naturally deform a character.
| | 02:36 | Now, I have done this just by
bending this character over.
| | 02:41 | By doing this, what I have done is
I have created a kind of a squash.
| | 02:44 | I have actually made his volume more
compact and tight simply by bending his
| | 02:49 | knees and arching over his
spine and tucking his head in.
| | 02:53 | It's almost like how somebody does a
somersault and they tuck their knees into their chest.
| | 02:57 | That's kind of a squash.
| | 02:59 | So the combination of doing a squash
through volume change or shape change and
| | 03:04 | by animating the joints can give
you a very good squash and stretch.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating squash and stretch| 00:01 | Squash and stretch is great for adding a
little bit of life and interest to animation.
| | 00:06 | Now, what's great for character
animation that you can also use it for motion
| | 00:09 | graphics or a lot of other types of animation.
| | 00:13 | So let's take a look at how to animate
squash and stretch using a simple ball.
| | 00:17 | Now I have got this ball bouncing on the ground.
| | 00:20 | Now let me just play the animation.
| | 00:21 | Now when I scrub through the animation,
you will see I have animated this 8
| | 00:26 | frames down, 8 frames up and 8 frames
back down again for a total of 24 frames.
| | 00:34 | Now when it hits, we don't have much
squash and stretch, so the ball looks very
| | 00:39 | very rigid and solid.
| | 00:41 | If we want to give a little bit more
elasticity, we are going to have to
| | 00:44 | squash and stretch.
| | 00:46 | So what I want to do is just go down to
this point where it hits on frame 8 and
| | 00:51 | just use my scaling commands to scale this ball.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to stretch it out and
squash it down and then I am also going to
| | 00:59 | move that ball down so
that it contacts the ground.
| | 01:03 | Now if all I did was animate the squash,
I really would not have much of an animation.
| | 01:09 | In fact let me go ahead and play this.
| | 01:11 | So when I do this, you can see the ball
is squashing before it hits the ground
| | 01:17 | but what is really causing that ball to squash?
| | 01:20 | Well, it's the impact with the ground
and what's happening is all of the atoms
| | 01:25 | and all the mass of this ball is still
wanting to go down. Again Newton's Laws
| | 01:31 | of Motion, an object in motion wants
to stay in motion. But the floor and the
| | 01:36 | skin of the ball are
preventing that from going down.
| | 01:39 | So it squashes out.
| | 01:41 | So if we go one frame before, then the
ball hasn't impacted the floor and
| | 01:47 | it hasn't had anything to create that squash.
| | 01:51 | So at this frame, you want to
create the opposite, which is a stretch.
| | 01:56 | So what I am going to do is scale this
down and scale it long so I have a little
| | 02:03 | bit of a stretch and then the other
thing I am going to do is I am going to
| | 02:07 | rotate this so that it's
pointing at that impact point.
| | 02:11 | So now what I have done is I
have created some contrast.
| | 02:14 | So here the ball is stretched out.
| | 02:18 | You are going from a very
elongated stretch frame to a squashed frame
| | 02:23 | immediately after and this sort of
contrast will create a very good sense of impact.
| | 02:28 | If you are in_between this, you would
not really get that sense of solidity and
| | 02:33 | impact with the floor.
| | 02:36 | As this ball takes off,
again it's going to stretch.
| | 02:39 | It's not going to squash.
| | 02:41 | All of this matter still wants to stay
on the ground but then again its momentum
| | 02:45 | is pushing it this way.
| | 02:46 | So we are going to stretch it and rotate
it so it points to the point where it was.
| | 02:54 | So now I have got squash, stretch and
this gives a much better sense of motion.
| | 03:01 | So let's go ahead and play
the full version of this.
| | 03:05 | You can see how this gives a much
better sense of bounciness to the ball.
| | 03:09 | Now this works just as
well for character animation.
| | 03:12 | In fact, the shape of this ball is very
similar to the shape a character would
| | 03:17 | take if he is leaping on
the ground and recoiling.
| | 03:21 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 03:22 | Here we have the ball superimposed over
a character who is going through pretty
| | 03:27 | much the same motion.
| | 03:28 | The character is falling,
hitting the ground and leaping up.
| | 03:31 | So as you can see as the character goes
towards the ground, we stretch him out.
| | 03:38 | So at frame 7, he is stretched out
pretty much like the ball is stretched out.
| | 03:43 | Then when he hits on frame 8,
we have completely squashed him.
| | 03:48 | Now we have squashed his joints to
give him a sense of physical motion and
| | 03:53 | we have also squashed his volume a little
bit just to give a little bit more impact.
| | 03:58 | And then as he takes off, he stretches
out again, goes back to a normal position
| | 04:04 | and again stretches and hits the ground.
| | 04:07 | So let me go ahead and play that in
real time and you can see it pretty much
| | 04:12 | follows a bouncing ball.
| | 04:14 | So let's go ahead and turn off the
ball over here and just show the character
| | 04:19 | and you see we get a very nice
motion of this character, very bouncy,
| | 04:24 | squashy, stretchy motion.
| | 04:26 | So remember, as you animate your
characters be sure to squash and stretch the
| | 04:31 | volume of your character much like
you would squash and stretch a ball.
| | 04:34 | This will give your character a lot more
life and add vibrancy to your animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Squashing and stretching characters| 00:01 | Now let's go ahead and animate a
character using squash and stretch.
| | 00:05 | Here I have a very simple situation
where a character is on a moving platform
| | 00:09 | that's moving up and then down.
| | 00:12 | Now this will create squash
and stretch for your character.
| | 00:16 | Now this animation is set so it moves
up 8 frames, holds for 8 frames and then
| | 00:23 | moves down for another 8 frames.
| | 00:25 | So we are going to animate
squash and stretch in two passes.
| | 00:29 | The first pass is to actually animate
the joints of the body to create squash
| | 00:34 | and stretch and then we are going to
animate the volume or the shape of the
| | 00:38 | character to create a little bit
more of a cartoony sort of action.
| | 00:42 | So the first thing I want to do is to
just turn off the legs of the character
| | 00:48 | because I really want to deal with just
the mass of the body and how that body
| | 00:53 | is going to move to create squash and stretch.
| | 00:56 | So as this character moves up, the
body is going to want to drag behind.
| | 01:00 | It's going to want to stay in place.
| | 01:02 | It's not going to want to move.
| | 01:04 | So as this is pushed up, the body
itself is going to want to move down.
| | 01:12 | So it's going to want to stay in place.
| | 01:13 | So we have got the body, the feet, and
the floor are moving up, but the body
| | 01:18 | itself is wanting to stay in place.
| | 01:22 | And then as it gets to the top, again we
have got the body wanting to stay in motion.
| | 01:28 | So it's actually going to
overshoot the final position.
| | 01:32 | So it's going to take a while to catch
up to the motion of the platform, and
| | 01:37 | settle in, and the same for when it moves down.
| | 01:41 | At frame 16, when it moves down,
we have got the character in a solid
| | 01:45 | position and then as it moves down,
he is going to want to stay up, and he is
| | 01:50 | going to stretch out, and then again
as he settles in, he is going to go back
| | 01:59 | to his normal position.
| | 02:00 | So now I have added the legs in and
let me show you what that looks like.
| | 02:05 | So as you can see, he is
getting a nice squash in his knees.
| | 02:11 | Because the body wants to stay where it is,
the mass of the body is moving down.
| | 02:15 | So the knees have to bend to
accommodate this and now we have a squash.
| | 02:20 | The same on the opposite side, but not
as much, because the legs actually kind
| | 02:24 | of max out here when it comes back down.
| | 02:28 | Now, I can add a little bit more
squash and stretch to this by working with a
| | 02:32 | couple of other parts.
| | 02:33 | I can actually play with the head a little bit.
| | 02:35 | So let me go ahead and do that.
| | 02:37 | So as he is pushed up, again his
head wants to stay in position.
| | 02:41 | So I can squash that head down and then when
it comes up, the head is going to overshoot.
| | 02:51 | So now I have got the head squashing
down and then coming back up, and then as
| | 02:58 | he comes down, again we are going
to stretch out the head as well.
| | 03:02 | We are actually going to push that head
up a little bit, try to get as much of a
| | 03:07 | stretch as possible.
| | 03:08 | Now we can get even more squash and
stretch by actually squashing and stretching the
| | 03:13 | volume of the character.
| | 03:17 | So as he moves up, I am going to
widen him out and squash him down.
| | 03:25 | So now, he is getting pushed like this.
| | 03:29 | Now, he seems to be
increasing the volume a little bit.
| | 03:31 | So I am going to squash him down
a little bit more. Here we go.
| | 03:37 | Then as he gets to the top here,
he is going to overshoot this.
| | 03:42 | He is actually going to stretch a bit,
and he is going to go a little higher.
| | 03:50 | So now, he comes up like this and then he
is going to actually settle down to normal.
| | 03:56 | So now, we have got him kind of
squashing up and then stretching down.
| | 04:00 | The same is going to happen
when he is on the return trip.
| | 04:03 | He is actually going to stretch.
| | 04:06 | He goes stretch, squash in this way.
| | 04:10 | So now we have got him squashing
down, overshooting, and stretching.
| | 04:15 | So let me show you the
final version of this animation.
| | 04:17 | So you can see how he squashes and stretches,
and it gives a much better sense of motion.
| | 04:25 | So let me scrub through this just a
little bit so you can see how this works.
| | 04:28 | So as he moves up, his whole body squashes down.
| | 04:33 | His head kind of goes into his
shoulders, and then when the platform stops,
| | 04:39 | everything overshoots and
settles in including the hat.
| | 04:43 | Notice how the hat is
actually leaving the head as well.
| | 04:47 | And then when the elevator moves
down, again he wants to stay in place.
| | 04:51 | So he stretches out and comes back down.
| | 04:55 | So let's take one more look at this.
| | 04:57 | So you can see how squash and stretch
gives a much better sense of volume, life,
| | 05:02 | and elasticity to your characters.
| | 05:05 | So be sure to animate your characters
with lots of squash and stretch, including
| | 05:09 | bending the knees and adding a little
bit of squash and stretch to the shape
| | 05:13 | and volume of your character.
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| Understanding weight| 00:01 | Weight is very important in animation.
| | 00:04 | All of your characters will have weight and
every object in your scene will have weight.
| | 00:10 | Now, the only way that we can weigh weight
in an animated scene is by moving the object.
| | 00:17 | How an object moves determines its weight.
| | 00:20 | Another principle is that weight is
relative to other objects, so sometimes
| | 00:26 | we'll only know that one thing is
heavier than the other by how they interact.
| | 00:32 | Let me show you an example.
| | 00:35 | Here we have two objects on
the end of a teeter-totter.
| | 00:40 | Now, the only way we know how much
they weigh is by putting things in motion.
| | 00:46 | So, now we know that the blue
ball is heavier than the green one.
| | 00:50 | Now, the weight of the
ball is really just relative.
| | 00:53 | All we know is that one
is heavier than the other.
| | 00:58 | Here is another scene.
| | 01:00 | Here we have an 8-ball and
then kind of an unspecified ball.
| | 01:04 | We don't really know
whether it's light or heavy.
| | 01:07 | The only way we know is
through how they interact.
| | 01:12 | So, in this case the orange
ball is lighter than the 8-ball.
| | 01:17 | The only thing that tells
us this is by how it moves.
| | 01:21 | Here I have exact same
setup with another animation.
| | 01:25 | Now, in this case, you can see that the
orange ball is a lot heavier than the 8-ball.
| | 01:31 | The only difference between this scene
and the one before it is how they move.
| | 01:36 | So motion determines weight
and weight is always relative.
| | 01:40 | One object can be heavier than the other
but you really don't know whether they
| | 01:44 | weigh a hundred pounds or thousand pounds.
| | 01:47 | Okay, now let's get this into a
Character Animation standpoint.
| | 01:51 | Now, again how a character moves
will determine the weight of an object.
| | 01:56 | Here we have a very simple scene
where he is about to pick up a bag.
| | 02:01 | Now, how much does that bag weigh?
| | 02:04 | Well, it's going to be determined by
how the character picks up the bag.
| | 02:09 | In this case, the bag is relatively
light because there is really not that much
| | 02:15 | effort on the character.
| | 02:17 | Here is another scene.
| | 02:18 | Now, in this case I've
animated it a little bit different.
| | 02:21 | The only thing that's different is the motion.
| | 02:25 | In this case, you can see
that the bag is a lot heavier.
| | 02:28 | So, you can see how I put a little bit
of stretch in the bag just to give it a
| | 02:31 | little bit more weight.
| | 02:33 | Notice also how in this scene
he is squashed a little bit.
| | 02:38 | He actually bends his knees to
get more force to pull up that bag.
| | 02:43 | This gives the illusion of weight.
| | 02:47 | Now, here we have a
weight that's very, very heavy.
| | 02:50 | In fact, he can hardly pick it up.
| | 02:52 | Again, he is bending his knees, he is
squashing his body to get as much momentum
| | 02:57 | as possible in order to
lift that weight but he can't.
| | 03:02 | Now, here is another situation.
In this case, we've got a very, very light weight
| | 03:07 | and the motion is very different.
| | 03:09 | Now, with all of these scenes
it all starts on the same frame.
| | 03:15 | The only difference is how the character moves.
| | 03:18 | So again, motion determines weight.
| | 03:22 | So be very cognizant of that when
you start animating your scenes.
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| Understanding anticipation| 00:00 | Anticipation is a very
important principle of animation.
| | 00:05 | What it is, is it's motion
that precedes a main motion.
| | 00:08 | So for example if you are going to
throw a pitch in baseball, you would rear
| | 00:13 | back before you threw forward.
| | 00:16 | In fact, anticipation is just moving
right before you move left or moving a
| | 00:21 | little bit up before you move down and so on.
| | 00:24 | Now the reason that anticipation is
important is because it gives body
| | 00:28 | parts more momentum.
| | 00:30 | So if you reach back before you throw
that baseball, you're going to get more
| | 00:35 | momentum or more speed into that pitch.
| | 00:39 | Now from a dramatic standpoint,
anticipation can be used to draw an audience's
| | 00:44 | attention to important actions.
| | 00:46 | So you can use anticipation to say
look here, something is going to happen.
| | 00:51 | So let's take a look at anticipation in action.
| | 00:56 | Here, I have a very simple setup and this
bear is going to pound his fist on the table.
| | 01:02 | Now, this scene is
animated without any anticipation.
| | 01:06 | The bear just hits his
fist directly to the table.
| | 01:11 | As you can see, there's
really not that much going on.
| | 01:14 | It doesn't feel like there's any force.
| | 01:17 | Now in order to hit that table with force,
he needs to come from much higher up.
| | 01:22 | So he needs to anticipate that hit.
| | 01:26 | So here we have the same scene
with a little bit of anticipation.
| | 01:32 | So let's go ahead and scroll through that.
| | 01:34 | So as you can see, he starts with his
hand in the same place, but before he
| | 01:39 | moves down, he moves up and he lifts
that hand up so he gets a lot of room to
| | 01:45 | slam it down on the table.
| | 01:47 | Now you can also see how that can be
used to draw attention to the fact that
| | 01:53 | he's pounding on that table.
| | 01:55 | Because when his hand is moving up,
the eyes of the audience will be looking at
| | 02:00 | that part of his body that's moving.
| | 02:02 | Now, here I have something that's
animated pretty much the same but with a
| | 02:05 | little bit more force.
| | 02:07 | So what we do is we hit it down a little
bit harder, use his whole body. In fact,
| | 02:13 | we are anticipating with his body.
| | 02:16 | Let's scroll through this.
| | 02:17 | So as he comes up, he also leans back.
| | 02:22 | So the point of this is that
anticipation not only happens just within the joint.
| | 02:27 | It also happens within the body.
| | 02:29 | This is very important.
| | 02:30 | You need to animate the entire body and the
entire character, not just one joint at a time.
| | 02:37 | Now, for added effect when he slams down,
we did a little bit of overshoot so
| | 02:41 | we actually hit a little bit further.
| | 02:43 | I squashed the table and then
just kind of brought it back.
| | 02:48 | So this gives a lot more force, and
that's because of the squashing of the table.
| | 02:52 | So let's take a look at that again.
| | 02:54 | So you can see how he hits
that with a lot of force.
| | 02:58 | Now, anticipation can be used
for a number of other things.
| | 03:02 | Here's another example.
| | 03:04 | This is the classic cartoon dash off.
| | 03:07 | It's almost like what Snagglepuss would do,
where you anticipate and then you zip off.
| | 03:14 | Now, let's go through
this and see how this works.
| | 03:18 | Now, what we do is we actually have a
very slow animation into this anticipation.
| | 03:25 | And once we're in this pose we can
kind of hold it for as long as we want.
| | 03:30 | Now, we can either just immediately go
into the action or we can hang there for
| | 03:35 | quite a while, because
this is a fairly stable pose.
| | 03:38 | And by making this pose, what it does
is it draws the audience's attention to
| | 03:43 | the character. They know
something is going to happen.
| | 03:46 | And so when he actually zips
off, their eyes are on him.
| | 03:51 | If he zipped off very quickly without
the anticipation, it would almost look
| | 03:55 | like he's disappearing, because the
audience wouldn't have time to look at the
| | 03:59 | character before he zips off.
| | 04:02 | So what I have is I have this almost 20
frames into that anticipation and then
| | 04:07 | he goes off in about 3 or 4 frames.
| | 04:11 | So as you can see
anticipation is very important.
| | 04:14 | In one respect it's a natural part of motion.
| | 04:17 | In order to get up enough momentum and
enough speed to do certain things,
| | 04:21 | we need to anticipate them.
| | 04:24 | We need to rear back before we
throw the baseball, for example.
| | 04:28 | On the other level, it's
a great dramatic device.
| | 04:31 | What it does is it actually allows
you to direct the eyes of the audience.
| | 04:36 | So by anticipating an action, the
audience will have their eyes on the character
| | 04:41 | when the actual action occurs.
| | 04:44 | So anticipation is important for two reasons.
| | 04:46 | One is to create natural motion, and two is
to direct the audience's eye to that motion.
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| Animating anticipation and weight| 00:01 | Now let's go ahead and use
anticipation in a real life situation.
| | 00:05 | Here we have a character and
we are going to make him stand up.
| | 00:09 | Now, in order to stand up, he
needs to get some momentum going.
| | 00:13 | If all we did was lift him up, we wouldn't
have any sort of sense of weight or momentum.
| | 00:18 | So, for example, if I took this
character and I just took his hips and I just
| | 00:24 | stood him up like this, obviously that
doesn't really seem all that realistic.
| | 00:30 | He really needs to anticipate that, so we
can get some momentum to get off of that box.
| | 00:36 | So, we are actually going to go ahead
and go to say about frame 4 and let's go
| | 00:41 | ahead and create an anticipation frame.
| | 00:44 | So, what I am going to do is
I am going to rotate him back.
| | 00:47 | So, what he is going to do is lean back
and then lean forward into the motion.
| | 00:54 | So, I am actually going to move him
like this, so he is actually going to go
| | 00:58 | backwards, anticipate this move and then
get into it and then actually stand up.
| | 01:07 | Something like this.
| | 01:09 | So, just by giving that extra little
sense of momentum, you can see how he
| | 01:13 | already has a much more realistic motion.
| | 01:16 | So, what we have is we have something like this.
| | 01:20 | Now obviously, we are just
moving the main weight of the body.
| | 01:25 | If we animate the legs underneath, then we
get something a little bit more like this.
| | 01:33 | Now, this is actually pretty good animation.
| | 01:37 | But you can see his arms and
his head are also fairly stiff.
| | 01:42 | So, what we can do is give his
arm some anticipation as well.
| | 01:46 | So, he is going to put his arms ahead
of himself and then as he moves back,
| | 01:50 | he is going to push his arms back
just like this and then straighten up.
| | 01:56 | So, let's go ahead and take a look at that.
| | 02:01 | So, with that sense of anticipation,
you get much better sense of weight and
| | 02:06 | motion in your character.
| | 02:08 | So, before you make your character do
a very large motion, go ahead and add
| | 02:12 | in some anticipation.
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|
|
3. Animating CharactersInternal vs. external forces| 00:00 | Character animation is basically
bringing something to life using motion.
| | 00:05 | Now, what creates motion?
| | 00:06 | Well, as we've seen,
forces are what create motion.
| | 00:10 | Anything that's put into motion is
subject to a force in one way or the other.
| | 00:15 | Now there are two basic types of
forces that can act upon a character:
| | 00:19 | internal and external forces.
| | 00:22 | Now, external forces are those that are from
outside the character or from the environment.
| | 00:28 | That will be stuff like gravity, wind,
or any sort of mechanical force such as
| | 00:32 | an anvil dropping on your character's head.
| | 00:35 | Now, internal forces are those that
come from within the character himself and
| | 00:41 | those are forces that are created by the
muscles of your character and driven by
| | 00:46 | the intelligence of your character.
| | 00:48 | So the internal forces are really
what bring your character to life.
| | 00:52 | Now, when animating a character and
trying to get a realistic animation,
| | 00:57 | you need to balance both.
| | 00:58 | You need to balance the internal
forces of the character's muscles versus the
| | 01:03 | external forces of the environment.
| | 01:06 | So let me show you how this works.
| | 01:08 | Here we have a simple character and any
character who is standing on the ground
| | 01:12 | is subject to the force of gravity.
| | 01:15 | So here we have a force, an external
force, acting upon the character to pull
| | 01:21 | him down towards the ground.
| | 01:23 | Now, if the only force that was
acting upon this character was gravity,
| | 01:28 | the character would just sink into the ground.
| | 01:31 | But the character does have muscles
and his own internal forces or internal
| | 01:36 | energy that he can use to
counteract the force of gravity.
| | 01:41 | So when his legs light up or the muscles
in his legs activate, he pushes against
| | 01:48 | gravity and creates a
counteracting or opposing force to gravity.
| | 01:54 | And those two forces, the external force
of gravity versus the internal force of
| | 01:58 | the character, create a balance
and so the character stands up.
| | 02:03 | And if the character is just standing,
those forces will continue to balance.
| | 02:07 | But as soon as the character moves,
changes his weight or changes that situation in
| | 02:12 | any way, then the forces will become out
of balance and the character will move.
| | 02:19 | So let me show you an example.
| | 02:21 | Here we have a character who is
just basically shifting his weight.
| | 02:25 | He is going from his right foot
to his left foot and that's it.
| | 02:30 | Now, this really doesn't look all that
realistic because we are not factoring in
| | 02:35 | the external force of gravity.
| | 02:37 | All we are doing is using
the internal force of his legs.
| | 02:41 | We're really not understanding how gravity
is affecting this character's body.
| | 02:47 | So when he animates, it just goes from
one position to the other and it really
| | 02:51 | doesn't have a sense of weight.
| | 02:53 | Because what's causing weight? Gravity.
| | 02:56 | So what we can do is we can actually
animate this character, so that it looks
| | 03:00 | like there is gravity acting upon him.
| | 03:04 | So first thing I am actually going
to do when I animate this is I am
| | 03:07 | actually going to turn off the legs,
because I really just want to get the
| | 03:10 | mass of the body moving.
| | 03:13 | So right now, the mass of the body
pretty much just moves in a straight line
| | 03:17 | from frame 0 to frame 16, and
I need to get a little bit more weight.
| | 03:24 | So what we can do is we can add
in the external force of gravity.
| | 03:28 | So as he moves, he is going to be
shifting his weight from one foot to the
| | 03:32 | other and in between those, there
will be an imbalance of force and gravity
| | 03:37 | will pull him down.
| | 03:39 | So what I can do is just take
his hips and drop them as he moves.
| | 03:45 | So now, he is going to go down
and then back up into his pose.
| | 03:51 | But one of the things is that again
his body is going to want to continue to
| | 03:55 | move in the direction that it's
going, again Newton's laws of motion.
| | 04:00 | So he is going to overshoot
this final position a little bit.
| | 04:04 | So instead of going right to the
position, I'm actually going to go little bit
| | 04:07 | higher and then settle him down.
| | 04:13 | So now this gives a much better sense of weight.
| | 04:16 | In fact, I've already animated
this and I have put in the legs.
| | 04:20 | So let's just go ahead and see how this looks.
| | 04:25 | As you can see, it has a much better
sense of weight just by adding in those
| | 04:29 | external forces of gravity.
| | 04:31 | So when you animate your character,
you need to balance the internal forces of
| | 04:36 | the character's muscles and
intelligence against the external forces of the
| | 04:40 | environment in order to
create a realistic animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing characters to life| 00:00 | Let's look at how internal versus
external forces bring a character to life.
| | 00:06 | Here I have a simple situation where
I have a character on a hoverboard, or
| | 00:10 | basically a platform that moves left and right.
| | 00:13 | In fact, I've already animated this.
| | 00:15 | So what I have here is just a simple
animation that goes back and forth.
| | 00:20 | 24 frames to the right, 24 frame
to the left for a total of 48 frames.
| | 00:26 | Now, because he is on this platform and he is
in motion, he will be subjected to some force.
| | 00:32 | So let's go ahead and take care of
the external forces first and then we'll
| | 00:36 | worry about the internal forces.
| | 00:38 | Now, as the character moves from right
to left, he is going to want to drag back.
| | 00:44 | It's very much like the pendulum that we saw.
| | 00:47 | He is going to want to stay in place.
| | 00:49 | So his body is going to behave
almost like an upside-down pendulum.
| | 00:53 | So let's go ahead and animate that motion first.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to go ahead and turn off his
legs, so that way we can concentrate a
| | 01:01 | little bit more on his body.
| | 01:03 | So, I'm going to go ahead and grab his
body and we're going to start animating this.
| | 01:09 | So the first thing I want to do is just go
ahead and keep him in place at frame 0
| | 01:13 | and then as he moves to the right,
he is going to basically rotate back and
| | 01:20 | his body is going to move back
and down, just a little bit.
| | 01:25 | Now again, this is just
stimulating that pendulum motion.
| | 01:28 | So he moves back and down, then he is
going to straighten up by the time he hits
| | 01:32 | the last frame of this and he is going
to again be pushed the other direction.
| | 01:39 | So again, I am going to rotate him
forward and drop him down and forward just a bit
| | 01:46 | and then I'm going to go
ahead and cycle this at the very end.
| | 01:52 | So now I have this basic motion.
| | 01:58 | So you can see how it's fairly realistic.
| | 02:00 | In fact, I've gone ahead and just
added in the legs and let's just go ahead
| | 02:04 | and see how this looks.
| | 02:05 | So now he looks kind of
like a pendulum, very simple.
| | 02:12 | But there are some additional
joints of this body that need animating.
| | 02:16 | For example, his arms, if they are not
under muscular control, they are again
| | 02:20 | going to behave much like a pendulum.
| | 02:24 | So as he moves forward, his arms are
going to want to stay in place and so
| | 02:29 | again we have that pendulum action and
his hands are going to kind of rotate
| | 02:33 | back and then they are
going to settle in again
| | 02:40 | and again they are
going to rotate forward.
| | 02:43 | So now we have an action kind of like this.
| | 02:47 | Again, we're getting this
secondary action of the character.
| | 02:49 | In fact, let me go ahead and
show you what this looks like.
| | 02:52 | So now we've got the
character animating back and forth.
| | 03:00 | Now, with this animation it looks very
realistic but the character does not look
| | 03:04 | the least bit alive.
| | 03:05 | He looks like a rag doll being pushed around.
| | 03:09 | That's because this is all external forces.
| | 03:12 | There is nothing from inside
the character making him move.
| | 03:16 | So let's go ahead and fix that.
| | 03:18 | So as he comes forward, let's go
ahead and make him a little cautious
| | 03:23 | about where he is going.
| | 03:25 | First thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to turn off those legs again, because I
| | 03:28 | don't want them to get in the way here
and now I'm going to lean him forward,
| | 03:33 | because he is actually being pushed
back, but he is going to resist this.
| | 03:37 | So somewhere around frame 12, I'm
going take his body, I'm going to bend the
| | 03:41 | knees a little bit by just bringing the
body down and then rotate him forward,
| | 03:46 | because he is really not wanting to go
in that direction and then I'm going to
| | 03:50 | take the hands and the arms and move
them forward as well, almost like he is
| | 03:55 | kind of putting his hands out to stop himself.
| | 03:58 | So I am going to put these hands
out and put this arm out as well.
| | 04:04 | So again, we are moving him against
the force that he is being subjected to.
| | 04:09 | So what I want to do is get a
pose that is somewhat like this.
| | 04:14 | So once I get this pose, you can see
now he has a very strong sense of motion
| | 04:21 | and as we animate this, you can see now
just by adding in that one little pose,
| | 04:27 | all of a sudden he really comes to life.
| | 04:30 | So we had a character who has being
pushed around like a rag doll and then just
| | 04:34 | by putting in some internal forces,
he is automatically sprung to life and
| | 04:39 | the whole animation together looks very realistic.
| | 04:44 | So by creating a balance between the
external and internal forces acting upon
| | 04:50 | your character, you can really bring
your character to life and create some very
| | 04:55 | realistic animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating blinks| 00:00 | When animating a character, you really
need to pay attention to the character's eyes.
| | 00:05 | The eyes are very key to the
character's facial expression.
| | 00:08 | They also show where the character's
attention is focused and the eyes also help
| | 00:13 | convey thoughts and emotions.
| | 00:16 | Now, when animating the eyes, one of
the most important things to pay attention
| | 00:19 | to is the way the character blinks.
| | 00:22 | Now, blinks are probably one of the
easiest ways to bring a character to life.
| | 00:26 | Now, another important thing with blinks
is that it draws attention to the eyes.
| | 00:30 | So if the eyes change direction, or
they change a motion, a blink really helps
| | 00:36 | to draw the audience to the eyes so
they can see the change and blinks can also
| | 00:41 | help indicate mood and alertness.
| | 00:43 | A fast blink is going to create a very
alert character, while a slower blink
| | 00:48 | might create a more drowsy or drunk character.
| | 00:52 | So let's go ahead and look
at how to animate some blinks.
| | 00:56 | So here we have a simple character and
we're just going to go ahead and blink her eyes.
| | 01:02 | So when you animate a blink, first thing you
do is decide how you're going to blink the eyes.
| | 01:07 | Now, I typically blink the character in thirds.
| | 01:10 | So I set up a one-third closed, a two-
thirds closed and then a completely closed eye.
| | 01:17 | Now, some people use fourths,
some people only do halves.
| | 01:20 | It really depends upon the character
and how you want to convey their moods.
| | 01:24 | So each character is going
to be a little bit different.
| | 01:27 | Now, I find this works best for the
type of timing that I like to use.
| | 01:32 | So let's go ahead and animate a simple blink.
| | 01:34 | It really just is a matter of
closing the eyes and opening them again.
| | 01:38 | So I'm going to actually start the
blink here at frame 2, over the course for a
| | 01:44 | couple of frames, I'm going to close the eyes.
| | 01:45 | So 2 frames per pose, 2 frames for one-
third closed, 2 frames for two-thirds
| | 01:56 | closed and 2 frames completely closed.
| | 02:04 | So basically we have open,
one-third, two-thirds, closed.
| | 02:09 | So that takes actually a total of
6 frames just to close the eyes.
| | 02:13 | Now, opening them back up may
take a few more frames as well.
| | 02:19 | And you can open them back up just the
same way that you close them, which is by
| | 02:24 | going two-thirds, one-
third and then completely open.
| | 02:30 | This is just one way.
| | 02:31 | So now we've got 6 frames down, 2
frames closed, and then 6 frames up.
| | 02:38 | So that's actually a total of 14 frames,
because you've got 6 down, 6 up, plus 2 for close.
| | 02:45 | So 14 frames is almost
half a second for a blink.
| | 02:49 | So lets go ahead and see
how that plays in real time.
| | 02:52 | You can see that's a nice blink, but
it's actually a fairly slow blink if your
| | 02:56 | character is very alert.
| | 02:57 | Now, one of the tricks I've learned is
that the rate that you open the eyes is
| | 03:02 | actually little more important
than the rate that you close the eyes.
| | 03:06 | So eyes that open a little bit more
quickly can be read as a little bit more alert.
| | 03:11 | So, I'm just going to go ahead and take
this character and open her eyes a lot faster.
| | 03:17 | So I'm going to take 6 frames to close
them but only half the time, 3 frames,
| | 03:21 | to open them back up.
| | 03:23 | So let's see how that plays.
| | 03:24 | So you can see she feels
a little bit more alert.
| | 03:29 | Now, when you blink the eyes, you really
have to pay attention to the entire character.
| | 03:34 | Now, just blinking the eyes like this
doesn't bring her to life nearly as much,
| | 03:39 | as if you would animate
a little bit more of her.
| | 03:42 | So in order to bring a little bit
more life to the character, I am going to
| | 03:45 | animate the head as well.
| | 03:48 | So as this characters blinks, I'm
actually going to dip the head, rotate her
| | 03:52 | chin down just a little bit and give
her a little bit of a head motion, as she blinks,
| | 03:59 | and then reverse that as she comes up.
| | 04:04 | So now, I've got something like this.
| | 04:09 | This gives a lot more impact. Just
dipping the chin little more bit or dropping
| | 04:14 | the head, as she blinks gives a
lot more emphasis to the blink.
| | 04:18 | It also makes the character come to
life a little bit more because we've got
| | 04:21 | more of the character involved in the animation.
| | 04:26 | So remember when blinking your
characters, the faster the blink, the more alert
| | 04:31 | and dipping the head just a little bit
as the character blinks will add a lot
| | 04:34 | more life to your character.
