giving gravitas by adding weight

Day 5

Today’s focus is the pose to pose concept in animation. From my understanding, this technique is understood better in conjunction with straight ahead action. ” Straight ahead action scenes are animated frame by frame from beginning to end. “creates a more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic action sequences.”  However, pose to pose focuses on a few poses and filling in the intervals later. It is one of the aha moments I’ve had with animation. It makes you think about the end result. Of course, the technique an animator uses depends on the intent and neither one needs to be practiced in isolation. Check out this super simple animation below. Notice the pause when she jumps in the air.

Of course this animation can be improved with working on details like anticipation, follow through, etc. I did however focus on another concept squash and stretch. This is probably one of my favorites from the principles of animation. I do want to note that inadvertently while practicing the pose to pose technique, you may include other principles like anticipation by default. It is in the very nature of the pose to pose concept. So when comes to the squash and stretch it added more complexity and a bit of humor. The exaggeration increases the likelihood that it will be perceived in a comical way. Of course, context always matters and comedy isn’t a science but more of an art. The basic purpose of using squash and stretch is to give weight to an object. Check out what happens when more pressure is involved or there is a significant amount of movement.

revelations

The pose to pose along with the squash and stretch techniques used here create a great way to use animation and tweak it without a ton of extra work by doing the upfront work in the beginning. It is tempting to just keyframe every movement. Trying to keyframe every movement with realistic results would require additional work not foreseen.
I will most likely go back and tweak this animation but the main work has been done and it is a good start.

Until next time