Chris Webster
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| Animation The Mechanics Of Motion |
The following deserve not only my very modest and humble
acknowledgement, but the acknowledgement and praise of all those who practise and strive to further the art of animation. They are truly giants on whose shoulders we stand so shakily. We should all thank: Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge for their enquiring minds and being such colourful characters. Emile Reynaud for being such a tragic and heroic pioneer of the medium. George Melies and the magic he brought to all our lives. His work remains fresh and inspiring. That great Yorkshireman J.S. Blackton for the first ever animated film. Willis O’Brian for making us laugh, cry and gasp in awe at the sheer brilliance of his work. Yes, I actually cried when King Kong died. Walt Disney and all those great guys at the studio for their part in raising the bar and turning animation into a craft and an art we can all be proud of. We owe a debt to Chuck Jones not only for Bugs and Daffy, but for so much more. Tex Avery for simply being Tex Avery and a particular brand of magnificent madness. John Halas and Harold Whitaker for Timing for Animation; I’ll bet most of us
have a copy of this great book (if you don’t own it – buy it NOW!). To Bob Godfrey for inspiring and entertaining my generation with his zaniness. To Ray Harryhausen for making us believe in fighting skeletons and for taking animation to stunning new heights. More recently a big thanks to Richard
Williams for all his great work, not just on the screen but through his teaching. To John Canemaker for his brilliant work as a teacher, historian and animator. To John Lasseter for taking the principles of these great animators into the twenty-first century. Last of all, the supreme tribute must go to the greatest animation god of all, Winsor McCay. Words are not enough.
My personal thanks must go to a number of people who have helped and encouraged me in my life as an animator. Perhaps the greatest of all of these is Graham Griffiths, a good teacher, a wonderful person and a great friend, and not a bad animator either. I thank Peter Hodges for all his encouragement and support in my development as a teacher. I need to thank my teachers Derek Barret and Dave Pearce, who helped me to progress as a designer and encouraged me to take up animation. When I entered the industry I had two more great animation teachers, very patient, tolerant and supportive: Chris Fenna and Les Orton. Thanks guys. Thanks to fellow Beefheart fan Mike Price for all the banter. Thanks to Nicola Marlborough for being just about the best assistant anyone could have and to Duncan Harris for being one of the worst assistants but one of the best friends you could hope to have.
I thank Robin Lyons for his role as producer and promoter of the Welsh animation scene. Thanks to Chris Grace as commissioning editor at S4C, without whom I (and a lot of other people too, let’s not forget this folks) would not have had the opportunities to develop as animators. Thanks to Mark Taylor at A Productions for all the times he has taken the mickey over the years. Thanks to Ceri Griffin (sadly no longer with us) and his wife Jude for providing proof that you can be good people and get on in business. To Clennal for all the tall tales of Africa and to Tony Barnes for all the lunacy. To Ric Villeneuve for being Canadian. A big thanks to Mike Milne and the animation crew at Framestore for tolerating me at their studios. A special thanks to Gerald Emanuel for the phone call that started all of this. Thanks to Rob Hamer and all the staff at the Glamorgan Centre for Art and Design Technology, who gave me the opportunity to develop as a teacher. Thanks to all the new friends I have made in the last couple of years at UWE and the Bristol School of Animation, especially Arril Johnson, Kari Nygarrd, Andy, Sophie Harbour,
Mark Hewis, John Parry, Dominic Grant and particularly Amanda Wood.
Thanks to Susannah Shaw at Animation Exeter for the helpful contributions to this book.
A big thank you to all my clients over the years, without whom I would never have been able to afford my extravagant lifestyle (yeah, right) or be able to learn and practise my craft. To Ken for always being there over all these years to share a few laughs and a few beers. I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to my family, for their support, understanding, patience and love over many long years. My wife Pauline, my son Marc, my daughter Rachel and my second son Richard have allowed me to indulge myself in pursuing this strange activity called animation when I should really have been doing more grown-up things. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to all at Focal Press, but especially Marie Hooper and Georgia Kennedy for all the support over a very, very long period and showing incredible patience. For pushing, shoving, cajoling and bullying me, and all with caring even loving heart, quite a feat really. Thanks to Mary Murphy, Gareth Cavanagh and Aurelie Blard-Quintard for help with some of the images for this book. And last of all, but to whom great thanks must go. I would like to sincerely thank all of my hundreds of students, both past and present, that I have had the pleasure to teach over the years and from whom I have learned and continue to learn so much. I can truly say that I am extremely proud to have known you all (well, most of you) and count myself truly privileged to have taught you. I pray that I can continue to pass on a passion for and a deeper understanding of our art form that I have acquired through this experience to generations of animators to come. Thank you, this book is for you.