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| Animating changes in eye direction| 00:00 | Now many times you would want to change
the direction of your character's gaze.
| | 00:05 | Now when doing this, a blink
will really help the process.
| | 00:09 | Now I've already animated this
character looking in different directions,
| | 00:13 | but without blinks.
| | 00:15 | So let me show you what that looks like.
| | 00:17 | As you can see the eyes look a little
bit floaty and when you animate the eyes
| | 00:22 | like this without a blink, they look
kind of almost like they are staring in
| | 00:27 | space or the character's a little bit spacey.
| | 00:30 | The better way to do is to
cover that motion with a blink.
| | 00:34 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
this same character and now I have added in
| | 00:40 | a blink to cover the change in eye direction.
| | 00:44 | As you can see it looks much more crisp
and also what it does is the blink draws
| | 00:50 | the audience's attention to the eyes.
| | 00:54 | By blinking the eyes, it's almost
like a semaphore that tells the audience,
| | 00:58 | something is happening here.
| | 01:00 | And when you change a character's eye direction,
you are changing the focus of that character.
| | 01:05 | She is looking to her right at
something and now she is looking to her left at
| | 01:10 | something, and there is something
important to her left that she is looking at.
| | 01:13 | So let's guide the audiences' eye, so
let's go ahead and signal to the audience
| | 01:18 | that those eyes are moving.
| | 01:21 | Another really important thing when
changing eye direction is making sure that
| | 01:24 | your eyes are focused on the right thing.
| | 01:27 | So for example here, I have the eyes
blinking and she is going from left to right.
| | 01:34 | But we also have these green sphere in
the scene, but you can tell very clearly
| | 01:40 | that she is not looking at this green sphere.
| | 01:44 | Only after she changes eye direction
slightly, do we know that now she is
| | 01:49 | looking directly at this sphere and
really this is only a fraction of the size
| | 01:54 | of the eyes that these are moving.
| | 01:56 | So from here to here, just completely
changes the way that the audience sees this.
| | 02:02 | In fact, let's go ahead and take a
look at this a little bit more succinctly.
| | 02:06 | So that's what she is looking at.
| | 02:08 | When we go back she is looking that way and
the audiences' attention is driven that way.
| | 02:15 | So you can see how when a character
blinks, you've got different eye directions
| | 02:20 | and they will mean different things.
| | 02:22 | They will also guide your audience's
directions to wherever those eyes are looking.
| | 02:28 | So pay attention to how your
characters move their eyes, cover those eye
| | 02:32 | movements with blinks to give them
more crispness and also pay attention to
| | 02:36 | how the eyes are focused, so you can
draw attention to certain things in your scenes.
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| Animating head turns| 00:00 | One other more important skills you will
need to learn as a character animator is
| | 00:04 | how to turn your character's head.
| | 00:06 | Now a head has a lot of different parts.
| | 00:09 | You have the shape of the face.
| | 00:10 | You have hair, eyes, nose, mouth,
and all of those need to move in
| | 00:15 | a very coordinated manner.
| | 00:17 | So in order to turn the head, it's
actually fairly complex animation even on a
| | 00:21 | simple character such as this.
| | 00:23 | So let me show you how to do it.
| | 00:25 | Now probably the easiest way to turn
a head is just to flip it, to actually
| | 00:29 | scale it in the opposite direction.
| | 00:32 | So for example, if I wanted to turn
this character's head between frame 4 and 5,
| | 00:37 | I could just very easily flip
it in the opposite direction.
| | 00:41 | So if I scale it -100% in that direction
and just reposition the head, I can just
| | 00:48 | have a very simple kind of a snap head turn.
| | 00:51 | Now I have seen this done in a lot of
character animations and it can work out
| | 00:56 | quite well in a pinch, but
it really is kind of a cheap-y.
| | 00:59 | So if you wants get a more realistic
head turn, you are going to have to in
| | 01:03 | between it over a number of frames.
Really anywhere from 6 to 12 frames is about
| | 01:07 | a standard head turn.
| | 01:09 | So let's go ahead and make a 6-
frame head turn with this character.
| | 01:13 | Now if I just took that flip, in
other words if I just scaled it over the
| | 01:17 | course of 6 frames, so I am going from frame
4 say to frame 10, which would be 6 frames.
| | 01:22 | You would see that this really
doesn't work because, well, it's scaling.
| | 01:28 | It's not really turning.
| | 01:30 | And here in the middle the
head actually kind of disappears.
| | 01:33 | So what we have to do is actually
create an in-between pose right about here
| | 01:38 | which is frame 7 to make it look
like the head is actually turning.
| | 01:43 | So we have to actually animate the
shape of the face and move the eyes and do
| | 01:47 | a number of different things in order to
make that head appears as though it's turning.
| | 01:51 | So let's go ahead and go to frame 7 and
I am going to go ahead and copy in that
| | 01:57 | original pose that we had at frame 4.
| | 02:00 | So here from frame 4 to frame7,
it's really the same pose.
| | 02:04 | But I am going to use this
pose as the basis for a head turn.
| | 02:09 | So what happens during a head turn?
Well, the facial features move over,
| | 02:12 | the chin drops and the head turns.
| | 02:15 | Now everything moves on an arc during a
head turn or really doing any other sort
| | 02:20 | of character animation.
| | 02:22 | So let's go ahead and try and simulate
that using some scaling and moving the
| | 02:26 | facial features around.
| | 02:28 | So first thing I am going to do is I am
going to go ahead and squash this head
| | 02:34 | and move it down and then rotate the chin.
| | 02:38 | So it looks like her chin is actually moving.
| | 02:41 | This is probably little too squashed here.
| | 02:46 | So now what I have got is I have
got her head kind of going like this.
| | 02:52 | But this really doesn't look quite right.
| | 02:54 | What's really going to indicate the turn
is that point on the bottom of the chin
| | 02:59 | that's actually going to turn.
| | 03:01 | So we need to make sure that we
animate that and give it kind of an
| | 03:04 | exaggerated sense of turning.
| | 03:07 | So what I am going to do is I am
going to go back to frame 4 and I am going
| | 03:11 | to anticipate this.
| | 03:12 | So I am going to go ahead and
move it in the opposite direction and
| | 03:16 | almost anticipate it.
| | 03:17 | So now her head comes up and then it comes over.
| | 03:21 | So now you can start to see that we
are getting a little bit more of what
| | 03:24 | it looks like a turn.
| | 03:26 | But again here between frame 7 and 8
it's kind of flipping and it's not really
| | 03:31 | doing what we wanted do.
| | 03:33 | So again what I am going to do is
exactly the opposite which is I am going to
| | 03:36 | take the keyframes here at frame 10 and
copy them over one frame after that in
| | 03:42 | between and then I am going to again
squash it down and then rotate that chin.
| | 03:54 | So now I have got
something that looks like this.
| | 03:57 | So at least the shape of the head is
starting to look a little bit more like a head turn.
| | 04:02 | So what I have done is I have
anticipated the head by moving up the chin,
| | 04:07 | squashing it down and rotating the chin
down, flipping it, and then bringing it
| | 04:12 | up to the opposite position.
| | 04:15 | Now in a head turn you can also do
something similar to an overshoot.
| | 04:19 | What we can do is we can go two frames over to
frame 12 and then overshoot here at frame 10.
| | 04:25 | So I am actually going to
bring this up a little bit.
| | 04:28 | So now it goes up and then it settles down and
her head rotates back just a little bit more.
| | 04:35 | So now we have got something like this.
| | 04:37 | It gives a little bit more of a bounce to it.
| | 04:40 | So now that we have got the basic motion
of the head, let's go ahead and move on
| | 04:44 | to the facial features.
| | 04:46 | So right here before it turns I want
to take the eyes and the mouth and the
| | 04:51 | nose and move them down.
| | 04:53 | I am going to go ahead and take this
right eye, move it down, take the left eye,
| | 05:01 | again move it down.
| | 05:02 | So what I am doing is I am
trying to get a sense of motion here.
| | 05:09 | So now we have got the
eyes coming down a little bit.
| | 05:12 | It makes it look like the
head is actually tilting down.
| | 05:16 | So I can take that nose
and move it down as well.
| | 05:25 | Again, just reset it.
| | 05:27 | So now it looks like her head is
tilting down, because the facial features are
| | 05:33 | moving slightly down.
| | 05:34 | So now that we have got this, we have
got a much better sense of a head turn.
| | 05:39 | Now there is still one more thing
that we need to do, and that is to put a
| | 05:43 | little bit of blink in the middle here.
| | 05:48 | So let's go ahead to this center point
here and we are going to add in some blinks.
| | 05:56 | So as her head comes down right there,
I want to make sure that she blinks.
| | 06:02 | Now her blinks are a little bit off here.
| | 06:06 | Here we go, much better.
| | 06:13 | So she blinks and then she is
going to open up her eyes again.
| | 06:24 | So now I have put a blink in
the middle of this animation.
| | 06:30 | So when her eyes are blinked here in
the middle, it gives a much better sense
| | 06:34 | of direction, because one other things
that happens is the eyes are changing
| | 06:39 | directions as well.
| | 06:40 | Now one other things you should do when
doing a head turn is you should take the
| | 06:45 | eyes and actually lead the eyes
in the direction of the head turn.
| | 06:49 | So as the character moves his/her head,
he/she is going to be looking in the
| | 06:53 | direction that her head is turning.
| | 06:59 | We can just do a little more animation.
| | 07:01 | So we can take the pupils of the eyes
and just do a real simple animation, so as
| | 07:07 | she comes down I want this position of
these eyes to move over just to look like
| | 07:13 | she is looking in the
direction of her head turn.
| | 07:17 | So then as the eyes flip over here,
again we are going to need to just put those
| | 07:22 | back in the direction that
they are supposed to be going.
| | 07:24 | So let's take a look at this final head turn.
| | 07:30 | As you can see, we have got number of things
that we need to do when animating a head turn.
| | 07:34 | First thing we should do is make sure
that the chin appears to be moving from
| | 07:38 | one direction to the other.
| | 07:40 | A squash in the middle can give the
sense that the chin and the face is dipping
| | 07:44 | down and then a blink in the
middle accentuates that head turn.
| | 07:49 | So let's see this one more time.
| | 07:51 | So go ahead and use these techniques
with your character's head turns and
| | 07:57 | they will appear a lot
more realistic and life-like.
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| Creating a strong line of action| 00:01 | As you start animating characters, a lot of
times you'll be animating from pose-to-pose.
| | 00:07 | Pose-to-pose animation really just
takes character from one pose to another.
| | 00:12 | Now, when you're animating using poses,
you need to create strong poses,
| | 00:16 | poses that read very well to the audience.
| | 00:19 | Your audience needs to look at your
character and instantly be able to know what
| | 00:23 | the character is doing and
where the action is leading.
| | 00:27 | So, this means your character's poses
need a strong line of action, as well
| | 00:31 | a strong silhouette.
| | 00:34 | Now, let me show you what those mean.
| | 00:37 | Here we have a character who is just
standing and this is actually kind of boring.
| | 00:40 | We really don't know what the character is
doing. There's really no intent in the pose.
| | 00:46 | She is just standing there.
| | 00:48 | If we create a stronger line of
action, we can have a much better sense
| | 00:53 | of what's happening.
| | 00:54 | Here's another pose.
| | 00:56 | So, with both of these poses, they
are much more dynamic, they have a much
| | 01:00 | better line of action and they show a
little bit more character just through the pose.
| | 01:04 | Now, if we take and we overlay on the line
of action on these poses, you'll notice
| | 01:09 | that the one that's kind of boring, the
straight up and down pose has a straight
| | 01:13 | up and down line of action.
| | 01:16 | These two poses have a
much stronger line of action.
| | 01:19 | So, in this one, she is kind of going back
and then this one, she is kind of going forward.
| | 01:26 | Now, line of action helps a lot with animation.
| | 01:29 | Here we have two simple poses that
show the woman pointing her finger.
| | 01:35 | Now, by using a stronger line of
action, we can get a much better sense
| | 01:39 | of motion from her.
| | 01:40 | So, in here, she is rearing back or
anticipating the point and here, she is
| | 01:46 | leaning forward and actually pointing.
| | 01:50 | So, if we actually take this and we
animate it, you can see how very quickly
| | 01:53 | this flips from one to the other.
| | 01:55 | So, we have Pose 1, which is a strong
pose, and Pose 2, which also a strong pose.
| | 02:01 | And even just flipping between these
two poses, we get a sense of animation and
| | 02:06 | so you can even see how this
character is going to in-between.
| | 02:11 | Now, again, if I overlay the line
of action, what you'll see is the
| | 02:15 | line of action is almost a waving curve.
| | 02:17 | So, it almost is like a blade of
grass or something like that, sweeping
| | 02:21 | back-and-forth and this gives it a
much more natural motion and much more
| | 02:25 | natural sense of aliveness.
| | 02:29 | So, let me go ahead and animate
this to see how this would work.
| | 02:32 | So as she moves forward, you can see
how this would just sway almost like a
| | 02:37 | blade of grass, but let me turn
her off and we'll just see what the
| | 02:39 | line-of-action looks like.
| | 02:41 | So you can see how it's a very fluid motion.
| | 02:44 | So, if you get your poses to follow a
very fluid kind of arc-like motion, you'll
| | 02:49 | get a much better sense of animation.
| | 02:51 | Let me show you a more complex example.
| | 02:53 | Here we have that character who is jumping.
| | 02:56 | So, let's go ahead and take
a look at what he looks like.
| | 02:58 | Okay, so he is jumping along an arc.
| | 03:01 | As we saw in the squash-and-stretch
exercise, he falls along an arc, squashes,
| | 03:07 | and then leaps back up along an arc.
| | 03:09 | Now, let's go ahead
overlay a line of action on him.
| | 03:13 | So, as you can see, the line of action
almost follows the arc that he is going.
| | 03:18 | So, he is going down in this kind of arc.
| | 03:20 | His line of action almost follows
exactly that arc and then when he lands,
| | 03:26 | the line of action changes.
| | 03:28 | You can see how it very quickly changes.
| | 03:30 | We have a lot contrast in that line and
by creating contrast, you can create a
| | 03:35 | real sense of impact and then he kind
of straightens up and again, he goes from
| | 03:40 | leaning forward to leaning
back and again, the same thing.
| | 03:46 | So, let's go ahead and see that in motion.
| | 03:48 | Okay, now let's go ahead and turn
him off and let's just see how the
| | 03:53 | line of action works.
| | 03:54 | So you can see that just the line
of action looks like it's hopping.
| | 03:59 | So, if you get a strong line of action,
the animation almost takes care of itself.
| | 04:05 | So, when you're posing characters,
make sure to have a very strong
| | 04:09 | line of action, a very good sense of
direction and the animation will flow
| | 04:13 | very, very naturally.
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| Creating strong silhouettes| 00:00 | Another important thing to consider when creating
a strong pose is the character's silhouette.
| | 00:08 | Now, what this silhouette is, is
basically the outline of the character.
| | 00:11 | So, here we have this
particular character in silhouette.
| | 00:15 | Now, the reason you want to have a
character read well in silhouette is because
| | 00:19 | the audience sees the outlines
first and then it fills in the details.
| | 00:24 | So, what happens is the audience
kind of sees the outer shape of the
| | 00:27 | character and then only after that do
we fill in the detail, such as what's
| | 00:31 | inside this general outline.
| | 00:34 | Another reason silhouettes are important is
because it makes poses much easier to read.
| | 00:40 | So, if your character has a strong
silhouette, your poses will read that much faster.
| | 00:45 | So, you can move your characters
faster without the audience getting lost.
| | 00:50 | So, let's take a look at a couple
of poses here and some silhouettes.
| | 00:53 | So, here I have one pose and the
silhouette, you can clearly see what the
| | 00:57 | character's is doing.
| | 00:58 | Here's another pose and again, in
silhouette, you can totally see what the
| | 01:03 | character is doing and
again, strong silhouettes.
| | 01:08 | So, let's go ahead and see
how silhouettes work in motion.
| | 01:11 | Here I have a simple silhouette of a
character and let's go ahead and animate him.
| | 01:18 | What is he doing?
| | 01:19 | Well, we really don't know
because the silhouette doesn't read.
| | 01:23 | If we actually un-silhouette the
character, you can see he is drinking
| | 01:26 | the bottle of soda.
| | 01:28 | But the way that I've staged this
is really very awkward and difficult.
| | 01:32 | The audience doesn't really know what
the character is doing from the silhouette.
| | 01:36 | So it's going to take that much longer to read.
| | 01:40 | So, here's a much stronger silhouette
and you can easily see what's happening.
| | 01:44 | When the character drinks, you can
very clearly see what's happening.
| | 01:51 | So, let's go ahead and play
that at speed. There we go!
| | 01:54 | So, you don't even need to see the
details in order to get what's happening with
| | 01:59 | the character but you can still see
exactly what the character is doing and it's
| | 02:03 | a much stronger set of
posses for the audience to read.
| | 02:08 | So, when you animate, be sure to create
strong silhouettes for every one of your
| | 02:13 | poses and your audience will read
your animation that much more clearly.
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| Pose-to-pose animation: Blocking| 00:01 | Now that you understand how to make
great poses, let's go ahead and animate a
| | 00:04 | character from one pose to the other.
| | 00:07 | Now, this is called pose-to-pose animation.
| | 00:09 | It's probably one of the most
common ways to animate a character.
| | 00:13 | You block out your poses and
then you do the in-betweens.
| | 00:17 | So here I have blocked out two poses.
| | 00:20 | On frame 0, I have this pose
and on frame 12 I have this pose.
| | 00:26 | So if we actually just played it,
you can see that the computer is just
| | 00:31 | animating the in-between and it
really doesn't look all that realistic.
| | 00:36 | The character's foot is sliding;
| | 00:37 | he's not really shifting his weight.
| | 00:39 | There's no overlapping and follow
through and it just kind of doesn't look right.
| | 00:45 | So the first thing I want to do is
get his weight shifting properly.
| | 00:49 | Now, if you notice here I've got
this foot just kind of sliding and that
| | 00:53 | really doesn't work.
| | 00:54 | Because here you can see he has
his weight all on that right foot.
| | 01:01 | Then when he shifts to this pose,
his weight is on his left foot.
| | 01:06 | So when he shifts his weight from one
foot to the other, he really has to do
| | 01:10 | that while one foot is solid on the ground.
| | 01:13 | So for example, here, this foot really
needs to be solid on the ground and then
| | 01:18 | we need to shift to this other one.
| | 01:20 | So the first thing, I'm going to do is
just worry about shifting the weight of
| | 01:23 | the character and then I'm
going to worry about the feet.
| | 01:26 | Now, when I animate like this, a
lot of times I will turn off the legs.
| | 01:31 | This is because I really want to
concentrate on where the weight hits the ground,
| | 01:35 | which is the feet, and the main weight
of the character itself, which is at the hips.
| | 01:41 | And the legs just bridge those three
main points, the hips and then the two feet.
| | 01:47 | So let's get the hips and the feet and then
the legs will just follow in automatically.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to animate the hips.
| | 01:54 | So this character goes over the
course of 12 frames, I want to drop the
| | 02:00 | weight of the hips, because what he's doing
is he's shifting from one foot to the other.
| | 02:04 | So when he does that he's going to create an
imbalance and gravity is going to take over.
| | 02:09 | Again this is internal versus external forces.
| | 02:12 | He is loosening up the force of his
legs and so his hips are going to drop.
| | 02:16 | So I'm going to go ahead and take this
character and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 02:20 | move his hips down a little bit,
and I'm going to rotate him over.
| | 02:25 | So now he's kind of coming
like this and then he's coming up.
| | 02:29 | So you can see that already that
gives a much better sense of weight.
| | 02:34 | In fact I can probably bring him
down just a little bit more here.
| | 02:36 | So now he coming down and then he's coming up.
| | 02:39 | So now when he comes up, one of the
things I'd like to do is actually give a
| | 02:43 | little bit of what's called
overlap and follow through.
| | 02:47 | So I'm going to actually go out to
frame 14 and copy his last pose, and then at
| | 02:55 | frame 12 I'm actually going to overshoot that
pose by actually bringing him up a little bit.
| | 03:01 | So now, he goes over, up and then he
settles down into this final pose.
| | 03:07 | So now, let's go ahead and take a
look at how the weight of the hips moves.
| | 03:11 | You can see he drops his weight,
he pushes up and overshoots.
| | 03:17 | Now when he's changing his weight here,
one of the things is that all of his
| | 03:21 | weight should be on his right foot.
| | 03:23 | So that foot should stay in place
until the weight shifts to the other foot.
| | 03:29 | In other words instead of sliding his
foot, I want him to take a step, because
| | 03:34 | that'll give a much better sense of weight.
| | 03:36 | So I'm going to take this right foot
and I'm going to keep it in place to about
| | 03:41 | say frame 6, which is about halfway through,
and then I'm going to in-between it as normal.
| | 03:49 | So I'm holding the foot from frame 0-6
and then as he steps up, I'm going to go
| | 03:58 | ahead and create a step.
| | 04:02 | So I'm actually going to move this foot up.
| | 04:03 | I kind of flip it up a little bit.
| | 04:05 | So now he takes a step.
| | 04:10 | So let's take a look at the final
version of this part of the animation.
| | 04:15 | As you can see, the character is
firmly transferring his weight and he's also
| | 04:21 | taking a step, which
again gives a sense of weight.
| | 04:23 | This has much better sense of weight
and volume than the previous animation.
| | 04:28 | So let's go ahead and tweak this a
little bit more in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pose-to-pose animation: Animating| 00:01 | So, now we have the weight of the
character shifting from one foot to the other.
| | 00:06 | As you can see the hips drop and then he
takes a step and we have a shift of weight.
| | 00:12 | Now, I have added in the legs
underneath him and the most important thing
| | 00:16 | is that if you get the hips and the feet,
the legs kind of just fill in the difference.
| | 00:21 | So here, right before he takes his step,
you'll see that I have bent the knee on
| | 00:26 | both legs and then as he straightens up,
those knees straighten up as well.
| | 00:32 | So, it really is just filling in the gaps.
| | 00:35 | The most important thing is to get the
feet solid as well as the shift of weight
| | 00:39 | in the hips and the legs kind
of just following underneath.
| | 00:42 | Now as this character is turning,
he's also doing a head turn.
| | 00:47 | Now remember, when the character
turns his head, what does he do?
| | 00:51 | He drops the chin and he also blinks.
| | 00:54 | So, let's go ahead and do
that with this character.
| | 00:57 | Let's do a nice head turn.
| | 00:59 | So as he shifts over, I want to
actually drop the facial features to indicate
| | 01:05 | that he's dropping his chin.
| | 01:07 | So, I'm going to go halfway into this
turn and grab the mouth and drop it down.
| | 01:12 | Grab the eyes and drop them down as well.
| | 01:16 | So, now it looks like he's kind of
dropping his chin as he turns his head.
| | 01:22 | It looks much more realistic.
| | 01:25 | But we also need to blink the eyes,
because when a character does a head turn
| | 01:31 | he also does a blink.
| | 01:32 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
take these eyes and squash them down.
| | 01:38 | So, in this case, the blink really
isn't going to be a standard blink.
| | 01:41 | It's just going to be kind of a
squash of the eyes because the way
| | 01:44 | this character is built.
| | 01:45 | And I'll also do the same for the other eye.
| | 01:48 | So, now it looks kind of like he's blinking.
| | 01:52 | But he is also blinking over the
whole course of this animation.
| | 01:57 | I really just want to blink in the middle.
| | 01:59 | So, I'm going to just copy some keyframes,
so that his eyes are wide open, about
| | 02:06 | three quarters of the way
into this and then he blinks here.
| | 02:10 | So, now he comes in then he blinks,
then his eyes go back to normal.
| | 02:22 | So now I have this.
| | 02:23 | I kind of have a nice blink,
and then his head comes up.
| | 02:29 | But we also can add some
squash and stretch to the head.
| | 02:33 | Now what is happening is as the body drops,
the head is going to want to stay in the same place.
| | 02:40 | So, let's go ahead and do some
squash and stretch on the head.
| | 02:44 | So, as the character drops down,
I want that head to stretch a little bit.
| | 02:50 | So, I'm going to go ahead and scale it
down this way a little bit, and scale it up.
| | 02:55 | So now, as he's coming down, it's kind
of pulling the head down and then as he
| | 03:01 | pushes up, he's going to
squash that head as well.
| | 03:05 | Right around here when he is really
pushing his head up, I'm going to go ahead
| | 03:10 | and just do the opposite.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to go ahead and squash the
head and another thing I'm going to do is
| | 03:15 | just push that head right
down on to his shoulders.
| | 03:19 | So now, I've got a nice stretch and squash.
| | 03:27 | Now one of the things I can also do
is I have a very nice overshoot here.
| | 03:33 | So I've got this weight kind of
going up and then settling back down.
| | 03:38 | I can mirror that with the head motion.
| | 03:40 | So what I can do is I can actually do
a little bit of overshoot here, so it
| | 03:45 | would just stretch up the head just a
little bit again, just to get a little
| | 03:50 | bit more bounciness.
| | 03:51 | Now this is almost like the bouncing ball.
| | 03:54 | Now you can see I've got a
much better sense of motion.
| | 03:58 | So, let's go ahead and see
the final version of this.
| | 04:02 | So, as you can see as the head turns,
it squashes and stretches, we put a
| | 04:07 | blink in the middle and we also bend the knees
to give a much better sense of weight and volume.
| | 04:14 | Now, once we have this all we have to
do is some additional fine-tuning and
| | 04:17 | we'll have a very good pose-to-pose animation.
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| Pose-to-pose animation: Finalizing| 00:01 | So now we have a change of weight in
the body as well as a head turn and let's
| | 00:05 | go ahead and finish up the
rest of this characters animation.
| | 00:09 | Let me show you where we are at, at this point.
| | 00:12 | We've got the character turning, we've
got a little bit of squash and stretch on
| | 00:15 | the head and we've got a proper head turn.
| | 00:17 | But we also need to work a little bit
with the arms as well as give some squash
| | 00:22 | and stretch to the body.
| | 00:23 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:25 | Now, the first thing is let's go ahead
and focus on this right hand, which goes
| | 00:30 | from palm up to palm down on the hip.
| | 00:35 | So as he moves from one to the
other, we've got a couple of things.
| | 00:38 | First of all, we need to do some drag.
| | 00:41 | So as this hand moves down,
we want to drag this hand back.
| | 00:45 | So I am just going to go ahead and
rotate that back just a little bit.
| | 00:51 | So now, we're getting a much better
sense of drag on that hand, but we also
| | 00:57 | need to flip the hand over, we need
to go from palm up to palm facing the
| | 01:04 | audience, to palm down.
| | 01:06 | So, I am going to at this point go
ahead and turn off this hand and turn on
| | 01:12 | another hand, which has the palm facing
the audience, and then just go ahead and
| | 01:18 | dial that into place.
| | 01:19 | So now as you can see the palm turns
hand up and then as he comes into putting
| | 01:27 | it on his hips, somewhere here around
frame 10, I'm going to go ahead and give
| | 01:32 | myself a palm down position.
| | 01:36 | Something like this.
| | 01:37 | So now I need to flip it
over and then just position it.
| | 01:41 | Here we go, much better.
| | 01:43 | Now just go ahead and
rotate that just a little bit.
| | 01:47 | So now I've got this hand working just fine.
| | 01:49 | So it goes and drags a little bit, flips
over and then comes resting on the hips.
| | 01:56 | Now the other hand, the left hand, and
the left arm is really isn't in between in
| | 02:01 | quite as well as I want, because here
where he is kind of facing the audience,
| | 02:07 | all of his weight is going to his right.
| | 02:09 | So in other words, in order to
counter balance this, it would be nice to
| | 02:13 | have his left arm out.
| | 02:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and grab
his left arm and just rotate it out at
| | 02:21 | this particular point.
| | 02:24 | So now we've got his hand
coming out and then back down.
| | 02:28 | So this gives a much better sense of balance.
| | 02:30 | Now, right here, you'll notice here
is a little bit of an incongruity here,
| | 02:34 | because really the shoulders are little bit off.
| | 02:36 | I've got this shoulder here for the
left arm is up pretty high, but the one for
| | 02:41 | the right arm is actually a little bit lower.
| | 02:43 | So, I'm going to go ahead and take that
right arm and then just move it up just
| | 02:47 | a little bit, so that I've got
a nice strong line between here.
| | 02:51 | So now we've got the hand motion, but
I also want to get a little bit of squash
| | 02:55 | and stretch on the body.
| | 02:57 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
the body. As he comes down, right about here,
| | 03:01 | I'm going to go ahead and
stretch him vertically, and then go ahead
| | 03:06 | and scale him down just a little bit on the
horizontal side, make sure he is positioned.
| | 03:10 | So, now he is stretching down and then
as he pushes up, I want to squash him.
| | 03:18 | So again, we're going to do the opposite.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to make him little bit
wider this way, a little bit shorter
| | 03:23 | that way and now we've got
stretch, stretch, squash,
| | 03:30 | and then he overshoots and settles in.
| | 03:34 | So again, when he overshoots, we're
going to go ahead and stretch him up.
| | 03:38 | So he stretches down,
squashes and then comes back up.
| | 03:43 | Again, it just gives a little
bit more life to the animation.
| | 03:47 | Now the last thing I want to play
with is the hat on the character's head.
| | 03:50 | This can actually add a lot more life
to the animation and I want to do some
| | 03:55 | squash and stretch on that as well.
| | 03:57 | As the head stretches down, I
want that hat to start stretching.
| | 04:02 | So I'm going to stretch it up and then
as he pushes up, it's going to squash.
| | 04:08 | So we're going to make it wide and
short and maybe even squash it down on his
| | 04:14 | head just a little bit.
| | 04:16 | Stretch, squash and then as he settles
in, I want that hat to almost come off
| | 04:23 | of his head.
| | 04:25 | I'm just kind of take that hat off of
his head, so now bounces up, and you can
| | 04:32 | see how the hat actually comes
off of his head and then settles in.
| | 04:36 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
the final version of this animation.
| | 04:40 | As you can see we've got a much stronger
animation than we had at the beginning.
| | 04:44 | We've got a good sense of transfer of
weight, we've got some squash and stretch
| | 04:49 | in the character and we also
have some proper motion in the arms.
| | 04:52 | Now, all of this is really just the
basic principles of animation applied to a
| | 04:58 | simple situation, which is going from
one pose to the other, and as you can see,
| | 05:03 | all of the principles of
animation really do apply.
| | 05:06 | Now, lot of your animation is
going to be from pose-to-pose.
| | 05:10 | So use these techniques to go from pose
-to-pose and give your animation a lot
| | 05:16 | more realism and a lot more life.
