Breaking Down Timing in Animation

Copied frames on top, made up poses on the bottom

Lately I have been drawing some UPA stuff so last night I tried to animate this simple bounce of some guy squashing down and stretching up, and I had a heck of a time with it. Should have been a very simple thing, but took me about 5 hours to do, I will post that later, it's not quite cleaned up yet.

So last night I also did some quick sketches on the arm and lever animation, and today I decided to animate one, it turned out pretty good. I then decided to break down the whole two second loop, just to see how they timed it. I feel like I read about this stuff, but it never really sinks in til I break it down.

The coolest thing that I noticed was when their was smooth action, say from side to side, it wasn't ever a perfect ease in and out. If the animator sprung into a pose, he would ease out slowly, or if he really eased into a pose, he would quickly move to the next one. I feel like this gives the animation a lot of variation, and I guess I have never noticed it until now.

Ultimately, I feel that I just need to do more animation, because I don't feel like I have much of a clue when I try and do it. Even when I try to time out a little scene to see how long everything will take, I still have to keep reworking it and reworking it. Then in the back of my head I keep thinking, how could all of the old masters learn to animate before pencil tests, I'm struggling with instant playback. Anyway, I guess it is safe to say that I am no master of animation.

Lever From - It's Everybody's Business (1956) from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

Here is that bounce that I was talking about. You can see two of the positions are on the bottom right of the paper at the top. Don't know what UPA short this is from, but they were named Arcadian off of the Cartoon Modern blog, so that is what I am guessing the name is.

UPA Bounce from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

As you can see, I didn't turn out at all, but it took me so much reworking already that I will let this one be.

Shuffling Off To Buffalo Fun

Well, I long time ago I came across the sheet music with the directors notes from the 1930's Harmen-Ising cartoon, "Shuffle Off To Buffalo". This is a wonderful piece of history that Stephen Worth put up at the Animation Archive. Finally I did something useful with it. I broke it down and figured out how it worked, then I decided to do a scene for myself. The first one that I did was pretty long, and I used a different layout, a different character, and I didn't quite follow all of the directors notes. Overall, I don't think it would have passed inspection in a studio, but it was fun. I will have to post that later.

On my second go at it, I decided to copying the background exactly, and animate the character that was actually supposed to be animated. I just changed him a little bit. The scene is a lot shorter, but that made it easier to focus on and there was only action going on which made it more fun. This exercise really seems to work well because the only thing that I have to worry about is animating. Everything else, from the character design, to the background to the music and timing is already done for me. So here it is.

Shuffle Off To Buffalo Scene 5 from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

I put the clip of the actual video at the end, it turned out pretty different, and definitely not as good. The three keys that I used from the original are these three pictures.





Also I just got Toon Boom a little bit ago which is were I animated this. I also inked a beautiful drawing from one of Walt Kelly's early Pogo Books.

Angry Nazi Run

Here is a run cycle that John K posted from a Snafu cartoon. I thought it was pretty cool myself, so I decided to pencil test it. As far as animating goes, I really didn't do any. I just got the first key drawn right (or close to right) and then went image by image of the 12 frame cycle.

There are 6 frames a step on ones, and I just went back and forth between the frame I had just drawn and the next one to see what all moved, how much, and where.

Even though I didn't really animate on this one, it was fun to see how much and how little everything changed from frame to frame. I think it turned out good, one of my most fun to show people. I sat down and belted this out in only 5 hours, don't think that was very though.

Snafu - Angry Nazi Run Cycle from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

John K Stuff: Real Animation
Original Post by John K

Dancing to the Bosko Beat

Wow, I meant to post this thing like two or three months ago, but I guess I got busy and forgot. I had it posted on my vimeo channel, but I never got around to blogging about it.

This thing, would be the first lesson on animation from the John K Stuff blog. He talks about animating a simple character on musical beats as the fastest way to learn how to animate. So he then shows a clip of Bosko, from the 30's and it's simple enough to figure out. I went a little further, and got a couple more seconds of footage animated. This was also my first and only attempt at traditional animation with pencil and paper on my homemade light table (actually it turned out really good for only $15).

Bosko Dance Animation from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

Now tell me what you think, hopefully I can get back to doing this more, it's sweet to flip through the animation and see it move before my eyes. Some nostalgic feeling that computer programs have never giving me, it just feels more real.

Here is the original post
John K Stuff: Animation Course Level 1, Lesson 1 - The Beat - Kali Does Bosko

NFB Animation Chart

Well it's been months since I posted anything, and the main reason for that is lack of time. With work, school, and snowboarding I barely had time for anything else, but alas snowboarding on chair lifts is over, and finals are next week, so I am going to be overloaded with spare time, which will be nice.

Speaking of spare time, I was browsing my usual blogs and websites one day a couple weeks ago, and I came across a great piece of animation history on Michael Sporn's Splog and it was the NFB Animation Chart from 1967. The original post is here and man does this have a lot of new info to me. It also has lots of in depth info on animators and directors. It's fun to see how much the directors and animators jumped from studio to studio.

Anyway, I was feeling frisky one day, and decided the pieced together scan that Michael Sporn so graciously put on his website wasn't perfect enough for me. I had printed it out on 16 pieces of computer paper, and glued it on to foam core, but it wasn't good enough. So I decided to recreate the entire thing from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, so that I could have a crystal clear recreation. Now about 20 hrs later it is finished, at 300 dpi and about 48 in X 36 in. Sorry for anyone who speaks French, but I only copied the English parts.

Now I can print it out on nice paper and frame it for my wall. I was thinking ePingo.com had decent prices for a print this big, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Without further adieu, her is the poster in all it's digitally remastered glory!

(Actually this is just a preview because blogger will only let me upload an 8 GB image with a maximum resolution of 1600 pixels)

So I uploaded the image to Rapidshare, it is available as a full dimension and 300 dpi jpeg (15.4 MB) and also as a pdf file (0.2 MB), which is the file format I am going to have it printed from. Enjoy, and hopefully someone gets something out of this as well.

Links UPDATED 09/12

Quick Animation Studies

To get the feel for animation, I have been doing some quick studies by just going through the frames on a paused tv. The sketches are just rough and quickly sketched out so that I could see how the animation flowed. The first two are from Disney's Mickey Mouse In Living Color. The last one is from Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 5. It was fun being able to see a sort of movement as I flipped through the pages.

This first one is from the opening scene of The Nifty Nineties (1941)

Mickey Mouse Animation Check from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

Pretty rough, but you can definitely see the action.







This second one is a lot faster action and a lot more fun to do, every frame seemed unique. It is from Plutopia (1951)

Disney Cat Animation Check from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

I think this one turned out better







The last one is from Gold Diggers Of '49 (1935). It's of Beans, and he is a lot easier to draw over and over again.

Beans Animation Check from Tyler Williams on Vimeo.

Came out ok, but rough. I think that I need to make me a light table.

Eldon Dedini

Just got a new book a little bit ago, called "An orgy of Playboy's Eldon Dedini"

Now I can't paint at all, but I have been playing around with his sleek and plump women style. And I just did the whole picture to get a feel for his light and shadow, and how he composes his pictures. I will have to try my own sometime.

Here is the book on Amazon