From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

Fast Bite

From the course: 2D Animation: Tips and Tricks

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Fast Bite

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- [Instructor] In the previous movie, I showed you how to do a bouncing ball using a frame or an image that you only see for one frame or maybe two or three, in that case it was the impact of the ball on the ground, all well and good, how do you apply that to a simple or even a complex character animation? So let's take a look at this. I'll let that play through a couple of times so maybe you can guess what's happening here. So you notice on the big chomp, you're really feeling a lot of energy behind that, and where does that come from? That's, pause this, on the anticipation, and I'll run through frame by frame. Bang, right there, and even bigger here, and notice how few frames that was, now if I scroll back, that's, go forward again, and just play. So you really feel it, it's a lot of power and force, but it's not done for so long that you have the time to really register the fact that we've done something ridiculous, if we used any more frames than two or three, the danger would be this thing would begin to look mushy and very strange. It might be an effect you like, but it's not an effect that I want, I just want this to be like a shock value or just a sensation that something very intense has happened. So here is the sequence of frames, and from frame one we start and 11 through 17 is a big looping anticipation, the anticipation for a very violent action should be a strong anticipation. If I had simply gone into the chomp, I don't think it would have worked very well, so if you're going to do a violent action like a punch, then you really want to pull the arm back far prior to that fast punch action, otherwise one, won't have energy, but two, your eye doesn't have time to realize what's happening, so in this case the anticipation is the big leftward motion on the head, down then back and up, and then we ease out of number 17, and these little tick marks are general, this would be number 25, 24, 23, 22, you know, there should be more little ticks in there, but you can't really fit any more than that. 26 is easing into the huge extreme frame of teeth, the wall of enamel, and then on 28 we're easing out of it, and then we're back to normality on 29. Notice the nose pops off here, there's no nose here, there's no nose there, you don't feel it because for only two or three frames, this is a visceral effect, and it's a great trick to use, and it harkens back to the kind of thing that was done a lot in the Looney Tunes the Tom and Jerry, Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny era, when the animators were I think a lot less inhibited than we are now. And one problem that a lot of us have when we're working with either 3D rigs or Flash or Harmony rigs, is that the rig takes over, so in this case, you break out of the rig, if you have to work in the rig system, and you have to find a way to see if it's practical to do this. And it's only three drawings, or three unique frames that you have to create. So if you can get away with doing it from time to time, it really adds a little bit of color to your scenes and your work, so keep it in mind.

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