A New Stroll Cycle
Each every so often, I get down Richard Williams’ guide from my assortment of one thing like 150 books on animation, and I am going by means of it from starting to finish. This doesn’t rely the instances I get it right down to lookup one thing particular, as for instance lately once I needed to assessment what he needed to say about somebody clapping their fingers.
The Animator’s Survival Package by Williams and Phantasm of Life by Thomas and Johnston are the 2 most influential and informational guides to the method of conventional animation that I can think about. Of the 2, Survival Package is definitely the extra helpful. For one factor, it’s organized higher; if in case you have ever tried to look one thing up in Phantasm of Life, you should have little thought the place within the guide to search for that one thing. You simply have to show pages till you discover it. It’s because, to a fantastic extent, Phantasm of Life is organized chronologically, extra as a historical past than as a textual content guide.
| I prefer it so nicely, I’ve two copies of this guide. |
Survival Package is definitely the whole lot that Richard Williams might consider about animation that could possibly be written down. It’s a how-to guide and a how-to-proceed guide, and it additionally tells you why. It isn’t a bible however extra a guide of lore, strategies that quantity to a sorcerer’s compendium of magic gathered from years working with Disney animators and Warners animators and others, and setting out the spells and rites (and onerous work) that may deliver forth good and fascinating animation that’s alive. Once I get it down for an intensive assessment, it’s to search for issues I had missed or glossed over earlier than, and there’s all the time one thing new for me.
Walks
With regards to characters’ walks, Williams does seventy-three pages, and that does not embody runs and jumps and different such variations. So it could be no surprise that one tends to show pages by means of this part, stopping to learn simply right here and there. This time I gave it a better scrutiny, as a result of I used to be about to do a brand new stroll cycle for my Previous Man character (for my movie Carry On) and I needed to work extra with the multi-pass method to any complicated animation, whereby you deal with one factor at a time, as for instance, first the legs, then the arms, then the pinnacle, and so forth. By this methodology you’ll be able to efficiently perform one thing that within the combination is extra nuanced and wealthy than you might accomplish if you happen to tried to consider the whole lot directly.
This seems to be a tough factor to be taught. I’m all the time tempted to attempt to get the whole lot down, and the whole lot proper, on the primary go. However my outcomes that approach are usually not all the time good, so I needed to commit myself to the multi-pass system that’s advisable not solely by Williams however was practiced by Milt Kahl and others.
The Previous Man
The temporary, or necessities, for this animation have been apparent to me. The person is previous, and he has a deformed backbone, however he isn’t weak–he can be dragging that massive steamer trunk round, bear in mind.
So his stroll could also be sluggish and deliberate, however not feeble or faltering. And, I do not need the stroll to be too comedian.
The apparent place to begin is with the legs and ft. I did in fact put within the torso, head and arms, however simply as placeholders. I’m not pondering a lot about them but: they’re topic to vary.
Every step can be sixteen frames, or 2/3 of a second at 24fps, quite than the 12 or 8 frames that we’re used to seeing. I’ll animate on 2’s quite than 1’s, so every drawing will get two exposures. For the entire cycle of two steps, there can be sixteen drawings.
First Cross
I made eight drawings to start with: for every step, a Contact place (1 and 9), a Down place (3 and 11), a Passing Place (5 and 13), and an Up place (7 and 15). Right here is that pencil check.
Properly, it is working. He has an nearly shuffling step, making contact on the ball of his foot quite than the heel, and I feel the quantity of up and down motion on the physique is sweet too.
Earlier than I add within the eight inbetweens, I’ll now make a second go for the arms and fingers, and I’ve an thought about this I wish to attempt. We’ll take a look at that subsequent time.
