Sorry the site has been a bit slow lately. I hope to interview some more artists for Spline Casts soon. It will happen in the next couple of weeks. On a side note, some folks wanted to know when and if any classes will be going on this summer. There is a class coming up in Montreal Quebec with myself and Veteran Story Artist, Matt Luhn. We are doing a two day intensive on Story and Animation on June 13th and 14th. Matt and I have been talking about doing something like this for a while. Montreal is certainly a great place to have an animation class. I know the tuition may seem steep but it costs a lot to put these on and the information is well worth it. A portion of any proceeds will go to charity. Here is a link for more info.
There are many different ways to approach a scene which contains a character walking. The first thing you need to figure out is what the scene is about. Is it a one off shot of a character walking into frame and saying a line? Is it a series of scenes of one or more characters walking and talking. I have worked on both types and many variations. When I was working on The Incredibles, I got a bunch of shots with Edna and Bob walking through her home talking about the past when he brings his super suit to be repaired. The best way to approach a bunch of shots like that was to create two really good walk cycles and plop them on a path. Then layer the acting on top of the walk. The best way to layer the walk on top is to use controls that let you animate on top of what you already have. Obviously you have to alter things like the arms in order to gesture, and the head to hit accents of dialogue, but the cycle you create is the key ingredient.
Now, what about a one off shot? A cycle is usually not the way to go, but I have seen it done well. An example of this was a shot in The Incredibles that animator Dave Devan did. It is of Dash in the cave with violet. He get up, says, “Well I’m gonna look around now” After he blocked in the character getting off the floor, he plopped in the walk cycle and showed the shot for a first pass to Brad. Once the basic idea and acting is approved, the walk cycle can be massaged so that the transition from the keyed animation to the cycle does not look bad. You never want the audience to see that the walk cycle is in fact, a cycle. You want to mess it up a bit and vary the timing of things and make it feel more organic.
The last case scenario would be the shot where you are basically keying the walk from start to finish. I am working on a shot like that now. First, I try to figure out where I want my character to be walking. You can either use a path or straight X,Y, Z controls. Then I start blocking the key poses of the walk by doing the legs first. I usually block on 4′s. I am thinking about the stride pose, the passing pose and back to the stride again. I inserted the images from Richard Williams book for a quick reference. Once I get that blocked in, then I can start thinking about the details of the push off and the timing of how the legs arrive at each key. It isn’t easy to do a good walk. In fact, its one of the more difficult things to pull off well. One of the most important things is making it feel in balance. You can only cheat so much. Your character really needs to feel like they are in the world. Once the legs are in then you can start getting into everything else like the acting, torso, arms, head, etc etc. In another post we can focus on the acting with a walk. This one is just a warm up to give you a tiny insight about how to approach 3 different types of shots that contain a walk. Again, no way is right. Its what works for you.
I am always impressed with certain animator’s clean blocking. Sometimes, I end up putting in to many controls or in general too much before I show for a review. I can’t stress the importance of clean, clear blocking. In this day and age of computer animation, the best thing you can do is to simplify. Many times when I look at a past scene I did, I always like the ones that are simple in their idea and approach. I am from the old school of blocking on every 4th frame. I like to see the detail and even include my breakdowns in that first showing. I’ll also even flesh out things such as a head shake in the spline editor. The tough part is that if I get a bunch of direction, I have to tear down the wall and rebuild. Some of the things that save my butt are trying to keep as many of my controls on the same frame and not offsetting things until I have that clear path. I also believe in showing early, rather than later. The more information I have, the better. I don’t need to hide away until I feel everything is perfect. It’s good to take a swing at things. I also think that if you are in a place where you can show your work in some sort of dailies, the first blocking pass should be seen in that forum. If you are going for a laugh, or trying to get a response, that first showing is your change to sell your idea. As I work on this next production, I really do want to try new methods of blocking a shot. I have never really worked with the exposure sheet method, ie. step key blocking, but I think its time to learn. Essentially, if I want my poses to be stronger, I need to start with strong ones to begin with. With the old school method, your poses evolve and get better. The flip side is that they feel more organic. What ever your method, its always important to keep the perspective that no one way is right or wrong. Heck, I used to know a guy who blocked all his arms with IK no matter what. It looked OK to me. Another guy used only linear knots… That might be a little crazy… The spline is your friend.
I wanted to quickly mention how important the root is in your character. With thinking about all our arcs, and overlap and all the critical principles. We can quickly overlook this fundamental area to pat attention to when you are cleaning up your shot. And that is the root of your character.
In case your asking yourself, what is the root of the character? It is the core part of your character (generally around the hip area) that translates the character forward or back. If for example, you had all your arms and legs on FK, your entire character would move if you moved your character by their root.
So, why is this so important? Well, like we mentioned before, it is the core movement in your character (Top of the group node), so everything is based upon it.
I see many students go into their work, polishing the arms, fingers, head, legs, BEFORE they have nailed down the timing of the root. If the root isn’t working, then your shot will never work, no matter how much you polish everything else. So make sure that it is working how you want it too, before you go and polish other parts of the body.
Below is 1 example of a students work, before they attacked the root. This is 1 of many that I found, and the problem that was happing was that they were focusing on so much at once (arms, hands, head etc), that they forgot to nail down the root. The second example is the same jump, but with the root being finessed. When that was done, there was a little finessing on the feet, to make the jump more believable. But that was done AFTER the root was finessed. I hope you can see the large difference between the two, just from finessing the root.
Here’s a scene from the Robert Altman film, The Player. I had been thinking about this post for a while and after reading Gordon’s latest I thought this would be a perfect extension of his point, but more related to dialogue as opposed to pantomime.
Watch Grant (the British dude) pitch part of his movie idea to Tim Robbins, a studio executive. Robbins’ performance is equally as interesting for all the subtext going on but I won’t spoil that for you. Here we’ll examine the texture of Grant’s performance in his body acting while he’s talking. Normally I wouldn’t advise hitting beats so “on-the-nose” as he does, as it tends to flatten a performance: why illustrate with the body exactly the words the character is saying? And certainly if all he had done was hit the obvious poses, the scene would be boring, or even worse, annoying. I want to talk not about the poses he hits, but what he does in between them that makes this scene so entertaining.
Take, for example, the first close up scene of Grant as he explains the car accident investigation. An animator would find it very easy and tempting to skip right from the “brakes have been tampered with” to the pose for “murder.” But Grant makes it interesting and convincing by doing a hilarious anticipation before the line. I broke the beat down into the five keys I’d pose for his action:
1) “brakes have been tampered with”
2) eyes close, head up
3) head down, hands up
4) hands hit down: “it’s”
5) head up to look at Tim Robbins: “murder”
(You’ll probably note that he actually hits a slightly different pose for “murder” before arriving and holding at the one I picked.)
Now he’s not just illustrating the line, he’s added a whole new urgency to it, and subtext that reads “no if’s, and’s or but’s, it’s murder!” And he’s broken up the action by having his hands follow his head as a second accent. He’s also acting within poses very economically; long holds with subtle texturizing movements. He’s covered all the principles! This whole scene is chock full of such juiciness (including preceding lines I cut for time). Look at the antic for the running action or the dramatic pause before “there’s not a dry eye…” And these are extreme examples; in animation even a two frame eye antic *before* your body antic can help show thought process and make a scene more entertaining. Bottom line: characters thinking = believability. Believability = entertainment.