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|
|
4. Animating WalksA walk in four poses| 00:00 | When animating a walk, you need to
pay attention to four basic poses.
| | 00:04 | These are the contact position, the
recoil position, the passing position
| | 00:14 | and the high point.
| | 00:17 | Now, when you tie these four poses
together, you get a convincing walk.
| | 00:21 | In fact, let's go ahead and play this.
| | 00:26 | Now, when I'm playing the walk, you'll
notice that it's just those four poses.
| | 00:30 | There are no in-betweens.
| | 00:32 | But those four poses alone are
enough to create a convincing walk cycle.
| | 00:37 | If you have in-betweens it will just amplify
that, but the four poses are what's important.
| | 00:43 | So let's take a deeper look at what
these poses are and why they are important.
| | 00:49 | We're going to start with the contact position.
| | 00:52 | This is where the body shifts its
weight from the back foot to the front foot,
| | 00:58 | and so what happens is
there is a big shift in weight.
| | 01:03 | This actually affects the next
pose, which is the recoil position.
| | 01:08 | This is where the weight
actually sets down on the front foot.
| | 01:13 | Now, when this weight sets down on
this foot, it causes the character to bend
| | 01:18 | his knee to absorb the weight.
| | 01:21 | Now, once the character has his weight
firmly on that foot, the leg pushes up
| | 01:28 | into the passing position.
| | 01:30 | This is where the leg that was back
starts moving forward and passes the leg
| | 01:37 | that is supporting the body.
| | 01:38 | Now, once this leg passes, it goes
into what's called the high point which
| | 01:43 | is where the leg, which is now the
front leg, gets ready to set down and
| | 01:49 | when it does we have another contact
position, but this time with the legs
| | 01:53 | obviously reversed.
| | 01:56 | We have another contact position
with the legs now reversed and then we go
| | 02:00 | through the cycle one more time with
recoil, passing, and high point for the other leg.
| | 02:09 | When you combine both of these,
you have a convincing walk.
| | 02:14 | Now, once you understand these four
poses, you can then modify and change them
| | 02:20 | to suit your character, so that way
your walks will have a lot more life and
| | 02:24 | character themselves.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Motion of the head and body | 00:00 | Now let's take a look at a
character as he walks through a scene.
| | 00:04 | Though I have turned this with a little
bit of ghosting, so you can see how the
| | 00:07 | character actually is moving as he walks.
| | 00:12 | Notice how he is actually bouncing up and down.
| | 00:15 | In fact, let's go ahead and slow
this down and take a closer look at this.
| | 00:18 | When the character gets to the
contact position, notice how this is not the
| | 00:25 | highest position in the walk.
| | 00:27 | We are going to take a look at this
head here. So as you can see the head
| | 00:31 | moves down as the character recoils
and then as he pushes up into the passing
| | 00:37 | position, the head goes higher and
higher still into what's called the high point.
| | 00:44 | And then when he goes back to the
contact position, his feet extend and again
| | 00:50 | the weight of the character starts to move down.
| | 00:53 | Now if you notice this is
actually kind of like a bouncing ball.
| | 00:57 | The weight of the character is being
thrown from one foot to the other and it
| | 01:02 | actually follows an arc very
much like the bouncing ball.
| | 01:07 | So let's take a look at this again
in real time and see how this works.
| | 01:12 | As you can see the character's head and body
is bouncing through the seen almost like a ball.
| | 01:19 | So when you animate a walk, please
pay attention to the height of the
| | 01:24 | character above the floor.
| | 01:26 | So that way you can get a
sufficient amount of vertical motion as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Walk cycles and backgrounds| 00:00 | The typical way to animate a
walk is to animate a walk cycle.
| | 00:04 | This saves on animation time, because
what you are doing is just animating the
| | 00:08 | basic poses of the walk.
| | 00:11 | What we do is we animate them in place, so
that the character appears to walk in place.
| | 00:17 | In fact, let's go ahead and play this.
| | 00:21 | So as you can see the
character is walking in place.
| | 00:23 | Now when there is nothing behind
him and he is not against any sort of
| | 00:27 | background, this is perfectly fine.
| | 00:31 | But if we want to make him walk through
a scene or walk against a background,
| | 00:36 | we need to do one of two things and
that is either pan the character or pan the
| | 00:42 | background, so it looks like there is some
movement of the character against the background.
| | 00:48 | So let's go ahead and turn on a
background that is panning and let's take a look
| | 00:53 | at what that looks like.
| | 00:56 | So as you can see by panning the
background you can make the character look like
| | 01:01 | he is moving through the scene.
| | 01:04 | Now the other way to do this is to
actually pan the character himself
| | 01:08 | against the background.
| | 01:09 | So I have another character here.
| | 01:13 | Now let's go ahead and turn on a
scene with a stationary background and
| | 01:17 | a panning character.
| | 01:19 | As you can see, all we do is take the
cycle of the character and panned him
| | 01:24 | against the stationary background and it
looks like he is moving through the scene.
| | 01:30 | There are two ways to make a
character walk through a scene.
| | 01:33 | One is to pan the background;
| | 01:36 | the other is pan the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Skeleton motion and walking| 00:00 | Another way to look at a walk is to
actually analyze the way the skeleton of
| | 00:05 | the character moves.
| | 00:07 | And if you understand how the bones or
the skeleton of the character moves,
| | 00:11 | you can understand how the
character will look when it's animated.
| | 00:16 | So let's take a look at this really
simple skeleton and this will give you a
| | 00:20 | much clearer idea as to what's going on
underneath the surface of the character.
| | 00:25 | In fact, let's go ahead and
highlight some of these joints.
| | 00:29 | Let's go ahead and
highlight the legs and the arms.
| | 00:32 | Then when I play this, you will notice
that the right leg and the right arm are
| | 00:38 | actually moving counter to one another.
| | 00:41 | In other words, when the right leg is
forward, the right arm is back and then
| | 00:48 | that goes in the opposite direction.
As the leg goes back, the arm goes forward.
| | 00:55 | Now let's take a look at this from the top.
| | 00:59 | When I play this, you will notice that the
arms and legs do work opposite to one another.
| | 01:05 | But the reason they are doing this is
because the shoulders and the hips are
| | 01:09 | also going opposite.
| | 01:11 | So let's take a look at
this in the highlighted mode.
| | 01:14 | Now if you notice the shoulders and the
hips are actually rotating opposite one
| | 01:19 | another, so when the right shoulder
is back, the right hip is forward.
| | 01:25 | Then it rotates, so that the arm
and the legs are opposite again.
| | 01:31 | Now this twist is
actually happening in the spine.
| | 01:35 | The spine itself is kind of rotating
to rotate the hips and the shoulders.
| | 01:42 | Now if we look at this character from
the front, you will notice that there is
| | 01:46 | also another type of rotation.
| | 01:49 | Let's go ahead and highlight
the hips, spine, and shoulders.
| | 01:55 | And as this character walks forward, notice
how the hips actually sway from left to right.
| | 02:02 | In fact, let's take a look at
this a little bit more closely.
| | 02:05 | So what happens is the hips are
level or horizontal to the ground when the
| | 02:11 | character is taking his step,
when he is in the contact position.
| | 02:16 | Now as he goes into the passing
position what happens is the weight of the foot
| | 02:24 | drags down that hip and so it
actually gets pulled out of center.
| | 02:29 | Now the shoulders have to
compensate for this is so they rotate in the
| | 02:33 | opposite direction.
| | 02:34 | Now when the character hits the
ground again, that means he is in a contact
| | 02:39 | position and the hips and
the shoulders are level.
| | 02:42 | As he goes into another passing position,
notice how again it goes out of sync
| | 02:48 | and the spine has to curve to compensate.
| | 02:51 | So let's take a look at that.
| | 02:53 | So as you can see the hips and shoulders
are also kind of walking back and forth.
| | 02:58 | So in other words we have
two counter rotating motions.
| | 03:02 | From the top, let's go ahead
and turn this one on again.
| | 03:07 | So from the top we have the
character rotating this way.
| | 03:11 | In other words rotating around the
spine and then we have the opposite rotation
| | 03:18 | happening from the front where the
character is now rocking back and forth,
| | 03:24 | because the weight of the leg is
pulling the character out of center.
| | 03:28 | Now let's go ahead and take a look at
this in a perspective view, so you can see
| | 03:33 | how this all works together.
| | 03:36 | As you can see there is a lot of different
rotations happening in the joints of the character.
| | 03:43 | In fact, let's go ahead and
take a look at this all at once.
| | 03:48 | So now you can see how the joints of the
character move while the character walks.
| | 03:54 | Now understanding this basic bit of
anatomy can help make your walks that much better.
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| Animating a walk: Contact position| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and animate a simple walk.
| | 00:04 | I have a basic character here and as you
can see he is composed of puppet parts,
| | 00:09 | so I have just various parts of
this character I can turn on and off.
| | 00:14 | Now this will make the walk
cycle much easier to animate.
| | 00:18 | Now before I start animating
I want to set up a guideline.
| | 00:23 | And what this is, is just a simple
horizontal line along the bottom of the screen.
| | 00:28 | Now I have positioned this so that
it's even with the bottom of his feet.
| | 00:33 | This makes him much easier to move
the feet along a straight line when we
| | 00:38 | actually get to animating the walk.
| | 00:42 | Now before we start animating, we do
need to set up the first pose of the
| | 00:46 | animation and the first pose is
going to be the contact position.
| | 00:51 | This is where the legs are farthest apart.
| | 00:54 | So we are going to actually start with the
feet and we've got to pose the feet first.
| | 00:59 | I am going to put the left foot forward
and the right foot back for this pose.
| | 01:05 | Now we don't have to start with the left foot,
but this is just a way that I want to do this.
| | 01:11 | So the first thing I am going to do
is just move that left foot forward and
| | 01:15 | then I am going to take the left leg and just
rotate it, so it kind of matches up with that foot.
| | 01:23 | Now for the right foot, I am
going to go ahead and move it back.
| | 01:27 | But I am not going to move it back nearly
as far as I moved the left foot forward.
| | 01:31 | This is because the leg doesn't bend
back nearly as well as it bends forward.
| | 01:35 | So we don't want to put this
leg into an unnatural pose.
| | 01:40 | Then once I get that foot positioned,
I am going to go ahead and take that right leg
| | 01:45 | and then just rotate it.
| | 01:48 | Then maybe even move
that leg so that it matches.
| | 01:53 | Now one other thing I am noticing here
is that when I move this leg down,
| | 01:57 | the hips seem to be a little bit too high.
| | 02:01 | So I am going to go ahead and grab those
and positioned them, so that they are a
| | 02:04 | little bit more evenly distributed
between the legs and just a little bit lower.
| | 02:10 | Now once we have this initial pose, I am
going to go ahead and turn on two more guidelines.
| | 02:17 | These are vertical guidelines that
determine the stride length of the character.
| | 02:22 | Now what the stride length is, is how far
apart the feet are when the character walks.
| | 02:28 | So a character with a large stride
length may be taking very long steps and
| | 02:34 | obviously a character with a shorter
stride length may be taking shorter,
| | 02:38 | more frequent steps.
| | 02:41 | So the stride length will determine to
some degree the character of your walk.
| | 02:46 | Now that we have the contact position,
we can actually start animating the walk.
| | 02:51 | Now make sure that your contact
position is balanced and it looks good, because
| | 02:55 | this is going to be the
basis of our entire walk.
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| Animating a walk: The feet| 00:00 | Now that I have this first pose,
this extended pose, set up,
| | 00:04 | I can start animating the walk.
| | 00:06 | Now, when I animate the walk, I am
going to start with the feet and then
| | 00:10 | just move up the body.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to do the feet, then the hips,
then the legs, and then the rest of the body.
| | 00:15 | But before I can do any of this, I
need to know some timing information.
| | 00:20 | I need to know how long does it take
the character to make one complete step.
| | 00:26 | But before I start animating anything,
I need to know the timing of the walk.
| | 00:31 | In other words, I need to know how long
it takes the character to take one step.
| | 00:35 | Now this will vary depending upon the character.
| | 00:38 | Some characters will be long and slow
and lumbering and they'll take a lot of
| | 00:41 | time to take a step.
| | 00:43 | Some characters will be fast, small, tiny,
quick and they all step a lot more quickly.
| | 00:48 | But for the average character, it's
generally about 2 steps per second, which
| | 00:53 | means that the character will take a
right and a left step within a second.
| | 00:58 | So for 24 frames a second, that's
about 12 frames per step and 30 frames per
| | 01:03 | second it's about 15 frames per step.
| | 01:07 | But generally, if we're animating at
30 frames per second, we up that to 16
| | 01:11 | frames per step, just because you can
divide it in half to get eight and that
| | 01:16 | makes it much easier to animate the walk.
| | 01:18 | You don't want to be animating at
seven-and-a-half frames, for example.
| | 01:22 | So with this character we're
actually animating at 24 frames per second.
| | 01:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and
set up a timeline with 24 frames.
| | 01:30 | Now, once we have this set
up, we're ready to animate.
| | 01:34 | But in order to animate the walk
again, I'm going to start with the feet
| | 01:37 | and move my way up.
| | 01:39 | So just to make things a lot more
clear I'm going to isolate the feet of this
| | 01:44 | character, so I'm going to go ahead
and turn off everything but the feet.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn off the
legs and also turn off the rest of the character.
| | 01:58 | So all we have are the character's
two feet and so let's just get these
| | 02:02 | animating and then we'll worry
about the rest of the character.
| | 02:05 | In fact, I'm going to go ahead and
start this animation with the left foot.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to turn off the right
foot and the reason I'm starting with the
| | 02:15 | left foot is it's the one that is
forward and it's much easier to start with the
| | 02:19 | forward foot than it is with the foot
that's back because as you'll see it's
| | 02:23 | much easier to get those first 12 frames in.
| | 02:26 | So I've got my timeline here at frame
0 and I'm going to go ahead and scrub
| | 02:31 | forward to frame 12, which
is halfway through that cycle.
| | 02:35 | Then all I really need to do is just
slide this foot back so it hits that line.
| | 02:40 | In other words, so it's at pretty much the
same position that the right foot was in.
| | 02:45 | In fact, if I turned-on the right foot, you
would see that I pretty much mirror at the two.
| | 02:49 | Now one is a little bit higher than the
other, just because of perspective but
| | 02:52 | you can see I have
pretty much matched both feet.
| | 02:55 | So, now once I have this, I have
already got the first half of the cycle, which
| | 03:00 | is just sliding back straight along the ground.
| | 03:03 | Now the last half of the cycle is this
foot moving forward, so to do that again
| | 03:10 | we're doing a cycle.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to go ahead and
scrub towards the end of this.
| | 03:14 | Actually I got it looping at 23
because frame 24 is going to be identical to
| | 03:19 | frame 0 and if I loop at 24, I'm going
to get a double play of the same frame.
| | 03:26 | So what I'm doing here is I'm just
scrubbing to 23 and then just copying
| | 03:30 | those frames to 24.
| | 03:32 | So what I have done is I have actually
copied what's at frame 0 to frame 24, and
| | 03:37 | then I've created a keyframe here in the middle.
| | 03:40 | So, this is what I've got.
| | 03:41 | So basically, this foot is
just sliding back and forth.
| | 03:46 | Now this just looks like he
is walking on ice or something.
| | 03:49 | He is really not taking a step, because
as this foot moves forward from frame 12
| | 03:54 | to 24, it's actually going to lift up.
| | 03:57 | So in order to do this, I'm just going
to go halfway through this step here,
| | 04:01 | which is kind of right around the
passing position, and I'm just going to go
| | 04:05 | ahead and move the foot up vertically, so I'm
just going to go ahead and lift up that foot.
| | 04:10 | So now we've got him moving back and
then lifting up and moving forward.
| | 04:14 | Let's go ahead and play this.
| | 04:18 | But as you can see it's not really a step.
| | 04:20 | That foot is going to rotate down.
| | 04:23 | Gravity is going to pull that foot down
and the foot is also going to drag back.
| | 04:29 | So at this point, I really want to
rotate this foot down a bit and that will
| | 04:33 | give me the sense of weigh,t that
gravity is pulling it down and also a sense of
| | 04:37 | drag and that it's wanting to stay put.
| | 04:40 | But we also have two other points that
we need to consider, and that is as this
| | 04:46 | foot lifts off, just think of how a
foot really lifts off of the ground.
| | 04:51 | What it does is the heel lifts and then
you roll off the ball of your foot onto
| | 04:56 | your toe and then the foot lifts off the ground.
| | 04:59 | So we're really not rolling the
foot off the ball of the toe here.
| | 05:03 | So in order to do that, I
need to do another rotation.
| | 05:06 | So I'm going to go about 2 frames
forward, so I've got from frame 12 to 18.
| | 05:12 | 18 is in the middle.
| | 05:14 | So about frame 14, which is about a
third of the way between that middle
| | 05:19 | pose, and I'm going to go ahead and
rotate this foot down so that it pretty
| | 05:24 | much touches the ground.
| | 05:26 | Then I'm going to slide
the foot back a little bit.
| | 05:31 | I'm going to again bring it back to that
line and what this does is it gives the
| | 05:35 | impression that foot is rolling off of
the ball of the foot and then lifting up.
| | 05:43 | So now, we'd get something like this.
| | 05:47 | So now it looks a lot more
like he is actually taking a step.
| | 05:51 | At the end of this, we also don't want
the foot to set down like this, because
| | 05:55 | typically what happens is
we set down on the heel.
| | 05:58 | So we lift off of the ball of the foot,
but we set down on the heel and in this
| | 06:03 | case, his foot is still kind of leaning
a bit forward, which means he is setting
| | 06:07 | down on the ball of the foot.
| | 06:08 | That's kind of more of like tip toe
type of step and that's not what we want.
| | 06:12 | So let's go ahead and flip
that foot up right before he hits.
| | 06:17 | So, I want to get a little bit of
contrast in there, so I'm just going to put
| | 06:20 | that in somewhere around frame 22 or 23
and so now we've got him coming down and
| | 06:25 | then he flips up, so he
can come down on his heel.
| | 06:29 | So let's just take a look at
what that looks like. Much better.
| | 06:34 | So now that I have this cycle in place, we
can do the same thing for the right foot.
| | 06:40 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn off
this left foot and then turn on the right.
| | 06:46 | So for this foot, we're
actually animating it backwards.
| | 06:48 | We are moving it forward first and
then sliding it back on the ground second.
| | 06:53 | So I'm going to go to frame 12 and I'm
going to just slide it forward and this
| | 07:01 | is to kind of get his
final position for that frame.
| | 07:04 | So now he is basically moving his
foot forward on this frame, so then I'm
| | 07:12 | actually copy the keys at frame 0 to frame 24.
| | 07:16 | So, now I have him doing this.
| | 07:18 | He moves forward first and then back.
| | 07:21 | But of course, when he is moving forward,
his feet are lifting off the ground.
| | 07:25 | So halfway between 0 and 12 is frame 6,
so I'm going to lift his foot off the
| | 07:32 | ground here and when do we do, we
rotate it down to get a little bit of drag.
| | 07:38 | So now we have this.
| | 07:41 | But we also need to roll him off the
ball of his foot, so I'm going to go frame
| | 07:47 | 2, which is about a third of
the way between frame 0 and 6.
| | 07:52 | So that way you could do in your
animation that has different timing.
| | 07:55 | Just remember that it's about a third
of the way in rather than two frames or
| | 07:59 | three frames or whatever.
| | 08:01 | So I'm going to go ahead and put
that foot here and then slide it back so
| | 08:08 | it touches the line.
| | 08:10 | So again, I just want this to look like
he is rolling off the ball of his foot
| | 08:13 | and that actually looks pretty good.
| | 08:15 | Then he lifts up, passes and then about
two frames and again this is going to be
| | 08:20 | almost a hard number, because you
want this to set down fairly quickly.
| | 08:24 | So you want him to kind of hold this foot
up until almost right before he sets it down.
| | 08:31 | You want to flip that foot up right there.
| | 08:33 | So now we've got this and
that's look pretty good.
| | 08:40 | With that, we have both feet firmly
walking and let's go ahead and play those.
| | 08:48 | So just by that, you can see you've
got a pretty good sense of cadence to the
| | 08:53 | walk and now once you have the feet in
place, the next step is to move towards
| | 08:58 | the hips and get the weight of
the character moving up and down.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: The body| 00:00 | So once you get the basic motion of the feet,
| | 00:02 | the next step is to animate the hips
and get the motion of the character's body.
| | 00:08 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at how these feet are moving.
| | 00:13 | You can see we have a very nice
cadence, so let's go ahead and just start
| | 00:16 | working with the body.
| | 00:18 | Now, before I do this I'm going to go
ahead and turn off these guidelines,
| | 00:22 | because now that I have the feet placed
I really don't need them and it'll make
| | 00:26 | it a much easie, to work
without all that clutter on the screen.
| | 00:30 | So, I'm going to just go ahead
and turn on the character's hips.
| | 00:34 | Now these are actually just a round shape.
| | 00:37 | If you want, I can turn on the rest of the
body so you can see how it all kind of fits in.
| | 00:41 | So you can see this is the body and
then just that shape is the hips.
| | 00:46 | Now this is kind of nice, because it
represents almost like the bouncing ball
| | 00:51 | and we can just animate the hips, almost
like a ball bouncing above the feet.
| | 00:57 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:59 | Now at this point we have a key already
set up at frame 0. We've already set up
| | 01:04 | that extended position.
| | 01:06 | So, I have this key, and it's actually
what I want for frame 0 and then
| | 01:11 | halfway through the cycle here when the
feet are on opposite sides it's going to be
| | 01:15 | pretty much the same.
| | 01:17 | So, I'm going to go ahead and copy it
there and again to frame 24 just so
| | 01:22 | that I've a nice loop.
| | 01:25 | And again I'm only animating to frame
23, because 24 is the loop point and
| | 01:30 | that's identical to frame 0, so I
don't want to double expose that frame.
| | 01:37 | So now that I have this you can see
that the feet are just moving below the body
| | 01:41 | but it doesn't look like that mass of
the hips is really connected to the feet.
| | 01:47 | So in order to this we need to
start to get a sense of motion for this.
| | 01:52 | Now, I'm going to start
here with the passing position.
| | 01:55 | Now the passing position for the hips
is basically where the leg goes under the
| | 02:00 | body and so the hips are at their highest point.
| | 02:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and lift those hips
up to give the legs room to move underneath.
| | 02:11 | So now, I have the hips bouncing up,
going down and then I can literally copy
| | 02:17 | the keyframe here on frame 6 to frame
18 just to get that same height, so we
| | 02:22 | have a little bit of consistency.
| | 02:23 | So again, I just at frame 18 again,
halfway between the steps at the passing
| | 02:28 | position I lift it up again.
| | 02:31 | So now I've got this
sense of bouncing motion here.
| | 02:37 | But what is also happening is that
as the character goes into the step we
| | 02:44 | actually are shifting
weight from one foot to the other.
| | 02:48 | Now, remember when we had pose-to-pose
animation, what happens when you shift weight?
| | 02:53 | The weight drops.
| | 02:54 | So at this point I'm actually going to
take the weight and make it lower than
| | 03:00 | where it was at the beginning.
| | 03:02 | So I'm just going to drop it just
a hair, just enough to give it a sense of
| | 03:05 | realism so it drops and then lifts.
| | 03:08 | And then again, a few frames into this
second step, it drops again. So now I have this.
| | 03:16 | So it actually drops, lifts, drops, lifts.
| | 03:19 | Even with that simple motion you could
see now you can almost imagine the legs
| | 03:27 | connected to the hips and we have
kind of almost having like this bouncing
| | 03:30 | ball above the feet.
| | 03:32 | Now let's go ahead and turn on the
rest of the body because I really wan to
| | 03:36 | give one more little tidbit of animation here.
| | 03:40 | So, I'm going to go ahead and select
the rest of the body and go ahead and turn
| | 03:44 | that off for just a second.
| | 03:45 | And what happens here is that as
this character falls down he is shifting
| | 03:51 | weight, so what is happening here?
| | 03:52 | Let's go ahead and just play this.
| | 03:55 | You can see he is bouncing up and
down, but there's really no back and
| | 03:59 | forth rocking motion.
| | 04:01 | As he comes into this step he's
actually going to lean forward a little bit,
| | 04:07 | so here on frame 2, maybe a little later,
but generally right around here around
| | 04:12 | frame 2, he is actually leaning into this step.
| | 04:16 | So now he leans in and then steps
up and then again on the second step
| | 04:23 | we repeat that frame.
| | 04:25 | So, now we've got a little
bit of a lean to the step.
| | 04:29 | It gives a much better sense of weight.
Between here and here it seems like he
| | 04:35 | moves forward a little bit too quickly.
| | 04:37 | So actually, I'm going to go ahead
and take that frame where he's leaning
| | 04:40 | forward and move it back from say frame
14 to frame 16 and again, here at the
| | 04:46 | beginning I'm going to move it from
frame 2 to frame 4, so that lean-forward is a
| | 04:51 | little bit more gentle.
| | 04:53 | So that looks a little bit better.
| | 04:55 | So now I've got him leaning forward
as he steps and it gives a much better
| | 05:00 | sense of weight and almost it's like
he's a pendulum going back and forth.
| | 05:05 | So as you can see we've got the hips
and now the feet moving, so we've got the
| | 05:09 | major mass of the body
moving as well as the feet.
| | 05:13 | So the next thing to do is to
connect the feet to the hips by animating the legs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: The legs| 00:00 | When animating a walk, I always find
that the hips and the two feet are the
| | 00:04 | three major points that
need to be pinned down first.
| | 00:08 | Once you get those, the rest of
the detail kind of fills itself in.
| | 00:13 | With those three points
animated, let's see what we have.
| | 00:17 | And you can see you have a very
firm basis for the walk with just these
| | 00:22 | three things animated.
| | 00:24 | Let's go ahead and fill in the
gap between the hips and the feet by
| | 00:30 | animating the legs.
| | 00:32 | Now, I typically animate the legs
after the feet and the hips just because,
| | 00:37 | well, those three points are so important
that I want to make sure I get them right.
| | 00:42 | And it also makes it much easier just
to bridge the gap because the legs would
| | 00:47 | kind of fill themselves in naturally.
| | 00:49 | If you are trying to actually animate
from the hips down the feet, the legs
| | 00:54 | kind of get in the way.
| | 00:55 | I kind of like doing it with this method,
which is basically disconnecting the
| | 00:59 | legs from the hips and the feet,
because it just makes a much more sense in
| | 01:03 | terms of animation workflow.
| | 01:06 | So, let me go ahead and
show you what I have so far.
| | 01:10 | As you can see, the legs
aren't doing much of anything.
| | 01:14 | So, let's go ahead and get them working.
| | 01:16 | I am actually going to go ahead
and start with the right leg first.
| | 01:21 | Because right here is where it does one
of its more complex motions, which is
| | 01:25 | bend and pass them under the body.
| | 01:28 | When it's going from the forward
position, it's actually just fairly straight.
| | 01:32 | So, let's go ahead and animate these legs.
| | 01:35 | So, I have the legs actually setup
so that I have go the top part of the
| | 01:40 | leg rotates and then I can also bend it at
the knee. Here I have kind of a knee bend.
| | 01:46 | And let's just go ahead and
lay in some beginning keyframes.
| | 01:50 | So, now as this foot comes up,
it's going to bend at the knee.
| | 01:56 | So, right around frame 3, I am going to
go ahead and bend this leg forward and
| | 02:01 | then just kind of bend the knee so that
it's at about the right angle and then
| | 02:07 | maybe do some repositioning here.
| | 02:10 | And that's kind of the value of
actually making this character all the same color,
| | 02:14 | because I can actually cheat a
little bit by moving this leg and not
| | 02:20 | having to worry about it kind of
connecting into a pair of pants or
| | 02:24 | something like that.
| | 02:25 | So, now I have got a kind of just
bending up and you can see here it works well
| | 02:31 | on this frame here, on frame 3, but
there is a little bit of disconnect here.
| | 02:40 | So, I am just going to go
through this frame by frame.
| | 02:43 | It's very easy just to kind of tweak
this in and again the only thing you
| | 02:49 | really need to worry about is this
connection here at the ankle where it kind
| | 02:53 | of fits into the shoe.
| | 02:55 | You want to make sure
that doesn't slide too much.
| | 02:57 | But it is moving fairly quickly, so if
there are little bit of jostles,
| | 03:03 | the eye will never catch it.
| | 03:05 | The only reason that you really want
to remain firm is that if something
| | 03:08 | is remaining solid.
| | 03:09 | But this is really changing shape
and direction so much that you are not
| | 03:13 | going to notice it.
| | 03:14 | So, let's go ahead over to the passing
position, which is where the foot passes
| | 03:19 | under the body and again this isn't enough.
| | 03:23 | I actually need more of a bend in that knee.
| | 03:25 | So, let's go ahead and bend that knee
a little bit more and I am going to go
| | 03:29 | ahead and flip that leg up.
| | 03:31 | I want that knee to be pretty
much as far forward as possible.
| | 03:35 | And I think I have maybe a
little bit too much bend on that.
| | 03:38 | So let's go ahead and just
rotate that right about there.
| | 03:43 | And again, I am looking at this
connection here and I want to make sure that I
| | 03:46 | got a good line off of
his rear end on to that hip.
| | 03:50 | So, I am just trying to
get a nice placement there.
| | 03:54 | So, that should work.
| | 03:56 | And because this is a fairly
straight in between here, I am not really
| | 03:59 | bending that knee too much.
| | 04:00 | I don't need much of an in-between,
between frames 3 and 6.
| | 04:05 | So, I have only set keyframes here
at frame 3 and then at frame 6.
| | 04:11 | So, now comes the other complicated part, which
is this leg has to kick out and set down here.
| | 04:20 | So, let's go ahead and just go all the
way forward to frame 12 and I am going to
| | 04:24 | just set this pose out.
| | 04:27 | So, I am going to select this leg and
I am going to rotate it so that we have
| | 04:32 | got the knee in the right position.
