going for a more full animation style...?

[slowtiger]

Just found a good example of a short film: "Howl" http://vimeo.com/27657792. It's a student film, which means the time and budget restrictions show sometimes. But overall this is a very satisfactory dense and intense film which has a lot of what I described as desirable in the last post.

It has a story. It reduces the story to the max: only 2 characters, no dialogue, nothing distracting. It decided for a natural pacing: all movements are in real time. It has a distinct style. It has wonderful backgrounds: elaborate ones for no animation scenes (skyline, moon), simple ones for close-ups. It uses perspective (in the sense of "where is the spectator in relation to the characters"), but it doesn't stick to technically "correct" perspective, it's a narrator's perspective, used dramatically.

It has textures, and they're animated where necessary. It has very simple characters, but spent much more time into getting each pose and each movement right. It uses hair movement, not as a cliché but where it's necessary (mother looking under bed).

This film is worth to be studied shot by shot, to see how perfect each is composed and balanced within the context.

[capricorn33]

Thanks for the post(s), slowtiger. Very insightful stuff, this is definitely a "keeper", goes right into my personal notebook.

I agree on all points. The definition of "full animation", the workflow considerations, not making religion out of your tools, budget vs. choice of animation style and quality standards, importance of story, balance and consequence to make something that is "good".

I read the part about the "ill-fitting element" with great interest. And I enjoyed the student film you referred to. Yes, very good balance in that one, I liked it a lot.
Thanks slow, I learned a lot from this.



Now I'm getting back to the specific question I'm trying to adress in this thread...

I was impressed by the owl in jwlanes short animation which neeters_guy pointed to a couple of posts back in this thread. This is the shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMhhkPMk_90

Slowtiger, wouldn't you agree that the character animation in this example is of what could be considered as very close to "full animation" quality, according to your definition? It is obviously a very well planned out piece of animation using full body movement, including full body turns, overlaps, consideration of timing and spacing down to fbf level... And it actually IS a dance, one of the things you mentioned we don't get to see that often....

I wonder what kind of work process jwlane used here... there is a lot of point animation involved, obviously, but how much of it did he draw out on paper, poses and breakdowns, before transferring to AS points? Did he use bones and how much?
I wonder if a driven and skilled animator and likewise driven AS user could be as efficient doing this kind of shot in AS point animation as in fbf classical technique?

- oh, look what I found when I read deeper into the thread...! I will quote jwlane here, his answer to questions about his work process on his characters....

" ..../ I'm working on another character that will be a little different. The head and main body (with shadows) are bone controlled. There are wings on this creature that are point to point, and mostly frame by frame. This is still faster than drawing each frame. /..."

" .../ I used switch layers a lot when I first started getting serious about ASP (then Moho). But, eventually I found that switch layers cannot be subtle enough without creating more switch layers (more work). So I just stick to fundamentals. If a shot has a lot of moving and turning, I first draw key poses that I import, making the pose visible at the correct frame in the action. I animate the bones to the key poses first. Then I go back and worry about the points having the correct shape. /... "
viewtopic.php?t=14643

" .../ I did all the character animation in Anime Studio Pro. The backgrounds were drawn with an actual pencil on natural finish paper, and colored in Photoshop. Compositing and and effects, like the owl's headlamp eyes and floor shadows, that was done in After Effects. /...."
viewtopic.php?t=15155

jwlane also states that he has keys on almost every frame of his timeline... which also shows in the detail of controlled animated movement on screen, I think. So he is paying fbf attention to his animation but still says that it is "faster than drawing each frame"....

Which I find most interesting from a workflow point of view.


jwlane, if you are reading this, it would be nice to hear your view on the efficiency of point animation in AS when it comes to making this kind of advanced animation.

cheers!

[GCharb]

I think what he meant is that he animates with passes.

He says the character is bone driven, there has to be one, maybe two passes of bone animation.

He says that he imported drawings of the animation, probably pose to pose the bone animation first, then he did the point animation on top of it.

He says the wings are basically FBF point animated.

This is pretty much what I do, also this is what I want to teach on the video set I am planning to do.

This looks like a workflow coming out of Richard Williams book.

[uddhava]

Really interesting and useful discussion going on here. Thanks to everyone for taking the time.

udd

[GCharb]

244233256 just posted animations that totally express what could be done in AS as far as mixing bone and point animation goes.

