Animation Unit - Timing and spacing and arcs

Over the course of this unit we will look at the principles of animation.



Timing and Spacing

The most important principles in animation are timing and spacing. Timing is about the key moments in a scene. If you are animating a bouncing ball, the timing to think about is when the ball hits the ground. The spacing to think about is how many drawings to do and how far away from each other they are.

Arcs

All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.
We can decide on and map out these arcs before we start animating, bearing in mind that a bouncing ball loses momentum each time it bounces.  

Slow in / Slow out

As action starts, we have more drawings near the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next pose. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the surprise element. This will give more snap to the scene.

Bouncing Ball Exercise

 Your first animation exercise will be to create a bouncing ball using Pencil Software. Once this is complete you should export your work as a Quicktime movie and save it. You will be compiling a showreel of the tasks from this unit which you can eventually post online. Today we will look at the Pencil interface and learn about... The timeline, Key frames, frames per second.