I know I have forgotten to mention some people and to some of those I apologize (or not), but you know which one you will be, don’t you?
Chris Webster
Introduction – Walking with Animators
In the summer of 1997 I had a real problem.
I had just come back from an exhausting trip to SIGGRAPH
(the annual CGI conference held by the Association for
Computing Machinery in Los Angeles) where I had hoped to
find a crew of talented young animators for an exciting new
project that I was certain would change the lives of everyone involved with it.
After a gruelling week in which my colleagues and I talked to
219 budding computer animators, we had to admit defeat.
Not one of the young hopefuls had any real animation on
their showreels – and there was hardly an animal to be seen
in all that work. To be brutally honest, most of the so-called
animation on the reels was not animation at all, but what
we referred to in those days as ‘flying logos and dancing
products’ – the main thrust of commercial digital animation at the time.
In the mid-90s it seemed that there was no communication
between the very different worlds of traditional drawn
animation and its electronic cousin, computer animation. A
few traditional animators had crossed the great divide
between paper and pixels – John Lasseter at Pixar was perhaps
the most notable – and the newly-fledged CG animation
department at Industrial Light and Magic had just produced
about 12 minutes of computer animated creatures that had
taken the world by storm.
In fact it was precisely that film – Jurassic Park – that had
inspired Tim Haines, then a producer for the BBC Science
series Horizon, that the time had finally come when an idea
he’d nurtured for many years might finally see the light of day.
He wanted to make a six-part television wildlife documentary
featuring photorealistic dinosaurs – a project that would need
three hours of computer animation, at a far higher standard
than had yet been achieved for any television project.
At first I had agreed – I was sure it was in the realms of
possibility – but my experience in California was now starting
to give me doubts. I was preparing myself to break the bad
news to the BBC that perhaps this project was too ambitious
for the new medium of digital animation.
As a last resort I posted an email to a CGI user group,
appealing for animators, and to my surprise I had several
worthwhile replies from people whose reels showed real
promise. Two of them were from students at The Glamorgan
Centre for Art and Design Technology in Wales, and the
animation was impressive – far better than the work I had
seen from students previously – so I travelled to Wales to see
the college and meet the people responsible.
That’s how I met Chris Webster – an irrepressibly goodhumoured
and lively individual whose enthusiasm obviously
inspired all the people around him. He was running a degree
course in which students learned all aspects of animation –
drawn, stop-frame and digital – over a 3-year period. Finally,
I had met someone who was bridging the gap between the
pencil and the keyboard – and I was extremely impressed by
his results. I explained to Chris my concern about whether
my young team could achieve the sort of animation quality
demanded by such an ambitious project – but Chris had no
such doubts. He persuaded me that we had all the makings
of a top animation crew and that we could forge a team of
young British animators that would be the equal of any in the world.
He volunteered to give extra coaching to our animation team –
both the students and experienced animators alike – to give
everyone a firm grounding in the principles of traditional
animation, and to show them how to adapt these for realistic creature movement.
Luckily for me, I accepted his offer. So, once a week for
several months, Chris got on the train from Wales to London,
and spent the day with the newly-formed animation team in a
makeshift lecture theatre (our client meeting room), breaking
new ground and re-designing the traditional tools of
animation for the demands of the digital age. He also spent
hours in individual sessions with the animators, explaining the
relevance of animation techniques to the particular shots they were working on.
The results of his work speak for themselves. When Walking
with Dinosaurs went on air after an eighteen-month
production schedule, it was an immediate international
success, and has now been seen by more than 400 million
people worldwide. The young team that he taught are now
amongst the most respected in the profession, working as
leading animators in countries as far apart as California
and New Zealand, on such features as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Thank you, Chris, for having the confidence in our young
talent and for sharing your enthusiasm and skill with them –
and thank you for spreading the word even further with the
publication of this book. I’m confident that all its readers will
be bowled over by your mastery of the animator’s craft – as I was, and still am.