[funksmaname]

v.nice animation of the owl

jwlane also states that he has keys on almost every frame of his timeline...

this could well be that 'some points' are moved on every frame, which makes the main animation lane show every frame is used... I recently did a very similar workflow on some scenes and the main timeline quickly gets filled with every frame in certain parts - but just correcting some of AS's natural tweening when you're using pre drawn poses as a guide can result in very natural 'full animation' look (if not TOO smooth, to combat which Synthsin created me a 'bake on' script where a sequence on natural 1s can be turned into held 2s+) to give a more traditional look...

[neeters_guy]

...which contitutes a satisfactory aesthetic experience. I found this to be true when watching animation. Most examples from this forum... just isn't enough: not enough story, not enough movement, not enough colours, not enough texture, not enough sound...

With so many technical questions on this forum, this post on aesthetics is a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the insights, slowtiger.

[capricorn33]

I think what he meant is that he animates with passes.

He says the character is bone driven, there has to be one, maybe two passes of bone animation.

He says that he imported drawings of the animation, probably pose to pose the bone animation first, then he did the point animation on top of it.

He says the wings are basically FBF point animated. /....

Yes, that was what I concluded also.

Looking forward to your tutorials, Gilles, to get a chance to see in detail at your take on that workflow.

.../ the main timeline quickly gets filled with every frame in certain parts - but just correcting some of AS's natural tweening when you're using pre drawn poses as a guide can result in very natural 'full animation' look /...

Yes, that is how you keep control over your animation, generally, when working with "tweening software". You have to work with ALL the curves between the key poses and breakdowns to get the exact spacing you want. We don't want the machine to animate for us, do we?

244233256 just posted animations that totally express what could be done in AS as far as mixing bone and point animation goes.

Yes, I just saw that. Amazing stuff! Really living up to slowtiger's definition of what "good" is. 244233256 (and his friends) confess to the style they have chosen, they stay put in it and tend to all the small details.

AND he is generously offering to share his anme.-files too. Now THAT I really love! This is a fantastic opportunity to deduce something about the workflow used by looking at the keyframes.

With so many technical questions on this forum, this post on aesthetics is a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the insights, slowtiger.

Yes I agree to that. This forum could really use more discussion on animation as art and craft and not just the petty technicalities of it. (I do love the techincal discussion too, but sometimes it just takes over too much...)
Especially workflow realated discussion is something that interests me.

[eago]

When I purchased AS I was planning on working like this.
Then I found I could only see one layer in the timeline.
Any tips on tweaking timing when you have keys in tons of layers?
If you have to go layer per layer to move the keys seems a lot easier to just work in flash in a more traditional way which is what I ended up doing

[slowtiger]

eago: One layer in the timeline is more than enough, trust me.

One bone layer can contain all bones of a character, so you can manipulate the whole character without changing layers. One vector layer contains all points of that layer, which can be hundreds.

Pay attention to the difference between the top grey and the bottom red timeline of each category (like points or bones): the top one shows all keys, the bottom red one only the keys for the exact item you've selected.

[eago]

Hehe, sorry, can't trust you, I tried it.
Having all the drawing in one vector layer just doesn't work for me.
1. If character is complex picking vertex from one particular part becomes hard. If body parts intersect you can't group select vertex so have to pick one by one.
2. If pieces of the character should change and have different layers constantly (head turns, hands, etc) it just makes little sense to have it all in one layer.
3. If motion isn't synced knowing which keys belong to which part becomes hard.
So at least for what I want to do multiple layers per character are a most. And if I have my character in multiple layers I want to see the timeline for all those layers, and edit many at once.
Also for the workflow proposed by AS features something like maya dopesheet would work way better than the current timeline.

[GCharb]

Eago, I would not suggest to put all drawings in same layer, but I always try to put as much as usable to be able to work as fast as I can.

I create groups for the major parts of the characters, like a group with all the points for the left arm, right arm, torso etc.

Then I use Fazek magnet tool to pull and push points around on selected parts, works really well, the magnet is your friend!

[neeters_guy]

For the sake of completeness, this is another older post that I found useful (this was also posted recently at the Animators Forum).

Our Process and the Bouncing Ball

The workflow description is the third link down. To summarize from the video description:

A brief explanation of the different stages we go through for animating in Anime Studio.
- Key Frames
- Smoothing/Breakdowns
- Follow Through
- Vector Fixing

As you can see this follows the idea doing things in passes, staring with larger movements and refining to smaller details.

Thanks for starting a most interesting thread!