Tag: animation tips

Capacity vs Accumulation

Dumbo by Bill Tytla. Every scene done by the great Bill Tytla showcased, by default, his uncanny ability to communicate emotion beautifully through shape, line and movement.

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” — Alan Watts, Philosopher

What does it mean to learn? To understand? Is it as simple as accumulating more and more information? Or perhaps maybe it has more to do with actually understanding the material that is at hand?

Today, artists — and especially animators — are always searching for more and more tips, tricks or technical scripts to improve their work. It’s normal to be looking for techniques and tools that might make the job easier or allow us to be more creative, and it’s also understandable to feel insecure and lacking, especially since we’re all essentially living in a very competitive globalized market economy. Unfortunately, this kind of mindset only leads one to constantly chase the craft, rather than pay attention to it.

An artist at work is a beautiful sight. Henri Matisse designing a mural for the Vence Chapel.

The purpose behind our art — which parallels the purpose in living to a degree — is to enjoy the process while also making some kind of meaningful contribution. This is often forgotten in the rather repetitive nature of common work and our conditioning to be ambitious, not to mention the basic need for survival. As noted here before, there are only a few fundamental ways to learn anything: analysis, explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition. The accumulation of knowledge itself is not enough — and can even be hindrance — if the necessary commitment that follows the acquisition of knowledge is not made. Anything new needs to be studied, understood, and practiced to become useful. This explains why students who jump from course to course, teacher to teacher, or school to school, don’t realize that most of the information is mostly the same stuff regurgitated — only the approach might differ. Anyone who tells us that he alone has the secret to success is clearly trying to pull a fast one on us.

“The type of thing I’ve had the most luck with is working on it, wrestling with it, scratching on the drawings, flipping them until the character’s doing what I conceive of it doing.” — Frank Thomas, Animator

Seeing is the start.

When young artists come to me for assistance, I primarily work to alter the way they look at the information, first by showing and then explaining to them why they’ve not yet understood such seemingly simple concepts as weight, depth, or overlapping action on their animations. What they soon realize upon our sessions is that it’s their inability to see and their lack of effort and time put into understanding the actual fundamentals that hinders them. Oftentimes, having been told or having done one applicable yet rudimentary exercise on the subject, students think they’ve actually learned the concept. Sometimes it’s even worse, having “passed” a course on the subject, he is deluded; the false impression of competence a passing grade or a piece of paper gives can easily decieve. So, like an athlete who wonders why his game seems to be lacking, what he needs to do is take the moment to look and see — and acknowledge to himself honestly — that he’s badly out of shape, can’t move well and lacks real strength or endurance. For the animator, the parallel often lies in the very poor knowledge and understanding of basics like anatomical structure and body mechanics. I also believe that many animators really don’t understand basic design or acting as well as they think they do. After all, almost everybody thinks they have “good taste.” Humility frees the mind and gives us strength. Knowing that you don’t know is the first step to building capacity.

“It’s a very difficult medium… You have to understand movement, which in itself is quite a study.” — Milt Kahl, Animator

The necessity of patience.

The other big hindrance to learning is a lack of patience. Skills don’t jump overnight. Just as muscles take time to grow despite our pounding away at the gym, the brain requires time to breakthrough our previous lack of seeing or clarity. Rushing gets us no where faster. One cannot create anything good or exciting without first a clear vision nor can he fix or repair what is wrong when he cannot identify the problem. This is purely psychological, of course; once the artist relaxes his desire to learn or improve quickly, his mind also relaxes and opens up thus expanding his capacity to understand new concepts or see old ones in a new way.

Building one’s capacity — which is both the understanding and the ability to apply — is always more important than the mere accumulation of more knowledge. Besides, most information and knowledge is already out there. If we’re talking about character animation, the great books written by legendary artists such as Preston Blair, Eric Goldberg, Richard Williams, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston are more than sufficient to derive most of the important principles and techniques on how to animate well. Add to them the hoard of excellent books on anatomy and near-instant access to online demos, video references and countless animated movies to study, there really isn’t anything new under the sun that would constitute giving anyone an “edge” over his peers.

How well do you know the human body? Anatomical movement of the human torso by Gottfried Bammes.