I am also going to kind of straighten out
| | 04:36 | that knee, not too much.
| | 04:37 | I don't want to overextend that knee.
I want to get kind of a nice arc along this,
| | 04:41 | so you can see how this is kind
of a nice little arc and then just go
| | 04:45 | ahead and again position it above the ankle.
| | 04:48 | So now, I have got this
kind of coming in like this.
| | 04:53 | But you can see here, right before
this leg sets down, I am going to bend
| | 04:57 | that knee just a little bit, so I have a
little bit more straightening out on that leg here.
| | 05:01 | So, let's go ahead and just tweak that.
| | 05:04 | So, I really want this leg to kind of
remain bent and then straighten out very quickly.
| | 05:11 | So, that should pretty much do it.
| | 05:13 | So, now I have got a keyframe on
frame 6, which is that passing position.
| | 05:18 | A keyframe on frame 10 and another
one at 12, just to straighten it out.
| | 05:24 | So, now let's go ahead and just
play that to see how it works.
| | 05:26 | And you can see that the first
half of the cycle works pretty well.
| | 05:30 | So, let's just go ahead and get that last half.
| | 05:33 | So, you can see we've got him going
into the passing position here at frame 18.
| | 05:38 | So, I am going to go ahead and just
rotate that leg down and maybe straighten
| | 05:43 | out that knee just a little bit.
| | 05:45 | But again, I don't want to over extend
that knee, but I do want to straighten
| | 05:49 | it out just enough so I get enough
length on that part of the foot to pass
| | 05:56 | under the body.
| | 05:57 | So again, I am just positioning this.
| | 05:59 | This is the key position point.
| | 06:01 | This is just going to disappear.
| | 06:02 | It doesn't matter as much
where this hits the body.
| | 06:06 | Just as long as you get a pretty straight
line of action from here all the way down.
| | 06:10 | This is a point where the character is
supporting all of his weight on this right foot.
| | 06:15 | So now, he comes in and then for the
last pose, again, what I am going to do
| | 06:20 | is copy the pose here.
| | 06:22 | So, I am going to copy this leg pose
at frame 0 and I am going to copy it
| | 06:28 | over to frame 24 and do the same for the
bottom part of the leg, which would be the knee.
| | 06:37 | So again, I am just getting this pose
to match up on frame 24, so that way when
| | 06:44 | it cycles from frame 23 over
to 0, it's going to match up.
| | 06:50 | So now, it looks pretty good.
| | 06:52 | It looks like right here, there is
a little bit of a dip right there.
| | 06:58 | You can see how this is actually going
a little bit too far down on that ankle.
| | 07:03 | So, I am going to just go ahead and
just do one little correction key right
| | 07:07 | about here and just go ahead and lift
that leg up, just to get that line because
| | 07:13 | what the eye is going to see is the
space between this, so I want to make sure
| | 07:16 | that stays reasonably constant.
| | 07:18 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at that. It's pretty good.
| | 07:24 | So let's go ahead and
scrub through this. Right there,
| | 07:29 | there is actually a little glitch.
| | 07:31 | So, what I am going to do is just scrub
through this and just do a little bit of
| | 07:34 | tweaking here, just to make sure
that this looks good. There we go.
| | 07:38 | Okay, so now I have got one leg animated.
| | 07:41 | It looks pretty good.
| | 07:43 | So as you can see, by bridging the gap
between the hip and the foot with the leg,
| | 07:47 | it actually makes for a
fairly convincing animation.
| | 07:50 | So, let's go ahead and take a look at
what this looks like with both feet animated.
| | 07:55 | Now, you are going to animate the
left foot exactly the same as the right.
| | 07:59 | So, I am not going to go ahead
and go through that process twice.
| | 08:01 | So, let's just go ahead and
see what they both look like.
| | 08:06 | So, there we have it.
| | 08:07 | So, now we have got the whole lower
body animated and we can now move on to the
| | 08:13 | upper part of the body.
| | 08:14 | We have got our firm foundation of our walk.
| | 08:16 | Let's go ahead and start
adding in the additional details.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a walk: The upper body and arms| 00:00 | So, at this point, we've got
the hips, legs and feet animated.
| | 00:04 | So, we have the foundation of our walk.
| | 00:07 | Let me play you what we have so far.
| | 00:10 | So, as you can see, we have a good
basic walk but of course the upper body
| | 00:14 | is completely dead.
| | 00:15 | So, let's go ahead and start animating that.
| | 00:18 | The next place I go when
animating the body is to the arms.
| | 00:23 | There's a number of ways
you can animate the arms.
| | 00:25 | The first one is just to use
secondary motion; in other words just let the
| | 00:30 | forces move the arms around.
| | 00:32 | In that case the arms are pretty
much going to move like pendulums.
| | 00:37 | If the character has motivation, he is
doing something, you can also animate the
| | 00:41 | internal forces of the arm, which is
if he is holding something or if he is
| | 00:46 | waving or doing really anything with his
hands or arms then you're going to have
| | 00:51 | to animate them a little bit differently.
| | 00:53 | So, for the purposes of this walk,
let's just go ahead and animate his arms as relaxed.
| | 00:57 | So that would make it a classic
case of secondary motion, in other words,
| | 01:02 | drag and followthrough.
| | 01:04 | So, when he is walking, he starts
with this cycle with his right foot back.
| | 01:11 | Right foot moves forward and then back again.
| | 01:14 | So, we're going to go ahead
and animate his right arm.
| | 01:16 | So, when the right foot is
back, the right hand is forward.
| | 01:22 | So, I'm going to go ahead and rotate
this arm forward and maybe even move it
| | 01:29 | forward a little bit to give it a
sense that the shoulder itself is forward.
| | 01:34 | So, once we have this forward then we
need to get the opposite position and when
| | 01:39 | the right foot is forward,
the right hand is back.
| | 01:43 | So, I'm going to move this arm back a
little bit to indicate that the shoulder
| | 01:48 | is rotating and then rotate it back.
| | 01:52 | And I want to get a
little bit clear of the body.
| | 01:54 | But if I go too far back
it's going to appear unnatural.
| | 01:57 | So, I'm going to go just a little
bit out like somewhere around there.
| | 02:01 | So, now his hand is moving back
and now again, we have to cycle this.
| | 02:06 | So, again I'm going to copy the
keyframes at frame 0 over to frame 24 and now,
| | 02:13 | we should have a basic cycle.
| | 02:15 | So, let's see what we've got.
| | 02:18 | Well that's looks a little bit
better but again let's take into
| | 02:21 | account secondary motion.
| | 02:23 | So, as that arm moves back somewhere
around frame 3 or so, I'm going to take
| | 02:27 | that elbow and then just move it up.
| | 02:31 | So again, I'd get kind of a bend.
| | 02:32 | It comes back and then somewhere
around frame 12, actually a little bit
| | 02:39 | further, it's going to straighten out.
| | 02:41 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
straighten it out here right around at frame 14
| | 02:46 | because again, this is
overlap and followthrough.
| | 02:48 | This is going to drag behind the main action.
| | 02:52 | That elbow is going to
straighten out as it's pulled forward.
| | 02:56 | So, once that shoulder moves forward,
that elbow is going to kind of lock and
| | 03:00 | move forward and then
the cycle will begin again.
| | 03:04 | So, let's take a look at that.
| | 03:08 | Okay, now in order to finalize this
all you have to do is to do the same for
| | 03:12 | the opposite arm and you have the arm
motion in place and we're getting pretty
| | 03:17 | close to the end here.
| | 03:18 | Now, all we need to do is to some head
motion and maybe a little bit of squash
| | 03:21 | and stretch, and we will be done.
| | 03:23 | So, remember when you animate your arm
that it's generally going to move like a
| | 03:28 | pendulum with overlap and follow-
through but if the character has motivation
| | 03:33 | then you'll add some internal forces or
internal motion to make the character do
| | 03:38 | whatever he wants and be sure to balance
those action against the natural motion
| | 03:43 | of the arm wanting to swing back and forth.
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| Animating a walk: The head| 00:00 | So, now we have the
character very close to being done.
| | 00:03 | Let me show you where we are at.
| | 00:05 | We've got the arms, the legs and
the feet and the hips all animated.
| | 00:10 | Now, there's one major part of the body left
that we need to animate and that's the head.
| | 00:15 | If you notice the character's
head really is kind of stiff.
| | 00:18 | So, let's go ahead and add some
secondary motion to his head to make him look
| | 00:22 | a little more alive.
| | 00:24 | So, I'm going to go ahead and scrub
into this first position, which is that
| | 00:28 | recoil position, and you can notice
that the body actually is moving doing and
| | 00:34 | leaning forward just a little bit.
| | 00:37 | So as it does this, this head is
going to want to resist that motion.
| | 00:41 | It wants to stay put.
| | 00:44 | So, I'm going to create a keyframe here,
where I'm going to lean that head back
| | 00:50 | and what I'm doing is I'm just getting
a nice line of action. In fact you can
| | 00:54 | see from the tip of hat, all the way
through this foot, you get a nice kind of
| | 01:00 | curved line. In fact I might
have a little bit too much.
| | 01:02 | Let me go ahead and straighten that out.
| | 01:05 | So, you can see he kind of leans in
to this, but also in this his body is
| | 01:11 | actually dropping just a little bit.
| | 01:13 | So as his body drops,
again get his head once to stay put.
| | 01:16 | So, I'm going to lift that head up just a hair.
| | 01:19 | So, in the next phase of the walk,
you can see he is pushing up into this
| | 01:24 | passing position and as he pushes up,
again the head is going to want to stay put.
| | 01:30 | So it's going to sink down into his
shoulders and the rotation of the head is
| | 01:37 | going to just basically go back to
where it was, so it's going to rotate up.
| | 01:40 | So, now we've got it kind of dragging
back and now here we have it pushing up and
| | 01:47 | then as the head falls back down again,
again the head is going to want to
| | 01:51 | resist this motion just a little bit.
| | 01:53 | So maybe just add a little
bit of a settle right in here.
| | 01:57 | So, I'm just going to go ahead push him
down just a little bit, just to give a
| | 02:02 | little bit motion here and that should be it.
| | 02:04 | Okay, so now I have got it in the front
part of the cycle but not the last half
| | 02:10 | and you can see the difference.
| | 02:11 | You can see the how the head moves
a little bit more naturally in that
| | 02:14 | front part of the cycle.
| | 02:15 | So all I need to do now is just copy
the first half to the second half and
| | 02:22 | we should have pretty good head motion.
| | 02:24 | So, let's go ahead and take a look at that.
| | 02:25 | So, it gives a much better
sense of motion for the head.
| | 02:29 | Now again we can stop here and this
would be a fairly complete walk cycle but if we
| | 02:35 | want, we can go a little bit
further and add some squash and stretch.
| | 02:39 | So, when you're animating the head,
just remember that the head does engage
| | 02:44 | in secondary motion and it will drag
behind the motion of the body just a little bit.
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| Animating a walk: Squash and stretch| 00:00 | So, now we have the walk pretty much animated.
| | 00:02 | Now all we need to do is add a few
final touches to really bring it to life.
| | 00:06 | Let's take a look at what we have so far.
| | 00:10 | Now, at this point we have a pretty
good solid walk, but we can also add in
| | 00:14 | little bit of squash and stretch, as
well as one other little thing, which is
| | 00:19 | how this line of this shirt is animated.
| | 00:22 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to go ahead and turn off
the arms, so we can see this completely.
| | 00:30 | Let's take a look at the line
between the shirt and the pants.
| | 00:34 | So, as we scrub through it, you
will see that well, it doesn't change.
| | 00:39 | But what this line represents is
really the angle that we are looking at this
| | 00:44 | particular part of the body.
| | 00:46 | So, as the hips rotate up,
this line will change.
| | 00:51 | So, by animating that edge, you're going
to get a much better type of animation.
| | 00:58 | So, what I'm going to do is just turn on a
little bit of shape animation on that shirt.
| | 01:02 | So, what it does is it now, instead of
going from basically concave, it goes to
| | 01:09 | convex and what this does, just by
changing the animation of just this little line,
| | 01:13 | it makes it look like his hips are moving.
| | 01:16 | It gives them a much more 3D effect and
all I'm doing is really just animating
| | 01:22 | that edge using a little bit of shape animation.
| | 01:25 | So, just by doing that we
have a much more realistic walk.
| | 01:29 | In fact, let's go ahead and turn the
arms back on and take a look at this.
| | 01:32 | So, as you can see he has got a much better
kind of a hip sway just by animating that.
| | 01:39 | Now, we can add a little more fun to
the animation just by giving it some
| | 01:42 | more squash and stretch.
| | 01:44 | We're just going to go ahead and start by
squashing and stretching the body at the hips.
| | 01:49 | So, as he comes down into this recoil
position, he is actually going to scale
| | 01:56 | up just a little bit.
| | 01:59 | Again, he is stretching and his mass
wants to stretch down and then as he
| | 02:04 | pushes up into the passing position, then
we're going to have actually much more of a squash.
| | 02:11 | So, now we have something like this.
| | 02:17 | So, as he comes in he squashes up
and then he straightens out again.
| | 02:22 | So, now let's go ahead and copy this to
the second half of the cycle and let's
| | 02:25 | go ahead and play this.
| | 02:26 | So, you can see just by adding a little
bit of scaling to the body, you get much
| | 02:30 | better kind of a bounciness to the character.
| | 02:33 | Now, there's one more little detail
that I'd love to play with it and that's
| | 02:37 | the character's hat.
| | 02:39 | Because this hat is going to squash
and stretch as well and actually because
| | 02:42 | it's right there at the top of the head,
it's a really good indication of how the
| | 02:46 | character squashes and stretches.
| | 02:49 | So, I'm going to go to this recoil
position and I'm going to go ahead
| | 02:53 | and stretch the hat.
| | 02:56 | So, I'm going to go ahead and squish it
down this way and lengthen it this way
| | 03:02 | and maybe even pull it up
a little bit on his head.
| | 03:06 | So, now as he is coming down,
that hat is resisting the motion.
| | 03:12 | Again, this is just secondary motion.
| | 03:13 | It wants to stay in place and then
as it pushes up, the hat squashes and
| | 03:26 | again, I'm just going to go ahead and
set it down on his head a little bit.
| | 03:29 | This is going to be pushed up into his
head and then all we have to do is just
| | 03:36 | finalize that for the cycle.
| | 03:38 | So, now we've got the hat kind of
coming off of his head, being pushed up and
| | 03:44 | then coming back down.
| | 03:46 | So, if we cycle this,
we'd get something like this.
| | 03:54 | So, there you have it.
| | 03:55 | We have a complete walk cycle with a
lot of squash and stretch, a little bit of
| | 03:59 | realism and it looks pretty good.
| | 04:02 | So, as you animate your walk cycle,
remember the general process is to make sure
| | 04:07 | to pin down the hips and the feet.
| | 04:10 | Then you can fill in with legs
and then work your way up the body.
| | 04:14 | And if your character is a little cartoony,
you can add in some squash and stretch.
| | 04:19 | So, be sure to take all of these
bits of advice into consideration when
| | 04:24 | animating your character's walking.
| | 04:26 | Now, every character is going to be
different, so you're going to have to
| | 04:28 | pick and choose which bits of
advice to use, but it all kind of comes
| | 04:33 | together and you can see how a walk,
it really is a whole system of body
| | 04:37 | parts moving together.
| | 04:39 | And if you animate a character
walking effectively, you should be able to
| | 04:43 | animate just about anything else.
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|
|
5. Animating RunsA run in four poses| 00:00 | Walking is only one way for a
character to move through a scene.
| | 00:04 | A character can also run, hop, skip, jump;
there are a number of different types of gates.
| | 00:11 | The run is probably the second most popular.
| | 00:13 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at how characters run.
| | 00:17 | I have a simple run that I've sketched out here.
| | 00:20 | Let's go ahead and play that.
| | 00:23 | And as you can see, a run
is more of a series of leaps.
| | 00:27 | In fact, let's go ahead and pause this and
scrub through it so you can see it a pose at a time.
| | 00:34 | So the run usually starts in this
position which I call the extended position
| | 00:41 | and this is where a character basically
takes off into a leap and so now we have
| | 00:46 | what's called an airborne position
where the character is literally airborne
| | 00:52 | and then the character lands and this
is more like a passing position where we
| | 00:57 | have one leg is passing the other.
| | 01:00 | And then as the leg absorbs the
character's weight, we have a recoil or a
| | 01:06 | cushion position here and then we
do that again on the other side.
| | 01:10 | So we have an extended, airborne,
passing and then a recoil position.
| | 01:17 | Let me go ahead and run
through this one more time.
| | 01:22 | So as you can see, it's a series of
jumps or leaps, so he leaps lands, cushions,
| | 01:28 | leaps, lands, cushions.
| | 01:31 | So let's go ahead and
play this in real-time again.
| | 01:34 | Now, I am going to turn on ghosting and
this will give you a much clearer idea as
| | 01:41 | to how the character moves through the scene.
| | 01:43 | So let's go ahead and take
this a little bit more slowly.
| | 01:47 | So as you can see, the character, much
like the walk, sweeps out an arc with his head,
| | 01:53 | so as he goes into this airborne
position, he is at his highest point.
| | 01:59 | Then when he lands and cushions, he is
at the low-point and again, we repeat
| | 02:04 | that for the next part of the cycle.
| | 02:07 | So let's go ahead and play this
one more time, so you can see that.
| | 02:10 | So you can see how he sweeps out an arc
with this head as he bounces up and down
| | 02:17 | as he runs through the scene.
| | 02:19 | Now let's go ahead and take one more look at
this and let's look at these poses in detail.
| | 02:24 | So we're going to start
off with this extended pose.
| | 02:28 | Now what this pose has is it has the
character pushing off with his foot on his toes
| | 02:34 | and we have this knee kind of cocked
ready for that foot to come up and start
| | 02:40 | moving forward to take the leap.
| | 02:42 | Now the next pose is the airborne
position and this is where the legs are
| | 02:46 | pretty much far apart and this leg is
getting ready to land and this one here
| | 02:51 | is just pushed off.
| | 02:53 | The next pose is the passing position.
| | 02:56 | Now what this does is this leg is
planted and it's ready to absorb the weight.
| | 03:01 | This is just as it hits the ground.
| | 03:03 | It hasn't absorbed the weight yet.
| | 03:05 | And now we've got this leg here ready
to pass and get ready for the next pose.
| | 03:12 | So as this character lands, you can see how
this knee bends and this leg starts to pass.
| | 03:20 | So let's go ahead and look
at this on the other side.
| | 03:22 | Let me go back into the extended pose,
airborne, passing, and notice how this
| | 03:27 | leg is fairly straight when it lands.
| | 03:30 | Now notice how he leans
back as he plants his foot.
| | 03:34 | This is because his momentum is putting
him so far forward, he has to put that
| | 03:38 | foot out in front of him to catch his
weight and then once he gets into this
| | 03:43 | recoil position, he does straighten out
and that knee bends and then the weight
| | 03:49 | of the character goes down to absorb the shock.
| | 03:51 | So let's go ahead and see this play,
see if we can see how this cycle works.
| | 03:55 | So those are the basics of how a character runs.
| | 03:59 | Now remember, a run is a series of
leaps and a run naturally has more momentum
| | 04:04 | so the character will be moving up
and down a lot more than he does in a normal walk.
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| Animating a run: First pose| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and start animating a run.
| | 00:03 | A run is very similar to a walk in the
way that it's animated and so we can use
| | 00:08 | a lot of the same tips and tricks
we used with the walk for the run.
| | 00:11 | Now, we're also using the same character
to animate this run that I did from the
| | 00:15 | walk and let's take a quick look at him.
| | 00:17 | He is actually composed of individual
parts and I can turn these on and off
| | 00:22 | and you can see that.
| | 00:23 | And this is just going to make it a lot
easier to manage the character as we animate him.
| | 00:28 | Now before I start animating the run,
I do want to set up a base line.
| | 00:34 | And what this is, is just a line
drawn across the bottom of the screen and
| | 00:38 | this gives me a straight line over
which to move the feet so that way his feet
| | 00:42 | move in a straight line.
| | 00:43 | It's basically the ground
plane that he is running on.
| | 00:47 | So let's go ahead and start animating this run.
| | 00:49 | Now I am going to do this in more of a
pose-to-pose sort of animation rather
| | 00:53 | than animate it a part at a time.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to set up the very first
pose of this character, which will be
| | 00:59 | the extended position.
| | 01:01 | This is the position of the character
right before he takes off on his leap and
| | 01:06 | remember that a run is a series of leaps.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to go ahead and first
I am going to start with the hips, and I am
| | 01:15 | going to go ahead and move those up
just a little bit because he is going to be
| | 01:19 | leaping off and I want to
get a good extension there.
| | 01:22 | And then I am going to go down to the left leg
and I am going to get that ready to take off.
| | 01:30 | This is the leg that's going to be bent,
so I am going to go ahead and rotate
| | 01:34 | this leg and I am going to go ahead and
move it up into the body here and I want
| | 01:40 | to get a really nice tight high knee on that.
| | 01:44 | So that needs to be really
high and ready to take off.
| | 01:48 | That's probably the most important part
of what's happening with this leg here.
| | 01:51 | So I just want to get that knee nice
and high, and then I am going to move down
| | 01:57 | to the foot and just go ahead and place
that under the leg here and maybe rotate
| | 02:05 | that up just a little bit.
| | 02:06 | So I am getting a nice high knee
and the foot is ready to take off.
| | 02:11 | Now let's go ahead and move on to the right leg.
| | 02:13 | I am going to start with the right
foot and I am going to move this foot back
| | 02:17 | and I am actually going
to move it back pretty far.
| | 02:22 | In fact, I might even overextend it
just a little bit because I really want to
| | 02:25 | get a good stretch on this leg.
| | 02:28 | I really want to get a strong pose, and
so by putting that foot pretty far back,
| | 02:32 | I am going to enforce this leg
to really give a nice arc here.
| | 02:35 | In fact, I want to look at this arc at
the back and then want to try and get
| | 02:39 | that foot pretty far back there.
| | 02:42 | Now, all I have to do is take
that leg and get that to match.
| | 02:46 | Now one thing you'll notice is that
by putting this character into such an
| | 02:50 | extreme position that this leg
isn't long enough to match up.
| | 02:55 | In fact, if I rotate it back there, you can
see how that leg just doesn't quite reach.
| | 03:00 | So what we're going to do is I am
actually going to do some stretching.
| | 03:03 | I am actually going to stretch his leg
just a little bit and then rotate it and
| | 03:09 | try and get that into position there.
| | 03:12 | So again, I am trying to make this leg
about as long as possible so that gives
| | 03:16 | it a much better stretch.
| | 03:18 | So let's go ahead and try
and get that in place there.
| | 03:22 | Now, the last thing is that this foot
here really needs to bend up because
| | 03:28 | what the character is doing is he is pushing
off of the ball of his foot, off of his toes.
| | 03:34 | So I need those toes firmly
planted on the ground.
| | 03:37 | So what I am going to do with this
foot is I am going to do a little bit
| | 03:40 | of shape animation.
| | 03:41 | Now you can do this a number of ways,
depends on the software that you are using.
| | 03:47 | And if you don't want to do actual
shape animation, you can certainly just
| | 03:52 | create a second joint in the foot, so
you can actually bend the foot at the toe.
| | 03:57 | So I am going to go ahead and just move
this foot up and just give a nice bend here.
| | 04:05 | So now you can see how this toe is
planted and I've got a nice arc to the foot
| | 04:09 | here, so we can see that the heel is off
the ground but the toe is still planted
| | 04:14 | and that's the most important part of
what is going on here with the foot.
| | 04:17 | So now that I have the pose pretty much
set up, I want to add one more guideline.
| | 04:23 | So I am going to go ahead and turn this
line on here and I am going to position
| | 04:26 | it right at the back of the heel.
| | 04:28 | Now what this is going to do is it's
going to give me guideline for how far back
| | 04:34 | the left foot will go when the character runs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Second pose| 00:00 | Once we have this first pose in place,
we can now work through the other three
| | 00:04 | poses in order to animate the run.
| | 00:08 | But before we start laying down any keyframes,
we need to understand the timing of the run.
| | 00:13 | Now, this run is going to be animated
at 8 frames per step for a total of 16
| | 00:19 | frames for the cycle.
| | 00:20 | Now this is a little bit quicker than
the 12 frames per step we used in the walk
| | 00:25 | and it will give us a nice smooth jog.
| | 00:29 | You can certainly animate the run
faster or a little bit slower depending upon
| | 00:33 | the character and the requirements of the scene.
| | 00:37 | So let's go ahead and turn on the
timeline so you can see what frames we are at
| | 00:41 | and let's get started.
| | 00:42 | So the first part of the
character I want to pose is the hips.
| | 00:47 | So let's go ahead and scrub over to Frame 2.
| | 00:50 | What's happening at this second pose?
| | 00:52 | Well, the second pose is the extended position.
| | 00:55 | This is where the character is taking
his leap, where he is flying through the
| | 00:58 | air in the middle of the run.
| | 01:00 | This is where both feet are off the ground.
| | 01:03 | He is at his highest point.
| | 01:05 | He is actually in the air.
| | 01:06 | So let's go ahead and move his body up.
| | 01:09 | Now once we have the body up, we can
pretty much see where the legs are going to go.
| | 01:14 | So I am going to go ahead and take the
right leg, move it up to match the body.
| | 01:18 | Now, he is actually stretching out,
he is starting to take his leap.
| | 01:22 | So this leg is actually going to
straighten out as he takes that leap.
| | 01:27 | So I am going to go ahead and unbend
that knee and go ahead and do a little bit
| | 01:32 | of a tweak here and then maybe also
rotate this around just a little bit.
| | 01:37 | So we'll go ahead and fine-tune that knee.
| | 01:40 | So again, I don't want this
completely straight. I want kind of a nice
| | 01:45 | little arc here and then just go
ahead and take this foot and put it into
| | 01:50 | place and rotate it.
| | 01:53 | Now let's go ahead and do the right leg.
| | 01:57 | So the first thing I want to do
with this leg is un-stretch it.
| | 02:01 | Remember how we had to
stretch it in order to get this pose.
| | 02:05 | So I am going to go ahead and undo that.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to go ahead and set this back
to normal and then rotate it back a little bit.
| | 02:15 | Now, what I am looking
at here is this nice line.
| | 02:19 | I want to get a kind of an S-shape curve.
| | 02:21 | I know we're not going to get it
exactly perfect because of the way
| | 02:23 | the character is constructed.
| | 02:25 | But this will be a good nice stretch
here and then let's go ahead and put this
| | 02:30 | foot into place as well.
| | 02:32 | Now first thing I want to do is go
ahead and undo the shape animation that we did
| | 02:38 | and then let's just go ahead and
rotate this into place and move it.
| | 02:45 | So there we go.
| | 02:46 | That's pretty much the pose.
| | 02:47 | I am going to save the upper body until later.
| | 02:51 | So let's just go ahead and focus
on the legs and the hips for this.
| | 02:55 | Again, it's very similar to the walk
in that I want to pin down those three
| | 03:01 | points, the hips and both feet.
| | 03:03 | In a way if I can get those, then the rest
of the body will just follow them in place.
| | 03:08 | Here because this is such an extreme
change here, I have got a little bit of an
| | 03:13 | in-between problem so I am just going
to have to readjust these feet to make
| | 03:16 | sure that I get them in place.
| | 03:18 | So I am actually putting in a keyframe at
Frame 1 just to go ahead and get them into place.
| | 03:25 | So now we've got our second pose.
| | 03:27 | Now again, remember, it is an extended pose.
| | 03:30 | So try and keep your feet pretty far apart.
| | 03:33 | The character is flying through the
air and also get a nice curve along this
| | 03:39 | front and back leg and that will
help it to read during the fast run.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Third pose| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and animate the third
pose of the run, which is the passing or
| | 00:05 | the landing position.
| | 00:08 | We already have the first two poses in
and now we have the extended position
| | 00:12 | where he is flying through the air, and
whenever he flies to the air he has to
| | 00:16 | land and that's this next position.
| | 00:19 | It's the point where he lands on the ground.
| | 00:21 | So when he lands on the
ground, he lands with his foot.
| | 00:25 | So let's go ahead and work with the left
foot and I'm going to go ahead and move
| | 00:30 | that down and rotate it flat.
| | 00:34 | Now when I get this foot landing, I want
to make sure that it is ahead of the body.
| | 00:39 | Again he is really putting his foot
fairly far forward and the body is going
| | 00:43 | to move over the foot.
| | 00:45 | So I don't want the body over the foot just yet.
| | 00:48 | So just go ahead and move the body
down and then we can position the legs.
| | 00:52 | So now I've got this foot and body
pretty much falling at the same rate.
| | 00:59 | So you can see here, they are pretty
much coming down about the same speed.
| | 01:03 | And once I get that in place, I'm going
to go ahead and move that leg into place.
| | 01:10 | Let's go ahead and get the lower
part of the leg and get that set in.
| | 01:18 | Okay, so now we've got this.
| | 01:22 | Now before that foot hits, I really
want to kind of angle it up even a little
| | 01:28 | bit more, because what that will do is
it'll give it a nice slap as it hits the
| | 01:33 | ground, so it'd give it a nice sense of impact.
| | 01:35 | So the further you kick up that toe
before it hits the ground, the more of a
| | 01:40 | sense of impact you're going to get.
| | 01:42 | Now, when that foot hits the ground, the body
will also be leaning back even a little bit more.
| | 01:47 | Now remember he pushed himself from
the hips, so the hips move first and
| | 01:52 | the feet are going to land first as well.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to go ahead and rotate
these hips back just a little bit more.
| | 01:57 | Now, this is going to be the
farthest back he is going to rotate.
| | 02:00 | So now, he is rotating back and he is
hitting the ground and now as he hits the ground,
| | 02:05 | this other foot is
going to pass beneath him.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to take the right
leg and start positioning that.
| | 02:16 | So first thing we're going to do is
rotate that leg vertical, move it down,
| | 02:22 | so it's underneath.
| | 02:23 | In fact, I'm going to kind of squash it up.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to kind of get that sort
of pose and then just make sure I get
| | 02:33 | that knee in place and maybe move it
back just a little bit and then get that
| | 02:40 | foot going as well.
| | 02:41 | Now, that foot is going to be
dragging back pretty far as well.
| | 02:44 | So I might want to push it back.
| | 02:46 | If I push it back too far, it's
going to look like a broken ankle.
| | 02:49 | So I'm going to push it back as far as I
can and so now we've got this and again
| | 02:56 | these feet are always
going to need to be in-betweened.
| | 02:59 | So I have got that and now that.
| | 03:04 | So now he's got a pretty good landing.
