"Facing the Tub"

Things to keep in mind when animating:

- Planning is the single most important part of animating, I have heard from many indutry people that about 80% of their time is spent planning their shot, and 20% is doing it. We don't have a lot of time for our shots, but we should still try and thumbnail out the character's poses, figure out the movemement by using video reference, or looking at a mirror to see how your body would move. I know we're using a quadruped, but the acting will still be the same, just get on your hands and knees and pretend!
- This should be one of the most enjoyable parts of the making of the film.
- This is where we have to make the dog come to life and tell the story.
- Remember to think about the principles of animation!
- Think cartoony/snappy, Chuck Jones' style.
- Utilize moving holds, when a character hits a pose, think about what the body would do, how would the body parts relax?
- Exaggerate, push the poses!
- Work pose to pose, key everything on the same frames even if not all the controls are being animated, treat it like drawings in traditional animation.
- Keep animation organised, make sure you can easily adjust timing and change poses.
- Work in stepped tangents first(in the graph editor, "stepped" will make your character jump from poses to pose without inbetweens), blocking out poses, without fighting with the computer's inbetweens.
- Don't let the computer do the work!! Stay in control!! Don't move into spline tangents (in the graph editor, "spline", "clamped", "flat", "linear", "plateau" will make the computer inbetween your keyframes) until you've worked out key poses and breakdowns.
- Key Poses:
First, do the key/storytelling poses, keying everything at the same time on determined frames.
- Breakdowns: Second, work out how the character is going to get from one key pose to the next. Key everything!
- Inbetweens: Third, this is where the computer helps you out or ruins your work. Work out the motion of the body inbetween the breakdowns and key poses.
- Consider arcs, everything in nature moves in arcs even it's very subtle, go through the frames, one limb at a time (if you have time) and make sure it is creating arcs in it's movement.
- Consider silhouettes, is the pose strong enough to tell what the character's doing even if we only saw it's silhouette?
- Consider easing! One of the the things that makes computer animation look computery is the lack of ease ins and ease outs.
- Anticipation is very, very, very important! The character has to aniticipate their action. It tells the audience what the characters about to do before they do it.

If you have any problems with a shot, either animation wise or technical, come and tell me and I'll do my best to help you and figure it out!

Have Fun!!!!!

This site is an amazing resource for animation tips from industry pros:

http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/