Breaking Joints

The successive breaking of joints to give flexibility.

When animators say breaking joints they really mean bending joints.

This follows on from your overlapping action/follow through exercises in that you need to realise that everything doesn't move or come to a stop all at once. It's the same when a character has a tail or a man runs to a stop and his coat 'keeps on going'.

When we animate a simple thing like a hand slapping a table, the shoulder stays pretty much constant, the elbow leads the way, the wrist then follows through and the the hand is the last, it keeps going.

When the hand and fingers keep going, the elbow joint bends or breaks, going back in the opposite direction, starting on it's way back down.

This principle is really important in order to make naturalistic, flowing animation, no matter what the subject, as long as it isn't something mechanical.

Task: Animate an arm slapping a table in a 12 drawing cycle so that it ends where it starts

 and the cycle can be reused over again.

Use the images in the shared area as a guide. Do not add detail like bracelets, watches, fingernails.

Yo will be marked on your ability to use the breaking joints principle.