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.

No. 9, Problem 2: A Staggering Solution (Part 2)

I am now going to be doing my pencil tests in color and with as high a resolution as I can get.  I think once they are compressed for the web they will look much more clear than they have until now.

As promised, here is the test without the drawings staggered but just used in sequential order:

As you can see, the animation actually works quite well without even resorting to the stagger effect.  The strain of effort and the sudden release are all there already.  Note that for this version,  all the drawings that will be staggered I exposed on 2's, whereas when I show you the staggered version in the next post, they will be on 1's.  The screen time is almost exactly the same in each case.

Next: The Staggering Conclusion to Problem 2

No. 8, Problem 2: A Staggering Solution (Part 1)

The Stagger effect is one of those gimmicks developed in Hollywood and used at Disney, Warners, MGM, and probably other places as well. It's first real use is probably not known.   It is a way of getting a shuddering or vibrating sense  of extreme tension into an animation, or it is used to illustrate fright or some other emotion where a progressive vibration is called for.  The technique is definitely a gimmick and dependent on the use of a formula, though as in the cartoon Take, which involves an anticipation and then some extreme distortion to express surprise or fright, the possible variations are endless.

But how many animators have simply never been called upon to do a Stagger, or have never even had a scene where a Stagger was a possible solution?  Well I am in that category, and so in my film The Crossing, when I devised a scene where a character must remove his hat dramatically,  I was delighted to realize that a good Stagger was exactly the right solution to the problem.

You begin by animating one or sometimes two sets of drawings in a smooth moving hold, which is ordinarily a way of maintaining life by moving from an extreme pose to a similar but even more extreme pose.  Then--and here is the gimmicky part-- you shoot the drawings out of order, but in a calculated way, to get the stagger effect.

Let's now look at my example.

Drawing 409--first frame of the scene

The setup is that the man has concealed something under his hat which he wants to present as a surprise to his wife (a live fox).  He has already tried twice to get his hat off with a little tugging, without success.  Above, he takes hold of the hat brim for a final effort.

Drawing 421--he gets set

In 421, the anticipation, he sets himself with grim determination.

Drawing 437--first drawing of the stagger.

Drawing 437 shows him at the point where he has already expended considerable effort, but whereas in his previous attempts he stopped to regroup, now he means to continue to the end.  The Stagger begins with this drawing.  Note that although the drawing numbers 437 to 453 on the spacing chart indicate exposure on 2's (exposing 2 frames per drawing), the Stagger will actually be exposed on 1's; when I did the drawings I was experimenting to see if I could bring it off on 2's, but it wasn't effective.

Drawing 453--last drawing of the stagger.

By 453 he has stretched everything to the breaking point; something's got to give!  The hat brim will tear or his fingernails will be pulled out or he will collapse with apoplexy--I plan to add a gradual red flush to his face color as this goes on.  Note that if this were not to be exposed as a Stagger, then drawings 437 to 453 would simply be considered a moving hold.

Drawing 455--the next drawing.

Yes, drawing 455 is the very next drawing after the one above; sometimes, an extreme change like this can work very well, as Eric Goldberg demonstrates so well in his book ("Character Animation Crash Course").  As the man had hoped, it was the hat that came off.  Suddenly unrestrained, his arms shoot up, his head jerks down into his chest, his knees (unseen) bend and bring his hips down, leaving his belly to hang for an instant where it was, a follow-through item.

Drawing 475--recovery and hold.

By drawing 475, the man has recovered from the violent movement, and he holds here for 18 frames as he assesses the situation.  I will be adding a blink when I get to my digital processing in Animate Pro.

Drawing 503--last drawing of the scene.

And finally, here is the last drawing of the scene, where we cut in mid motion to a wider shot of both the man and his wife and he continues sweeping off his hat for her, revealing the tightly furled fox upon his head.


Next: For Comparison, Testing the Scene Without the Stagger Effect

No. 7, Problem 1: Fixing a Bad Drawing (Part 5): All the Bells and Whistles

Hello again, and I want to thank my Followers for staying with me.  Here is the long-promised version of our scene--or, rather, our female character and her goose--being thrown off balance and recovering:

As you can see, we have fixed the notorious bad drawing, with all that that entailed, and also improved the animation of the goose.  (Notice the taped-on extensions to the animation paper at the left of the screen, giving the goose room to maneuver.)  The addition of the skirt animation helps a lot, but it interestingly softens the effect of her leg kicking out because the movement brings the skirt out with it.  I tried another version where the skirt stays behind but found I was getting all involved in complex wrinkles and folds; in the end I found it simpler and more elegant to let the fabric behave as you see here.

Let's compare it with the original version for contrast:

Next:  My List of 10 Best Historical Animation Books.

No. 6, My 10 Favorite Animation Instruction Books

Let me first say that though I do have an extensive library of animation books in English (over 120), there are some that I don't own and have not even had a chance to examine.  But lists like this are inevitably subjective, and so these are the ones that have proven most valuable to me,  in chronological order and with a brief explanation of why each book was selected:

1.  Cartoon Animation, by Preston Blair. c1950, 1980
I recommend the 1994 edition which combines Blair's two famous large-format books into one, with additional new material.  Lushly illustrated with late 40's-style Hollywood character design and many beautiful examples of character animation often taken directly from films on which he had worked, the book is inspiring and clearly laid out. 

