Animation Analyze 01

Ok... I've decided to start studying feature animations and post them on my blog(might be of good help to people). I will try to do 1 or 2 a week depending on my schedule. I believe doing this exercise in a regular basis will help me expand my knowledge as a character animator. I will start out analyzing feature animation sequences and then later on live action. I think it'd be best if I study how people caricature movement to tell a story. Once I have a confident Idea of how to do this, I will go on to live action and try to caricature it myself using the same gestures and subtext, and so on..

Here is the Reference file




At first glance, it looks kinda complex.. look again.. Here I drew in the extremes only.. I included the moving holds as well..






-It looks much simpler now!
-in essence, it is just 2 golden poses.. near each other and very subtle.




Here are the breakdowns.. take note..
-anticipation for an anticipation extreme on frame 2
-anticipation is almost invisible.. it is just felt..
-settle on frame 11 (4 frames after extreme)
-the moving hold is sort of a breathing pass that goes up and down






Finally, last bits of breakdowns and lipsync..

lesson?

-not much movement on the body to show to the audience the expressions on the face.
-audience must see face to empathize what the character is feeling


The majority of animation students, when planning for a shot put too much motion under impression that good animation has nice fancy movements.. This reference clearly shoes that it is not about having fancy movements.. It's about having the audience empathize with you character and making sure that it is seen very clearly with the posture and the facial expressions. The posture here in this shot is clearly read especially since the posture is pretty much held most of the shot...

Additional notes:

-when doing invisible anticipations (2-4 frame antics) make sure the antic poses are not too different from the extreme because it will just look like a pop and out of place gesture if they are too big.. keep it subtle..

*Video reference property of Disney. This is reproduced specifically for educational purposes and nothing more..