From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

Breakdown intermediate

From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

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Breakdown intermediate

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- [Instructor] Now we'll look at how to apply breakdowns to more complex actions. This time, we have three key frames, it's a simple punch, the character starts in frame one, moves into an anticipation to the punch on frame 15 and hits on frame 21. I'm working on frame 30 frames per second, you can work on 24 if you like, I'm not going to bother you about it. Let's take a look at the frames. So these are our three key poses, and that produced the animation that you've already seen. Now here they're overlaid on top of each other, and I've color coded them for clarity. So green's on the bottom, then blue, with the latest one in dark gray right on the top, so you can see the relative space. So now I'll show you the keys, with the crude break downs, these are the basic break downs, nothing fancy, just halfway between. And when you arrange these in a row of five with our frame numbers, we have these five poses. The key frame, the break down, the key frame, the break down, the key frame. Now for some projects, you know what, this will be fine. Some projects like these very simple, almost austere, you know, styles of motion. But what if you want to go above that and aspire to the classic look? So let's break up the break down poses, on the first break down, number eight, we'll make an anticipation. On the second break down, I frankly decided to experiment and lead with the shoulder, so he's almost swinging this side body around. And I thought this might make a bigger impact, because I'm pulling this hand back, and the hand now has further to travel before slamming into the wall. So let's go side by side, that was the basic break down pose, and this is the experimental one, trying to add some vitality to it. So let's take a look at the new animation and see what it looks like. I like the anticipation, it looks good, I'm not so sure about the punch, and it's certainly more flexible, no question about that. I just don't think I succeeded in selling that, boom, that really hard impact. I learned something by the mistake, I learned that if I want to make a character look a little wimpy, then this certainly the way to do it. It's a nice trick to have, and I'm sure if I experimented some more with a different break down position, then yes, I could definitely probably by, on the break down, like, pulling that hand, like way back in depth, so that it's tiny, like way back here, and then smashing it into the wall really fast. But the poses by themselves look great, it's just the animation as a whole just softens the impact for some reason. Anyway, this is why I stress this is all about thinking, I wonder, will that work, trying it, part of it works, maybe some of doesn't, maybe you got an effect different from what you intended. So I'm leaving this error in the course, and you can take it for what it is. So now let's see how these drawings overlay. So that was the first frame, there was the break down into the anticipation, this is the anticipation, and then we have the second break down into the impact. So we have frame one is here, in green, frame 15 in blue, there was the original break down, there was the corrected one. So you can see how I pushed it down. Now we have the second half from 15 to 21, and the original bad break down was here, and then my experimental break down is there. So if you want home work, you can try, trying something different. And if I had this to do again, I would put the break down of the head here, really hold the entire body back, and I would find a way to pull that arm, this red fist here, somewhere over there. I bet the wall would feel that. Okay, so let's move on. So these are our beginning and our end states, side by side, and if you look at the one on the left, again, quite stiff, it seems to be doing nothing particularly interesting, but the guy on the right, he's up to something, definitely. He's bending the legs, bringing the body down, moving the fist into a bunch like that. Even with that wimpy impact, it's still a better scene than the one on the left. So again, the importance of this, is to have the high level control over these quite complex actions. The one thing I will warn you about, is when you begin to do this, is that the arc patterns will become much more intricate. As you move from this position down into this position, back into this position, then into this one, and to this one, the movements will go from a simple pendulum arc, into something that will be more like a figure eight, or a peanut or a lozenge, or these kind of looping patterns. So you have to plot the arcs, just watch your arcs, on the head, on the hand, any body part that's not moving outside of a simple one, two, three, obviously any three points, you can plot with a simple curve. Once you have five, then all kinds of magic begins to happen, and you want to be in control of that magic, and make sure that you don't have things arcing out in weird patterns, that will look truly ugly. My only takeaway from this, in terms of adding fancy motions to the break downs, it's going to add complexity to your arcs, and do keep a very sharp eye on them to make sure you don't have jaggy motions.

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