The 12 Principles of Animation - Episode 4
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The Fourth Principle - Pose to Pose & Straight Ahead
Although not technically a principle, pose to pose and straight ahead are methods of frame-by-frame animation and thus considered the fourth principle of animation.
STRAIGHT AHEAD: drawing frames in order, starting with the first frame and finishing on the last frame. As a method, this one is more instinctual and a lot like improv. That's why straight ahead is typically better for animating fluid and realistic, natural and free-flowing actions whose exact movements are hard to predict - such as particle effects like explosions, water or fire.
POSE TO POSE: drawing frames in order of importance, for instance starting with the first and last frames, then working from the middle of the animation. Pose to pose -method is a deliberate workflow that allows for planning the animation in advance. This method can be used for all kinds of actions as it builds a solid and consistent foundation for almost any animation through the four stages of pose to pose animation:
1- KEYS or KEYFRAMES: the essential frames that are drawn first. They are the frames that are required to tell the story. I believe in this way the panels of a storyboard can be considered keyframes if directly implemented into animation.
2- EXTREMES: the furthest points of any action. These could be the peak of a jump as well as its base, where the character has bent their knees to the lowest point. Extremes often count as keyframes.
3- BREAKDOWNS: the frames that describe motion from one extreme to another. These are very important in the bigger picture, as a breakdown frame between two extremes can drastically change how an action plays out. For example, if we added a frame where the character is in midair between two walking frames, the character jumped during the walk. But if we added a frame of the character crouching instead, that would mean the character crouched during the walk. Pretty neat how powerful breakdowns can be, right?
4- TWEENS: the leftovers, or any other frame in-between the keys, extremes and breakdowns, which is why tweens are often called in-betweens. Their purpose is to time the animation correctly so that it flows smoothly and realistically.
Even if one method can fit a specific animation better than the other, which method an animator decides use often boils down to an animator's preferences. Despite this, it is recommended for every animator to try both in order to understand how it feels to work with both methods. Sometimes the two methods can be mixed: the character's main action - let's say a jump - is easier to draw with pose-to-pose, but their clothes and hair could be drawn over using the straight ahead method.
Challenges:
Because the methods are very different to each other, they naturally have their own obstacles that animators must overcome in order to create excellent animations:
Straight Ahead:
- The more frames you draw, the further you go from the first image. Because animators are only figurative machines, it can be very easy to lose the character's proportions. As small mistakes continue to amplify over time, in the end, your subject of animation - although spontaneous and natural - might end up shrunken or grown in some or even all aspects.
Pose to Pose:
Practise exercises:
Because I'm running out of time, unfortunately I won't be providing my own examples in these blogs from now on :( But what I will do is add them in later and share exercise ideas down below as per usual.
For the straight ahead method, I was going to try animating hair billowing in the wind, because hair - like other free-flowing elements - can also have an irregular, unpredictable movement to it.
For the pose to pose method, I wanted to try to animate a character dancing to a song. Because I would have liked to have the movements match the beat of an undecided song, I figure pose to pose would be the ideal method for an animation like this.
Other great exercises for practising these techniques include:
- Flipbook animations: unless you're a mastermind of timing and planning (in which case I applaud and envy you), basically any and all flipbook animations are made with the straight ahead method. It's a fun exercise to try for example on the corner of a course notebook. There's also lots of flipbook animations on YouTube for inspiration!
- Water splashing or fire burning: water and fire are natural free-flowing phenomena, which is why they are unpredictable and easier to animate using the straight ahead method.
- Clouds of dust or explosions: similar to water and fire, these are unpredictable particle effects that don't always occur in the same manner.
- Clothes flapping: clothes flapping in the breeze of a wind or according to laws of physics, their movements can also be hard to predict, which is why straight ahead seems to work better.
- Character talking: when you animate a character talking, using pose to pose method allows you to analyze not only the audio clip for the dialogue (inflections, mood etc.) and how to match it with the animation, but also how the character should act while talking.
- Character changing facial expressions: my source videos for this blog recommended pose to pose for animating close-up shots of emotional scenes, and I can see why. With a shot so close to the character's face, the audience can easily pick up on warping proportions - which is why pose to pose works wonders for animating changes in facial expressions.
- An animal with a tail jumping down: because a tail is a separate part of the body with seemingly its own laws of physics, it might be a good idea to first animate the main action of jumping down pose to pose, then the tail lagging behind the body using straight ahead.
- A clothed character doing something actiony: maybe it's a superhero, maybe a ninja. Whatever it is, the action of the figure is recommended to be animated pose to pose while the clothes can be animated afterwards with the straight ahead method.
I hope you enjoyed reading or even skimming through my blog. Feel absolutely free to comment more ideas or even share your own animations! I'd love to hear and see some of what you can come up with for practising this principle! And with that...
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