Exaggeration:
Building upon symmetry is the idea of exaggerating your effects drawings to increase their appeal. In addition to this, exaggerating helps to capture the energy of the effect more effectively. Gilland (2009, p. 50) says how not exaggerating enough is a common beginner mistake. There is also safety in exaggeration, as Gilland (2009, p. 49) claims that “you can always scale back an overly exaggerated drawing, but it’s far more difficult to breathe life into a stifled one”.
All of these principles can be seen in action within professional 2D effects animation work:
Quentin Cordonnier (2019)
This still from Quentin Cordonnier (2019) shows that even among different styles and types of smoke animation, the shape design can be consistent whilst following the design principles. In all of these he uses rounded shapes yet he still varies them to avoid repetition, parallel lines and symmetry. The leftmost smoke cloud on the middle row shows an example that is quite symmetrical by nature, yet Cordonnier uses the forms inside the silhouette to create contrast and weight on one side.
Chris Graf (2010)
This is a great example from Chris Graf (2010) of avoiding symmetry and using different actions to give the smoke more appeal. There are a variety of shape sizes as well that give the smoke a good sense of scale.
Chris Graf (2009)
This cigarette smoke by Graf (2009) shows how using non-parallel lines can significantly increase the appeal of a drawing.
Nikolaos Finizio (2017)
Finally, Nikolaos Finizio’s (2017) still of an explosion shows a great example of how to make a naturally symmetrical (in this case completely spherical) effect look appealing, through the use of varied line width to avoid parallel lines as well as asymmetrical negative space (in the center of the explosion).
Timing and spacing:
Contrast is vital for not just the aesthetics of the effect, but also within the timing and spacing. Without it, the animation “appears stiff and mannered” Gilland (2009, p. 39). Repetition is what causes this lack of contrast, so to overcome this and make the animation more dynamic, you should “overlap the timing of our elements and the directions of overall movement as well” Gilland (2009, p. 38). Gilland (2009, p. 39) uses an example of a bottle smashing against the floor to explain this concept. If the bottle smashes on the floor with all the pieces moving with the same speed and in their same respective directions, then the animation will look quite boring. Simply by having different pieces do different things with different timings will fix this and make it a much more appealing scene. For example several pieces could explode outwards as normal but in different trajectories, but some could slide along the floor or bounce away.
The same principle should be applied to the spacing, but here focusing on creating enough of a contrast to give the illusion of different pieces having different speeds.
Form:
The final general fundamental links to the importance of observation, in the sense that it is about the understanding of the element. Knowing the form of the effect you are trying to animate is vital, Tracy Strong (2017) says how “if you wanna know the basics, [...] learn to understand the form, learn to understand the perspective”. Knowing the form of what you're drawing is essential to understand how it’s moving in 3D space, how to avoid flat looking animations and it also helps massively with keeping track of all the lines in an animation.
To practice this, Tracy Strong (2017) recommends drawing a wireframe over your drawings to help visualise their form, therefore I did this for one of my previous smoke sketches:
No comments:
Post a Comment