Bouncing ball critique & Pendulum exercise
12 Principles of Animation
- Arcs:
- Organic life moves in arcs, simulating curvature in motion, it’s characterised by the increase and decrease in the acceleration that is not constant.
- Robotic and artificial ways, on the other hand, move linearly as per constant acceleration.
- Exaggeration:
- Enhances dramatic effect and emphasizes important moments, so it’s clear to an audience what’s happening. Animation is about exaggeration.
- Enhances dramatic effect and emphasizes important moments, so it’s clear to an audience what’s happening. Animation is about exaggeration.
- Timing and Motion:
- Defines the pace and the rhythm of movement, and justifies the simulation that approximates real movement.
- Defines the pace and the rhythm of movement, and justifies the simulation that approximates real movement.
- Anticipation:
- Prepares the audience for an action by providing a visual clue about what is about to happen. It gets pulled back before it goes forward etc.
- Prepares the audience for an action by providing a visual clue about what is about to happen. It gets pulled back before it goes forward etc.
- Follow-Through and Overlapping Action:
- the primary action comes with secondary actions that follow to enhance the fluidity of the organic movement.
- the primary action comes with secondary actions that follow to enhance the fluidity of the organic movement.
- Staging:
- Understanding where the subject that is being animated is supposed to be situated is more related to the viewer feedback, in the way that the viewer has a sense of what’s going on, thus the animator’s role is to clearly convey that action that is taking place.
- Understanding where the subject that is being animated is supposed to be situated is more related to the viewer feedback, in the way that the viewer has a sense of what’s going on, thus the animator’s role is to clearly convey that action that is taking place.
- Straight-Ahead vs. Pose-to-Pose Action:
- Straight Ahead: Suited for tackling heavily organic movements, emphasizing the physicality of motion.
- Pose-to-Pose: Structured and thought through as per break down, useful for complex animations.
- Layering: Combining both approaches for efficiency and optimized approach.
- Slow In and Slow Out:
- Achieved using Graph Editor curves:
- Linear Curve: Constant motion.
- Smooth Gradual Curve: Gradual acceleration or deceleration.
- Sharp Steep Curve: Quick, abrupt motion.
- Achieved using Graph Editor curves:
- Secondary Action:
- It follows the primary action and adds depth and richness to the movement, enhancing the fluidity of the organic movement.
- It follows the primary action and adds depth and richness to the movement, enhancing the fluidity of the organic movement.
- Appeal:
- Adds an “extra flavour” to the animation, often during the polishing stage.
- Adds an “extra flavour” to the animation, often during the polishing stage.
- Squash and Stretch:
- Reflects the flexibility and mass of the object. (Covered in the detailed during the 1st week)
- Reflects the flexibility and mass of the object. (Covered in the detailed during the 1st week)
- Solid Drawing:
- A principle rooted in 2D animation, ensuring that forms remain consistent in volume and appearance, and reliable in motion.
- A principle rooted in 2D animation, ensuring that forms remain consistent in volume and appearance, and reliable in motion.
Pendulum motion: Understanding follow-through and overlapping action
What is Follow-Through?
Follow-through refers to the movement that continues after the primary action has taken place. It describes secondary actions that are a natural result of the primary motion, enhancing the realism and fluidity of the animation. This principle ensures that movements feel organic and not abruptly mechanical.
Successive Breaking of Joints
A key technique in follow-through is the successive breaking of joints, where the motion flows like a chain reaction. Each joint moves with a slight delay compared to the previous one, creating a cascading effect. This slight offset prevents the animation from looking rigid, introducing a natural and dynamic quality to the movement
Drag aka Wave Principle
Drag, or the wave principle is essential for achieving overlap in motion. It involves a lead-and-follow dynamic, where the leading part of an object drives the movement, and the following parts react to it. This interaction highlights the relationship between primary and secondary actions, adding depth and complexity to the animation.
Pendulum Motion
A classic example of overlapping and follow-through action is pendulum motion. Here, the gravitational energy transitions into kinetic energy, creating smooth arcs and diminishing momentum over time. The pendulum showcases how overlapping motion can add weight, rhythm, and natural flow to animated objects, making them feel grounded in physical principles.
Everything is a bouncing ball
Tutorial source:
Everything is a Bouncing Ball
A video demonstration reveals that the complex movement of a character in animation can be broken down into separate areas, each of which can be depicted as a bouncing ball moving independently. Each joint or limb of the character follows its own unique path, much like an individual bouncing ball, yet when combined with the motion of the rest of the body, they come together to define the cohesive and dynamic movement of the character. This approach highlights how the interplay of these individual elements contributes to the overall flow and believability of the animated motion.
