No. 23, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 7)

The Finished Scene

It would have been perhaps just as appropriate to label this post Drawings Into Digital: Part 4--The Finished Scene, but for any of you who have been with me in parts 1 through 6 of The Fox On the Man's Head, I didn't want you to miss the payoff.

Here is the scene:

As I said I would, I have added a camera move-- a truck-in near the end--and an eye blink for the man, which I drew directly in Animate Pro and repeated once, to give the man's hold pose a little life.  I also put in a placeholder sound effect for the fox shaking himself out; it is not quite what I want there and I intend to switch it out when I find or record a more appropriate sound, but it will do for now.


This is my last post for 2012, and at this time I want to wish a Happy New Year to all my friends around the world.  I have been pleased this year to have hits not only in North America but from India, Ukraine, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Australia, Israel, Germany, Macedonia and many other countries in every part of the earth.  I thank you for your interest.

For 2013 I promise you many more posts detailing my investigations into the fascinating world of 2D animation, mostly of the hand-drawn variety.  But first I will give you a look at a holiday ecard I was commissioned to do in a very short time--about two weeks--and which forced me to rely not on elaborate full animation but mostly on camerawork instead.



Next: Problem 4: Forty Seconds In Two Weeks (Part 1)  

No.17, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 6)

Head To Tail: : Putting It All Together

Because I have up to four layers here in the pencil test, I took the time to clean up all the drawings in black pencil so you will get the clearest possible view.   Here is the result.

This is about how I want it.  I will add  a couple of eye blinks to the man, but I will do this on the fly, in Toon Boom Animate Pro.  I will also add a camera move at the end, trucking in on the fox as he sits down.

This scene is ready to be inked and painted, and I have decided to go ahead and do that so you can see the final result and get the full production picture of a scene from rough pencil tests through final color.

This will take me a while, so in the meantime I will do a few posts on rare animation books you may never have even heard of.


Next: Animation In Twelve Hard Lessons

No. 16, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 5)

The Breakout of the Shakeout

Before we get back to the tail, I thought you might like a close look at the drawings involved in the fox shaking himself out after being matted down beneath the man's hat.  It involves drawings on both 1's and 2's, and also the use of multiple images.

Here again is a look at this portion of the sequence at full speed.  I remind you again, we are at this point ignoring the tail, which will now be on its own layer.

Now here is another  version of the same drawings, but this time with enough frames exposed for each that you can observe every drawing and its relationship to the others.

Up through drawing 61, the drawings are all exposed on 2's, with 61 itself being held for 4 to stress the anticipation.

Then 55 through 78 are on 1's, after which we return to 2's with 79 through 85.

The drawings with two heads each--66, 69, 72 and 75--are used where the fox whips his head across from one side to the other, spanning a distance where there can be no overlap of forms of the head.  In such a situation, some artifice is usually advised to help the viewer bridge the gap between the widely spaced drawings.  This might be a blur, a smear, a trail of speed lines arcing across, or, as in this case, the use of multiple positions of the moving object on one drawing.   (Note: The trailing heads on drawings 69, 72 and 75 are drawn in red only to make them stand out in the pencil drawings from the blue lines that they cover.)

Note that the head in the drawing following each of these is very closely related to the forward head of the multiple drawing; it is advanced just a little more, and the ears continue forward in a follow-through.

Mine is only one way that this might have been done.  There are many ways of convincingly  animating a quick motion like this, and therein is the joy and intrigue of animation, that although it is possible and useful to work with formulae, one may also invent something new that may be more effective than the old. 



Next: Tail and All: The Full Scene Put Together

No. 15, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 4)

Shakin' It Out

Before doing the rest of the tail, which after all is a follow-through item, I needed to finish all necessary work on the body, lest the tail end up wagging the fox.

The two unresolved elements were: 1) how the fox sits down after shaking himself out, and 2) how his bristly fur settles down, and what kind of timing that called for.

Sitting Down

Previously I had only done key drawings.  Now I added in my inbetweens and got this:

This was good in most respects, but I thought the head turn, where he looks down, should hold longer.  (Remember, we are more-or-less ignoring the tail for now.)

I altered the timing so that he is looking down for 8 frames instead of two.  Here is how that looks:

Much better, and I am now ready to look at it together with the shakeout that comes before.  Also I now add detailed drawings showing his fur, which is all bristled out after the violent shake, settling down as he goes into his hold.

Here is all of that together:

All seems to be working.  Yet to do is the final timing, mostly on its own layer, of the tail itself, and then a test of the entire combined scene.

But first...

Next: An Analysis of the Shakeout Drawings and Timing

No. 14, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 3)

[First, an apology to my readers for the long time between posts.  The fact that I was busy with other things does not mean anything when you feel that the blog you are reading has gone dead.  I intend to try to post at least twice a month, and more often if possible.]



Here I want to work on the beginning of the Fox's unwinding, slowing it down, making it more interesting, and making sure it works well with the little "take" or reaction  of the man to the tail movement.

