Research
Before I can animate I need to understand some of the key principles of animating something to seem heavy. I found this video from AnimSchool which went through and showed examples of each element which I will keep in mind as I animate my weight lift. Things like having a high effort for little effect on the object; managing where my Centre of Gravity (CoG) is; how I anticipate the lift and show the effect the object has on the body will all make it appear as if the object is heavy. How you pose your character, and how they follow arcs will dictate the force.
Then in class we practiced trying to grasp this idea of heavy-ness. Here is a deadlift, where I was able to pick out the key poses, the anticipation in the feet and change of grip in the hands, the slow rise to get the weight up and under the hips ( keeping the CoG close to the character’s CoG which is supported by the feet) and the faster falling as he sets the weight down, I also exaggerated the bend in the weights to really sell the heavy weight. I did struggle with trying to show off the shaking, and thus the effort but I was able to understand the body mechanics a lot better.
Another practice, this time with a different shaped weight and done in Blender. Although I prefer 2D I am slowly practicing 3D animation.
Then I looked at how you could put some storytelling into a weight lift. For this assignment I wanted to try and incorporate perspective in these to challenge myself a bit further. I like how the simple location indicates how the character moves in space, particularly where the anticipation for the throw has her swinging the weight back causing her foot to go back to stabilise her. Then the follow through action of her throw causing her flow with the object shows it is not an easily managed weight and that is what makes it appear HEAVY. I spent a lot of time just picking about the staging and the spacing and timing of the frames.
Creating My animation
For my animation I decided to have a farmer putting a pumpkin on a truck, so it would involve having a weight lift that follows through to weight shifting.
For my references I combined the lift from animated and realistic reference ( looking at how they showed exertion in the frames with shaking knees, sweat drop and staggering the lift from a couple frames). I do really like the animators use of smear frames in this short, and while it isn’t something I am aiming to put in my assignment animation it is something that I will try explore in my own time.
I referenced the shift of weight and the throw from this animation. Looking particularly at feet placement, knee/ankle rotation and how easing and follow-through helps to sell weight of the object and the force of the throw.
I then also practiced my intended movements in my bedroom. I like to really feel the motion of the actions (where I am able to act them out) as it gives me a better understanding of how my body parts are moving and how, and then I can record myself doing them to see how they move. This also helps me decide if certain motions are possible, before trying to implement a bit of exaggeration for appeal once I translate it to Toon Boom.
I started by roughly putting down some keys with a really basic figure. This was pretty challenging as I was trying to imagine all of this in a 3D environment, but using simple shapes and studying my reference I was able to move the character through the scene. I don’t think my perspective is entirely correct here, but I am trying to push myself out of my comfort zone so that is to be expected.
I then started to add on more frames, still fiddling with the timing and spacing of the frames so that I could recreate the feeling of weight. I really liked the puffed cheeks from one of my references so you can see that I have started to plan for that movement as well.
I then added my repositioning and failed lift attempt, and I was caught between two versions of this, so I exported both out and got some feedback from Aodhan on them. Personally I think it would make more sense for the reposition to be after the failed lift, but I think the first one has a better flow to it.
I decided to go along with what Aodhan liked, since I had no preference. I finished up the rough plan and then started to add more form and personality onto the skeleton roughs. This actually helped me to visualise how my character needed to move in the 3D space and let me work on making the character feel grounded in the environment. This was when I needed to remind myself of the animation principles, particularly follow-through, anticipation, spacing, etc , to make sure I could get a complex character movement looking appealing. I decided to create a little farmer animal, letting me get some nice secondary action and add context to the prompt of just lifting a heavy weight.
Once I was happy with the skeleton I decided to add some form to the character. This was a bit tricky but I managed to rough out the forms of the head, add clothes start adding on facial expressions. I also added in my breakdowns and some tweens before taking a step back and look at the timing of things and if I was conveying the weight correctly.
The next areas which I had some struggle with were showing some extra exertion on the lift and the timing on the throw. I wanted to add some shake on the lift, but when I tried to follow my reference it looked a bit too choppy, but the sweat seemed to work ok (according to my peers), so I will need to have some more experiments on this. The throw, despite some adjusting like giving another anticipation frame was still looking off for me so this also needs some more work. I did like how the tail supplemented the characters actions. I will be honest and say that I am not happy with how this is turning out, I think I bit off more than I could chew for this assignment but I am identifying how I should approach and think while I work on larger more complex actions.
I thought the throw was looking too slow for the motion I wanted to achieve. This had been on fours and twos mainly so it was just a matter of adding some tweens and adjusting the frames, after acting out the motion I decided to have the movement ease out a lot and then ease in a bit to the landing. Here I was able to identify one of my biggest hurdles when I animate, I have the tendency to make things slower than they should be so throughout the assignment I will try and improve on this! You can see the timing chart I used to help visualise the added/changed keys on the throw.
Then I had to fix up the tail animation on the throw as well as the arm when he lands (after scrubbing through I realised this snapped into place bluntly, so I made this squash down on impact), relatively easy adjustments as I just keep thinking in arcs and trying to think of how the momentum was working for each part.
Finally I added my in-betweens on the lift, this really helped me see that my timing actually worked, as without these I was really struggling and thinking something looked off. I did experiment with adding some shake in the knees and legs as they rose like in my reference, but it just didn’t match the rest of my animation and added this extra noise that made it too messy. I did this for the pumpkin as well, including removing the overlapping lines with the truck to better convey the depth of the scene. I then sent this to Alec for feedback. I was surprised to hear that he didn’t have much to critique, he said he thought my timing and spacing was pretty nice and that it was okay that it was sketchy, and any inconsistencies I could just clean up after for my portfolio.
After making some small adjustments this was when I decided to leave it as done for this assignment.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the progress that I have made with knowing how to convey weight in animation, I really enjoyed researching to understand the movement and was able to work from reference to create something new because I understood the mechanics behind the actions. I found myself thinking a lot more consciously about the animation principles and how I could use these to help me convey weight, through posing and timing (slow on the lift, get the weight under the hips and fast on dropping object/ throwing), and then transferring that weight with the body moving in arcs. Using Toon Boom also wasn’t that difficult compared to my usual animating software, so I am happy to have broken out of my comfort zone and will continue to do so to improve.
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