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For People Crazy About 2D Animation!

Acme Punched! is for people crazy about 2D animation. It may be enjoyed by beginners and others, but it is aimed at animators who know already something about the process of animation and the basics of character animation. In large part, it will attempt to provide a deep look into the problem solving that goes on in my head as I work out a scene, often in step-by-step posts that I will sometimes enter in "real time", without knowing in advance what the outcome will be. Mistakes and false starts will not only be included but emphasized, so that the creative process of animation will be portrayed realistically. And, while my own bias is for 2D drawn animation, many of the effects and principles discussed here can apply to CGI 3D animation as well. I hope the blog will prove useful and instructive for all.

-Jim Bradrick

Friday, July 20, 2012

No. 10, Problem 2: A Staggering Solution (Part 3)

Now let's take a look at the scene with the Stagger in place:

You can see how shooting those drawings out of order, in this very controlled way, produces the trembling effect that I wanted here.

Here is exactly how the drawings were staggered.  There were 9 drawings to the stagger, 437 thru 453 (using odd numbers only.)  For clarity, let's give them the letters A thru I instead.  For the smooth version, shown in Part 2, they were of course shot straight through: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I, and exposed on 2's. 

But staggered as you see here, and exposed on 1's, it goes like this: A-B-A-C-B-D-C-E-D-F-E-G-F-H-G-I-H.  That's 17 frames as compared to 18 frames in the smooth progression, so the screen time is almost the same.  The basic idea to this stagger is: advance two letters, then go back one; advance two letters, then go back one.  Thus you progress steadily on to the end.

In my opinion the stagger adds an extra element of effort to the action, and was well worth doing.

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