2.  Illusion of Life, by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. 1981
This is a textbook disguised as a coffee table book, and though its arrangement is historical and quite unsystematic in terms of instruction, the lessons are in there if you watch for them, and they are pure gold.  Frank and Ollie were college chums, neighbors, partners in everything throughout their lives, and they packed this book with everything they thought might be helpful from their particular viewpoint as veterans of the Disney studio from the mid 1930's until their retirement in the 70's.

3. The Animator's Workbook, by Tony White. 1986
A veteran of Richard Williams' London studio, Tony White actually got many techniques and principles into book form years ahead of Williams, and he included other tips and tricks I have encountered nowhere else.

4. Animation from Script to Screen, by Shamus Culhane.  1988
Culhane was a talented animator and director who worked at Disney, Warner Bros, Fleischer and Lantz before becoming an independent producer, and he  tried to put everything he knew into this book, which unfortunately suffers from a small format that does not do justice to the illustrations.

5.  The Art of Hercules,  by Stephen Rebello and Jane Healey. 1997
I have several Art of This, Art of That books, but this one I find myself going back to again and again. The process of character design that is recorded here, beginning with the bizarre yet graceful imagery of Gerald Scarfe and working toward a style that was both distinctive and workable in animation, is a fascinating journey.  Also includes a lot of animation drawings, both cleanup and rough, which are always a delight to me.

6.  The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams. 2001
Already a designer and draftsman of stature, the author became obsessed with learning animation  and hired a number of great Hollywood veteran animators to work on his films and, along the way, to teach him and his staff what they knew.  His book is an exhaustive distillation of all that lore, plus additional material from his own experience.

7. Prepare to Board, by Nancy Beiman. 2007
Just when I had concluded there was nothing more to be said, this former Disney animator showed me how wrong I was with not just one but two books full of lore, advice and lucid instruction. This one is about effective storyboarding rather than animation as such, yet the two disciplines are inextricably related, and for the independent animator, Prepare to Board is a must-have.

8. Character Animation Crash Course, by Eric Goldberg.  2008
By the animator of the Genie in Alladin and Phil in Hercules, this book is most notable for its demonstrations of the power of the breakdown drawing and also the "punch" that can be imparted to a movement with sudden transitions.  Includes a DVD illustrating every example in the book.

9.  Drawn to Life, vols. 1 & 2, by Walt Stanchfield, edited by Don Hahn. 2009
Compilation of illustrated lecture notes from gesture drawing classes given by Stanchfield at the Disney studio over a 20 year period.  I use these books as a kind of daily devotional, reading only one or two entries a day.

10. Animated Performance, by Nancy Beiman.  2010
Ms. Beiman's second book goes where no author has gone before in terms of laying out the planning behind great animation, and her solid teaching skills combine here with deep knowledge of feature animation to produce a volume full of insight and also some facts I have found nowhere else, such as the difference between a Scene and a Sequence. 

No. 5, Problem 1: Fixing a Bad Drawing (Part 4)

Now here is the redrawn anticipation, together with the recovery:

Of course, strictly speaking this is not an anticipation; it is an outside force (the weight and momentum of the goose) throwing the character out of balance.  But in many ways it is like the windup of a baseball pitcher, so it is similar to an anticipation before a major action.

Generally I think it works, so now I will move on to the addition of the detail on the goose, the movement of its wings and neck, and also add in some secondary and follow-through animation showing the woman's dress.  That post will be entitled All the Bells and Whistles.  But it will take me some time to prepare (I really am doing this stuff between postings) and I am about to start a contract job doing animation for a new video game.  Therefore my next post will be a top 10 list of books I consider essential for the 2D animator, which ought to be of interest to cgi animators as well.

Next: Top 10 Instruction Books on Hand Drawn Animation

No.4, Problem 1: Fixing a Bad Drawing (Part 3)

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Although I am now a believer in serious thumbnail planning, I admit that I have always had difficulty judging the timing of an animation with only key drawings to work with in the pencil test.  Suppose you have a character throwing a ball.  You make a drawing each for the starting pose, the anticipation, the pitch, the recovery and the ending pose.  In the pencil test you expose each drawing for its own duration, plus that of all the anticipated drawings between it and the next pose.  Thus, if you have decided that drawing 1 is an 8 frame hold and then there are 8 more frames of movement until you get to drawing 2, you will expose drawing one for 16 frames.  I can imagine this in my head and time out the spacing with a stopwatch, but to string the 5 drawings together in a pencil test and try to decide from that whether it is going to work, is hard for me.  Still, in my time I have done a lot of animation where I did not give the poses enough time to "read", so I am going to work with this a while and maybe I will get it.

Here is a pencil test using the same thumbnails as shown in Part 2.

 

This pencil test omits the first of the seven poses,

 and you can see that it was done on the upper edges

 of the original drawings.

I think now the poses do read, and so I feel I can proceed to full-size animation drawing now and add more nuance.  Here is the first test with all inbetweens present:

There are 18 drawings here.  The recovery is fine at the end, but the leg comes down too quickly, throwing away the comic effect.  I decide to add 3 more drawings, which will also serve nicely to slow the acceleration of the goose, playing up its weight and inertia.

Here is the new test, now with 21 drawings:

Alright, this all seems to be working well.  One of the new drawings was a single exposure of the kickout, a hyper exagerrated drawing with no drawings between it and the previous extreme.  Everything else here is on 2's.  Here is that drawing in blue and the one following in orange:

Next:  The Anticipation Revisited