What is their secret?

[TheMinahBird]

Hi everyone—again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gWZ4p6vDs4

You should check out the rest of their animations!
Anywho, it looks so dynamic, y'know? Does anyone know how they did it this way?
The account seems to be inactive so I can't really reach them. However I bet experienced animators here
can figure out what's going on.

[hayasidist]

ah! yes -- I remember this one ... the files were here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19960&p=113780#p113780 - hotfile has been shut down, so you won't be able to download, but there's an email address for the animator...

[TheMinahBird]

Aww that's fine, I actually have emailed them before I made this post. I just think they are inactive.

[neeters_guy]

The other video on that channel pretty much explains the method:



Draw the key poses on paper, import and trace it in ASP, then move the points following the key drawings. It's all point motion, no bones or switches. The simplicity of the method belies the considerable drawing and animating skills needed to pull this off.

[TheMinahBird]

I've seen the video but they don't really go into much detail or a thorough explaination. How did they even get the points to not mess up between the key frames? Unless they actually drew each frame simply using anime studio to color each frame rather than making key frames by itself in between.

[neeters_guy]

Unless they actually drew each frame simply using anime studio to color each frame rather than making key frames by itself in between.

No, they did not draw every frame. There are only 4 or 5 frames on the timeline with keys, corresponding to the key poses.

[heyvern]

How did they even get the points to not mess up between the key frames?

The phrase "not mess up" doesn't really say much . Not sure what you mean by "messing up the points" but it could be trying to move points too far or too much between keys. The simple basic motion shown on those keys in the behind the scenes video makes perfect sense. The key to understanding it is watching that video closely. The point motion is actually relatively "subtle" and the action is spread over several basic simple key poses. The first key has the head turn down. The next key is straight to the right. The movement is pretty much a linear movement.

Animating points with only linear movement has inherent issues to overcome. Contrary to using bone rotations to move points, point translation is always in a straight line. Period, end of story, full stop. There is no way around it. No changes in interpolation or rotating the points or anything will ever change that (without using bones).

When you move a point on frame x, it moves in a perfectly straight line from the previous key frame. A perfectly straight line. There is no arc, no way to "curve" that movement.

This is why rotating a box with point motion only on a key frame can be kind of tricky. Animating a box rotating with point motion requires extra keys and smaller rotations between the keys, otherwise the rotation also makes the box "scale" up and down. When you key the points of a box by rotating the points, they aren't actually rotating at all, they are simply moving in a straight line to a new location. The box "shrinks" as the points move uniformly in that perfectly straight line. The rotation of points isn't "stored" in the key frame. Only the FINAL location of the point is keyed not "how it got there". This has to be kept in mind when doing any point motion.

In that how to video you can see that the keyed movement is not very extreme. It's basically a very simple turn from side to side with some up and down. The motion works as a linear point translation. However if you tried to do a more extreme point motion turn of the same head you would need many more keys.

Because of this behavior this could be a cause of "points messing up" between keys. Too extreme a motion and the points don't animate how you expect them to. This can lead to adding more and more keys to smooth the movement or adjust the inbetweens.

[neeters_guy]

heyvern, thanks for clarifying that.

Besides point motion, there is animated layer sorting of the hair as well. Here's a color coded version so you can see how different parts of the hair move above and below the face:

[rocky53204]

I remember that poster vividly as I spent hours downloading a great deal of sample .anme files no longer available online from him. (I always download good stuff as historically it sometimes disappears over time.) He was in China working with Japanese animators. The work seemed quite magical to me at the time as it was done in early versions of moho. Neeters furnishes a very good explanation... point pushing and layer promotion. There were also examples where layer visibility was turned on and off to enable layer substitution. In some cases layers were held off-screen and then substituted for others in a single frame.

Neeters successfully uses a variant of this method for some 'Disneyesque' style animations as well as Amira Mostafa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nmDORN7NY

Kudos to HeyVern for the info!

[neeters_guy]

I first got a glimpse of this method years ago in the jwlane's work: America's Pop Star Penalty Round
He used a combination of bones, switches, and point motion; he would have keys on every frame. I think 244233256 example here is cleaner. Back in the day though, seeing works by jwlane and knunk really opened up the possibilities of ASP to me.

(I always download good stuff as historically it sometimes disappears over time.)

Best reason to check out the forum daily to catch these gems.

[lwaxana]

Minahbird--Maybe the problem you're describing of points messing up between key frames is caused by points not corresponding correctly between poses. For example if you have a point at the chin in one key pose, the next key pose should have that same point be the chin if you want to use point interpolation between those poses. But based on your dynamic vector animation video, I think you have this part down.

Part of the reason this example looks so dynamic is just that the key poses are really well done. If you look at the video showing the scanned key drawings, they look amazing and watchable even before anything is done in AS. They prepared the beginning and final pose as well as a couple of poses that provide the critical information of how it moved from point A to be B (breakdown poses). It's especially important to give attention to the breakdown drawings if you're animating something moving following an arc shape. Actually the original drawings give more of an impression of one sweeping motion following an arc before the automatic interpolation is added. Although the animator may not have been going for one continuous arc in this scene.

[TheMinahBird]

Thank you everyone! I'm sure I plenty information now. XD

[jezjones29]

I have these files if you need them
http://www.animestudiotutor.com/shared_ ... /485/1/10/