Outside (and some inside) the box ideas
Working in Poses!
Put on your 2D animation goggles
Big, Small, Tiny
Golden Ratio--simplify to Rule of Thirds
The story telling poses are half the work--Drawovers!
Sang June, BJ, JJ, Graham
Adding straights creates tension and energy.
-Personality Traits vs Species Traits
What does a bull brain and body do? What does vain or neurotic or excitable personality do?
-Caricature vs. Naturalism
-The greater the Graphic Abstraction of design, the more stylized the possible motion.
-At the same time, our challenge is to make things feel emotionally and viscerally real.
So we need to stylize motion to make the bulls feel HEAVY. Heavy things have inertia. If they are
still they don't want to move, and if they are moving they want to keep moving. We need to caricature this phenomenon thru timing, so heavy things aren't generally snappy and we need to find a balance.
-In our situation, we can only lay down some guideposts, but we will
refine the path in the first few sequences.
-It will be easy to overpose El Primero to the point he starts to
lose importance or gravitas. He is not a clown. Even though he is thin, he should generally move with reserve, dignity, and weight until the passion is expressed in bold quick poses and flourishes.
Representing defiance, Primero should always be angular and linear. A wall or barrier. His poses and action should serve to block the natural flow around him be it animal or human.
Giacomo's Secret
Similar features to Primero
McLeach: A character embodying defiance. Imposing and Angular.
Analyze a film that is strongly pose based and
is an animated comedy about bull fighting: BULLY FOR BUGS.
Big, small, tiny:
Big shapes (body) = less motion, less attraction
Small shapes (head, hands) = more motion, more attraction
Tiny shapes (eyes) = high motion, high attraction
Build the 2D sensibility
-Exercise from Eric Goldberg's book.
-Provide a 2D clip of similar character and copy it with rig i.e Facilier for El Primero
-FLATTEN! Mentally reduce gradients and turning edges. See as drawing first then sculpted in z-space.
Ring style DNA?:
EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE
Gobelins student films--pose and shape based
later Chuck Jones
elements of HOME ON THE RANGE
GIACOMO'S SECRET
KLAUS- Sergio Pablos
Guess what? We're joining a club! The Barnyard Movie Club!
Let's see where other filmmakers have staked out territory in this place.
Films set in the barnyard:
Animal Farm
Babe
Charlotte's Web
Gobelins films--https://www.youtube.com/user/gobelins
KLAUS--https://vimeo.com/126287950
http://2dtraditionalanimation.tumblr.com/?og=1
http://livlily.blogspot.com/2013/07/pencil-tests-films-alphabetical.html
Bulls:
Pasha
Beast
Thin Man:
Presto
Facilier
McLeach
Lupe:
The Hercules/ Philoctete relationship
Jose Carioca?
Expressing Inner life before speaking
A word about character intentionality and inner life. To have an audience understand and empathize with a character's inner life, that character cant just start and stop a dialogue shot. Just as the overall pose should communicate attitude, the precursors to dialogue and the residual energy at the end of dialogue are required to make the audience feel what the character is feeling. Eyes, mouths, and hands are all portals to the mind--the parts of the body most directly wired to the brain with the densest connections. These features are always alive and reflective of inner life, unless repressed with effort. So look for ways to show how a character is dealing with its inner life before they tell you something in the dialogue. The mouth might compress or relax a second before they speak. They might slowly move their lips into a initial phoneme before any sound is uttered. Feel how effortless it is to make tiny shape changes with your mouth--smacks, clicks, swallowing, slackening, teeth grinding, small soundless phonemes.
Unless there are high stakes requiring someone hide their feelings, always consider how to handle the residual energy after a character expresses verbal dialogue. Characters may speak with spontaneity or deliberate intention, quietly or with force, but anytime a character speaks the residual trailing energy from that release should be considered, particularly if there is a strong emotion driving it. The stronger the force, the more resolution time and effect on the body. We first think of the eyes, but also think about what to do with the mouth and hands.
How to approach large forms in animation!
Large forms should have weight. Large forms are grounding.
So large forms should be controlled and move within tighter range. The smaller
head will be more active and draw the eye.
Hold back on bull body motion until they are required to throw their weight around--then
it will have more impact! See their strength in impacts with ground and objects.
An immovable anvil becomes an anvil in motion! Watch out!
Think: Steam Locomotive, Wrecking Ball, anvil launched from cannon.
Be conscious of the screen space eye bounding box!
The eyes should be confined to exist in a small bounding box often!
Large Quads: the face should move the most. BOdy is solid and heavy
Hedgehogs and Lupe: body should be more active
We have elements of stylized design in the characters. This allows us to push stylization of
motion. Snappier snappys and Holdier holds. To sell weight or lack of, we can caricature physics
more. We are on the continuum toward Peanuts and UPA style. But we still have to honor emotion through relatable and visceral motion. Pose and movement caricature the Idea we need to communicate. Non-verbal comedic and sympathetic language of motion.
Eliminate the 50% inbetween when you can!
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