Therefore I will only be showing the first part of the scene in this post.


Here is the first pass at improving the start of the unwind:

I feel this doesn't work as well as it might because, although I have added some drawings to the tail movement to slow it down from the original, the man's reaction still distracts from the more important movement that I want the viewer to observe (that is, the fox shaking himself out).

What else might be done here?  What else is in our animator's toolbox?   Well, it occurs to me that I could add an anticipation to the tail unwinding.  This would not only make the movement more dramatic and suspenseful, but it would also add the extra time to the movement that I am looking for.

So I erase those few drawings--they are simple ones and not hard to replace--and begin again with a snappy anticipation.

Here is how that looks:

Okay!  I am happy with this; it is exactly the effect I wanted to achieve:
-The man's reaction seems to come at a natural time, as soon as he feels something moving.
-The anticipation works well to draw your attention to the tail, and it lasts long enough that by the time the man has come to rest, the viewer is ready to focus on the main business of the fox unwinding, and he hasn't missed anything important

A note on the anticipation:

I want to draw your attention to something a bit unusual about the anticipation.  Here are the key drawings: 1, 13, 17 and 25, shown with 2 spacing guides.

Note that I use Disney-style numbering, where the drawing numbers are also frame numbers whenever possible.  Thus, if drawing numbers are all odd numbers, it means the drawings are being shot on 2's.  (This technique is best described  by Richard Williams in his book The Animator's Survival Kit.)

Drawings 1 thru 13 comprise the actual anticipation--the movement that telegraphs and often opposes the forward movement.  Nothing unusual here; as the spacing guide shows, we ease out and ease in.

But I have dwg 13 hold for 4 frames (at 24 frames per second), so that the next drawing and number is 17.  Again, there are no drawings between 13 and 17.   This gives the movement its snap.  Also, I am playing with the apparent variable volume you get with hair or fur, where it can appear to be a smaller mass when wet or otherwise compressed.  Therefore 17 shows the hair suddenly all spread out.

The remaining inbetweens that fill in between 17 and 25 are a conventional ease in as the tail fur collapses down again.

Next:  Shakin' It Out

No. 13, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 2)

As stated, the first thing I want to do here is to change the "take" to something more subtle, and rather more amused than alarmed.  Here was my first try at the revision:

Better than before, but it still isn't quite right.  The arm movement overstates the reaction (not to mention that the framing will be a tighter closeup), and the eyes stay closed for too long.

Let's try again, letting the shoulders do the work and making the blink much shorter.  Here it is again:

Good; this is what I was looking for.  He just shows that he is aware that the fox is moving, without being too worried about it.

Next I will re-time the unwinding of the tail, slowing that down and also bringing it to a hold at the end after the body does, as it is seldom good to have everything stop all at once.

Next: The Fox Unwinds

No. 12, Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 1)

First, you will need to understand the story at this point.

The Story: 
The man has arrived home to present 3 things to his wife.  He has already given her the goose and a bag of grain.  But he has concealed his third purchase as a surprise: under his hat, perched atop his head is a live fox.

In problem 2 we saw how he pulled his hat off, using the stagger effect.  Now we see the fox, his ears down and his tail tightly furled around his body, so that the man's wife is not sure what she is seeing.

The Scene:
Closeup.  The fox uncoils his tail and shakes himself out.  The man reacts in a subdued "take" at the movement of the fox.

The First Version:
In my first pass, I had the man reacting with alarm as the fox uncurled.  Here is the pencil test of that:

Pencil Test 1

In fact, the first test had the man waiting until the fox was completely uncurled before he reacted.  This was poor planning, a too literal interpretation of the rule of thumb that the movement of a secondary character can draw the viewer's attention away from the main movement of the primary character.  Often that means to have only one character moving at a time. But I realized it doesn't work well for the man to wait all that time before reacting to the movement of the fox; he should logically react right away.  Therefore as you see above, I have moved his reaction up to the beginning of the movement of the fox.  This is better, but still, it does distract.

What would be a better solution?

In watching the movement of the fox (which I am basically happy with), I realized that it would be more effective to have the tail begin to unwind much more slowly, then time the man's reaction to happen with that.  Thus the man will be at rest (and not distracting us) by the time the fox goes into his more violent movement.

There are two other things I am going to change here.  First, the shot was to be a wide view as you see in Pencil Test 1.  Since planning that, I have had more experience in Toon Boom AnimatePro, and found how easy it is to use a Camera Module.  I decided I wanted a tighter closeup, excluding the wife from the frame, more like this:

The other change is to the man's reaction itself.  Instead of being alarmed by the fox's movement, he should react only a little here, with an expression more of delight than of uncertainty.  Notice that I have the man's head moving very little, because I want the fox to remain fairly stationary.  I will stay with that constraint, mostly moving his shoulders instead of his head, and giving him that more pleased expression.

Next: Problem 3: The Fox On the Man's Head (Part 2)  We fix the man's "take".