Pendulum exercise
1. Quick and Dirty Method in Maya
Following the class example, I attempted the “quick and dirty” method in Maya. However, I encountered difficulties when trying to develop the pendulum’s movement after its base stops. At this point, the kinetic energy transfers through the system, creating the characteristic “C” and “S” shapes.
2. Understanding the Movement Logic
Tutorial source:
How To Animate a TAIL – Animation Exercise
To better understand the logic behind the movement, I started by sketching the motion of grass as demonstrated in the tutorial.
Observations:
- The grass tail begins its motion in an initial C-like shape.
- As it moves, the bottom half of the tail shifts in the opposite direction to the upper half, transforming the C-shape into an S-shape.
- The S-shape represents the point where the energy peaks, causing the tail to snap back into an inverted C-shape.
- This cycle repeats, following a similar pattern of movement logic.
3. Analysing Pendulum Motion
Video source:
https://vimeo.com/111841120
To analyse the pendulum motion, I used George’s pendulum animation to closely examine for all the shapes discussed in the point above.
Steps taken:
- I selected a specific chunk of the video and extended its duration to slow it down significantly.
- This allowed me to view the motion in slow motion and clearly identify the pendulum’s path, including all the “C” and “S” shapes.
Extremes and keyframes
According to Animation Survival Kit, the positions where the pendulum reaches its furthest points are called extremes, which is intuitive. As a rule of thumb, extremes are not circled in animation planning sketches, but keyframes are.
Keyframes, based on the 1940s animation method, are the key drawings circled in the sketches used to plan an animation. Between these keyframes are the intermediate drawings, often referred to as in-betweens or phasing frames.
The hierarchy of animation planning follows this structure:
KEYS → EXTREMES → BREAKDOWNS → IN-BETWEENS
For example, moving from frame A to frame B without any in-between frames would create a “teleportation” effect—an unnaturally quick movement with no sense of transition. To address this, a breakdown key is introduced to highlight the journey between frames. The in-between frames are critical as they define the character of the movement. By adding in-between frames, the motion can be slowed down or made more fluid. Concepts like ease-in and ease-out rely on adding frames strategically to emphasize gradual acceleration or deceleration.
- Keyframes define what happens and where it happens on the screen, providing staging information (e.g., if a character moves forward, the keyframes indicate the start and end positions).
- In-betweens define how the action happens, adding nuance to the nature of the movement.
In 3D animation, software handles interpolation between frames automatically. However, the animator’s role remains essential for keying the major positions during the blocking stage.
Best Approach to Animation Planning
A hybrid method known as layered method (discussed in detailed in week1), combining pose-to-pose and straight-ahead techniques, is the most effective approach. This ensures the animation is both logical and structured (pose-to-pose) while maintaining a fluid and natural quality (straight-ahead).
Steps for Planning Animation:
- Define the main keys for the animation.
- Add the extremes.
- Incorporate breakdowns and in-betweens.
- Apply the straight-ahead approach to specific parts of the character.
- For example, in the flying squirrel animation from week 3, the ball and the tail would be treated as separate components.
The keyframes are the most critical as they define the foundation of the animation.
The pendulum loses momentum as it swings, resulting in asymmetrical movement. Each successive endpoint of the swing decreases in height (as seen in the cartographic view/left plane). These “endpoints of the movement” are numbered in the image below, starting with 1.
Bouncing ball feedback
Submission on syncsketch:
Ball that bounces 🙂 -> bouncing ball
- ” Animation requires for ball to bounce 1 or 2 times”.
- “Please try to curve out motion trail and reduce rotations since some parts are spinning to much”.
Pendulum exercise
Planning
Delivering
As the base of the pendulum moves, the end of the pendulum is getting dragged alongside. This dragging gets transcend into kinematic energy, so when the base comes to stop the pendulum swings until the complete loss of the energy. The most important when delivering an animation is that, the end of pendulum, remains in the same position, for the first few keyframes, to achieve the notion of dragging.
The base comes to stop, energy is being transcend, resulting in a swing into the opposite direction.
The graph describes rotation X of the pendulum base, that decreases over the time, as the pendulum swing backwards and forwards, until complete lose of energy (flat line at the end).
Successive breaking of the following joints, as depicted on the screenshot above, as the pendulum take a awkward shape that resembles S shape, as it’s swing from one side to the opposite one, marking both extremes, while taking a shape of reversed letter C and regular C, respectively.
Offsetting as an easy and quick way to get fast results. For the consecutive joints of the pendulum the keys are applied in that same values are applied but offset in the time, meaning moved across the timeline by the certain number of keyframes for each of the following joints, with the highest offset applied for the end of the pendulum, as this comes to the end as the last. the screenshot shows the graph editor, where rotation x is shown for the following joints.