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If you haven't already, then download the character animation pdf that accompanied my video on doubling your animation output, as it lays out this work flow quite nicely:
Double Your Animation Output in 7 Easy Steps
In my mind, I liken character animation to clay sculpture.
In clay sculpture, you first lay the Foundation for all work to come; you draw out and plan your work on paper. This is the most important stage of any animation; planning what your character or characters will be doing.
Using these detailed plans, you then construct your armature or STRUCTURE (in animation), which will HOLD your work. When I animate, this stage is usually roughly drawn thumnail poses with some timing.
Now its time to add on a lump of clay.This is the blocking of our animation. We are really just trying to get the most important poses of our character here. Ask yourself: "What poses does my character need to hit in order to convey the physical action and emotion of this scene? You are not really animating, just blocking.
At first this makes your work look awkward and wrong, but as you sculpt in the DETAILS, it begins to take shape! You can push the timing around to get your animation feeling more like what you see in your head, and in your thumbnails. I also like to convert my animation to Linear Curves. This way I can "steal" poses between poses to set my breakdowns. Why animate what I've already animated? ;)
Once we've added the main details, we might literally POLISH the sculpture and give it variance in texture. This is the same with character animation. Only once all the details are in place should we start to refine and polish them.
We can focus on pushing the performance, or we can focus on refining our use of the 12 principles of animation. However we choose to polish our animation, it cannot be done until AFTER the details are in place, including good timing, solid poses, arcs, overlap and follow through, and all of the 12 principles of animation.
Structure first, details later:
If we are sculpting a head, we would never start sculpting the detail of an eyeball before we've finished filling in the mass of the head. This is the same with character animation! We should avoid polishing the tilt of our characters head until we have finished blocking out the entire performance.
This is our natural urge; we get impatient and want to 'see what its going to look like' but this is bad practice. We must follow the steps in order if we want to work efficiently, and produce animation that wows our audience.
Every step has its natural place, and I believe the method I've laid out here is the most natural method for animating, as I've learned it over 15 years. Taking things in order is the surest way to produce character animation that will entertain and inspire.
Actually, planning comes first:
First we must plan our animation, then we must block out, only then can we start to 'carve in' our breakdowns and inbetweens of our character. Once the structure of the scene is all in place and 'roughed out' we can begin adding the details and polish. I cannot stress enough the importance of taking time to plan your animation!
If you want to become a better animator, a faster animator, and produce higher QUALITY animation; you don't need to work harder, you need to work SMARTER.
Once we get into our animation program (or even just into the scene if we're animating traditionally), we can easily get lost and confused. The principles of animation start coming to mind, our characters personality, even just the physics of animating a walk, run or turn can overwhelm us. Our scene planning is our Animation Treasure Map! It's the guide we wrote to help us navigate to all the important points in our scene without having to think about it. You will never remember everything in the moment, so plan your animation thoroughly on paper before you ever open up ANY animation software.
With that in mind, get out there and start animating! You will never learn how to animate from of book or a webpage. You will only learn by doing it, by sitting down and animating. So go, and take this article as a guide to help you.
Feel free also to download this pdf and share it with your friends and co-workers. It's free and I believe every animator should read it!
Double Your Animation Output in 7 Easy Steps
It may sound impossible, but I have proven time and again that following a structured approach to character animation can truly double your output!
Happy Animating!
-DJ