So you can see here we've pretty much got
| | 03:08 | almost the first half of this cycle done.
| | 03:11 | So with this pose, the passing pose or
the landing position, you want to make
| | 03:15 | sure that the foot is in front of the
body, the body is leaning back and that
| | 03:21 | other knee is crunched up and that foot
is beginning to pass beneath the body.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Fourth pose| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and animate
the last poses of this run.
| | 00:04 | Now, I've got the third pose, which
is the landing pose, already animated.
| | 00:08 | So I have got one through three.
| | 00:09 | So I have got the first pose,
second pose, third pose.
| | 00:13 | Let's go ahead to the fourth pose,
which is kind of the lowest position, where
| | 00:16 | the feet pass below the body, and then
we need to also come up in a mirror
| | 00:20 | opposite of the first position.
| | 00:22 | Now, I am actually going
to jump ahead a little bit.
| | 00:26 | I am going to take this foot, the left
foot, and I am going to animate it all
| | 00:31 | the way back to frame 8.
| | 00:32 | Because I want to make sure that the left
foot is in the same position as the right foot.
| | 00:37 | So I am going to go to frame 8 and go
ahead and just take this foot and animate
| | 00:42 | it all the way back.
| | 00:46 | So it hits that line.
| | 00:48 | So now the in between will just
automatically keep it on the ground.
| | 00:52 | So if all I do is just animate it
straight back, it will stay on that baseline.
| | 01:00 | So now, I know exactly where it's
going to be at on frame 6, which is where I
| | 01:05 | need to make that next pose.
| | 01:08 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:10 | Now at this point, the mass of the
body is also going to be moving forward.
| | 01:15 | So I am going to go ahead and
take the body and rotate it forward.
| | 01:21 | This is where all of his weight
catches on the ground,and then he moves
| | 01:26 | forward, and he is also going to
drop just a little bit more because he
| | 01:30 | is going to squash and then I am
going to go ahead and position these
| | 01:35 | legs underneath him.
| | 01:37 | So I am going to go ahead and bend his
knee to give him enough to squash with
| | 01:45 | and position that leg pretty far below him.
| | 01:49 | In fact, I can probably
squash that a little bit more.
| | 01:55 | Go ahead and move this leg up, and I can
even get the body down a little bit more.
| | 02:02 | What I am trying to do is make sure that
weight of that body is coming on to that shoe.
| | 02:08 | So I'll just go ahead and position this.
| | 02:10 | So now he is squashing on to that.
| | 02:14 | Now this other leg is going
to be coming around and under.
| | 02:18 | It's going to kind of flip under
there and start to move up in anticipation
| | 02:23 | of this next leap.
| | 02:24 | So I am going to go ahead and take
this foot and rotate it and move it
| | 02:31 | around like this.
| | 02:33 | So now this foot is kind of coming
like that and we are going to go ahead and
| | 02:40 | take the right leg and position that as well.
| | 02:44 | And I may need to rotate that.
| | 02:46 | And again, that leg is going to remain
fairly squashed, in order to come through there.
| | 02:53 | So again, just something like that.
| | 02:55 | So now I have got all four poses:
one, two, three, four.
| | 03:04 | Now let's go ahead and scroll to
the very back and get the next pose.
| | 03:11 | Now I am going to start with the hips.
| | 03:12 | Now I already know exactly where the
hip should be, because I have already
| | 03:14 | animated them into position before.
| | 03:17 | So let's go ahead and take that
left leg move it back and I am going to
| | 03:21 | straighten this out and rotate it in
a place and again, I probably need to
| | 03:29 | stretch this a little bit,
like I did with the other leg.
| | 03:35 | So I am going to go ahead and
stretch it, and rotate it into place.
| | 03:42 | So now with this foot
here, I have to bend it up.
| | 03:45 | So that it matches here.
| | 03:48 | So I am going to go ahead and turn on that
shape animation that we did with the other one.
| | 03:52 | And let's get that in place.
| | 03:55 | So now we have got a really nice extension.
| | 04:02 | See how it kind of goes from that to that?
| | 04:04 | Really good pop there.
| | 04:06 | And then all we have to do with this
foot is again just bring it up and make it
| | 04:10 | ready for takeoff, so
let's go ahead and do that.
| | 04:13 | I get this foot here ready
and rotate that around as well.
| | 04:21 | So now we've managed to animate the first
four poses and the first pose of the next cycle.
| | 04:27 | So as you can see we have got all of this.
| | 04:33 | So we have pretty good cycle here going.
| | 04:35 | So now, once I have the other half
animated it's going to look something like this.
| | 04:39 | Now I have gone ahead and taken away the
guidelines and let's go ahead and just play it.
| | 04:45 | So as you can see, with those four
poses you can get a really good basic run.
| | 04:52 | We still need to do the upper body.
| | 04:54 | But by getting the basics of the
lower body in place, the rest will follow naturally.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating a run: Upper body| 00:00 | Once you have the foundation of the
character animated, in other words, the hips
| | 00:04 | and the feet, you can move onto the upper body.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and see where we are at.
| | 00:11 | We've got this nice little run cycle,
but of course as you can see the body
| | 00:14 | really is kind of dead.
| | 00:16 | So let's go ahead and start working with that.
| | 00:18 | Well, the first thing I want to
work with is basically the transition
| | 00:22 | between the lower and upper body,
and that's the line where the shirt
| | 00:27 | intersects the pants.
| | 00:29 | So that we can see it a little bit
better, I am going to go ahead and turn off
| | 00:33 | this arm so we can see this line.
| | 00:37 | What's going to happen?
| | 00:38 | Now we have talked about this in the walk
cycle. Now let's go ahead and go over it again.
| | 00:43 | What's going to happen here is that
as the character moves, this shape
| | 00:50 | actually will change because right
now it's kind of down and it's kind of
| | 00:55 | like this concave line here.
| | 00:58 | And what this means is that
right foot is down and back.
| | 01:01 | But when the right foot is up and forward,
| | 01:05 | that means the other foot is down and back.
| | 01:07 | So really the weight has
shifted to that other foot.
| | 01:11 | So if we actually animate this shape,
the line between the upper and lower
| | 01:17 | torso, we can actually get a much
better sense of volume in the character.
| | 01:23 | So notice how now instead
of concave, it's convex.
| | 01:27 | So we go from this shape here to this
shape here on the opposite foot, and
| | 01:34 | when we put all that together, you can see
how it gives a much better sense of volume.
| | 01:39 | It looks like his hips are
rocking back and forth as he runs.
| | 01:43 | So now let's go ahead and move up to the head.
| | 01:46 | Now, this head is actually going to
have some secondary motion as the character
| | 01:51 | bounces up and down.
| | 01:53 | So as he pushes up, this is going
to kind of sink into his collar.
| | 01:59 | So now, he pushes up, it sinks into his
collar, and then as he falls down here,
| | 02:05 | the head is going to lag behind.
| | 02:07 | So it's going to kind of
come up a little bit like this.
| | 02:10 | So now we have got almost like a piston.
| | 02:13 | It kind of comes up, comes down,
and then it goes back to the original.
| | 02:17 | So let's go ahead and play that.
| | 02:21 | So as you can see we have got a much
better motion on the head, but another
| | 02:27 | thing that looks pretty stiff is his hat.
| | 02:29 | Now, we can have a lot of fun with that.
| | 02:31 | We can do a lot of squash and stretch animation.
| | 02:33 | So again, just like the head, as that
head is being squashed into the body,
| | 02:39 | the hat is being squashed into the head.
| | 02:42 | So let's go ahead and animate
some squash and stretch on the hat.
| | 02:46 | So I am going to go ahead and squash
his hat down, maybe rotate it a little bit
| | 02:53 | to get it kind of set down onto his head.
| | 02:57 | So now, as he pushes up, that hat
squashes and as he moves down, it's going
| | 03:04 | to stretch.
| | 03:07 | Let's go ahead and rotate it.
| | 03:10 | As it stretches, it actually may even
leave his head just a little bit because
| | 03:13 | he is really doing some
pretty hefty motion here.
| | 03:17 | So now, I have got it squashing around
frame 2, stretching around frame 6, and
| | 03:22 | then going back to normal on the cycle.
| | 03:26 | So let's see how that works.
| | 03:27 | Now, I can actually have that squash
down a little bit more on the head here.
| | 03:35 | Let's go ahead and
stretch this a little bit more.
| | 03:38 | Yeah, that's much better.
| | 03:40 | So now we can then
stretch this more. There we go.
| | 03:46 | Let's take a look at this.
| | 03:49 | There we go, much better.
| | 03:50 | So now we have the body.
| | 03:52 | And the last thing we need
to do is animate the arms.
| | 03:56 | Let me go ahead and turn those back on.
| | 03:59 | The arms actually move opposite
the legs very similar to a walk.
| | 04:04 | So as the right leg is back,
the right arm is rotated forward.
| | 04:10 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
it forward and even move it forward a
| | 04:13 | little bit to give a sense of his
shoulders moving forward, and also rotate this a
| | 04:19 | little bit at the elbow.
| | 04:22 | That's actually a little bit
off right there. We can fix that.
| | 04:26 | So that's my good first pose.
| | 04:28 | Then just go halfway through the cycle
and get to my second pose, which will be
| | 04:34 | this is straightened out and the
shoulder is rotated back and it also moves
| | 04:42 | back here, something like
that, maybe a little bit more.
| | 04:46 | So now, yeah, that looks about right.
| | 04:48 | So now all I have to do is just copy and
paste those first frames to frame 16 to
| | 04:55 | give a nice cycle, and let's see how that looks.
| | 05:03 | It's a little bit off, but
that will be good for now.
| | 05:05 | You can see where we are going with
this and I have also already animated the
| | 05:09 | left hand to make sure that it
works as well, and there we go.
| | 05:15 | So there is a basic 8 frame per step run
cycle and as you can see, it looks pretty good.
| | 05:22 | So when animating a run,
it's often best to do it pose to pose.
| | 05:27 | Now, make sure that your poses are
strong and also make sure that you have
| | 05:32 | smooth in-betweens between the poses.
| | 05:34 | Once you are done with the basic run,
you can add a little bit of squash and
| | 05:38 | stretch to make it give it more life.
| | 05:41 | Different characters will run
differently, but hopefully, this run is a good
| | 05:46 | template for which to
base all of your other runs.
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|
|
6. Facial Animation and DialogueThe basics of dialogue animation| 00:00 | If you ever want your characters to
talk or speak, you are going to have to
| | 00:03 | learn to animate dialogue and lip sync.
| | 00:06 | Animating dialogue means you are
syncing the entire character to the sound.
| | 00:12 | Now, this of course means syncing the mouth
so that the mouths line up with the soundtrack.
| | 00:17 | But more importantly, it means syncing
the body or the character to the sound.
| | 00:22 | Let me show you an example.
| | 00:24 | Here we have a simple character.
| | 00:26 | Now, if all we did was animate just the
mouth, you would only be animating this
| | 00:31 | much of the character.
| | 00:33 | All of this would be dead and really what
the audience sees is the entire character.
| | 00:39 | So you need to make sure to animate
the other part of the character as well.
| | 00:44 | So when you do that, you
animate the entire character.
| | 00:48 | So make sure you animate the
character, not just the mouth.
| | 00:52 | Now, with that in mind, let's
talk a little bit about the mouth.
| | 00:56 | Now, when you animate the mouth to
the soundtrack, you are animating what
| | 01:00 | are called phonemes.
| | 01:02 | Now, phonemes really are just the shapes
of the mouths that make the fundamental
| | 01:06 | sounds of dialogue, and we will
get to those in just a minute.
| | 01:09 | But phonemes really fall into two categories.
| | 01:13 | There are vowels, which are open mouth
sounds, and so of course these are A, E,
| | 01:18 | I, O and U. They are made by opening the mouth.
| | 01:21 | That's what makes the sound.
| | 01:23 | In between the vowels, we have what
are called consonants, and those are
| | 01:28 | closed mouth sounds.
| | 01:29 | So anything that
interrupts a vowel is a consonant.
| | 01:33 | Now, when you animate phonemes, be sure to
open your mouth quickly and close it slowly.
| | 01:39 | You really want to get a good
contrast when you open your mouth.
| | 01:43 | When you go to something like an A or
an I, one of those ones that has a very
| | 01:47 | large mouth, make sure you
just open that very quickly.
| | 01:51 | You want to make sure that
you have 2 frames minimum.
| | 01:55 | So in other words, keep every mouth or every
phoneme on the screen for at least 2 frames.
| | 02:01 | If you animate a phoneme only over one
frame, it's going to get lost and it's
| | 02:05 | going to look like noise.
| | 02:07 | The eye really only can
catch it if it's on for 2 frames.
| | 02:11 | Now, there is going to be times when your
dialogue is actually faster than 2 frames.
| | 02:17 | So in that case, don't try to hit every phoneme.
| | 02:20 | If the phonemes are going faster than
2 frames per phoneme, then just try and
| | 02:25 | get a good general guide or just
kind of interpolate it so it looks good.
| | 02:31 | But if you try and hit every phoneme,
you are going to get mouths that look very
| | 02:34 | chattery and we don't want that to happen.
| | 02:37 | So with that in mind, let's go ahead and
take a look at the phonemes themselves.
| | 02:41 | The first one we have is A and I,
which is kind of an open mouth.
| | 02:47 | And this is really probably the
largest of the phonemes that has the
| | 02:50 | mouth opened the widest.
| | 02:52 | After that we have the one for EH and
UH which are kind of more of the softer
| | 02:58 | vowel sounds and that has the
mouth a little bit more closed.
| | 03:02 | Then we have the Eeee sound,
which is a broader mouth.
| | 03:07 | After that, we have OH and Oooh, and
these are both just circular mouths and
| | 03:12 | one is closed a little bit smaller
to make the Oooh sound and when it's a
| | 03:16 | little bit wider, it's OH
and these are all vowels.
| | 03:21 | Now, for the consonants, we have the
first one is the closed mouth, which is for
| | 03:25 | sounds like M, B or P. And then we have
the hard consonant sounds which are ones
| | 03:33 | such as C, D, G, J, K, S, T, X and Z.
These are all kind of the hard types of
| | 03:41 | consonants that really
only happen over 2 frames.
| | 03:43 | Typically, these sorts of consonants
will be animated at about 2 frames.
| | 03:48 | They are very, very short.
| | 03:50 | Then we have the longer consonant sounds,
such as this shape for F and V, which
| | 03:56 | has the lip tucked up under the teeth.
| | 04:00 | Then we have one for T, H and L, which
has the tongue tucked up under the teeth.
| | 04:07 | Now, all of these together can be
used to make very convincing dialogue.
| | 04:12 | Now of course these are
just one style of drawing.
| | 04:15 | Your characters may be very different
but if you get the same general mouth
| | 04:20 | shapes, you should be able to animate dialogue.
| | 04:23 | So remember, when you are
animating dialogue to animate the entire
| | 04:28 | character, not just the mouth, and
when you animate mouths make sure that
| | 04:32 | you get your phonemes right.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reading tracks and assigning mouth shapes| 00:00 | Now in character animation, before you
do any sort of animation, you first need
| | 00:04 | to record your dialogue.
| | 00:07 | Now in animation, dialogue
tracks are recorded first.
| | 00:10 | This makes it much easier to get a really
good take and a good spontaneous bit of acting.
| | 00:17 | Now, once you have that bit of
recording, you have to read the tracks and
| | 00:21 | actually get the phonemes.
| | 00:23 | And then after that, you
animate to the existing track.
| | 00:28 | So basically record the dialogue, read
the track to get the phonemes and then
| | 00:33 | you animate to the track.
| | 00:36 | Now, when you are reading a track,
one of the first things you will do is
| | 00:39 | you will actually bring it up in the
computer and you will see a visual
| | 00:42 | representation of the waveform of the track.
| | 00:46 | When you are looking at a waveform
such as this in the computer, you will see
| | 00:49 | that there are louder parts,
which are the up and down parts here.
| | 00:53 | So this is a loud part. Or a soft part.
| | 00:57 | If you really take a look, you will see
that the loud parts are vowels and the
| | 01:01 | soft parts are consonants.
| | 01:04 | So that means vowels are typically
louder and consonants are quieter.
| | 01:09 | This is because remember, vowels are
the open mouth sounds and consonants are
| | 01:14 | the breaks between sounds.
| | 01:16 | So consonants just by
nature are going to be softer.
| | 01:20 | So if you can look at this track here
you can see that the vowels are little bit
| | 01:24 | taller and the consonants
are a little bit softer.
| | 01:28 | So there is a consonant, a very short
one, between these two vowels and here is
| | 01:32 | another soft consonant.
| | 01:34 | So that's a typical rule of thumb.
| | 01:36 | But let's go ahead and read an
actual track and see how it works.
| | 01:42 | So here I have a basic track
and it's about 70 frames long.
| | 01:47 | And I am going to go ahead and read it,
but before we read it, let's go ahead
| | 01:51 | and play in real time.
| | 01:54 | (Recording: These pretzels are making me thirsty,
these pretzels are making me thirsty.)
| | 01:59 | So now that you have head the track,
let's go ahead and scrub through it a
| | 02:03 | little bit more slowly.
| | 02:06 | So here we have the waveform
that represents that track.
| | 02:10 | So let's go ahead scrub through it
a frame at a time and see what we get.
| | 02:20 | So the first word is "these."
| | 02:22 | Now the dialogue track says these
pretzels are making me thirsty.
| | 02:26 | So the first bit of dialogue
is when you can hear the word these.
| | 02:33 | So this actual word is these.
| | 02:36 | So you can also see that that's the TH,
| | 02:44 | and this the E,
| | 02:47 | and that's the S at the end.
| | 02:49 | So you can see how we have the word "these."
| | 02:55 | So you can see Th-eeee-ss.
| | 02:58 | So we have These.
| | 03:06 | You can hear the P and even see
that little mark here for the P,
| | 03:10 | These pretzels, PRE.
| | 03:20 | So there is pr-EH---tz---eh---lllll-ssssss.
| | 03:23 | Let's actually go ahead and bring that up.
| | 03:26 | So pretzels. So you can see here this
part is actually the L and S, there are
| | 03:30 | actually long consonants.
| | 03:35 | Pretzels, so let's try that again.
| | 03:39 | So that's pretzels.
| | 03:44 | Are. Now I am using the phoneme sound.
| | 03:49 | So are is actually Ah and the letter R. So "are."
| | 03:56 | You can see this is the M, Make, Marking.
| | 04:05 | And now again we have got
another M here, Me.
| | 04:11 | So making me and the last word is thirsty.
| | 04:15 | In fact if we take a look at this, we
can almost figure it out just by looking
| | 04:19 | at the waveform, what is it? Thirsty.
| | 04:21 | So th-UR---ssss-t-eeee.
| | 04:25 | That's pretty much what's it going to be.
| | 04:27 | You can almost look at the waveform
and infer what the phonemes will be.
| | 04:31 | So we can also see this as thirs-teee.
| | 04:35 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 04:41 | So you can actually get to the point
where you can actually almost look at
| | 04:44 | the waveform and by knowing the dialogue,
you can pretty much see where everything is at.
| | 04:49 | So we have thirs and this is S and
then we have tee, which is that short
| | 04:55 | consonant, and then t-eee and then
the E. So we have th-UR---ssss--t--eeee.
| | 05:06 | So now that we have the track read,
let's go ahead and play it back one more time,
| | 05:10 | so you can see the
phonemes against the sound in real time.
| | 05:15 | (Recording: These pretzels are making me thirsty.)
| | 05:17 | (Recording x2: These pretzels are making me thirsty.)
| | 05:21 | So there you have the track read.
| | 05:23 | Now when reading a track, be sure to
match your phonemes against the waveform
| | 05:28 | and once you have it, it's
time to start animating dialogue.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Phonemes and lip-syncing| 00:00 | Now that we have read the track and
know where the phonemes lie in time, we can
| | 00:05 | match up our mouth shapes to our phonemes.
| | 00:09 | So let's go ahead and play
the track, as we have read it.
| | 00:13 | These pretzels are making me thirsty.
| | 00:16 | (x2) These pretzels are making me thirsty.
| | 00:19 | So now let's go ahead and
insert in our mouth shapes.
| | 00:23 | And I have already setup a simple set
of mouths that has basically all the
| | 00:28 | shapes that we need to animate to this dialog.
| | 00:30 | And let's go ahead and just do our animation.
| | 00:35 | When we start animating we have to
scrub against this waveform, recognize the
| | 00:41 | phonemes and insert the
proper mouth shape at the time.
| | 00:45 | But we also, need to make sure
that it all animates well together.
| | 00:49 | It's not just a mechanical
process of matching mouths to phonemes.
| | 00:54 | You really have to make sure that the
mouths flow properly in the animation context.
| | 00:59 | So let's go ahead and do this.
| | 01:00 | Now our first phoneme is going to be Th.
| | 01:02 | Let's go ahead and scrub this first word.
| | 01:06 | (Recording: These...)
| | 01:08 | So it goes "these," and you can see that
the S is this kind of little tail end here.
| | 01:13 | So up here is the Th, in the middle
this broad part is the E and then at the
| | 01:19 | end we have got the S. So we can almost just
look at the timeline and see how this works.
| | 01:25 | So right about here you can
see this is where the Th starts.
| | 01:28 | So I am going to go ahead
and slug in that mouth sound.
| | 01:31 | So I am going to keep it for two frames minimum.
| | 01:34 | So I am going to go here. We've started
here at frame 2, and 3 our Th, then I go
| | 01:42 | to frame 4 and I am in the middle of that E.
| | 01:46 | If I insert in the E sound, you are
going to see that I really don't have a lot
| | 01:51 | of contrast between this Th and the E.
So when it scrubs like this, you are
| | 01:57 | going to see it's not really going to pop.
| | 02:00 | If you wanted to be accurate,
you could do it this way.
| | 02:03 | But I am actually going to break one
of my rules and that is I am going to
| | 02:08 | actually open this mouth a little
bit more, and I am going to put in the
| | 02:12 | wrong mouth shape here.
| | 02:14 | I am actually going to put it an A just
to get that mouth open a little bit more.
| | 02:20 | Once I have got that A shape in,
I can then bring it back down to the E.
| | 02:27 | Now this will give a lot more
contrast in how you animate.
| | 02:31 | And then once I have that, then I am
at the tail end where I have my S sound.
| | 02:39 | So I am just putting in my hard consonant.
| | 02:42 | Kind of closed teeth for the S.
| | 02:45 | So let's go ahead and scrub this.
| | 02:46 | So you could see we have "these."
| | 02:53 | Now just by opening the mouth
here, you get a lot more contrast.
| | 02:56 | And a lot of times when you are
animating dialog you want to get contrast
| | 03:01 | between your phonemes to
make certain phonemes pop.
| | 03:04 | So let's go on to the next word.
| | 03:07 | These, okay now, the next one is pretzel.
| | 03:10 | So we have got pr and then EH, puh-er-eh, pretzels.
| | 03:16 | So we need to put in actually three
shapes in order to make this work.
| | 03:23 | So right after the S sound, I am going
to go ahead and animate that from frames
| | 03:28 | 8 to 9 and then right here around
frame 10, which is actually almost a little
| | 03:34 | bit early, I am going to go
ahead and put in that P sound.
| | 03:39 | So I am just going to have a closed
mouth shape, I am going to hold it for two
| | 03:44 | frames and then I am going to go to an R shape.
| | 03:50 | Now what is an R shape?
| | 03:52 | Well an R, if you think about it,
R is almost the same as the Oo sound.
| | 03:58 | So pr, puh-rr, but it's actually p-r and
then we go into an EH, which would be this shape.
| | 04:08 | So let's go ahead and scrub this.
| | 04:10 | So we go Pa, two frames, r, two frames EH.
| | 04:22 | pr-EH and then we hold the Eh for a
while and then we go into a teh, another t sound.
| | 04:28 | And a T is a hard consonant so
again we are just going to use that
| | 04:33 | catchall consonant sound.
| | 04:42 | So pr-EH-tz, I am going to hold
that so that's a T and then we have
| | 04:48 | eh-llll-ssss, these pretzels.
| | 04:51 | Eh, that's not an e. That's
not pretz-eels. It's pretz-uls.
| | 04:55 | And so I am going to use that kind of EH sound.
| | 04:59 | So I am going to go ahead, and put in
this Eh sound and hold that for a little bit.
| | 05:03 | But as you can see on this timeline here, we
have got actually a long L and then a long S.
| | 05:10 | So let's go ahead and scrub through that.
| | 05:15 | It goes from E to L to S. So it's kind
of unspecific as to when this happens.
| | 05:22 | So what I am going to do is this actually
goes from about frame 19 to about frame 29.
| | 05:30 | It's actually about 10 frames.
| | 05:32 | So I am going to give each about 3
frames, just kind of break it up.
| | 05:35 | And we can actually
almost see where the S starts.
| | 05:38 | You can see this is where the L
ends and this is where the S starts.
| | 05:43 | So I am actually going to start my L
right about here, and then hold it to
| | 05:48 | about right before that start, again
that is almost three frames, and then here
| | 05:54 | at frame 26 I am going to go ahead and
put in the S sound, which again is that
| | 06:00 | hard consonant sound.
| | 06:01 | And then right about here is where I am
going to have the word "are." So I am just
| | 06:07 | going to go ahead and close it.
| | 06:10 | Now typically, when animating dialog
it's better to go a little bit early with
| | 06:14 | the mouth shape then it is to go late.
| | 06:17 | In fact, the Disney animators would
always animate two frames ahead of where
| | 06:22 | they were animating.
| | 06:23 | Now a lot of this was because
they would play their cartoons in big
| | 06:26 | theaters and it would actually take
a fraction of a second for the sound
| | 06:30 | to actually hit the audience.
| | 06:32 | Now for animating for something a little bit
more immediate such as a TV or at the computer,
| | 06:37 | you may want to animate right on the phoneme.
| | 06:39 | It just depends, but typically it's
better to go a little bit ahead, because it
| | 06:44 | does take sound a little bit
of time to hit the audience.
| | 06:49 | So here I am going to actually go
a little bit early in my "are" shape.
| | 06:52 | So I am going to go AH-r.
| | 06:57 | And now the R again, the R shape is
actually pretty much the same as the Ooh shape.
| | 07:10 | R and again hold that for at least
two frames, and then I have got my M shape.
| | 07:16 | Making me thirsty.
| | 07:20 | And again, it's just A.
| | 07:21 | So now, we have worked away about half
way through this track and you can see
| | 07:25 | what the process is.
| | 07:26 | It's really just scrubbing through the
track, seeing where the phonemes are and
| | 07:31 | applying the proper mouth shape to the phonemes.
| | 07:35 | So let's go ahead and see
the final version of this.
| | 07:39 | (Recording: These pretzels are making me thirsty,
these pretzels are making me thirsty.)
| | 07:46 | So there's the final version.
| | 07:48 | So let's go ahead and scrub through it
once just to see how this works in slow motion.
| | 07:53 | (Recording: These pretzels are making me thirsty.)
| | 08:07 | So there we go, these
pretzels are making me thirsty.
| | 08:10 | So as you animate your phonemes to the
track be sure to get contrast between
| | 08:19 | your phonemes, so that your vowels will
go ahead and pop out of your consonants
| | 08:24 | and be sure also to give at least two
frames per a phoneme so that your dialog
| | 08:29 | doesn't appear chattery.
| | 08:31 | So that's how you get your
mouth assigned to your sound track.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating dialogue: Animating the body| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and move on to the next
logical step, which is animating the
| | 00:04 | entire character to dialog.
| | 00:07 | Now, when you animate a character to
dialog you want to make sure that you get
| | 00:10 | the body animation first, then do the
phonemes and then do the whatever
| | 00:16 | fine-tuning you need
to make sure it all syncs up.
| | 00:20 | Now the reason we want to animate the
body first is we want to get the broad
| | 00:23 | motion of the character blocked
in before we do any phonemes.
| | 00:28 | There may be situations where the
head is in a strange place and certain
| | 00:32 | phonemes won't work.
| | 00:34 | So we want to make sure that we get the
poses and then do the phonemes, because
| | 00:38 | again the body is more
important than just the mouth.
| | 00:42 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
the dialog that we are going to be using.
| | 00:45 | And I am going to go and play this.
| | 00:49 | (Male speaker: I can't figure this out,
I can't figure this out.)
| | 00:54 | So as you can see the
dialog is "I can't figure this out."
| | 00:57 | Now when reading the track for body animation,
you don't want to do it a phoneme at a time.
| | 01:04 | If you animated the body to every single
phoneme, you totally over-animate the track.
| | 01:09 | What we were trying to do here is get
the broad sense of the track and get the
| | 01:14 | major beats or major
points of emphasis in the track.
| | 01:18 | So which words in the track are emphasized?
| | 01:22 | So in this particular track, I am
thinking the words "can't" and "out" are the ones
| | 01:27 | that I want to emphasize.
| | 01:28 | So I want to go, "I CAN'T figure this OUT."
| | 01:34 | So let's go ahead and scrub through
this and see what the track looks like.
| | 01:38 | (Male speaker: I can't figure this out.)
| | 01:45 | Again, the word "can't" and
"out" seeing to be the points of emphasis.
| | 01:50 | So if I emphasize those two words,
the rest should fill in just fine.
| | 01:57 | So let's go ahead, and
start doing some animation.
| | 02:00 | So the first thing I am going to do
is go to the beginning of the word can't
| | 02:04 | and set some keyframes, and then I am
going to go to where the word kind of
| | 02:10 | comes to it's peak, which is in the middle of
this word an't or the AHH sound in the word can't.
| | 02:17 | And go ahead and animate the
character, so that he is in a nice pose.
| | 02:22 | So I am going to go ahead, and rotate
him up a little, and then, because he is
| | 02:27 | saying the word can't, which means I don't know,
| | 02:30 | I am going to go ahead and
bring his arms into a shrug.
| | 02:32 | So I am going to go ahead and rotate
his arm out a little bit and move it up.
| | 02:38 | So it seems like he is shrugging.
| | 02:39 | So he is saying I can't.
| | 02:41 | Now, let's go ahead and
do that for the other arm.
| | 02:43 | So I am going to do the same for the
right arm. I am going to go ahead and rotate
| | 02:46 | his arms out just a little bit, and
again move it up so he has a shrug.
| | 02:52 | So now we have (Recording: I can't) figure this...
| | 02:58 | I am going to keep him arms out for
that so when he is saying "I can't figure
| | 03:03 | this out," he is still going to be
shrugging and then he is going to basically
| | 03:08 | relax the shrug on the word out.
| | 03:11 | So he has got (Recording: I can't
figure this..) and then out,
| | 03:18 | he is going to go ahead and relax his pose.
| | 03:21 | I am going to go ahead and
bring his arms back to the side.
| | 03:25 | Now this is just the basic blocking.