I think it’s better always to keep things simple; see what fundamental issue you struggle with and go address it. Look at the core of the problem. Find the valid and applicable information, then actually try to understand it by studying it and practicing it. Seek a reputable teacher/mentor if that is desired. Copy if it helps. Trace if we must. Doing so is not cheating if it’s done to learn. (Copying and using for final production, and then not giving acknowledgement however, is stealing, and horrible shame and bad karma should visit those who do so!)

In summary, remember what’s most important is the depth of one’s understanding. Real ability lies there. Learn to see, then learn to do. Afterall, it’s only our genuine ability that’s ever gonna give any of us any sense of security in a world so full of uncertainty.

Arms & Hands

The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci reveal his deep interest and understanding of the bones and muscles of the arm.

“Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand.” — Jane Addams, Writer/Sociologist

Arms and hands are important. But despite working with their hands all day, most artists are frightened about drawing or animating arms and hands. The reason lies in the artist’s unwillingness to understand them in its entirety.

The arms and hands are — and we’re talking particularly about the human form rather than the animal one which is more genus specific — a microcosm of both the simplicity and complexity of the entire body. One has to see the whole but also understand the parts and how they all go together. And like the body, the upper limbs are both a form and an action, meaning that it’s a solid structure that carries not only weight but also function, and mostly notably by extending psychological expression through gesture.

This Daffy Duck model sheet by the magnificent Chuck Jones demonstrates the power of expression that arms and hands can convey.

Here are a few things to take note of when incorporating arm and hand work in your art or animation:

a) Know the basic anatomy

Every artist should spend some time studying and understanding the basic structure of the limb and all its details. Know what and where those parts are and what they generally look like. Not that we have to able to identify all the scientific names or be able to duplicate it perfectly in rendered form, but we should have a basic yet solid idea of its substance and appearance. At least as much so that we can recognize the forms when we see them, either in life and in video/photo reference. We can’t duplicate or create what we don’t know or can’t see.

The skeletal elements of the shoulder, arm and hands. These are the essential basics. The key is to recognize and understand their form and positioning.

b) Know the mechanics

If we don’t know what the scapula or collar bones do, or how the shoulder muscles such as the trapezius and deltoid muscles work together with the pectoral muscles to move the arms, then we don’t know much about how arms work. For example, study the muscle insertion points and one can see that the one branch of the chest muscles is attached to the humerus bone, and hence we can’t move the arm without effecting the look and shape of the chest. The various joints of the arm, on the other hand, also vary from one connection point to another, from ball joint, to lever and again to ball joint. This leads to the strange way the arms moves as it turns, swings, pushes or pulls. The shoulders in general, are often misunderstood and are both commonly under-animated or animated incorrectly. The shoulder joint is both a translation and rotation axis, the apparatus moves up/down/forward/back and rotates up/down/in/out as it floats on top of the ribcage, while the top of the humerus which lies in its socket rotates in near 180 degree action (half sphere). The largest and strongest muscle is the trapezius, a trapezoidal shape which makes up a group of muscle fibres extending from the top of the neck spine, out towards the tips of the shoulders, and down to the lower middle back. It is the most important group of muscles for shoulder/arm action.

The various movements of the shoulders. The shoulders drive the arms.

c) Understand Pronation and Supination

The arm apparatus has its tendencies and preferences in how it wants to move. But because of the complex adjunction of the various components — scapula to humerus (upper arm), humerus to ulna/radius (lower arm), lower arm to hands etcetera — the arms create torque and power by how it rotates and bends. Pronation — when the arm turns over like when we look at our watch or twist open a jar — is primarily a closing gesture, where the hand turns inwards closer to the centreline of body and the elbow points away from the ribs. Supination — when the arm flips outward like when we ask for change or deal out a deck of cards — is primarily an opening gesture, where the hand turns outwards away from the body and the elbow points into the ribs. Animals such as horses or dogs have their elbows anatomically aligned and constrained close to their rib cages, unlike primate forms whose elbows (and thus arms) are completely free from the body. If you understand the anatomy, you’ll know that the radius bone which is closer to the thumb crosses over the ulna bone in pronation and we see the top of the hand. This is also the position that causes carpel tunnel syndrome which many animators are familiar and one can easily see why (the inbetween space for the artery and the nerves that service the hand become compressed). The point is, the way the hand moves and looks is heavily determined by shoulder and upper arm positioning and action. There is so much more to arm action than mere pendulum motion.

