In our first skills workshop, we recapped an animation principle. In traditional 2D animation, there are two main methods of working. The first is called straight ahead and is mainly used for natural forces or other subjects which can’t be planned out and have random motion such as smoke, water and fluid elements. It involves drawing one frame after the other in chronological order until the desired result is reached. A perfect example of this is animating a flame or any form of fire.
The second method of animation is called pose to pose and is used most of the time when animating a character, creature or action that requires tight timing and structure. It involved drawing the main poses first, and then filling in the gaps between them with more frames until the animation is as smooth as the creator wants it.
We focused on the pose to pose method, which I am grateful for because it’s the one that I struggle with the most, and it is most useful to know. When creating the animation, there are three types of keyframes to know about and use:
Types of Keyframes
- Key pose/ Keyframe – These are the main poses and key shapes that showcase a character and/or their action.
- Breakdown – This allows the character to transform from one pose to another.
- In-between – These are the additional frames that go between key poses and breakdowns. They help space out and smooth the animation.
The more drawings there are between keyframes, the slower the action will appear because it takes more time to complete the same action. In animation, space = time. The more space there is between drawings, the faster the action will appear to progress and vice versa. With pose to pose animation, this can be planned out, because the process is characterized by first drawing the key poses at the significant points of action, refining the key drawings, and then doing the in-betweens, which gives the creator more control by ensuring the accuracy of the final result. Straight ahead animation, on the other hand, is drawn from the first position to the last, in a linear sequence. Because this methodology requires very little planning, oftentimes the final results are a surprise for the animator as well as the audience. While this approach is a lot more spontaneous and creative, it can create inaccurate results.
Task
For our task, we used pose to pose as the method of animating and used a video of a woman walking as a reference. I began by opening up Adobe Animate and dragging the video into the workspace. I then selected ‘Embed 6.264 video into timeline’ and clicked next until it was placed. It was a little too large at first, so I selected it, locked the ratio, and scaled it down to fit it to the canvas. I played it through to see how the woman walks across the screen, and roughly how much time it would take. It was clear from the start, that I would not have time to animate the whole video.
Next, I created a new layer, and scrubbed through the video, stopping each time I saw a key pose or breakdown, and marking it by writing a bold ‘k’ or ‘b’ on screen. Marking the frames like so makes it easier to understand and read, thus faster to animate on. After finishing this, I made another new layer and drew a stick figure of the pose on each k/b frame. This was pretty difficult without a graphics tablet, but good practice to draw with a mouse. I found that I couldn’t add the arms without drawing some sort of body, so my stick figure ended up looking very strange, with a solid shaped body and head, but simple lines for the limbs. When I felt that I had done enough of these (I didn’t use the whole video), I moved on to the hardest step, which was filling in the in-between frames without reference.
I turned the video off and turned onion skin on so that I could see the previous and next frames. Because I drew in yellow, I quickly changed the background to a more suitable colour and got to work. It was so frustrating doing the in-betweens, because not only did I not have a tablet, but I also have to guess how to draw the limbs. It wasn’t too hard when the next and previous drawings had a different angle of the arms or legs because then I could just draw the middle frame in the centre and roughly estimate what angle it would be. The real challenge came when there was a slim to no difference between the two frames. I had to somehow show a change when there was virtually no progression in the action.
In the end, this didn’t matter much though, since I didn’t have enough time to fill all the frames in, and the animation remained choppy and blinking. The method worked though since you can sort of see the character walking, even if it does get even more choppy towards the end. 2D animation really takes a lot of time, effort and consistency, because every single frame needs to be filled in.
Unfortunately, I have lost my USB with the evidence. If I manage to find it, I will insert the screenshots and final Gif here.