The Principles of Animation
Building blocks that I ignored because, well, because I did.
Tutorial available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqEmour_IEs
Squash and Stretch
Small mid-action adaptations to a shape that give provide realistic characteristics. I've tried to incorporate many of these in the past, but this tutorial really helped to highlight the importance of things showing/ emphasising speed, especially the small wobble at the end as the square resumes its shape.
Another thing I learned about here was that the speed graph I've been using has often actually been a value graph - they seem to do similar things, but the small differences had a massive impact with the rotation of this square, so I learned a lot about using the graph to accomplish this effect.
Anticipation
Pre-action movement that draws the viewers eye, lets them know where the action is going to be, and gives a bit more realism to the movement taking place.
I also used this example to play with slowing objects down. I'll get to over-lapping later, but I want to improve my work with speed in terms of boosting off when movement starts and slowing down to a stop at the end. This is the beginning of that improvement.
Tutorial available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM3J2rzubj8
Staging
Staging is all about ensuring the audience is looking at the right thing on the screen. Where anticipation tells the audience that something is about to happen, staging lets the audience know which object on the screen should be the focus of their attention.
Typing that out, they sound very similar, but I suppose that's similar to my Squash and Stretch animation utilising some anticipation and some over-lapping: these principles all must work together to be effective. I wonder if there are any of these example animations I can make that don't involve another principle.
I got distracted playing with the effects and movement in this, I'll try to hold back on that in future.
After a chat with Rebecca I established that I was trying to do a too much with this video. Rather than trying to make the camera do too much, I should take my time with the movements and let it zoom and pan at the same time, rather than jerkily do one after the other.
Slow in and Slow Out
This is the semi-obvious fact that when something moves it takes time to get up to speed and time to slow back down again - nothing other than a machine can start at great speed then stop instantly. In After Effects this is dealt with through Easy Ease, speed graphs and value graphs.
I've been playing with Easy Ease for ages, trying not to rely on its automatic settings and wanting to put my stamp on it by playing around the Bézier curves and handles. I've not always been successful but my stuff's usually turned out ok. For my example I chose to work with a pendulum as it has a constantly varying rate of speed. I regretted this choice fairly quickly, but I managed to learn a lot through the process.
Tutorial available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-_m1Nq8WM
My main issue was that the first pendulum (blue) was very smooth (which I liked), but as it went back to a constant height each time it gave the impression of being controlled. It was very deliberate but for a first attempt I didn't mind it at all.
Example 2, the red pendulum, moved a lot more robotically. I was happy that it lost momentum over time and eventually came to rest at the bottom (I applied the overlap technique from my Squash and Stretch tutorial here). It was much more timely and the rate at which it slowed pleased me greatly.
The final example (yellow) is the one I'm happiest with - it swings smoothly, it loses momentum over time and looks like the whole process is very natural. I took long time between examples measuring curves, frames and timings, some of which felt very productive, but when it came down to it I just had to eyeball each curve in comparison to the previous one. If I was a cleverer man, I could probably work out the maths of each curve and apply that to make my process quicker, but I'm proud of where I reached with my neanderthal technique for now.
My attempt at mathematically working out the timings, followed by the three speed graphs that I worked on. Even by looking at these it's clear that the red example is, while not erratic, certainly more jumpy than I wanted. The yellow's smooth curves that calm over time as they lessen looks like the nicest shape, and it makes sense that it's the graph for the nicest pendulum.
Bouncing Ball
I feel like bouncing balls are the go-to example for animation, so it's about time I made one. I followed the tutorial but felt confident enough to adapt parts of it, and have added a wee line in to show that the ball is rolling. It was fun to bring in some squashing and squeezing, but I really enjoyed learning about how to make the ball slow down to a stop, rather than having a blunt stop or just rolling off the screen.
I've added a tail and it's super fun. It doesn't look natural at all, and to be fair, I haven't finished the tutorial yet, but I wanted to mark this point as it was mostly done through path manipulation, which is something I've played with before so it's nice that I'm getting to apply a previous skill to add into this learning journey.
Tutorial Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBzPL1J19c8&t=99s
It only took a few more changes to make this a little more natural:
- easy eased the tail movements (haven't speed-graphed them at all, there are loads of keyframes and for this purpose I feel like I don't need to focus on each tiny detail (I may be proven wrong on this)).
- worked on length (the tail was growing and shrinking inexplicably, hopefully I've given it a more natural length that grows and shrinks accordingly with the movement).
- the end is not perfect (I'm trying to see things from a spectator's eyes, and not pick apart flaws that I know are present).