Supination vs Pronation. Notice that the flipping over of the hand corresponds to the flipping over of the elbow joint which protrudes from the humerus bone.

d) Understand the movement as a unit

Arms can move in fantastic fashion from lifting, pulling, punching, slapping, to baseball throws. Arm action can be both bold and powerful or tender and articulate. The animation/artist must be judicious in his vision of how to use/express the hands in motion. But he must first understand how it works as a unit. Arms in passive action can behave like a pendulum. They can twist and turn like driving a car (known as pronation and supination as explained above) and also swing in near full 360 degree vertical motion like a turbine. Certain actions generate move power, others more control. Hence the incredible and powerful diversity of the hand so it’s no wonder they say that the human hand’s uniqueness may have been as important to our evolution as a species as our brain. But the most important aspect of the movement of arms for animators is the concept of “successive breakage of joints” which really follows from the principle of lead and follow. The shoulders drive the upper arms which drive the lower arms, which combine to drive the rotation of the wrists and in turn the thumbs and fingers. The parts of the arm do not operate in isolation. Richard Williams’ excellent book The Animator’s Survival Kit goes into significant detail in this regard. I will not duplicate such information here. If you don’t understand how we build torque or force in the arms, I highly suggest studying those pages seriously as well as observing video at various camera angles.

A page from Richard Williams’ foundational book The Animator’s Survival Kit.

e) Simplify the Forms

In art we make use of symbols — lines, shapes, colours — and how they move to express our ideas. Since realistic anatomy is complex and rarely to be duplicated in detail except in the case of special effects work, artists must simplify the structural parts. Art is, after all, not duplication but creation. Here, we have leeway to exaggerate or caricature the form and its movement. The best thing is to see the parts as a mixture of solids connected to each other, then we understand where the movement begins. It also helps to set standards as to where to push things like squash and stretch that make more sense and have greater believability and appeal. For example, stretching the neck makes a lot more sense than stretching the more solid form of the skull (super cartoony animation notwithstanding).

A simplification of the various structure groups helps keep the mind of the artist organized and his work clear.

f) See the Groupings

When we begin to study anatomy and body mechanics, we begin to see groupings both functionally and artistically. That is, certain things go together. The right and left arms, for instance, influence each other because of the connection to the pectoral (chest) muscles and the trapezius, creating a rubber band-like connection. The same goes with things like hands. The thumbs tend to work with the index finger and the remaining fingers tend to curl and uncurl together in a group. Astute artists throughout history have well understood this and documented it in their work. As animators we must truly understand both the way the hands are constructed and how they move with the rest of the arm. Only then will it look right and feel right. Study of our own hands helps us see how they move and how it looks in any action. Fingers and hands twist, turn, open and close in a very specific fashion. For example, we always close our hands with the shorter fingers first and open our hands leading with the thumbs and index finger. Test it out yourself. Remember: respect for the structure and mechanics is often rewarded with both beauty and believability, especially when given extra flair and exaggeration in the right spots.

Milt Kahl’s beautiful studies of Merlin’s hands done for The Sword in The Stone.

g) Look, Touch and Draw

If we don’t spend anytime to “experience” hand and arms, we’ll never learn about them fully. Without direct observation, tactile exploration and tangible study of the arms and hands, an artist will never develop comfort with them. Weak hand animation is so prominent in animation today it’s hard to witness — we see mechanical, weightless and even rigid spatula or “box” (closed fist) hands everywhere. It’s so unfortunate since arms and hands have been and continue to be a HUGE part of human expression; hands are beautiful. And while a lot of that has to do with more and more animators mindlessly dependent on copying their video reference, even more of it has to do with not being aware of what we are seeing or understanding what’s happening in the action, and ultimately not implementing any sense of design and creativity with the work. And the easiest way to remedy this is by drawing. Drawing teaches attentive observation and creative design. Go and build a fuller understanding and greater respect of this very important limb because it is, after all, what enables us to make art in the first place. Our human hands really are “thinking hands.”

“The hand is the visible part of the brain.”― Immanuel Kant, Philosopher