Ok, so I've written a lot about poses and how important they are and haven't been discussing animation directly. So let's break this inertia and get started! :-)
This will be a short post to discuss the main stages of animation. What you saw up there was my first animation from 2010 (yay!). So how did I get there?
First I chose the theme for the animation: a magician that gets very confident after putting on his hat and that notices he's being followed by a creature and performs a magic trick on it. Then I had to gather reference for it and, of course, I acted it out so it was just what I wanted it to be.
Next, thumbnailing. I went through the reference video frame by frame, identifying the key poses. This really helps organize the main ideas of the shot, chose the key poses and define the timing roughly. The first page of the planning can be seen below.
As you can see, it's not very elaborate, but helped guide me through the process. It makes the next step a lot easier. Now we start the software and get the main poses in there. This is the blocking stage. No worries about having a smooth animation, about breakdowns or in-betweens. But get the timing right. Here's my blocking:
And now...I added the breakdowns, adjusted the tangents, corrected some poses and incorporated the comments my mentor (and peers) gave me. Oh, actually, each step incorporates the critique I got on the one before. This stage is called blocking plus.
Ok, I know this was extremely superficial, but that's why I called it a simple introduction to the animation process. :-)
As mentioned in an earlier post, strong poses are very important for the audience to read what's going on with the character.
Planning usually plays a fundamental role there. “Usually“ because I bet there are some that can skip this part and reach great results like grandmas that don't need a recipe to cook those fabulous meals :-) .
Of course we need to plan animations too...but, I'll just take one step at a time and discuss planning of poses now. To keep things illustrated as we move along, we'll use the theme balance :-)
Reference
A good start is gathering reference, taking into account the theme you're working on. Search google images, reference sites (like http://www.gettyimages.com/), Eadweard Muybridge's books and also look around you, what do people do to express the feeling you want to transmit? Depending on the amount of time available, also check out movies or youtube videos. And, of course...see what YOU would do. That's a model that will always help you and even if you won't always be able to do what you have in mind, most of the times it helps. :-) Take pictures and test different ideas.
How would we look for reference if the theme is balance? Dances, slacklining, surfing, circus acts, yoga, ...there are lots of possible keywords to find adequate poses. Sometimes you also find poses that may be of use for a future project.
Sketching
After you've got plenty of reference, select a few poses that please you or seem more apropriate for what you're working on. Make a few sketches. You don't need to draw all the details, just a skelleton suffices really. Make sure you have the hips and shoulder rotations in there.
Check it for physical principles...is there balance? Is the weight well distributed? Is there a clear line of action in it? These are the important points, you don't need to be a wonderful drawer to make clear sketches (take a look at mine and you'll know what I mean ;-) )
To draw your sketches or evaluate your poses, it sometimes helps observing the negative space: if there's an empty area between the arm and the body, how much space is there between the legs. Sometimes it helps seing negative if you've looked for too long at something for example.
See if you can make it more interesting...can you push it a bit more? Wouldn't it be nice to add some exaggeration to it? In the end, your character will probably not look exactly like the reference you chose because maybe his body is a lot different or maybe he would look nicer if you push the pose a bit more.
Get feedback! Other people will have a fresher pair of eyes and are likely to help you out a lot with that :-)
Posing
Now let's start posing! You'll follow the reference you've got, but since your character is 3D, you can always chose the best angle of your pose. Take a look at the silhouette, is it readable? Do you have a clear view of what's going on with the legs, arms, body?
If you can understand roughly what's going on only by looking at the silhouette, you're on the right track! Always be sure the camera angle you chose lets you see the line of action - can you draw a nice clean line through the character's body. More about line of action here.
So here's my pose after all these steps:
By the way, the pose I chose comes from one of my favorite videos on youtube, so I thought I'd just share it with you...it's Polina Semionova dancing to Herbert Grönemeyer's Letzter Tag, really beautiful :-)
