Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Flip your drawings!

There are many workflows and methods of animation that have been in existence for well over 70+ years now. Many cool traditional tips and tricks are just limited to 2d animation but some of them are really helpful in CG as well. And one of the methods is "flipping". Flipping is a method to go through the drawings very quickly and see whats happening with your character and whether your drawings are working well all together. It gives you a clear picture of your drawings on the whole, and really helps to spot a problem very easily.
When I animate in Maya or FlipBook, I always keep on flipping to my previous drawings while making my poses/drawings. It really helps to figure out the arcs, spacing, overlaps and the overall performance of the action.
TIP for Maya users: Use "<" and ">" to flip through the (CG) drawings. It especially helps when you've timed out your shot and want to flip through your breakdowns and keys to maybe fix some spacing and arcs issues, without worrying about the computer inbetweens.
Here's a video where I've animated a simple floursack jump in FlipBook. You'll see how frequently I flip through the drawings while animating. And it really helps a tonne while inbetweening my shot in 2d, where the spacing might get really, really tight almost like a moving hold, and it becomes almost impossible to put a drawing without flipping back to my previous drawings for reference.

Here is the video, enjoy.... :)


Flour Sack in FlipBook from Amrit Derhgawen on Vimeo.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Amrit ! its greate Stuff! big thanks ! ! ! ( sorry for my Eng)

Ratul Sarna said...

Awesome tip!
And great to see you animating in FlipBook. Really gives insight into how a pro works...
Thanx again Amrit,
Keep such Tips & Tricks coming!
Ratul

Daniel Huertas said...

hey there.. nice stuff in this blog! :) I see that your aproach in this animation test is pretty much straigh ahead.. and it looks good.. the only comment i would have is to keep in mind if the right foot is pushing the jump.. it's better and more dynamic to land with the opposite foot.. in this case is pushing and landing with the same foot and it looks a little out of balance.. but it's a very nice test man.. keep it up!

daniel huertas.

Amrit Derhgawen said...

Thanks guys. Daniel, you are right... my bad! Thanks for the reminder :)

Cheers!
-A

Anonymous said...

hey amrit,
nice tip.ur tips are same as Jason.
looking for more tips from u.
bye.

Mat and Kale AUBRY said...

Hey Amrit!
really cool stuff there!

thanks for sharing.

If you have a minute, come and post in on Animation Lounge. ;)

Good job!
Mathias.

Mahesh Bisht said...

dude Gud stuff....
How much time did u spend to animate this and also tell me how much time do u spend to clean it....Cleanning..I simple dont like ..its more like Graph editor...I did some stuff wid PAP just have loook..


Gr8 time watching ur stuff....
still in delhi or moved..man take out some time and make a plan for meet up..? its almost 2 years now

its upto u man..no prb


Cheers..

-MB

Amrit Derhgawen said...

anonymous: Thanks. I've learned it all from Jason and he is an inspiration for me.... so, our approach is quite similar....cheers!

Mathias: Thanks for chiming in bro. Please feel free to put this on Animation Lounge. I'm not on my home computer right now and can't remember the password. Cheers! ;)

Mahesh: I made this very quickly in about 9 to 10 minutes. I usually spend about 60% of my time cleaning, polishing and tweaking my shot.
Thanks for visiting. :)

Anonymous said...

wonderful stuff as usual -
harsha

V said...

good to see a blogger in the new team!.....wonder if the others blog too!:)
I havent gone through the entire site, but surely will in time.....keep up the good work...and we'll see each other real soon:)

Amrit Derhgawen said...

Thanks Harsha... Thanks for visiting! :-)

Hey there V,

Thanks for chiming in. Good to see you too!

Best...........-A

d. vasquez said...

Amrit that flour sack animation is great! lot of great insight that will help me as I just bought flipbook and the boris rig, and I'm looking forward the jason ryan's tutorials to be posted!!

Amrit Derhgawen said...

Hey there dv,

Cheers for visiting. Glad you found it helpful. Yeah, Jason's stuff is pure gold and I can't wait to get started!! :)

All the best...