I am just getting the basic pose.
| | 03:29 | So let's go ahead and see what this looks like.
| | 03:31 | Let me go ahead and just scrub it.
| | 03:33 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.)
| | 03:37 | Now I want to get a little
bit more animation into this.
| | 03:40 | I want to anticipate both
of these points of emphasis.
| | 03:43 | The point where he is shrugging and
the point where he relaxes the shrug.
| | 03:48 | So I am going to go ahead and do
some more animation with his body.
| | 03:53 | So I am going to go ahead and before
he actually comes up into this pose I am
| | 03:59 | going to actually drop him down a little bit.
| | 04:02 | So I am going to actually drop his body,
maybe even rotate him a little bit in
| | 04:09 | the opposite direction.
| | 04:11 | So now, he is going kind of like this.
| | 04:15 | And so he is kind of dropping down and
then popping up, and then again I want
| | 04:21 | to kind of sink him down just a
little bit, and maybe even rotate him over a
| | 04:24 | little bit and just kind of drop him down.
| | 04:28 | So I have got him coming up and then
dropping down. In fact, I can probably drop
| | 04:35 | him down a little bit faster.
| | 04:38 | So drop him down and then again, I want
to kind of keep him moving. I don't want
| | 04:43 | him just to freeze there and maybe
even relax the arms a little bit.
| | 04:47 | So we go ahead and take these arms and
rotate them in, just so he is relaxing.
| | 04:55 | One of things that will really help
your animations is learning a little bit
| | 04:58 | about drift, and that's gravity
will always tend to pull things down.
| | 05:02 | So when your arms are out,
their tendency is to sink down.
| | 05:07 | So his arms will try to sink down.
| | 05:10 | So he comes up and then he kind of
relaxes down, and then he should actually
| | 05:17 | come up again on the word
out and then settle back in.
| | 05:22 | So what we were going to do here is as
he says the word out, I am going to go
| | 05:26 | ahead and pop him up one more time.
| | 05:31 | And keep those arms out.
| | 05:39 | So now, we have got "I can't figure this out."
| | 05:44 | So I have gone ahead and
tweaked this a little bit.
| | 05:46 | So let's go ahead, and see what my final version
of just this phase of the animation looks like.
| | 05:53 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.)
| | 05:58 | So there we have our
first pass at the animation.
| | 06:01 | So we have got the body animated.
| | 06:04 | Now we need to go ahead
and fill in the phonemes.
| | 06:07 | But when animating the body make sure
you hit the major points of emphasis in
| | 06:12 | your dialog, be sure to anticipate
those points of emphasis and be sure to not
| | 06:18 | over-animate by trying to animate every word.
| | 06:22 | And if you do that, you'll have a
good start on your dialog animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating dialogue: Assigning mouth shapes| 00:00 | So now we have the rough body animation
blocked out and let's go ahead and see
| | 00:05 | what that looks like.
| | 00:07 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.)
| | 00:12 | So now that we have the
body animation done, let's go ahead and
| | 00:16 | start animating the
mouth shapes to the phonemes.
| | 00:20 | So as we go through this
track you'll see have "I can't."
| | 00:25 | Let's go ahead and scrub through that.
| | 00:29 | So it goes I and then it goes silent for the C.
So let's go ahead and start with the A sound.
| | 00:37 | So the first thing I am going to
do is go here to where this starts.
| | 00:41 | In fact, I can just look at the track
and see where the sound starts and I am
| | 00:46 | going to go ahead and
put it in my A mouth shape.
| | 00:49 | Then I am going to scrub through to
where we have the C, and then I am going to
| | 00:55 | go ahead and put in my consonant sound.
| | 00:59 | Now the one thing is I have got a
lot of space between here and here.
| | 01:05 | I have got about eight frames.
| | 01:06 | So I really want to take and put in a
middle frame here, somewhere around here,
| | 01:12 | I want to actually put in an in-between.
| | 01:16 | So that way it kind of gives a little bit
more of in-between between this and this.
| | 01:20 | So now we have got...
| | 01:23 | Okay so now we have got
the word can't, and again,
| | 01:26 | you can see, you can even just look at
this timeline and see where the A starts.
| | 01:31 | It starts right here, at frame 24.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to put in my A sound,
"I can't" and then the nt again.
| | 01:41 | You can see right here
that's where this A sound ends.
| | 01:46 | So I am going to go ahead here and at
this frame which is somewhere around frame 28,
| | 01:51 | and again, put in my
consonant sound, "I can't" and then.
| | 02:00 | So let's go ahead and scrub this.
| | 02:05 | Here is the f for figure, so let's go
ahead and put that in, so that would
| | 02:10 | be this mouth shape.
| | 02:13 | So this mouth shape is for f, figure.
| | 02:16 | Now figure is actually f-eh.
| | 02:19 | So it's more of an EH or an E sound.
| | 02:22 | So I am going to go from this
mouth shape to this mouth shape.
| | 02:25 | So I am going to go "fig," and then it
goes back into a consonant for figure.
| | 02:31 | The G is a hard consonant, so I am
going to go ahead and put this shape in.
| | 02:40 | Now the next one is UR.
| | 02:43 | Now with UR, it's mostly round mouth sound.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to actually start with
an open O sound and then just bring it
| | 02:51 | down to an Ooh half way through this phoneme.
| | 02:55 | So now, I have got... "figure this."
| | 03:02 | So here, we have got the th mouth shape, this.
| | 03:06 | So again, I am going to hold this for
two frames, then put in an e, this, and
| | 03:11 | then we'll go back to our consonant
sound for the S and then for "out,"
| | 03:17 | what I really want to do is I want to
get a really good emphasis for this.
| | 03:21 | So I want to open the mouth up pretty wide.
| | 03:24 | So for the word out, I am actually
going to start with an A sound then go to an O.
| | 03:31 | So we are going to from
Aoo and then go into an Ooh.
| | 03:37 | So that's pretty much it.
| | 03:39 | So let's go ahead and take a look
at the final version of this.
| | 03:44 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.)
| | 03:49 | So as you can see we now have the
body and the phonemes animated together.
| | 03:55 | Now when you are putting in the phonemes, be
sure to pay attention to where the head is at.
| | 03:59 | But also pay attention to the rules
of phoneme placement, which is two
| | 04:02 | frames minimum per phonemes, and try
and get contrast between your vowels
| | 04:07 | and your consonants.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating dialogue: Finalizing | 00:00 | Now we have the body
animated, as well as the phonemes.
| | 00:04 | So let's go ahead and take a
look at where we're at right now.
| | 00:08 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.)
| | 00:13 | So as you can see, it's getting closer.
| | 00:15 | We're doing this a layer at a time,
but we still need to do secondary motion.
| | 00:20 | Then also I want to do a
little bit of eye direction.
| | 00:23 | I want to do some blinks and
also give a change in eye direction.
| | 00:27 | So let's go ahead and do that first.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to go ahead and scrub in here,
and as you can see as he changes his
| | 00:34 | pose from this through the shrug,
I want to go ahead and do a change in eye
| | 00:39 | direction, which means I want to go
ahead and make him look up and away.
| | 00:44 | So right about here, I'm going to go ahead
and change his pupils to move basically up.
| | 00:55 | So he's going to be kind of looking
almost to the sky, because he doesn't know.
| | 01:01 | Now, let's go "I can't figure this..."
| | 01:06 | Then as he comes back, I'm just going
to go ahead and have them go back to
| | 01:09 | my normal pose here.
| | 01:12 | So I'm going to go ahead
and move that eye back.
| | 01:18 | What was that?
So now he's going...
| | 01:21 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.)
| | 01:26 | So I can't figure this out.
| | 01:31 | So what I'm doing is I'm changing the
direction of his eyes on each of the major points.
| | 01:37 | That will help to sell the animation.
| | 01:39 | But when I change eye
direction, what else do I need to do?
| | 01:42 | I need to add in a blink.
| | 01:44 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:47 | I'm going to go ahead to each
eye and just add in a blink.
| | 01:52 | So as he comes in he blinks up,
and then he opens his eyes again.
| | 01:58 | Let's do the same for the other one.
| | 02:02 | So as he changes his eye direction,
I'm going to go ahead and add in
| | 02:09 | a blink for each eye.
| | 02:14 | So now he goes, "I can't figure this out."
| | 02:21 | Very simple!
| | 02:22 | So let's go ahead and scrub
that against the track.
| | 02:25 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.)
| | 02:28 | So that works pretty good.
| | 02:29 | But I still need to do a
little bit of secondary motion.
| | 02:33 | The first place I'm going to
concentrate on is the head.
| | 02:36 | Now the head is going to
move because of two reasons.
| | 02:40 | One is it will have secondary motion.
In other words, it will lag behind the
| | 02:46 | motion of the body, because
again the head wants to stay put.
| | 02:50 | So it's going to try and stay
where it is as the body moves.
| | 02:53 | So it's going to drag
behind the motion of the body.
| | 02:56 | But there is another reason why the
head is going to move, and that is because
| | 03:00 | when the mouth gets large, such as in A
or I sounds, the head will tend to tilt
| | 03:07 | back just a little bit to open the throat.
| | 03:11 | So what we're going to do is as we
get into our big sounds, we're going to
| | 03:14 | bounce the head up and then we're
going to combine that with secondary
| | 03:17 | motion against the body.
| | 03:19 | So right here, he goes into an I sound.
| | 03:23 | So what I'm going to do is just take
the head and just kind of drop it down a
| | 03:28 | little bit and maybe rotate it.
| | 03:30 | Again, one of the things I'm going to
do is rotate the head just a little bit.
| | 03:33 | If I rotate his head like that,
it gives a nicer line to the pose.
| | 03:38 | So what I'm having him do is kind of just
tilt over a little bit and then he goes "I".
| | 03:45 | So, I'm going to pop the head up
just a bit on that word I,
| | 03:54 | and then he kind of comes down.
| | 03:58 | So again, I'm giving a little bit
of a contrast there, but then as he
| | 04:03 | starts pushing up, I want to actually bring
his head way down kind of into his shoulders.
| | 04:09 | We'll squash his head a little bit.
| | 04:14 | Then as he gets into this other A sound,
I want to pop the head up and maybe do
| | 04:20 | a little bit of rotation.
| | 04:22 | So now we've got, "I can't." So you can
see how the body pushes and then that head
| | 04:31 | pops up almost as emphasis and
it actually tends to emphasize that word.
| | 04:39 | Then we can go ahead and
settle that had back down.
| | 04:45 | Let's go ahead and scrub this.
| | 04:47 | (Recording: I can't...)
| | 04:49 | See how that word can't is now super-
emphasized, not just by the mouth, but by
| | 04:54 | the body and the head.
| | 04:56 | (Recording: I can't figure...)
| | 04:59 | Figure. So what we need to do know is just
start animating the head against these
| | 05:04 | phonemes at this point.
| | 05:06 | So I'm going to go ahead and drop the
head down just a little bit, and then as
| | 05:10 | he comes into that phoneme, I'm going
to pop him up and again, drop him down.
| | 05:21 | Again, I may add a little bit of
rotation just to add some variation, just to
| | 05:24 | give it a little bit of life.
| | 05:31 | Then again, we're coming up
into another big motion here.
| | 05:34 | So I'm going to go ahead and
get this ready, anticipate it.
| | 05:42 | As he's coming into this big move
right here, I want to squash the head and
| | 05:50 | then overshoot it and then settle back in.
| | 05:54 | So now we have something like this.
| | 06:00 | I can't figure this out.
| | 06:02 | I want to add one more
little bit of secondary animation.
| | 06:06 | That's on the arms.
| | 06:07 | Now notice how the arms are actually
fairly stiff when they move, particularly
| | 06:11 | when they come down.
| | 06:13 | So right about here, as they start
coming back down, I want to actually add a
| | 06:19 | little bit of drag into those lower arms.
| | 06:23 | So at this point, as they come down,
I'm going to take the left arm and I'm
| | 06:30 | just going to rotate it out a little
bit and do the same for the right arm.
| | 06:38 | Again, just put a little bit of a bend
in that elbow and it will give it a much
| | 06:42 | stronger sense of flexibility.
| | 06:45 | It will actually make the character
look a lot more realistic and flexible.
| | 06:49 | So now if you look at the arms, you can
see now how I'm kind of bending those,
| | 06:54 | as he's coming down. In fact, I could
probably do that a little bit more right
| | 06:57 | there and there we go.
| | 07:00 | That pretty much completes it.
| | 07:03 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
this final version of the animation.
| | 07:08 | (Recording: I can't figure this out.
I can't figure this out.)
| | 07:13 | So as you can see, we've
done this animation in layers.
| | 07:17 | We first blocked out the body motion,
then we added in the phonemes, and then we
| | 07:23 | did our fine-tuning.
| | 07:25 | By doing it in this way,
you get a really good animation.
| | 07:30 | It's good to do it step-by-step,
because that way you have a firm foundation on
| | 07:35 | which to build the next step.
| | 07:37 | So go ahead and continue to practice
with your own characters and do some
| | 07:42 | additional dialog animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Animating Characters in After Effects and FlashAnimating a scene| 00:00 | So now that we understand the basics
of animation, it's time to actually
| | 00:04 | start animating a scene.
| | 00:07 | Now, we're going to animate the exact same
scene in Flash CS4 as well as After Effects CS4.
| | 00:13 | So if you're familiar with one or
the other, just go ahead and jump to
| | 00:17 | those particular movies.
| | 00:19 | Now, the scene we're going to animate
actually has walking as well as dialog.
| | 00:23 | So we should give a broad coverage of
the techniques for both of these packages.
| | 00:29 | Now, before you start animating your scene,
you need to plan and direct your scene.
| | 00:33 | This means we start off with
something like a script or a storyboard.
| | 00:38 | Now, you can always just go directly
to storyboard if you want, and once you
| | 00:42 | have the basic story down,
you can record your dialog.
| | 00:46 | Once you have the dialog, you can marry
that with the storyboard to create an animatic.
| | 00:53 | So let me show you the storyboard for
the animation that we're going to be doing.
| | 00:58 | It's really very simple.
| | 01:00 | We have a character who is a woman and
she walks into the scene, center stage,
| | 01:05 | stops and then she just says "Welcome
to the show," and does a quick gesture.
| | 01:11 | So let's go ahead and take a look at the
animatic with the dialog from our lovely Samara.
| | 01:17 | (Samara: Welcome to the show.)
| | 01:19 | And there we go. It's
really a very simple scene.
| | 01:22 | It's only 80 frames long, but it
does cover a number of techniques.
| | 01:26 | Now, before you start animating any
scene, you really need to go through an
| | 01:30 | entire process to actually animate it.
| | 01:33 | The animation process starts off with blocking.
| | 01:36 | You need to make sure that you get
your character into the right place at the
| | 01:39 | right time, so you block out your major poses.
| | 01:43 | Once you have your blocking, then you
actually go through and do your animation,
| | 01:48 | then you lay in your dialog
and then you do some fine-tuning.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and take this
basic scene and let's animate it in
| | 01:58 | several different packages.
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| Setting up the scene in After Effects| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and
animate our scene in After Effects.
| | 00:04 | So I'm going to go ahead and open up
After Effects CS4 and we're going to go
| | 00:09 | ahead and open a file here called Woman_
Stage and that's in the Chapter 7 folder
| | 00:14 | of your exercise files.
| | 00:16 | Now, this actually has a
number of different compositions.
| | 00:21 | The first composition is the actual
storyboard and then we have a composition
| | 00:26 | with just the woman rigged and
ready to go, kind of like a blank slate.
| | 00:31 | Then as we go through all of these
other compositions, it just gets more
| | 00:34 | and more animation.
| | 00:35 | So these are all the stages in the
process, finally ending in the composition
| | 00:40 | called Woman_07, which is the final scene.
| | 00:43 | So let me go ahead and play that so we
can see where we're going.
| | 00:48 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 00:50 | (Female Speaker x2: Welcome to the show.)
| | 00:53 | So let's go ahead and start
working towards that scene.
| | 00:57 | Now, let me describe the
setup a little bit here.
| | 00:59 | Now we have a Null object
here at the very bottom.
| | 01:03 | This allows us to
position the entire character.
| | 01:06 | So we can go ahead and position her
wherever we need and then each part of the
| | 01:11 | character is basically just jointed.
| | 01:13 | So we can just rotate the joints.
| | 01:16 | Now I did not use the Puppet tool in
this because for these types of joints,
| | 01:20 | it's probably easiest to just
use rotations and use hierarchies.
| | 01:24 | Everything is kind of put together in
a hierarchy, so that when you move the
| | 01:28 | shoulder, the lower arm
moves and so on and so forth.
| | 01:31 | Now, the one thing I didn't do was
I broke the hierarchy at the hips.
| | 01:35 | So the legs are not connected to the hips.
| | 01:39 | This really lends itself to the way
that I like to animate, which is to animate
| | 01:42 | the feet and the hips, and then
just put the legs in between them.
| | 01:47 | That's basically my choice
and how I like to animate.
| | 01:50 | I think it works really well.
| | 01:52 | Then the rest of the parts of the
character are kind of just put together,
| | 01:55 | so we've got the head and so on and so forth.
| | 01:58 | So let's go ahead and set up this first pose.
| | 02:01 | I'm going to go ahead and take
a look at this storyboard here.
| | 02:04 | The first pose really just has a
character ready to start walking.
| | 02:08 | So she's stage right and
with both feet facing forward.
| | 02:12 | So here I've got her feet kind of facing out.
| | 02:15 | So let me go ahead and grab the left
shoe and go ahead and just scale that in
| | 02:22 | the opposite direction.
| | 02:23 | In fact, if I want to get that very
accurate, I can go into the Scale function here,
| | 02:28 | and just go ahead and type in
-100, so it's exactly of the right size.
| | 02:33 | If I want, I can go ahead and zoom in and
get this position exactly the way that I want.
| | 02:38 | Now once we have this basic pose, then
we're ready to actually start animating.
| | 02:44 | Here is the actual pose that I'm going
to start with, which is called Woman_01.
| | 02:50 | So before you start animating anything
in After Effects, you need to get your
| | 02:53 | character position properly on the
scene and get everything set up and rigged
| | 02:58 | and ready to go, which is what we have here.
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| Animating the feet in After Effects| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and start animating the walk.
| | 00:02 | We need to block out the steps of the
walk and also get the hips moving, so that
| | 00:08 | they stay between the steps.
| | 00:09 | Now the way that I animate is I like to
animate the feet and the hips first and
| | 00:14 | then fill in the legs.
| | 00:15 | So what we are going to do is we are
just going to isolate the feet and the hip.
| | 00:20 | I am going to go ahead and select the right
the right and left shoe as well as the hips.
| | 00:25 | So these three objects here
are going to be highlighted.
| | 00:29 | Now, I am working in the Woman_01 composition.
| | 00:32 | Now what I need to do is get this
character from point A to point B, point B
| | 00:38 | being the center of the screen.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to go ahead and turn on the
Grid here, so that we can see that this
| | 00:44 | line here is the center.
| | 00:45 | So we want to get it
pretty much around this line.
| | 00:49 | But we only have about
a second or so to get it there.
| | 00:53 | Let's take a look at this board.
| | 00:55 | So what we have is we have got her
walking in and then the dialog starts right
| | 01:02 | here between 40 and 50.
| | 01:05 | Now we are animating this at 30
frames per second, which means that I have
| | 01:10 | about from frame 0 to frame 30, maybe
a little bit past frame 30, to get her
| | 01:15 | into the center of the screen.
| | 01:17 | Now the reason I am kind of shaving off
those 10 frames is that we need time to
| | 01:22 | get her into her first pose.
| | 01:24 | So I want to make sure I get her to
that spot a little bit early so that we can
| | 01:28 | get her into her first pose.
| | 01:30 | So what we have got is we have got to
get from here to here in about a second
| | 01:34 | and that means we need to take how many steps?
| | 01:37 | Well, let's go ahead and take a look at this.
| | 01:39 | So we need to get from here to here.
| | 01:42 | Now it looks like we are going to need
about three to three-and-a-half steps
| | 01:46 | in order to do that.
| | 01:47 | Three steps over 30 frames, that's
about 10 frames per step, but actually I'm
| | 01:52 | going to shave it off even a little bit more.
| | 01:54 | I'm going to make it about 8 frames
per step, which is actually a fairly fast walk,
| | 01:59 | but I think it will work.
| | 02:01 | So let's go ahead and start
animating the feet and blocking in this walk.
| | 02:06 | Now I'm going to go ahead and
start this with the right foot.
| | 02:10 | Let's go ahead and make sure that we
understand why I'm starting with the
| | 02:13 | right foot. Because we are going to
step here and then that third step is
| | 02:17 | going to be crossing that line.
| | 02:19 | I'm figuring about one of
these grid lines per step.
| | 02:23 | So we have got one step, two steps and
then that third step is going to go ahead
| | 02:28 | and cross over that line.
| | 02:30 | So this would be 1 and 3,
and this step would be step 2.
| | 02:33 | So I need to start with the right foot.
| | 02:38 | So let's go ahead and lay in some keyframes.
| | 02:41 | Now for this first step, you got to realize
that she is standing with her feet together.
| | 02:45 | So it's not going to be a full step.
| | 02:47 | It's going to be a little
bit more than a half step.
| | 02:49 | So if I am doing 8 frames per step,
I am going to do this one at say 6.
| | 02:54 | I could do it at 4, but I think 6 is
actually going to work a little bit better.
| | 02:57 | So I am going to go to frame 6, make
sure the right shoe is selected and then
| | 03:02 | I'm going to go to this position
value here and I'm just going to click and
| | 03:07 | scroll this so that it's about a
half-a-shoe length ahead of the left foot.
| | 03:14 | So this distance here is
about one half of a shoe.
| | 03:18 | So now that I have got that blocked
out, I have got kind of the first step.
| | 03:23 | Now what I'm going to do is just block
it in with the feet shuffling and then
| | 03:27 | we'll go ahead and make this a
little bit more of a solid walk.
| | 03:31 | So now that I have got the right shoe,
we need to work with the left shoe.
| | 03:34 | So I am going to go ahead and expand this,
go back to frame 0, and set in some keyframes.
| | 03:40 | Now I would like to set in keyframes
at 0 just so I know I have my first pose
| | 03:43 | locked in, and I'm going to go ahead and
just select and copy and paste those to frame 6.
| | 03:49 | Even, so they are the same keys,
I like having once at 0 just so I have
| | 03:53 | them for reference.
| | 03:56 | Now we are going to go from frame 6 plus 8.
Remember it's 8 frames per step, so 6+8=14.
| | 04:04 | So I am going to go to frame 14, select
this left shoe and again bring it about
| | 04:11 | a half-of-a-foot or half-of-a-
shoe length ahead of that right foot.
| | 04:18 | So now I have got this.
| | 04:19 | So you can see we are
starting to make our steps.
| | 04:23 | Now, let's do the same for the right foot.
| | 04:26 | Now here, I want to make sure that
this foot stays in place, so I'm going to
| | 04:29 | go ahead and copy and paste the keyframe at
frame 6 to frame 14, just to lock that in place.
| | 04:37 | Then I'm going to go another 8 frames,
which is going to be frame 22. 14+8 is 22.
| | 04:44 | And again just slide the horizontal
one until I get that foot just right
| | 04:50 | around that center line. So here we go.
| | 04:55 | So let's go ahead and just play
this and see what it looks like.
| | 04:58 | So you can see we have got a nice little walk.
| | 05:02 | One of the things we have to do is
we have to get her into her final pose.
| | 05:06 | So as you can see, her final pose has
her heels together and her toes out so
| | 05:12 | let's go back to this and we have to
get this left foot into that position.
| | 05:19 | So what I need to do is as the right
foot passes the left, I want to take that
| | 05:24 | left foot, pivot it around, and then
slide it up against the right foot.
| | 05:31 | So what I'm going to do is right
around the passing position, right where
| | 05:34 | the one foot passes the other,
I'm going to take this left shoe and I'm
| | 05:39 | going to flip it around.
| | 05:40 | So I'm going to take probably maybe
three or four frames and I'm going to scale
| | 05:46 | it in the opposite direction.
| | 05:50 | So where it was -100, now it's 100.
| | 05:57 | But I have got that a little bit wrong,
because I need to go ahead and lock
| | 06:00 | that pose down at frame 19, so I'm just
going to go ahead and copy that first frame,
| | 06:04 | the scaling in the first
frame, and paste it to frame 19.
| | 06:10 | And then as it flips over, you'll see
here we have got pretty much a nice flip here
| | 06:16 | but it's getting way too skinny here,
so I'm going to go ahead and expand
| | 06:20 | that and then just rotate it down just
a little bit, so that it looks like it's
| | 06:27 | pivoting down and again I'm going to
have that same problem with the toe moving.
| | 06:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and copy
the rotation key from frame 1 again.
| | 06:36 | So that's going to rotate down and
then I'm going to again scale it and rotate it.
| | 06:46 | So again, what I'm doing is I'm kind
of pointing the toe down to give almost
| | 06:49 | like a false sense of perspective.
| | 06:52 | And then I'm going to go ahead and
put it back to the original rotation and
| | 06:57 | scaling and I'm going to go ahead
and lock in the position as well.
| | 07:01 | So now we have got it kind of flipping over.
| | 07:04 | You can see how that foot is flipping over.
| | 07:07 | In fact, let's go ahead and
take a look at this up close.
| | 07:11 | So now we have got this left foot,
scales down, rotates so the toe is down,
| | 07:17 | flips over and then goes back to normal.
| | 07:21 | I need to slide that up against the right foot.
| | 07:26 | Now the right foot stops and plants at frame 22.
| | 07:30 | So that means from frame 22 to about
say 26, I have room to slide this foot up
| | 07:38 | against the other one.
| | 07:40 | So now we have got that.
| | 07:43 | So we are going to step, step, step, slide.
| | 07:47 | Now I still have a little bit more
work to do, which means that I have to get
| | 07:52 | these to look like it's walking.
| | 07:55 | So what I need to do is let's go
ahead and zoom out a little bit.
| | 07:57 | So let's go ahead and take this right
foot and what it's going to do is as it
| | 08:03 | lifts off, remember that the foot
will pivot off the toe as it lifts up.
| | 08:08 | So I'm going to go ahead and
rotate that foot down and lift it up.
| | 08:15 | So now it looks like it's lifting up
and then right before it sets down, which
| | 08:20 | is at frame 6, I'm going to go ahead and
rotate it up so that it looks like it's
| | 08:27 | setting down a lot more solidly.
| | 08:30 | So now it goes like this.
| | 08:34 | Rolls off the toe, toe lifts up, it sets down.
| | 08:38 | Let's do that one more time for the other foot.
| | 08:40 | So I'm going to go ahead, and go about 2
frames out, lift up the foot and rotate
| | 08:49 | the toe down so it looks like
it's rotating off of that toe.
| | 08:53 | Then when I get to the very last frame,
again I want to make that 0 so the foot
| | 08:58 | is flipped and then I want to go one
more frame before that and lift that toe up
| | 09:04 | and maybe even lift the
foot up just a little bit.
| | 09:08 | So now I have got it
looking like it's an actual walk.
| | 09:14 | Now the next thing I need to do is
I'm going to go ahead and stop here.
| | 09:17 | You can do the rest of the feet by yourself.
| | 09:20 | But let's go ahead and just show you a
little bit about how the hips would work as well.
| | 09:23 | Now once I have the feet moving properly,
I need to get the hips moving as well.
| | 09:29 | So let's go ahead and do them.
| | 09:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and
just drop in some keyframes.
| | 09:37 | Now as the feet go apart,
the hips are going to drop.
| | 09:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and drop the hips
and move them forward just a little bit.
| | 09:45 | Now this is going to be very subtle.
| | 09:47 | You are not going to have
a whole lot of motion here.
| | 09:50 | Then as the feet pass each other,
again the hips are going to go right above,
| | 09:55 | the feet and they are going to go high,
because again the passing position is
| | 09:58 | the highest point of the walk.
| | 10:01 | And then, as they set down again we are
going to go again about halfway between
| | 10:06 | and we are going to come down
again, and so on and so forth.
| | 10:09 | So let's go over to Woman_02, which is
the final version of the feet and the hips,
| | 10:15 | and let's see what these look like.
| | 10:16 | Okay, so as you can see,
they walk and they set into place.
| | 10:22 | So they walk, look at how the feet move,
and then the foot flips over and again
| | 10:28 | the hips just stay pretty
much centered between the feet.
| | 10:32 | Once you have this, you have the basic
structure of your walk and everything
| | 10:37 | else will fall into place.
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| Animating the legs in After Effects| 00:00 | At this point, we have the feet and the
hips moving and this gives us the basic
| | 00:04 | structure of our walk.
| | 00:06 | Now we need to fill in the lower
part of the body by animating the legs.
| | 00:11 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take the left leg and we are going to go
| | 00:16 | ahead and animate that.
| | 00:17 | So I'm going to go ahead to solo
that and I'm going to turn off the right shoe,
| | 00:21 | so all we are working with
is the left foot and the left leg.
| | 00:27 | So let's see what we have got here.
| | 00:29 | So as you can see, we have got this foot
and hip moving, but the legs don't match up.
| | 00:35 | Well, we can fix that fairly
easily just by animating the legs.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to zoom in here so
we can see this a little better.
| | 00:42 | So as you can see,
everything is moving but the legs.
| | 00:46 | So let's go ahead and start
adding in some keys for the legs.
| | 00:50 | Again, I'm putting in some keys at
frame 0, just so I have a good strong pose
| | 00:55 | and now let's go ahead and go out to
frame 6 because what happens is this foot
| | 01:00 | stays solid until frame 6.
Nothing really happens.
| | 01:06 | So what I can do is I can just rotate
and move the upper part of this leg,
| | 01:12 | which should be left upper leg, and again just
match it up so that it looks like it's moving.
| | 01:19 | So now you can see it looks
like it's pivoting off of that leg.
| | 01:26 | And then I'm going to go ahead and
copy and paste keys for the lower leg as well,
| | 01:30 | just so that we have them in place.
| | 01:33 | Now, as that foot lifts up, we
need to do some more complex keying.
| | 01:37 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to go to the passing position, which is
| | 01:41 | about four frames in, which is about
frame 10, and I'm going to start with the
| | 01:46 | upper leg and move it and then take the
lower leg and rotate it so that we have
| | 01:53 | got a nice pose here,
so something like that.
| | 01:58 | Now you can see that the in-between
doesn't really work all that well.
| | 02:04 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
go halfway in-between there and see if
| | 02:08 | we can get a better pose.
| | 02:10 | Now in some of this you may
have to tweak a frame at a time.
| | 02:20 | So now we have got the leg moving and
let's go ahead and get this extended
| | 02:27 | position, which is at frame 14.
| | 02:29 | So again, I'm going to straighten out
that knee and go ahead and move it over.
| | 02:37 | So really it's just a
matter of connecting the dots.
| | 02:40 | What you have got is you have got
these two points, you have the hip and the foot,
| | 02:43 | and you just need to make the leg
bridge that gap and I find this is much
| | 02:49 | easier than trying to
animate the foot from the leg down.
| | 02:53 | Keeping that foot separate really helps
a lot and again what you need to do is
| | 02:59 | just kind of go back and tweak it.
| | 03:01 | But it's really not that difficult of a task.
| | 03:04 | It's really just kind of lining things up.
| | 03:06 | Now I'm going to go ahead and switch
over to Composition:Woman_03 and let's take
| | 03:12 | a look at what that looks like.
| | 03:13 | So let's go ahead and zoom in and
we can see a little bit closer, as to
| | 03:17 | how this leg works.
| | 03:19 | Just scrub through that
a little bit more slowly.
| | 03:24 | So as you can see, it bends, extends,
squashes and then as it pivots,
| | 03:34 | I'm actually not animating
the leg hardly at all.
| | 03:36 | It's the foot that's
really doing most of the work.
| | 03:38 | If you notice that this curve
here is always on the right side.
| | 03:43 | Now if I wanted to, I could actually
use the Puppet tool or something like that
| | 03:46 | to give it a little bit more balance,
but this seems to work just fine.
| | 03:50 | Now once you have one leg,
the other leg pretty much works the same.
| | 03:55 | I'm not going to go ahead and
go through all that process.
| | 03:57 | So let's go ahead and take a look at
what the final version of the hips,
| | 04:00 | legs and feet look like.
| | 04:04 | So again, for the right leg, it's
exactly the same process as the left.
| | 04:07 | You just have to match it up and make
sure that everything holds together.
| | 04:12 | Then once you have that, you can
start moving on to the upper body and
| | 04:18 | the rest of the character.
