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.