Mike Milne
Director of Computer Animation,
Framestore CFC
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Product details
Price
|
|
|---|---|
File Size
| 11,028 KB |
Pages
|
280 p |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 0 240 51666 4 |
Copyright
| 2005 Chris Webster |
Table of Contents
Foreword ..................................................................... ix
Preface ........................................................................ x
Introduction – Walking with Animators ............................ xiv
Acknowledgements ....................................................... xvii
Chapter 1 Basic Principles .................................. 1
Before we begin ............................................................ 3
Timing in animation ....................................................... 4
Animation Exercise 1.1 – Flip Book ............................. 8
Laws of motion ............................................................. 14
Squash and stretch........................................................ 18
Pose-to-pose and straight-ahead.................................... 24
Keys and inbetweens ..................................................... 27
Animation Exercise 1.2 – Bouncing Balls..................... 32
Overlapping action, follow-through and drag ................. 35
Overlapping Action Case Study 1 – Lifting
a Weight ................................................................ 41
Overlapping Action Case Study 2 – Getting
Out of a Chair ....................................................... 44
Questions to Ask Yourself about Overlapping
Action, Follow-through and Drag ............................. 49
Arcs and curves, and line of action................................. 50
Cycle animation ........................................................... 55
Animation Exercise 1.3 – Flag Cycle........................... 58
Animation Exercise 1.4 – Aeroplane Cycle .................. 64
Chapter 2 Figurative Animation ....................... 67
Before we begin ........................................................... 69
The four ‘A’s of animation .............................................. 69
Walks and runs............................................................. 72
Animation Exercise 2.1 – Basic Walk Cycle ................. 78
Animation Exercise 2.2 – Basic Run Cycle ................... 89
Weight and balance...................................................... 89
Questions to Ask Yourself about Weight and
Balance ................................................................. 98
Anticipation.................................................................. 98
Chapter 3 Acting .............................................. 105
Before we begin ......................................................... 107
Characterization......................................................... 109
Temperament and pace .............................................. 115
Animation Exercise 3.1 – Temperament and
Pace.................................................................... 117
Animation Exercise 3.2 – Character Types/
Two Sacks............................................................ 119
Character interaction .................................................. 121
Animation Exercise 3.3 – Character Interaction ......... 123
Planning a scene ........................................................ 124
Props and costume ..................................................... 125
Questions to Ask Yourself about Acting
in Animation ........................................................ 126
Chapter 4 Design............................................. 129
Before we begin ......................................................... 131
Storyboards................................................................ 133
Animatics................................................................... 139
Character design........................................................ 142
Design criteria............................................................ 152
Questions to Ask Yourself about Design.................... 154
Chapter 5 Animals in Motion........................... 155
Before we begin........................................................ 157
Four legs ................................................................... 158
Animation Exercise 5.1 – Basic Walk Cycle ............... 163
Animation Exercise 5.2 – Basic Run Cycle................. 167
Animation Exercise 5.3 – Advanced Action ............... 167
Questions to Ask Yourself about a Four-legged
Animal in Motion.................................................. 168
Birds in flight.............................................................. 168
Animation Exercise 5.4 – Basic Flight Cycle .............. 171
Animation Exercise 5.5 – Take-off and Landing ......... 176
Questions to Ask Yourself about Birds in Flight .......... 177
Chapter 6 Sound Synchronization ................... 179
Before we begin ......................................................... 181
Bar charts .................................................................. 182
Delivering dialogue and carrying narrative.................... 189
Lip synchronization ..................................................... 189
Animation Exercise 6.1 – Lip-sync ............................ 197
Animation Exercise 6.2 – Sound Synchronization ....... 198
Questions to Ask Yourself about Sound
Synchronization .................................................... 199
Chapter 7 Technical......................................... 201
Before we begin ......................................................... 203
Dope sheets............................................................... 203
Questions to Ask Yourself about Dope
Sheets ................................................................. 219
Line tests.................................................................... 220
Layouts and field guides.............................................. 221
Questions to Ask Yourself about Layouts ................... 226
Formats ..................................................................... 226
Production processes .................................................. 229
Questions to Ask Yourself about Production
Management ....................................................... 236
Appendices ....................................................... 237
Appendix 1: Glossary ................................................. 239
Appendix 2: Further reading ........................................ 245
Appendix 3: Further viewing ........................................ 249
Appendix 4: Useful contacts ........................................ 251
Index ......................................................................... 253
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