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| Animating the upper body in After Effects| 00:00 | Now we have the whole lower body
animated and we can move on to the upper body.
| | 00:06 | Now, what we need to do here is put in
a little bit of our body turn as well as
| | 00:11 | work with the hands.
| | 00:12 | So, let me show you where we are at right now.
| | 00:16 | So, we have the lower body animated.
| | 00:18 | Now, one of the things I've done
just in the sake of time is I've actually
| | 00:23 | animated the hands a little bit.
| | 00:25 | So, let me show you where we at, at this point.
| | 00:27 | I've just kind of animated the hands
coming down to the side and we're going to
| | 00:32 | actually do some more hand animation to
actually do the poses of the character,
| | 00:37 | but also what I want to do is
actually put in a little bit of a body turn,
| | 00:42 | because right now she is kind of
facing a little bit to her right, and I want
| | 00:47 | kind of pull her body
a little bit more forward.
| | 00:51 | So, we can do that by animating
just this upper part of the body.
| | 00:55 | So it's a little bit more centered.
| | 00:58 | So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:00 | Now, as she comes into this pose, you
can see that she actually sets down her
| | 01:04 | foot at frame 22 and then
slides up into this pose.
| | 01:10 | So from frame 22 on is really where we
need to kind of put in this body turn.
| | 01:15 | Now, I'm going to start with the neck.
| | 01:18 | So what I'm going to do is put
in some keyframes at frame 22.
| | 01:23 | Now, as this character slides up
I'm going to go ahead just do little bit of
| | 01:29 | motion and I'm just kind of go ahead
and slide that over just a little bit and
| | 01:34 | maybe even rotate it just so that
it's a little bit more centered.
| | 01:39 | So, as you can see now as she comes up
into this pose, the neck now goes from
| | 01:45 | facing that way to being a
little bit more centered.
| | 01:48 | Now, when this is centered and this is
actually moved off to the side, the chest
| | 01:53 | also needs to be animated as well.
| | 01:56 | So, we're going to go ahead
and do the same thing for that.
| | 01:59 | So, I am going to go ahead and put in a
Position key for each of these at frame
| | 02:04 | 22 and then move over to frame 28 and
then just kind of select them and slide
| | 02:13 | them over just a little bit so that
they are a little bit more centered.
| | 02:17 | So, now we've got this, so that as she
comes into this pose you can see now,
| | 02:24 | especially the edge right here,
how it kind of comes over.
| | 02:28 | Again, it just makes her a
little bit more centered in the frame.
| | 02:31 | It looks like she is facing forward.
| | 02:34 | Now, let's go ahead and
put her into some poses here.
| | 02:39 | So, as she comes into this final
position here at frame 30, what I want her to
| | 02:43 | do is I want her hand to come up on her
hip and then I also want her to gesture
| | 02:49 | to the sound track, so let's go ahead
and first of all put her hand on her hip.
| | 02:56 | So, I am going to go ahead and zoom in.
| | 02:58 | Let's zoom in a little bit further and let's
take this arm and we'll get into this pose.
| | 03:06 | So right here at frame 30,
I'm actually going to take my left arm and
| | 03:16 | I'm going to just go ahead and make sure
I've got some keyframes there, because
| | 03:21 | I'm going to start this at frame 30
and I'm also going to put in a keyframe for
| | 03:29 | the hand as well. And again this
is just a rotation keyframe, because
| | 03:33 | everything is rotating.
| | 03:35 | I just need to slide her hand up onto her hip.
| | 03:40 | So, I'm going to do that over the
course of maybe about eight frames or so.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to start with the upper arm and
just slide that in and then again what I'm
| | 03:54 | doing is I'm just creating some keyframes here.
| | 03:57 | So as you can see, it just
kind of comes up like this.
| | 04:02 | So you just need to make sure that
that's right and then the hand itself is
| | 04:09 | going to put itself on the hip.
| | 04:15 | But the problem is that this
hand is actually ahead of the hip.
| | 04:20 | So, we've got this hand coming in
front of the hip when we really want it to
| | 04:24 | kind of clasp the hip.
| | 04:26 | We want these back fingers to be behind the
hip and the front fingers to be on top of it.
| | 04:33 | We can fix this by just putting in a mask.
| | 04:36 | So, I'm going to go ahead and select
the left hand and I'm just going to go
| | 04:39 | ahead and draw a little bit of a mask here.
| | 04:41 | So, I'm just going to select my Pen
tool and draw a mask that's about the same
| | 04:48 | shape as that hip and then go ahead
into the mask and let's just make it
| | 04:54 | Subtract mask and let's see what we got.
| | 04:59 | So, now that looks pretty good, but of
course, this is now attached to that hand.
| | 05:06 | So we need to animate it off of
the hand until we get to that point.
| | 05:11 | So, where's that? Frame 38
is where our mask comes in.
| | 05:16 | So we're going to take the mask path,
put a keyframe on it, go one or two frames back,
| | 05:22 | and just animate that off,
and then just kind of get that.
| | 05:34 | So, now just pull that off. There we go!
| | 05:36 | So, now you can see it comes
in and then just masks it off.
| | 05:45 | Now this is a little bit rough, but you
basically get the idea of how to do that.
| | 05:50 | Now, let's go ahead and
take a look at the other arm.
| | 05:53 | Now what I want to do is to bring this
up and actually animate it to the dialog.
| | 05:59 | So she says, "Welcome to the show!"
| | 06:02 | I want it to hit on the word show.
| | 06:05 | I want her hand to flip over on the word show.
| | 06:08 | So, let's go ahead and
take a look at the dialog.
| | 06:11 | And we can actually go ahead and
unmute this and let's go ahead and hold down
| | 06:15 | the Ctrl key and scrub.
| | 06:17 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 06:24 | So, welcome starts right
around frame 42 or 43.
| | 06:32 | And then show hits right around frame 60.
| | 06:35 | So, I'm going to ahead and start
animating this right arm up around frame 42.
| | 06:42 | So, I'm going to start by finding the right
arm and let's go ahead and put in some keyframes.
| | 06:48 | So, right now it's at this position,
so I'm just going to lock in this position
| | 06:52 | by copying and pasting the keyframes
that were there and now start raising up
| | 07:00 | the arm and I also need to
do same for the hand as well.
| | 07:09 | So, as this comes up, let's go
ahead and start rotating this up.
| | 07:13 | So, at the position I want it to be
in is somewhere around here and then I
| | 07:23 | want it to flip over.
| | 07:24 | So, it should go Welcome, but as this
comes up, again we're going to have a little
| | 07:30 | bit of drag here on the hand.
| | 07:32 | So, this hand is going to go
like this and as it flips over,
| | 07:43 | I am going to go ahead and straighten out this
lower arm as well as this upper arm, but I also
| | 07:56 | need to get the hand to flip over.
| | 07:58 | So, you can see what I've done here is I
have created a kind of secondary motion
| | 08:02 | here, but I need to get this hand to flip over.
| | 08:05 | So right here where the hand is at its
peak, I'm going to set a key for this hand.
| | 08:12 | Now, this hand is set up on a Time
Remap which means that if I take a look
| | 08:18 | at the right hand composition here, you
can see that each frame is a different hand.
| | 08:26 | So, by selecting that frame, when we
want to flip over that hand we can animate
| | 08:33 | the shape of the hand.
| | 08:34 | So, I'm going to go ahead and keep it
here on frame 3 and then as it flips over,
| | 08:40 | I believe its frame 4, that's the opposite side.
| | 08:46 | So now it goes like this.
| | 08:48 | So, really all we're doing
is we're switching the hand.
| | 08:52 | Look at this right hand composition.
You can see that I've got just a bunch of
| | 08:58 | different hands that are just animated
in and we're just selecting those here.
| | 09:04 | So, as it comes at, we come over and
then we can bring her hand out, palm up
| | 09:11 | like we're supposed to have..
| | 09:13 | So, now she is coming in.
| | 09:16 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 09:19 | Very good.
| | 09:20 | With all of that in place, let's take a
look at Woman_06, which is the final version.
| | 09:27 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 09:31 | So, as we did before, we're animating
the major poses of the character before
| | 09:36 | we ever do lip-sync.
| | 09:37 | So, now that we have the basic poses
in place, we can go ahead and move on to lip-sync.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the mouth and blinks in After Effects| 00:00 | So at this point we have
the entire body animated.
| | 00:04 | So we kind of almost have the lip-sync in place.
| | 00:06 | All we need to do is add in the mouths
and maybe a few blinks and we'll have
| | 00:11 | this animation done.
| | 00:13 | Let me show where we are at so far.
| | 00:15 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 00:21 | So you can see the gestures of the
body are in sync with the dialogue.
| | 00:26 | So now all we have to do is fill in the
mouths and some blinks and we are done.
| | 00:31 | So let's go ahead and work with the Mouths.
| | 00:33 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in here
so we can see how these are put together.
| | 00:40 | So the mouths are set up as a sub-
composition and they are actually set up so
| | 00:45 | that the Time Remap value
controls which mouth we have.
| | 00:51 | So if I double-click on that Mouths
composition, you can see what it looks like.
| | 00:56 | All it is, is one mouth per frame or
one phoneme per frame, for a total of
| | 01:02 | about eight frames.
| | 01:05 | So all we need to do is in our
composition select which one we want.
| | 01:09 | So if we selected 1, it would be the
open or the A sound, if we selected 3,
| | 01:15 | it'd be the consonant sound and so on.
| | 01:18 | So by setting it up this way, all we
have to do is animate this value and we
| | 01:23 | can animate the mouths.
| | 01:25 | So as we do this, I want to see
this value against the waveform.
| | 01:29 | So I am actually going to scroll
down here find Welcome.wav, which is
| | 01:33 | towards the bottom.
| | 01:35 | And let's go ahead and drag this up,
so it's right above the Mouth layer.
| | 01:41 | So we can open up the Welcome.wav and we can
see the waveform against this Time Remap value.
| | 01:48 | So I am going to go ahead and move this
up so we can see the waveform and then
| | 01:53 | the Remap value so we can
actually see how we are animating this.
| | 01:56 | So let's go ahead and center her on
the screen, so we can see her mouth and
| | 02:01 | let's start animating.
| | 02:04 | So this dialogue starts, you can
even see it on the waveform here.
| | 02:07 | It starts right around frame 43.
| | 02:10 | So I am going to hold
down the Ctrl key and scrub.
| | 02:13 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 02:19 | So the first one is "welcome."
| | 02:21 | So it's the U sound or W sound and so
what we need to do is bring in kind of
| | 02:27 | like the oooo sound which is actually number 7.
| | 02:31 | But just by putting in this keyframe,
you are going to see that what happens
| | 02:35 | is, is that it's going to in-between
between the original frame 0 and this frame here.
| | 02:42 | Now we can set the key
type to like a square wave.
| | 02:45 | But I find it's just easier to
just copy the key beforehand.
| | 02:49 | So now we are going from the M to the oooo.
| | 02:52 | So what I have done is I have copied
this first frame to frame 42 and on frame 43,
| | 02:59 | I go to the oooo sound.
| | 03:03 | And then I am just going to copy
and paste that to frame 43, so we have
| | 03:07 | two frames of oooo.
| | 03:09 | And then it goes into a
bigger sound, so it goes welcome.
| | 03:13 | So when it says Eh, the Eh in welcome, I
am going to actually open it up a lot more.
| | 03:19 | A lot of contrast in the mouth shape here.
| | 03:22 | So I am just going to go ahead and
create, "wel," and then the L
| | 03:29 | is this shape here, 4.
| | 03:35 | And again what I am doing here is
I am just copying and pasting this
| | 03:38 | keyframe here, so I have it.
| | 03:40 | And then it goes wel-k with
the k sound, which is a consonant.
| | 03:44 | And so the consonant is frame 3 of that
Time Remap and again I am just copying
| | 03:51 | and pasting that so we will have
a double frame here. Wel-come.
| | 03:57 | So for the "ome," I am going to actually
have the O sound which is this one here.
| | 04:06 | Copy and paste that and then we go
welcome, and now we have got welcome to.
| | 04:18 | So again I am going to go
frame 7 for oooo, welcome to.
| | 04:26 | To the, ah, so that's an ss sound.
| | 04:29 | So I am going to use
frame2, welcome to the show.
| | 04:39 | So that sh actually lasts for a long time.
| | 04:42 | It goes for-- let's scrub that again.
| | 04:49 | Right there is where it stops.
| | 04:50 | So you can even see it on the Timeline.
| | 04:51 | You can see that little clip there.
| | 04:53 | That's where it goes shh-ow.
| | 04:55 | So the sh is actually last for a
little bit longer than two frames.
| | 05:00 | It actually last for about three frames.
| | 05:08 | Okay, so shh-ow. I really want this to open
up a lot because this is actually the most
| | 05:14 | emphasized word here.
| | 05:16 | So I am actually going to open it up to an A
sound first and then go down into the O shape.
| | 05:30 | And it goes aauu and it goes down to an oooo.
| | 05:33 | So it goes--
| | 05:36 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 05:39 | It kind of trails off
and then after that I am just going to go
| | 05:43 | back to a neutral mouth shape,
so she has her mouth closed.
| | 05:47 | So now let's take a look at where we at.
| | 05:54 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 05:55 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 05:57 | So now all we have to do is add in
some blinks and a little bit of head
| | 06:00 | motion and we are done.
| | 06:02 | Now I am not going to go through the
whole process of this, but let me just show
| | 06:06 | you quickly how the blinks work.
| | 06:08 | The blinks works exactly like the mouths.
| | 06:10 | We have a Time Remap value here and
all we have to do is just open and close
| | 06:16 | the eyes like this.
| | 06:19 | So value 1 is 1/3 closed, 2 is
2/3 closed, 3 is completely closed.
| | 06:27 | So all I have to do is animate
those and you have got a complete blink.
| | 06:33 | So let me show you the final
version of this animation.
| | 06:36 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 06:41 | Now all I did on this final version was
I just added in some blinks to cover
| | 06:49 | the change in eye direction.
| | 06:50 | Now she is looking at the audience, so
she is going to be looking left and right
| | 06:54 | and looking around to
address everybody in the audience.
| | 06:57 | So now that we are done, you can
see the general process of animating
| | 07:01 | characters in After Effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up the scene in Flash| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and
animate our scene in Flash.
| | 00:03 | I am going to open up Flash CS4
and we are going to open up a file.
| | 00:08 | It's in our Chap_07 folder
and it's called Women_Stage_00.
| | 00:14 | And this basically has our female
character rigged and ready to go and she is
| | 00:18 | on a stage backdrop.
| | 00:20 | So we can have a full scene.
| | 00:22 | Now, I have done a few little
organizational things to this rig and one of the
| | 00:26 | things I have done is I have added
some folders here so that we can organize
| | 00:30 | this by the upper and lower body.
| | 00:33 | Now, I also have the right-hand below
the lower body because ultimately it's
| | 00:38 | going to have to swing behind this body.
| | 00:41 | So the right arm and hand are not in a folder.
| | 00:44 | Now before we get started we do
need to import our sound file.
| | 00:48 | So let's go ahead and go File > Import
and let's just Import to Library and the
| | 00:53 | name of the file is called Welcome or
Welcome.wav and it's just a wav file, just
| | 00:58 | an audio file and you can see when
I import it here, it comes up in the library.
| | 01:03 | Now if I want this to show up on the
Timeline, I need to just create a layer for it.
| | 01:07 | So I am going to go ahead to the
Timeline, right-click, Insert Layer and then
| | 01:12 | you have to do is drag that in.
| | 01:14 | Now you are not going to see this until you
have enough frames to actually see the waveform.
| | 01:20 | Now, I know the waveform
is about 80 frames long.
| | 01:23 | So all I have to do is just add in those frames.
| | 01:26 | So let's go ahead and open up all the folders.
| | 01:29 | Click and drag to select all the layers
and then just hit F5 and that will put
| | 01:34 | in some blank frames that we
can use to animate this scene.
| | 01:37 | Now, once we do that you can
see that here is the waveform.
| | 01:40 | So if we want to,
we could actually play this.
| | 01:44 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 01:46 | So there is our dialogue.
| | 01:48 | At this point I really
don't need to hear the sound.
| | 01:50 | So I am just going to go ahead and
mute it by clicking on the Mute layer, and
| | 01:55 | now we can just go ahead and
start setting up our scene.
| | 01:58 | Now the first thing I want to do is
get the character in the proper position.
| | 02:03 | Now, if we go to our storyboard here,
you can see that she starts stage right,
| | 02:08 | walks in and then stands center stage
and starts acting and delivering her line.
| | 02:16 | So the first thing we are going
to do is set up our first pose.
| | 02:19 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this arm and I am going to go ahead and
| | 02:22 | take this pivot point, put it to the
shoulder and then just rotate it down.
| | 02:27 | Now the one thing I am noticing is that
the thumb of the hand is on the wrong side.
| | 02:31 | So all I have to do is take this hand
and then just scale it in the opposite
| | 02:35 | direction and again just put it in place.
| | 02:38 | Now, I may need to zoom in here just to
see if I have got everything lined up.
| | 02:44 | Now, for this right hand I
actually don't want this palm open hand.
| | 02:48 | So I am actually going to go ahead
and delete this hand and drag in another
| | 02:52 | symbol from the library.
| | 02:55 | And the symbol that I am going to drag in is
called L_HandSideA, so that's this one here.
| | 03:02 | I am going to drag that into the library.
| | 03:04 | Now, you can see it's actually the
left hand because it's scaled the
| | 03:07 | opposite direction.
| | 03:08 | But we can just scale it the way that we want.
| | 03:11 | Position that pivot point exactly where
we want it, and make sure it's in place.
| | 03:17 | So now that we have that, we can just
go ahead and select all of these, again
| | 03:24 | position that pivot point
and rotate it down to her side.
| | 03:30 | So let's go ahead and take a look
with this looks like in the window.
| | 03:33 | So that's a good starting pose.
| | 03:35 | Now the one thing we do want to
do is actually put the foot the
| | 03:38 | opposite direction as well.
| | 03:39 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the left shoe and just scale that so it's
| | 03:45 | in the opposite direction. So there we go.
| | 03:49 | So let's go ahead and grab all of these layers.
| | 03:51 | I am just going to go ahead and click
and drag and then put her off to the side
| | 03:56 | where we want her to start walking in.
| | 04:00 | Now that we have our first pose in
place, we can start animating our scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the feet in Flash| 00:00 | Now that we have the first pose in
place, we can start animating the walk by
| | 00:04 | focusing on the feet.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead before we start and
actually take a look at our storyboard.
| | 00:11 | Now in the storyboard we have her
starting in this pose. She walks to
| | 00:16 | center stage and stops.
| | 00:18 | Then she delivers her line.
| | 00:20 | So when she is walking her feet are
pointed forward but then when she stops,
| | 00:25 | notice how her heals are
together and her feet are out.
| | 00:29 | So we need to have her walk out and then
turn her left foot so that she is in this pose.
| | 00:35 | Now the next thing we need to do is
figure out how many steps will it take to
| | 00:38 | get her into the center of the stage
and how long will those steps take.
| | 00:43 | Well this we can just do
by kind of rough estimation.
| | 00:46 | Let's go ahead and take a look at our scene.
| | 00:48 | What we have to do is we
have to go from here to here.
| | 00:51 | Now I notice we can probably
take one, two, three steps.
| | 00:57 | So I think it's somewhere around
three to three and a half steps and if you
| | 01:01 | notice from the dialogue line,
the dialogue starts somewhere around frame 40.
| | 01:06 | So we need to get her into position before then.
| | 01:09 | In fact, I want to get her into position
a little bit before that to give her to
| | 01:13 | relax and get into her next pose.
| | 01:16 | So that means I have to get her
from here to here by about frame 30.
| | 01:22 | So if she is doing three steps by frame 30,
that means she has about 10 frames per step.
| | 01:28 | Now we are animating at 30 frames per second.
| | 01:31 | So she has got about a second to
get into the center of the screen.
| | 01:36 | I am actually going to animate this at
about 8 frames per step and I think it
| | 01:40 | will work out just fine.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead and start this
walk by animating just the feet.
| | 01:47 | Now this is something I always like to do.
| | 01:48 | I want to get the feet walking properly
and then the rest of the body will follow.
| | 01:54 | So let's go ahead and focus on the feet.
| | 01:56 | So I am going to go ahead
and turn off the upper body.
| | 02:00 | I am going to also turn off the arm
and then I am going into the Lower Body
| | 02:06 | folder here and I am actually
going to turn off the legs as well.
| | 02:09 | So the only thing that's going to be
turned on is the L_Shoe and the R_Shoe.
| | 02:14 | So let's go ahead and start animating.
| | 02:17 | Now the first step I am going to take
is actually not going to be a full step,
| | 02:20 | because she actually has her feet together.
| | 02:23 | This is going to be a little
bit more than a half a step.
| | 02:25 | So for 8 frames per step, a half step
is 4 frames but I am actually going to
| | 02:30 | give myself a little bit more time to get
started, so I am going to do it at 6 frames.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to go to frame 6 and I am
going to go ahead and insert a keyframe.
| | 02:40 | I am going to go ahead and select the shoe
and hit F6 and select the other shoe and hit F6.
| | 02:47 | So now I have a keyframe.
| | 02:49 | So I am going to go ahead and select
this right shoe and we are going to move it
| | 02:54 | out just a little bit.
| | 02:56 | Now I am going to move it out just so
that the heel of that foot is about a half
| | 03:02 | a foot ahead of the other foot.
| | 03:04 | So the right foot is going to be about
a half a foot ahead of the left foot.
| | 03:10 | So now we have this situation where
it snaps from one point to the other.
| | 03:15 | Now in Flash, in order to in-between that,
all I have to do is click in this gap
| | 03:20 | between these two keyframes, right
click and go Create Classic Tween and I am
| | 03:25 | going to do that for both of these.
| | 03:27 | Now I am not going to be using any
motion tweens or any of these sophisticated
| | 03:31 | things in Flash CS4, because well, this
is actually a better way to animate for
| | 03:36 | this type of animation and also this
applies to almost every version of Flash.
| | 03:41 | So now we have got this foot coming
out and if you notice the foot really is
| | 03:45 | just sliding along the floor but
that's going to be okay for now because all
| | 03:49 | I want to do is get the basic motion of the
feet and then we will go ahead and fine-tune it.
| | 03:54 | So now that we have this first half
step, let's go ahead and go 8 frames
| | 03:58 | forward to frame 14 and again, I am
just going to go ahead and select those
| | 04:04 | frames and hit F6 to give me a
keyframe and I am going to go ahead and select
| | 04:10 | the left foot and again, just slide it
over so it's about a half a foot length
| | 04:15 | ahead of the right foot.
| | 04:17 | So now we have got right and then left and of
course, I can certainly just put in the tweens.
| | 04:26 | So now we have got the feet kind of
sliding and then the last one is at frame
| | 04:31 | 22, 14+8 is 22 and again, F6 sets in
my keyframes and this time it's going to
| | 04:39 | be the right shoe.
| | 04:42 | And I am going to put that somewhere
around the center of the screen, somewhere
| | 04:46 | around there and again, just in-between that.
| | 04:50 | So now we have got right, left, right.
| | 04:54 | So I am going to go ahead and
create a tween for the left as well.
| | 04:58 | This isn't fully done, because this
foot has to flip around and come up into
| | 05:04 | this other foot in order to get that final pose.
| | 05:07 | But before we do that I want to
actually put in a little bit of
| | 05:10 | in-betweening here.
| | 05:11 | Now when the feet walk, they are
actually going to lift off of the ground.
| | 05:15 | So I am going to go one or two frames
into this animation and then I am just
| | 05:20 | going to go ahead and move this foot up
and notice how it automatically creates
| | 05:24 | a keyframe and then I am just
going to tilt that toe down.
| | 05:27 | Again, remember how the feet roll
off the ball of the foot and this
| | 05:32 | will simulate that.
| | 05:34 | So again, it's kind of rolling up and
then right before it sets down, I am
| | 05:38 | going to go one frame back, select this
and then just rotate that toe up so it
| | 05:45 | sets down on the heel.
| | 05:47 | So now we have got
something that looks like this.
| | 05:49 | So let's take a look at this.
| | 05:51 | So you can see it goes rolling off the
foot and then that toe comes up and it
| | 05:56 | feels like it sets down on the heel.
| | 05:59 | So let's do the same for the left foot.
| | 06:01 | So I am going to go one, two frames in,
select that left foot, lift it up just a
| | 06:05 | little bit, tilt that toe down, then go
to this keyframe here, one frame back,
| | 06:14 | lift it up just a little
bit and lift up that toe.
| | 06:18 | Now we have got that and again,
the same for that right foot.
| | 06:23 | You can roll off the toe, set down on the heel.
| | 06:35 | So now we have this.
| | 06:40 | We still have to get this
foot up against that foot.
| | 06:44 | Now what I am going to do is actually
take this left shoe and I need to flip it
| | 06:50 | around and then slide it in.
| | 06:53 | How this is going to work is that as
this foot passes, I am going to go ahead
| | 06:56 | and spin on the toe and then once as
right foot is planted the left foot is
| | 07:01 | going to be facing the other
way and sliding up into it.
| | 07:05 | So I need to add in some keyframes here.
| | 07:07 | So I am going to go in one, two, three
frames back, set a keyframe for this,
| | 07:16 | then I am going to go and
I am going to scale it down.
| | 07:20 | In fact, let's go ahead and zoom in
here, so we can see how this looks.
| | 07:23 | So I am going to scale this a little
bit and make it look like it's turning.
| | 07:33 | So it basically look like it's turning
on its toe, maybe even rotate a little
| | 07:38 | bit more and then on this frame it
actually is going to go ahead and flip over
| | 07:46 | to the other side and again, I am
trying to make this look like it's kind of
| | 07:52 | in perspective here.
| | 07:54 | So it kind of flipping over and then
the last frame is going to be that foot
| | 07:59 | flipped over on the opposite side.
| | 08:01 | So now we have got something like this.
| | 08:06 | Now I need to slide this
up against the other foot.
| | 08:08 | So I am going to take about 4 frames to do that.
| | 08:10 | So I am going to go to frame 26 and
again, insert some keyframes, F6 and then
| | 08:16 | just slide that up against there
and let's do our classic tweens.
| | 08:23 | So now we have got, here we go.
| | 08:27 | So let's take a look at this in frame
and I am actually going to go ahead and
| | 08:32 | lock these so you can actually see
them without the brackets on them.
| | 08:36 | So let's go ahead and see how this works.
| | 08:37 | Okay, so that looks pretty good.
| | 08:41 | So let's scrub that again, great.
| | 08:44 | Now here is the final version.
| | 08:46 | I have stored that in Woman_Stage_01.
| | 08:49 | So let's go ahead and see what the final
version of that looks like. Very similar.
| | 08:54 | So now that we have the feet animated,
we can now start animating the body
| | 08:58 | and the legs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the body in Flash| 00:00 | Now that we have the feet animated,
we can go ahead and start animating the body
| | 00:05 | to match the motion of the feet.
| | 00:07 | Let's go ahead and see where we are at.
| | 00:09 | We have basically the feet moving into
position over the course of about 26 frames.
| | 00:17 | Now, let's go ahead and
take a look at the upper body.
| | 00:19 | What we need to do is basically make
the hips float above the feet to make it
| | 00:23 | look like she is walking.
| | 00:25 | Now we also need to animate everything else.
| | 00:28 | Now when we are animating something like
this in Flash, we want to set keyframes
| | 00:32 | for anything that's on a layer.
| | 00:34 | So, let's go ahead and expand all of these.
| | 00:36 | Now, one thing I'm noticing is that
her arm is actually all the way down here
| | 00:41 | and the rest of her parts are up here.
| | 00:43 | So, I'm actually just going to
do a little bit of a cheat here.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to Shift+Select all of
these and go ahead and just move them up
| | 00:49 | into this folder here.
| | 00:52 | So that way, I can have all of
these together when I animate.
| | 00:56 | It's just going to make it easier on
the timeline and once I get everything
| | 00:59 | animated, I can always re-layer them
and put the hands back where they belong.
| | 01:04 | So, let's go ahead and start doing keyframing.
| | 01:07 | Now, the first major keyframe is here
is around frame 6 where she actually
| | 01:12 | takes that first step.
| | 01:14 | So, let's go ahead and select that frame
and hit F6 to lay-in a keyframe for that.
| | 01:21 | And then we are going to
go ahead and position her.
| | 01:24 | So, what I'm going to do is actually
bring her down and forward just a little bit.
| | 01:29 | So, you can see she snaps down and
then I'm just going to go ahead and select
| | 01:34 | all of these, right-click
and go Create Classic Tween.
| | 01:37 | So, now we've got her coming down.
| | 01:40 | Now, the next major pose is where
this foot passes the other foot.
| | 01:45 | So, this is somewhere around frame 10.
| | 01:48 | So again, I'm just going to go ahead
and select the upper body parts, F6 to
| | 01:52 | create the keyframes and
then just drop her into place.
| | 01:56 | Now, when she comes into this passing
position, she is actually going to be
| | 01:59 | a little bit higher.
| | 02:01 | Again, I want to center her above the
feet and lift her body up just a little bit.
| | 02:06 | You can see this is ghosted, so
I can bring her over and then up.
| | 02:10 | So, I'm just going to bring her up
just a little bit here and there we go.
| | 02:15 | And again, let's just go ahead and
just keep doing these classic tweens.
| | 02:20 | So now you can see what I'm doing is I'm
actually getting that body into position.
| | 02:26 | Now, one thing I can also do
is I can start to rotate her.
| | 02:30 | So, as she comes into this pose here,
I can take her and I can rotate her
| | 02:36 | a little bit forward.
| | 02:37 | So, I'm going to take the pivot point
of all of these and then just rotate her
| | 02:42 | forward just a little bit.
| | 02:43 | So, she is just going to lean
forward going into this and then come up.
| | 02:48 | So, the next major position is at frame
14, where her feet are completely apart.
| | 02:53 | And again, I'm just going to go ahead
and select all of those frames and F6 to
| | 02:59 | put in my keyframe and then position her.
| | 03:01 | So she is going to be halfway between
these, a little bit down and then maybe
| | 03:06 | leaning forward just a little bit.
| | 03:09 | And again, right-click, Classic
Tween and there she is, one, two.
| | 03:19 | And then again, another passing
position here somewhere around frame 17 or
| | 03:25 | 18, and again she is going to move over and up
and again just create that Classic Tween.
| | 03:35 | You'd really get into rhythm here.
| | 03:36 | What you do is F6, create the key, position
your parts, and then Create Classic Tween.
| | 03:42 | So, now here is what we've got.
