Gesture Animation

I thought about this topic as a new direction to my thesis, and it focuses on gesture, and or gesture drawing for animation. Not sure how this would be interlaced throughout the project, but I do find a correlation as gesture relates significantly to emotion. Below is a description followed by an example of gesture animation I found on youtube.

My topic is gesture animation. Gesture drawing is a type of drawing done quickly in life drawing classes where the student must capture the figure's pose and proportion in a rhythmic fashion so as to appear fluid. These quick drawings, on a deeper level, can also capture the feeling or emotion of the pose being displayed. One of the concepts of gesture drawing, is that this preliminary gesture drawing is the foundation for what could be a final rendered drawing. At this stage, the drawing could be created in such a way that it exaggerates the pose at hand, which then exaggerates the feeling or emotion being expressed by the model. The concept to remember is: more exaggeration equals more emotion. An intermediate student having taken a number of life drawing classes would understand this, and I believe that relating this knowledge or experience to the student's task of animating CG characters would help the student at the initial posing and keyframing stage. Before animating a CG character, a animator must plan out the main poses of the animation through various keyframes in the animation. If the student understands that through exaggerated gestures emotion is achieved, then the student will have an easier time achieving emotion in computer generated characters.

Thesis Part I Completion : Moving Forward

I went through the quarter taking a character animation class, in which we engaged in exercises that when taken in sequence would eventually build skill in animating character emotion.

These were the exercises accomplished this quarter and have been posted in this blog:

• bouncing ball
• 2 bouncing balls with differing weights
• drink box
• walk cycle
• run cycle
• pantomime
• hip turn
• one emotion
• gear change - two emotions
• creating a demo reel.

The question I encountered this week, is what should the next exercises be. In my thesis proposal, I had planned to do two major assignments that would be developed next quarter, dialogue with a single character, then dialogue between two characters.

I spoke to the animation instructor about it and he felt the dialogue exercises should be last, and that more should be done before being attempting dialogue. These exercises should be attempted below but in an 11 week it might be difficult to teach this to students. An alternative would be teach and develop a curriculum spanning 2 quarters (22 weeks).

• another gear change assignment of different emotions (2 weeks).
• an animation showing 4 emotions (these two would be blocked in pantomimes in the beginning) 3 weeks.
• a body mechanics animation (ie. a character jumping off of a high place or picking up a heavy object). 1 week
• Pantomime animation with 2 people. (1 week)
• Dialogue animation assignment with 1 person. (2 weeks)
• Dialogue animation assignment with 2 people (not sure if there's time for this one - 2 weeks).

These would be the animation assignments I have slated for next quarter.

As an example, please see Rebecca Perez' demo reel, it features many of the assignments mentioned above and its a good example of what I'm striving for. She's a Disney Animator (perhaps Dori knows her) and she accomplished these exercises through the Animation Mentor class.

http://www.wik-id.com/reb/AM/Class2/A12/ALLanims_sm.mov

and

http://www.wik-id.com/reb/AM/Class1/A12/AM_Class1_Anim_comp_sm.mov

I'm wondering what feels the best to you as far as which assignments to go forward with. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Randolf

Shaun Freeman Site

Animator Shaun Freeman has a nice page full of animation tips and tricks. Definitely worth checking if you'd like to improve your work. Below is a sample of some of the topics he discusses.

http://www.shaunfreeman.com/animating_tips/index.htm

• Using live reference.
• Moving holds
• Animating to the camera
• Animation Flowcharts
• Refing your work (I liked this one a lot)
• Characterization
• Blocking in Dialogue

Thanks for posting Shaun.

Animator Link Update

Just updated the links you see to the right.

These animators have inspired this project. I just sent out general inquiries to all of them to see if they would be available to answer a few questions about their animations.

Lots of fantastic work to the right by artists and animators with "dope fresh" skills.

Enjoy!

Jason Ryan Flip Book LInk

In this demo, you'll see Jason Ryan, animation director for Disney, use a program called Flipbook to create a simple 2D animation. This is much faster and he'll use it for approval. In this video, he demonstrates how he takes the footage generated in Flipbook and Maps it as an image sequence in Maya. Here, he uses the 2D Flipbook footage as reference for a more refined model.

I thought I'd post it as it shows the importance of drawing and 2D animation fundamentals during the creation of a CG animated sequence. Click the link below to see the demo.

Fire it up!

http://www.flipbookpro.com/movies/mayabowlingdemoSTRMED.mov

List of Emotions

Below is a list of common emotions that when animated, will give you a good variety of assignments. To add additional variety, try animating them in different intensity levels from subtle (realistic) to exaggerated (cartoony).

The following emotions are:

• Shyness
• Disgusted
• Fear
• Surprised
• Joy
• Happy
• Anger
• Inquisitiveness
• Sadness

Hooks, Ed. "Acting for Animators". Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 2000.

John Lasseter on Using Tradional Animation Techniques for the Computer

Came across a website that has lots of great advice from John Lasseter of Pixar. In it, he gives great examples on the following:

• Keyframing Tips and Tricks
• The Thinking Character
• Weight and Size
• the Moving Hold
• Emotion (I got to read this one)
• Readability
• Story Tricks

Definitely worth reading if you are an animation student and have not read this yet.

http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/lasseter_s94.htm

Citation:
Lasseter, John. Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation. July 1987. Computer Graphics, pp. 35-44, 21:4. 03 June, 2007.<http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/lasseter_s94.htm
>

Pratt Institute MFA & BFA Animations

http://dda.pratt.edu/gallery.php