Introduction

This skills workshop lesson was about the different types of keyframes in animation – building on the basics of what we learned about keyframes last year.

Straight Ahead Animation

Straight ahead animation is where an animator draws each frame in chronological order – one after the other. An example of straight ahead animation would be rotoscope.

Pose to Pose Animation

Pose to pose animation is where an animator will draw keyframes (the most important frames) in the animation first, and then add frames in between to make it smoother. This process of filling in frames between keyframes is called inbetweening. In motion graphics, it is called interpolation, and is an automated process.

Keyframes

There are three types of keyframes:

• Key pose – these are the poses in an animation that show the most change or movement in an animation.
• Breakdown – these are the frames that allow a subject to move from one pose to another.
• In-Between – these frames are additional frames that are in between keyframes and breakdowns in order to make the animation smooth.

Conclusion