Arcs and Tangents

Hello!



I've been working on another pass of my animation to show the guys at work next Thursday. They've given me some great feedback so far and I don't want to disappoint.
We're having a get together to share animation, look at other animations, discuss and analyse. Im really looking forward to it.

Here's my youTube channel if you want to see the progress so far:
www.youtube.com/user/BarryBland

The latest pass is not quite ready to show so I haven't uploaded it yet. It should be up there by next Thursday.
This week I thought I would do a post of Arcs and Tangents and how they effect my animation.

Arcs
Why arcs?
Apart from robots and mechanical devices pretty much everything moves in arcs. The arcs of arms and legs as we walk. The arcs of pointing to the tiny movements of scratching chins. Arcs are everywhere in our as we move about our daily lives. By building them into my animation it helps to build a sense of believability into the characters.
Another point is that arcs, curves and splines are generally more attractive to look at so they help give the characters more appeal. One of the 12 principles of animation.

I read that Keith Lango thinks of all 3D animation as 2D because they are shown on a flat plane. I'm trying to reflect that in the poses of my characters and how they move by paying attention to their arcs.

As im working on a character piece, a good place to look for arcs is on the tip of the nose. If the arcs are clear here then it will help make a better animation overall.

Ball on nose example
To make it easy to maintain and modify animation arcs a script like the one below for Maya is a really useful tool:
fliponline.blogspot.com/2007/01/track-those-arcs.html

To use this I simply parent constrained a sphere to the head controller of the character and created the arc on the frames I wanted to tweak. The beauty of using a script like the one above is that the arc is updated in real time making it much easier to maintain.

Here are some screens of how the arcs on the nose look on the character, click to see them full size:





Tangents
What are tangents?
Tangents are points in an animation where it's difficult to tell what is in front or behind of what. For example when a hand is right next to the face it is harder for the mind to read what is in front of what. By layering animations carefully it's easier for the mind to read the image and therefore communicate the message. Which is what we're all about, communicating the message as clearly as possible.

Below I've highlighted a few areas in my animation where tangents are a problem.







For further reading here is a PDF originally by Walt Stanchfield on the subject. Scroll down to page 6:
www.animationmeat.com/pdf/misc/waltstanchfield/16ws_dimensional_drawing.pdf

Yup, that's right, Walt Stanchfield is the legend. If you dont have the book of his compiled notes "Gesture drawing for animators" then get it, it's a must buy.

That's it for me this week, ill be posting an update to the animation next week however right now im having a beer, enjoying the warm weather and getting ready to go out for a curry. Good stuff.