Week 1 and 2: Physics and Life Drawing
I can’t say I was quite expecting the first two weeks to go the way they happened, but then that’s because I wasn’t expecting the course to be as loose and free as it’s opened up to be. Not that it’s a bad thing: having spent the last year and a half as a self-taught animator, some of these lessons have really taken me back to basics and get me to consider building my foundations of animation from the ground up.
The first in-studio lesson we had largely ignored animation altogether. Instead, as an ice-breaker to meet some of our new peers, we got into groups of 4 to select a typical story narrative, something to do with the “7 plots” that most stories are derived from. As such, we chose the “escape” plot, where a group of characters are trapped in a location and try to escape together following adversity.
Our tutor, Steve Roberts, made it clear that we shouldn’t think too much about production value or editing. Easier said than done really, we’ve all gotten so used to presenting our best work that making something as rough and imperfect as our final short film felt weird. But I get what the intent was: loosen up and have a child-like freedom of playing with narrative. You can see our final result below (including an editing error where I accidentally left one of the outtakes in):
As was noted in our timetable, we have a scheduled life-drawing session each week on Thursday from 6-9PM. Since we’re in the midst of a pandemic still, these take place over zoom where a model (alternating between male and female each week) poses as we draw in intervals. Sometimes we get given 30 seconds, sometimes 3 minutes.
The point of these sessions is to help us as animators understand the human anatomy. I was reading a book for research called The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams, and he left this anecdote which I’d like to share:
The movie actor, Scott Wilson sat through my three-day San Francisco masterclass. To my surprise, he came up at the end and said, ‘Of course you realise, Dick, that this whole thing has been about acting.’
I said, ‘What?’ and Scott said, ‘These are the exact equivalent methods, exercises and analyses we actors do in our acting workshops.’
So acting is intrinsically part of the whole. And if you can’t draw or articulate movement how are you ever going to do the acting?1
Since going into these sessions, I’ve become increasingly aware of my inability to draw the human body properly. As you can see with the drawings below, I have a tendency to exaggerate or draw the proportions incorrectly to a point if the character stood up, one leg would be significantly longer than another. Session 1 wasn’t great, a few good drawings here and there but many of witch were off, but I take these criticisms onboard and continue to develop my understanding of the body.
Week 2 started off with learning the principles of animation, specifically on physics, matter and the bouncing ball. On the first day, I decided to have a go at puppet animation, using an action figure (I’ve forgotten the technical term) and a ball and exploring how I can convey weight in movement.
Apart from a few technical hitches (i.e. the mac restarting for 30 minutes), I really enjoyed puppet animation. Our tutor for this session, Anita, described my thoughts perfectly: the result is immediate. You aren’t spending too long drawing it out or thinking about the poses, you just take a photo and work from there.
I don’t imagine puppet animation however to be where I go in the future, as my patience for posing the man wore down (to the point I only made “key frames” down below rather than shoot a second version). But never the less, being able to see a body and how the joints move helped greatly.
The next day, I got a proper try at TV Paint to animate how a bowling ball moved. Steve described timing charts and guesswork but at this stage, it all went over my head and I had trouble working it out. I’m used to just guessing every couple of frames without charts so it’s an area I’ll want to work on in the near future.
As for the bowling ball itself, I don’t it turned out too badly, but perhaps I could have left a few frames longer for it to slow down. Especially at the point where the ball drops over the edge: it almost teleports a little too quickly. I’d like to put an excuse of “I was just getting used to TV Paint” but I’d say it’s just guesswork issues.
The day after, I went back to a program I’ve spent the last year learning: Clip Studio Paint. I decided I wanted to try a different bouncing ball, something that floats better, and went for a football (with a twist at the end). Again, timing charts went over my head, but I think the result is a little stronger than the bowling ball itself.
The last scheduled session of the second week was once again Life Drawing. I wasn’t sure how I’d do given the previous week, but Vanessa Luther-Smith, our tutor, gave us some really nice advice of breaking the body down into various circles and shapes before starting out. I spent the majority of the session implementing this approach, and whilst I’ve got a lot to learn on proportions, I feel some progress made on understanding the anatomy.
Having looked ahead to next week’s sessions on followthrough, I decided to take this geometric breakdown of the body and have a go at an upper body walk cycle.
There’s definitely some criticisms worth mentioning, such as the hands occasionally bouncing when they reach the furthest point, or the head bouncing oddly at times – I definitely overthought the movement when breaking it down. But it really helps to have some rough guide before committing to the design, and I think these previous lessons helped.
I’ll be sure to post a round-up of my progress in a week’s time.
1 – Williams, R., (2001) The Animator’s Survival Kit