Timing and Spacing - 15/10/19

The principle we learned in this session was timing and spacing, the most important principle of animation. Timing refers to how long an action lasts to achieve its optimum effect. Spacing is about how far each frame is from eachother, and consists of 4 types: linear, ease-in, ease-out and easy ease. Two quotes from the seminar that sums up this principle really well are:

• The real trick to great animation is not to make great images that move, but to make great movements that work as images.
• What happens between each image, is more important than what exists in each image.

We first practised the different types of spacing with a plasticine ball. This was the easy ease, and I feel like it worked well, however to make the effect more obvious I should have added more steps to really highlight the ease in and outs. Actually trying out the different types of spacing with the same exercise showed how each one creates a different feel to the ball's movement, without actually changing anything about the ball or the direction.

Next we practised timing by animating a blink using only two frames - eyes open and eyes shut. The personality of the character should dictate how long the blink lasts, and as my character is a bit jittery I wanted the blink to be quick. I found this quite hard as I couldn't decide between 3 or 2 frames for the blink, but I ended up deciding 2 was too quick. This exercise showed me how important timing was to convey the right emotion and personality of a character.

I couldn't decide on an action to use, so I created two quick rough animations to visualise my different ideas. I think idea 1 showed the personality of my character more, however a slower dance would suit Creak much more than a quick one, and that combined with the slow head turn would result in too many frames for this exercise. Idea 1 also lacked a reaction to the offscreen prompt. Moreover, idea 2 allowed me to have a contrast between the slow head turn and the quick flinch back that allows me to practise two different types of timings, thus I went with that one.

Finally, we had to animate a 6 frame movement for our characters to perform. Overrall I found this very hard but it taught me a lot about timing. I feel like the contrast between the slow head turn and the fast reaction was efficient at creating a scared reaction, however it took me a long while to decide on the correct timing. One thing I need to work on is focusing solely on the timing and ignoring the lack of inbetweens. This is because I was focusing too much on how the animation wasn't fluid. I feel like the timing of this scene isn't completely perfect, however I'm not sure what bits need to change. The shot definitely needs a lot of inbetweens though.