| | 03:44 | So, now she is going left, right, and
so on and then she kind of comes into
| | 03:50 | that final pose somewhere around
frame 22, but then she slides up to 26.
| | 03:56 | So, let's go ahead and do 22.
| | 03:59 | If you want, you don't have to hit F6;
you can just choose it from the
| | 04:01 | menu, Insert Keyframe.
| | 04:04 | And again she is going to be right
about here, leaning a little bit forward
| | 04:09 | again, and now let's go
ahead and Create Classic Tween.
| | 04:14 | And then the last one is right around
frame 26 where her feet come together.
| | 04:18 | Now, what she is going to do is
she is actually going to come up.
| | 04:22 | So, let's go into frame 26. Insert Keyframe.
| | 04:27 | She comes over, up and let's go ahead
and make sure she straightens out to
| | 04:33 | somewhere like that and Create Classic Tween.
| | 04:39 | So, now we've got her walking in.
| | 04:42 | We've got everything but the legs.
| | 04:44 | So, let's take a look and see
how this works. It looks pretty good.
| | 04:50 | Without the legs it even looks she is walking.
| | 04:52 | Now, all we have to do is bridge the
gap with her legs and we'll have the
| | 04:57 | majority of her body walking.
| | 04:59 | So, now I've gone ahead and saved out
the animation as Woman_Stage_02 and let's
| | 05:05 | go ahead and see what that looks like.
| | 05:10 | Now you can see what we have is we have the
feet, the hips, and the body all animated.
| | 05:16 | All we need to do now is bridge
the gap between the hips and the feet
| | 05:20 | by animating the legs.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the legs in Flash| 00:00 | At this point we have most of the
body animated, we have the feet animated
| | 00:05 | and now all we need to do is bridge
the gap between the feet and the body by
| | 00:09 | animating the legs.
| | 00:11 | I have a file here called Woman_Stage_02
and this has the animation to this point.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and just
play this to see where we are at.
| | 00:20 | So as you can see I have animated the
body parts and the feet and all we need to
| | 00:27 | do is bridge the gap with the legs.
| | 00:30 | So the first thing I am going to do is
actually just turn off most of the body
| | 00:34 | parts except for the hips and
then I am going to turn on the legs.
| | 00:42 | So we are actually going to go
ahead and start with the left leg.
| | 00:45 | So I am going to go ahead and turn
off the right shoe as well as the right
| | 00:49 | upper and lower leg and all we are
going to be working with is the left leg,
| | 00:54 | the left shoe and the hips.
| | 00:57 | The hips and the shoe are already
animated, all we have to do is work with these
| | 01:00 | two points and make sure that they
bridge the gap and we'll be golden.
| | 01:05 | So let's go ahead and start animating.
| | 01:07 | I am actually going to zoom in a
little bit so we can see what we are doing.
| | 01:12 | So first thing I want to do is go
to this first pose, right before this
| | 01:16 | foot leaves the ground.
| | 01:18 | So it leaves the ground here on frame 6.
| | 01:21 | So I am going to go ahead and select
these two, left upper and lower, and hit F6
| | 01:26 | to put in a keyframe.
| | 01:28 | Now I am going to position these.
| | 01:30 | So I am going to go ahead and take
this pivot point, position it somewhere
| | 01:34 | around the hip and move this so that
it's right up against that hip and then
| | 01:43 | rotate it to make sure that it lines up.
| | 01:50 | Now let's do our Classic Tween.
| | 01:54 | Let's see what happens.
| | 01:57 | Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 01:59 | So now the next part of this is where
the foot lifts off the ground, passes the
| | 02:04 | other foot and sets down again.
| | 02:06 | So I am actually going to go and do
this passing position first, so you can see
| | 02:10 | its right about here and so let's go
ahead and blow in some keyframes here and
| | 02:16 | let's start positioning this.
| | 02:17 | So the first thing I want to do is
just get the rough position of the upper leg,
| | 02:21 | so I am going to position that
pivot point and just rotate everything.
| | 02:26 | One thing I will do is I am going
actually lock the hip, so I don't
| | 02:30 | accidentally move them and then let's
go ahead and just move this so that it's
| | 02:36 | right about the right position.
| | 02:38 | Now I also have to select this lower
leg and rotate that so it's in position as well.
| | 02:45 | And notice how this isn't
quite lining up with the foot.
| | 02:50 | Well, one of things we can do is select
both of them and just scale it or skew
| | 02:54 | it just a little bit so that it
does line up a little bit better.
| | 03:01 | Once we have that let's go
ahead and create our Classic Tween.
| | 03:04 | You can see it looks pretty good,
although it looks like this is off just a
| | 03:10 | little bit, so I am actually going to
go ahead and move that into place and
| | 03:12 | maybe even scale it down just a little bit.
| | 03:14 | It kind of blew it there. There we go.
| | 03:21 | If you get this right you can
see how it's pretty darn close.
| | 03:24 | There is a point right there
where it doesn't quite line up here.
| | 03:28 | So let's go ahead and just add in
another little keyframe, so that we can
| | 03:32 | just get that lined up.
| | 03:35 | There we go, beautiful.
| | 03:37 | So now we have got our first step and
let's go ahead and go to frame 14 where
| | 03:43 | that sets down and again, add in a keyframe, F6.
| | 03:51 | Now this is where the leg is extended,
so the first thing I am going to do is
| | 03:55 | create a straighter version of this leg,
make sure that that's all in place,
| | 04:00 | then select both of them and just
position it as best I can and I may have just
| | 04:08 | skew it a little bit.
| | 04:09 | Now this is a kind of the nice thing
about Flash is that lets you kind of do
| | 04:13 | this kind of cartoony
stretching very easily. So there we go.
| | 04:17 | Let's go ahead and Classic Tween that.
| | 04:21 | You can see that that frame
is right but these two aren't.
| | 04:27 | So I am just going to go
about halfway in between here.
| | 04:30 | Now this is kind of a point where you
really are kind of fine-tuning this and
| | 04:34 | you really just want to make sure that
this pretty much matches up, there we go.
| | 04:39 | And all we are really doing is
filling in the blanks here. So there we go.
| | 04:42 | Now I have got a little bit of a nub
kind of hanging out there, right here, but
| | 04:49 | I don't think that's going
to be all that big of a deal.
| | 04:50 | So what I can do is take this pivot
point here and skew it that way just a bit.
| | 04:59 | So now the next part is
where the foot starts to turn.
| | 05:01 | So I am actually going to go to this
point right here, right before that foot turns,
| | 05:06 | so somewhere around frame 18
and let's go ahead and again, one more
| | 05:11 | keyframe. I am going to straighten
this out and again, I am just moving this
| | 05:18 | pivot point here to where I need it,
making sure that everything is in place and
| | 05:26 | let's do our Classic Tween.
| | 05:32 | There we go and then as it spins
around, go ahead put F6 in for these and
| | 05:41 | again, just position them.
| | 05:44 | So you can see the workflow
is pretty straightforward.
| | 05:46 | All you are really doing is bridging
the gap between the hips and the feet.
| | 05:52 | Now once you have these legs in place,
you will have a pretty decent walk.
| | 05:55 | Now I am not going to go through all of
this, but you can see what the process is.
| | 05:59 | Now you have to do this for both legs.
| | 06:01 | But let's go ahead and take a look
at what the final version looks like.
| | 06:04 | I have a file here called Woman_
Stage_03, which has this in it.
| | 06:09 | So let's go ahead and just take a look
at this one leg that we were working on
| | 06:13 | and this is the final version of that
and you could see that just by doing some
| | 06:17 | nice in-betweens you can
actually get that into place.
| | 06:20 | So I went ahead and animated the right
foot and the right shoe as well and let's
| | 06:24 | see what that looks like.
| | 06:27 | Now the process for these was exactly
the same. What you do is you animate the
| | 06:32 | legs to bridge the gap
between the hips and the feet.
| | 06:35 | Now once you have all of this in place,
let's go ahead and turn on this upper
| | 06:39 | body here and let's see what it looks like.
| | 06:45 | There we go. It looks pretty good.
| | 06:47 | Now the one thing is these arms are
not in the right place, so I am actually
| | 06:51 | going to go ahead and take the right
hand and arm, I am going to move those
| | 06:54 | down so that they are
below the rest of the body.
| | 07:00 | Now once that's in place,
we have a pretty good little walk here.
| | 07:04 | So there is our basic walk.
| | 07:06 | Now we still need to get some fine details
in the body as well as animate the dialogue.
| | 07:13 | So we need to work a little bit on the
hands, some secondary motion, as well as
| | 07:17 | animate the face and animate the
dialogue and lip-sync of the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating the hands in Flash| 00:00 | Now we have the basic
animation in place, so now we can begin
| | 00:04 | pose-to-pose animation.
| | 00:05 | Now I want to show you a little bit
about how to animate hands and how to swap
| | 00:10 | one hand out for the other in a smooth fashion.
| | 00:13 | So we are going to do some pose-to-pose
animation mostly involving the hands of the character.
| | 00:18 | So let me show you where
we are at, at this point.
| | 00:20 | Now I have added a little bit of
animation. We are using a file called
| | 00:24 | Woman_Stage_04 and let me
show you what's in this.
| | 00:28 | So she walks out and comes to the final pose.
| | 00:32 | Now I added a little bit of secondary
animation between the last lesson and this one
| | 00:36 | and what I did was I switched this
hand so that it kind of come into a side
| | 00:42 | view as she comes through her final pose,
as well as some secondary animation on
| | 00:46 | the body and the head, just to
give it a little bit more fluidity.
| | 00:51 | Now we need to animate her posing to the dialogue.
| | 00:55 | So let's go ahead and make sure that
we have the dialogue in place. Now I have
| | 00:58 | deleted it in this file.
| | 00:59 | So we are going to go ahead and
insert a layer and then just drag in the
| | 01:03 | Welcome.wav and it should show up and if
it's not showing up make sure that your
| | 01:09 | Properties are Stream, make sure its
Syncs to Stream and you should be okay.
| | 01:16 | So let's go ahead and play this
with the dialogue track.
| | 01:20 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 01:21 | Okay so she goes "Welcome to the show."
| | 01:24 | Now I want her to actually put her hand on
her hip before she says welcome and then
| | 01:29 | lift her hand up and then
gesture on the word show.
| | 01:33 | So let's go ahead and first
get her left hand on her hip.
| | 01:36 | I am going to bend this arm up from
frame 30 to about frame 35 or 36 and put
| | 01:43 | her hand on her hip.
| | 01:44 | So I am actually going to zoom in a
little bit, so we can see this more in detail.
| | 01:48 | I am actually going to take this whole
upper body and I am actually going to set
| | 01:52 | keyframes for everything and I am going
to go ahead and change her pivot point
| | 01:57 | here and I am going to lean
her back just a little bit.
| | 02:01 | I am going to go ahead and set
keyframes here for the right arm as well.
| | 02:05 | So I actually want to select the right
hand, the right arm as well as all this
| | 02:09 | upper body, so I am just doing Ctrl+Select.
| | 02:12 | And now I want to just lean
her back just a little bit.
| | 02:16 | So we are going to go ahead and set this
pivot point here and at this, I am just
| | 02:19 | going to lean her body a little bit
to this side because she is going to be
| | 02:23 | putting her hand on her hips and
now I want to get this arm into place.
| | 02:27 | So let's go ahead and select this arm,
change the pivot point and let's go ahead
| | 02:31 | and just work our way down from the
shoulder. So I am going to go ahead and get
| | 02:35 | the shoulder in place and then get that
hand and forearm in place and then flip
| | 02:44 | this hand back just a little bit.
| | 02:46 | Now what I am trying to do here is get
this hand almost to the point where it
| | 02:51 | crosses over. When she puts her hand
on her hips, these fingers are actually
| | 02:56 | going to be behind the hip.
| | 02:57 | So I want to get right to the point
where her fingers are about to go behind the hips,
| | 03:02 | but aren't exactly behind the hips.
| | 03:05 | So now we have got coming up here, so
let's go ahead and in between that, and
| | 03:15 | now she is coming up.
| | 03:18 | In fact, go ahead and take this hand
and flip it out just a little bit. So I am
| | 03:23 | going to take this hand, insert a
keyframe and give it a little bit of secondary
| | 03:29 | motion, so now she comes in.
| | 03:31 | And now I want to continue this in-
between, but I want to make sure that the
| | 03:36 | hand goes behind this hip and what I need to
do at this point is actually swap out the hand.
| | 03:44 | So I am going to go one frame
forward from here and hit F6.
| | 03:48 | Now I am going to keep this selected,
hit the Delete key, get rid of that symbol,
| | 03:56 | and scroll down until I find the other
one. It's going to be L_HandSideB which
| | 04:02 | has those fingers missing.
| | 04:04 | This is the one I had before which has
all of those fingers in place, but this
| | 04:08 | one has the fingers missing.
| | 04:10 | So I am just going to go ahead and
drag that in and then just put that into place.
| | 04:17 | Make sure I get the pivot point set.
| | 04:19 | So now you can see we have got this
looking as though the fingers are going
| | 04:24 | behind the hip and then I could make
sure I adjust that into place here and
| | 04:29 | again, I want to set a keyframe for
the forearm as well as the upper arm.
| | 04:34 | So let's go ahead and make
sure that all of this is in place.
| | 04:37 | So now I want to make sure I flip this.
| | 04:42 | You can see how it looks like her hand
is coming behind her hip and then let's
| | 04:48 | go ahead and just continue this
animation and I want to go ahead and just a few
| | 04:52 | more frames forward here and let's just
put in a few more keyframes just to make
| | 04:58 | this look more realistic.
| | 05:01 | So just go ahead like that and
then just make sure that hand looks like
| | 05:09 | it's got the two back fingers behind there and
then I want to in-between just this frame here.
| | 05:18 | So this frame, right before it flips I don't
want in-between on this one and then it comes in.
| | 05:24 | So now just go ahead and view
this a little bit more fully.
| | 05:29 | You can see she comes in, hand comes
up, and it looks like it's on her hip.
| | 05:35 | So that's one little trick.
| | 05:37 | Now let's go ahead and
animate her hand to the dialogue.
| | 05:40 | So we have got this hand coming up.
| | 05:42 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the...)
| | 05:45 | So the word show starts somewhere
around frame 56, so I need to get her hand up
| | 05:51 | and ready to anticipate that gesture.
| | 05:54 | So this is a good case of anticipation.
| | 05:57 | Now I want to get this right hand coming up.
| | 05:59 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the right hand, forearm and upper arm, and
| | 06:03 | let's go ahead and put in some keyframes here.
| | 06:05 | Let's just start moving this up, so I
am going to go ahead and bring this into
| | 06:10 | about frame 42 or so and let's go
ahead and just start rotating this up.
| | 06:17 | Now this hand is going to drag.
Remember we have got drag here.
| | 06:22 | So go ahead and create a tween.
| | 06:25 | So you can see it's coming up.
| | 06:29 | So now I want the forearm
and the hand to also come up.
| | 06:36 | So again, just going to go ahead and
just start keyframing that. Here we go.
| | 06:41 | So this hand is coming up.
| | 06:44 | Let's see what we have got here.
| | 06:48 | And I can see as this rotates up we have got
a little bit of a disparity here in this hand.
| | 06:56 | Let's go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 06:58 | You can see how this hand comes up and
it's actually not in-betweening properly
| | 07:06 | and this is something that happens
every once in a while and all you need to do
| | 07:09 | is just create another in-between frame here.
| | 07:11 | So let's go ahead and just create some
more keyframes and just move that out.
| | 07:20 | Make sure this all lines up. When
you have really dramatic rotations...
| | 07:27 | So now let's go ahead and bring this up.
| | 07:29 | Let me go ahead and mute this for a
little bit and then I want to get this wrist
| | 07:35 | flipped back, right before we have our gesture.
| | 07:39 | So let's go ahead and again, create
some more keyframes and I want to flip that
| | 07:49 | wrist back as well as bring up the rest
of the forearm and upper arm, drag those up,
| | 07:56 | make sure that this in place here
and let's go ahead and create our in-
| | 08:06 | between for our Classic Tween.
| | 08:07 | So now we have got a nice anticipation.
| | 08:11 | I wanted to gesture on that word show.
| | 08:14 | Now I have muted this, so I can
talk over the dialogue and scrub.
| | 08:17 | So let me go ahead and unmute
this and let's see where we are at.
| | 08:21 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 08:25 | Now in the word Show, I
want her to flip her hand over.
| | 08:27 | So let me go ahead and mute this again.
| | 08:29 | So we are going to do that
by swapping out the hand.
| | 08:32 | So let's go ahead and start moving this
hand into place. So again, I want to get
| | 08:36 | this hand almost to a vertical position.
| | 08:39 | So I am going to go ahead and again,
just add a few more keyframes here.
| | 08:43 | So get it kind of vertical and also I want
it to started bending at the wrist as well.
| | 08:49 | So I am going to go ahead and select
the forearm and the hand. Make sure that I
| | 08:54 | have got this coming up this way.
| | 08:56 | So let's see go ahead and tween this.
| | 08:58 | So now she comes up and now as she
moves over, this is the point where I am
| | 09:04 | going to flip her hand over.
| | 09:06 | So I need to go one frame ahead
of this and insert a keyframe.
| | 09:11 | Now this is the point where I am
going to swap out this symbol.
| | 09:14 | So I am going to do take this hand,
delete it and then find the symbol that says
| | 09:20 | left hand up, which is actually the
hand flipped over the other direction and
| | 09:25 | let's put that in and let's make sure
we get that in the right place and again,
| | 09:33 | make sure the pivot point is
set about the right place as well.
| | 09:38 | See how that looks.
| | 09:42 | Now this is where I really want to flip this.
| | 09:44 | Now you can see how it looks almost
like it's flipping over just by going
| | 09:47 | from one to the other.
| | 09:49 | So that's what I really want to get and
then I am going to go ahead and put in
| | 09:52 | keyframes for the other parts of that
upper arm and then bring it over just a hair.
| | 10:01 | So you can see that's your standard
British Royalty wave, there we go.
| | 10:11 | And now bring it over into the actual gesture.
| | 10:15 | So I am going to go say about 5 or 6
frames ahead and just straighten out the
| | 10:21 | hand and then continue the rotation of
that hand over so that the palm is up,
| | 10:27 | and then also I want to get the
shoulder flipped over as well.
| | 10:43 | So let's see what we got here, there we go.
| | 10:45 | So select these, Classic Tween.
| | 10:49 | Now notice there is no
tween between where it flips.
| | 10:53 | Okay, so that's the key part
is you don't want to tween that.
| | 10:56 | So now we have got-- not too bad.
| | 11:01 | Looks pretty good. Okay I am going to
turn off mute here, so we can actually
| | 11:04 | listen to this and let's
see what we have got.
| | 11:08 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 11:09 | Looks pretty good.
| | 11:11 | Now I have a more complete version
of this here and it's in a file called
| | 11:16 | Woman_Stage_05, so let's take a
look at how that sounds and looks.
| | 11:22 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 11:24 | Beautiful.
| | 11:26 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 11:28 | So as you can see we have got pretty
much all of our animation in place.
| | 11:33 | Now all we have to do is lip sync and
a little bit of eye animation and we
| | 11:37 | are completely done.
| | 11:39 | Now remember, when animating hands if
you want to swap out a hand shape,
| | 11:44 | make sure that you set a key before the swap
and after and don't in-between those two
| | 11:51 | keyframes and you will be fine.
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| Animating the mouth in Flash| 00:00 | So once you have your basic pose
animation in place, you can animate your lip
| | 00:04 | sync and your phonemes, as well as do some
eye direction and some general head motion.
| | 00:10 | So let's go ahead and do that and
we're going to go ahead and do another
| | 00:13 | technique for mouth swapping, where
you can actually swap out a number of
| | 00:17 | different mouths very quickly.
| | 00:20 | Now before we get started,
let's see where we're at.
| | 00:22 | We pretty much have the poses
of the character in place.
| | 00:26 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 00:33 | So we have pretty much
all the animation in place.
| | 00:36 | All we need to do is just finalize the head.
| | 00:38 | So let's go ahead and zoom in to the
head, and if we actually select the head
| | 00:46 | and double-click on it, we
can tunnel into the head.
| | 00:49 | You'll notice that the head
actually has multiple layers.
| | 00:53 | There is Layer 1, which is
basically the head and the hair.
| | 00:56 | We have the mouths on a separate layer,
as well as the pupils and then there is
| | 01:01 | also a layer for the eyelids.
| | 01:03 | Now what we're going to do is we're
going to actually animate this here and then
| | 01:07 | it will actually show up in our main movie.
| | 01:10 | Now before we do this, we need to
actually add in the frames that we need.
| | 01:15 | Now it's an 80 frame animation,
so I'm just going to go ahead and
| | 01:18 | left-click and drag, and then just hit
F5 to add in the frames that we need.
| | 01:22 | Now let's go ahead to the mouths, and
we'll take a look at how to animate those.
| | 01:27 | If I select this mouth and double-
click on it, you'll see that once I tunnel
| | 01:32 | into this, it's actually a sub-animation.
| | 01:35 | It's actually got one phoneme per
frame for total of about seven or eight
| | 01:42 | frames of animation.
| | 01:44 | I've got a few blanks here, but
those aren't going to be used.
| | 01:47 | So what we can do is we can actually
select which one of these frames is visible
| | 01:53 | and actually animate between these mouths.
| | 01:55 | All we have to do is select this mouth
selection here, go over to our Properties
| | 02:01 | panel and you'll notice here
that we have a Looping control.
| | 02:05 | If we keep this option at Single Frame,
we can actually select which one of
| | 02:09 | these frames-- again, let's go in
here-- we can select which one of these
| | 02:14 | frames is displayed.
| | 02:17 | So double-click to come back out.
| | 02:19 | So if I do frame 1, it's that one,
frame 2 is the A mouth, frame 3 is the E mouth,
| | 02:27 | frame 4 is that consonant
sound, 5 is L or TH,
| | 02:35 | 6 is the F sound, 7 is Oh, and 8 is Ooh.
| | 02:41 | Now one of the things I like to do is I
actually kind of like to write them down
| | 02:45 | so I have them handy.
| | 02:47 | I also like to standardize these
between my characters, so that way I can just
| | 02:53 | memorize the numbers and I
don't have to worry too much about it.
| | 02:56 | Now we're actually going to be
animating this to the dialog.
| | 02:59 | So, first thing I want to do is
actually go ahead and select this mouth and
| | 03:02 | let's go ahead and get our first frame
set up, so she's actually going to have
| | 03:05 | her mouth closed to start with.
| | 03:07 | But I also need the sound
track in order to animate to it.
| | 03:11 | So I'm actually going to go find my
Welcome.wav and I'm actually going to slug
| | 03:16 | in a layer, temporarily,
and just drop that in here.
| | 03:22 | Let's make sure that we go ahead and
select that and the Properties, make
| | 03:26 | sure it's at String.
| | 03:27 | So now all we have to do is
just start keying the mouths.
| | 03:30 | So let's go over to our Properties panel,
select the mouth and our first frame
| | 03:35 | is going to be closed mouth.
| | 03:38 | So as you can see, we can go to frame
42 and that's where the "welcome" for
| | 03:47 | "welcome to the show" starts.
| | 03:49 | So the first phoneme is going to be Ooh or
the W sound or the Ooh sound for welcome.
| | 03:55 | So I'm going to select frame 42 on the
Mouths layer in the Timeline, hit F6, and
| | 04:03 | let's just go ahead and select that
object and let's just put it to number 8,
| | 04:08 | which is that phoneme.
| | 04:11 | You can see it animates between them.
| | 04:13 | So now all we have to do is go another two
frames forward and let's go to our next phoneme.
| | 04:19 | So I'm going to hit F6 and select that
and let's go ahead and put in the next one.
| | 04:25 | So it's going to go Well-eh, eh or A.
I'm actually going to put in the A sound here.
| | 04:34 | So that's number 2.
| | 04:35 | So now you can see it's going Weh,
and then let's just keep animating.
| | 04:45 | So the next one is going to be the L sound.
| | 04:49 | So again, you click on the symbol,
change it to the proper phoneme, which in
| | 04:56 | this case is number 5, Well, and again
I'm trying to do at least two frames per phoneme.
| | 05:07 | So I'm going two frames, so it's Ooh, A,
L and then come, welcome, is actually
| | 05:15 | going to be the consonant sound,
which is I believe number 4.
| | 05:23 | Then you just start working your way through.
| | 05:26 | So now I've got the M sound,
which is going to be frame 1,
| | 05:34 | and so on and so forth.
So you've got--
| | 05:38 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to...)
| | 05:40 | Now when I go out to my animation,
you can see how I've got my animation in place.
| | 05:49 | Now I'm going to stop here with the
lip sync animation, and let me show you a
| | 05:53 | little bit about how to animate the eyes.
| | 05:54 | Again, I'm going to double-click
on the head and tunnel into that.
| | 05:58 | So now let's go ahead and
start animating the eyes.
| | 06:01 | I'm going to go ahead and
mute my dialogue for right now.
| | 06:06 | Now let's just go ahead and first
of all get her eyes into a position.
| | 06:09 | Now remember, she's walking to her right.
| | 06:12 | Now, when we're animating this way,
when we're actually tunneling into a symbol
| | 06:16 | to actually animate, we don't get the luxury
of actually being able to scrub the whole thing.
| | 06:22 | So you kind of have to guesstimate.
| | 06:24 | So actually you have to have a lot more planning
in place, when you actually go to animate it.
| | 06:29 | So I'm going to go ahead and put
her eyes over to this side here.
| | 06:33 | Now remember, she walks in and then
right around frame 30, she comes to her pose,
| | 06:39 | and then "Welcome to the show," and
remember the "show" is on frame around 56 to 60.
| | 06:48 | So let's go ahead and
start her off with a blink.
| | 06:50 | So I'm actually going to select the lids here.
| | 06:54 | One of the things is that you're not
going to actually see this, because I
| | 06:57 | actually have a blank frame in here.
| | 06:59 | In fact, if we click on this little spot,
you can see I've got again, the same
| | 07:04 | situation I have with the mouth,
which is a symbol and we can select which
| | 07:08 | frame of the symbol.
| | 07:09 | So, for example, frame 2 is the eyes
one-third closed, frame 3 is the eyes
| | 07:16 | two-thirds closed and frame 4
is the eyes completely closed.
| | 07:20 | So we can use this to create a blink.
| | 07:22 | So let's go ahead and start with frame 1.
| | 07:23 | I'm going to go ahead here to frame 6,
and let's go ahead and insert a keyframe.
| | 07:32 | Let's go ahead and do another keyframe,
and again, just select the eyes and go
| | 07:39 | frame 2, and then two frames, select
them again, frame 3, and again all we're
| | 07:48 | doing is just animating that number.
| | 07:53 | Again, I'm just hitting F6,
reselecting it and then closing the eyes.
| | 07:59 | So now, you can see she's closing her eyes.
| | 08:03 | So now what we want to do is
just go ahead and open them back up.
| | 08:07 | If you want, you could actually copy-
and-paste these keys, but I find it's a
| | 08:11 | little bit easier just to
type in the numbers again.
| | 08:13 | So actually, I'm going to open
her eyes a little bit faster.
| | 08:16 | So she's going to close
slow and open pretty fast.
| | 08:20 | So right by this frame here,
she's going to be completely open.
| | 08:28 | So now we've got a blink.
| | 08:31 | Now let's go ahead and change her eye direction.
| | 08:33 | In fact, I want to go ahead and go
back out to my main composition and let's
| | 08:37 | take a look at this.
| | 08:42 | So she walks in, she doesn't blink,
and now when she stops, I want to do a
| | 08:46 | blink right around here.
| | 08:47 | So right around frame 24 or
so, I want to have a blink.
| | 08:52 | So let's go ahead and go into her head here.
| | 08:56 | Again, I'm going to zoom in so we
can see this a little bit better.
| | 08:58 | So now on frame 24, I want to
go ahead and do another blink.
| | 09:04 | The easiest thing to do is just select
these frames, copy them, then just go to
| | 09:09 | frame 24 and go Paste Frames.
| | 09:12 | Now notice you're getting a little bit
extra at the end here, all I have to do
| | 09:16 | is select that and just go remove those frames.
| | 09:19 | So now we've got another blink.
| | 09:22 | Now in this blink I want to
actually change the eye direction.
| | 09:25 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
each eye as it closes, and then set another
| | 09:37 | keyframe. In fact, I need to zoom in a
little bit better here. Just go ahead and
| | 09:46 | move these eyes over to the other side.
| | 09:47 | So now she comes in and she looks to
the right and to the left. There we go.
| | 09:55 | Let's go ahead and zoom out a little
bit, there we go. There she blinks.
| | 10:02 | I've got that, it looks like it's in the
wrong place, so actually I want to go
| | 10:06 | ahead and take this frame and
move it a little bit, there we go.
| | 10:18 | Then Welcome to this show,
I want her to go ahead and blink.
| | 10:23 | So I'm just going to select all of these
and again, Copy Frames, Paste Frames.
| | 10:34 | Then select these and just Remove Frames.
| | 10:38 | So now I've got another blink.
| | 10:41 | So right there, I want to keep her
eyes in the right place and then as she
| | 10:48 | brings them up, I can again just copy
and paste the frames so that she's going
| | 10:54 | in the opposite direction.
| | 10:56 | So you can do that for the other
eye as well, Copy Frames, Paste Frames.
| | 11:04 | Let's go ahead and tunnel
back out, and let's center this.
| | 11:13 | Let's see what we've got.
| | 11:18 | So you can see her blinks and everything.
| | 11:20 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn
on my sound, so we can hear this.
| | 11:24 | I'm going to show you the final
version of this with the blinks and all
| | 11:27 | the dialogue in place.
| | 11:29 | Now as you can see, animating
something more complex like the head, a lot of
| | 11:34 | times you want to
actually animate within a symbol.
| | 11:37 | So actually I have symbols
nested within other symbols.
| | 11:40 | The one issue with this is that
you can't see the full animation.
| | 11:43 | So a lot of times you have
to pre-plan certain things.
| | 11:48 | Now, dialogue really works well, because it's
really just scrubbing against the sound track.
| | 11:53 | Now something like blinks you may need
to have a little bit more pre-planning
| | 11:56 | because you'll have to get
your eye direction just right.
| | 11:59 | But let's go ahead and take a
look at this final animation.
| | 12:03 | (Female Speaker: Welcome to the show.)
| | 12:05 | So, there you have an animation in Flash.
| | 12:09 | What we've done is we've actually walked
the character in, posed her and done dialogue.
| | 12:13 | So we've covered most of the major things
that you need to do with any Flash animation.
| | 12:18 | So now that you understand the
principles of animation and how to animate in Flash,
| | 12:22 | you should be able to
animate just about any scene.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | This concludes 2D Character Animation.
| | 00:03 | Now, I hope you learned a lot in this
course and I hope you got the fundamentals
| | 00:07 | of character animation
| | 00:09 | so you can apply it to any sort of
character that you use in your work.
| | 00:13 | Now remember, character animation is an
art and you do need to practice it in
| | 00:18 | order to get really good at it.
| | 00:20 | So go ahead and watch other types of
animation to see what you like and
| | 00:24 | go ahead and practice your
animation to improve your skills.
| | 00:28 | So with that, I'd like to say
goodbye and see you next time.
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