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Hello, everyone.

Havtza here.

So now that we've learned a little bit more

about how we do animation in the last lesson

we want to put the things

that we've learned into actual use

and start and create some really interesting animations

because up until now

we've only used simple objects or very simple actions.

In this lesson, I'm going to teach you

how I approach my animation

and how I think when I'm trying

to connect movements and create interesting and realistic actions.

For this lesson, I'm going to show

very simple full body movements with front view,

nothing too complicated, no foreshortening, nothing like that.

We're just going to see

simple connected movements

and learn how we break them down

and how we can find the correct timing

and poses for our animation.

This applies to both simple actions, complex actions,

and we will be using

this same type of thinking

when going forward into most cinematic animation,

with more difficult angles.

I'll be demonstrating with human forms,

but this type of analytical thinking is good for both

objects, animals any other creatures and, of course, humans.

What I'm going to teach you today is actually

how to analyze the movement

and how to break complex

movement down into simple actions

that are easy to time and plan trajectories for,

as well as how to connect multiple unrelated trajectories.

When following the exercises in this lesson,

please try and match the amount of complex movement

that you're going to add.

I'm going to combine around 3 to 4 action

within each demonstration,

but you can always do it with one or two actions

as long as you have just good understanding

of the entire body movement and some connecting movements

so you can practice everything.

I recommend making exercises of between 1 to 3 seconds.

Of course,

if you're more experienced,

you can try and go beyond these number of seconds

and beyond this number of poses,

but remember that we're going to be using this exercise

for the next lesson of adding details and character designs to our animation,

so you don't want to have something

that is too complex or too long,

which would be harder to do in the next lesson.

With that out of the way, let us begin.

A lot of the time when people just start to animate,

they try and rely on their intuitive understanding of movement,

and a lot of the times

they will make a lot of versions of the movement until it looks good,

rather than understanding the reason behind what made it work.

A lot of the time you will also hear corrections

such as give it more weight or make it more energetic

and you wouldn't really know

how to correct these things

if you don't already have a lot of experience.

Most of the time, animators improve

slowly due to working in the industry

and gaining a lot of experience in the actual field,

or with using a lot of reference to improve their craft.

Now this is important and can give you a lot of steady progress

and of course, the more you animate,

the better are going to become.

But if you don't actually think about what you're doing,

your focus will be a lot slower

than if you understand

the reason behind the movement and actions.

Using a lot of reference and a lot of practice of a certain type

without branching out to different areas

can actually kind of harm you as an animator

because you will be limited

by the type of references that you're going to use,

and you might get too comfortable

with one style and one subject of animation,

so you wouldn't be able to tackle

different things when you get to them.

This is especially problematic

if you're doing animation with unrealistic character designs

which require good understanding of actual physics

because you wouldn't

be able to find any reference or any experience

with something like that

because it's unrealistic and you might not have done it before.

So what we actually want to do

is be able to animate any subject

without any reference or previous experience with it.

For this,

we need to understand the universal rules of movement,

which is actual physics.

So the first thing we are going to do

before we start animating

is actually understanding the properties

of what we're going to animate,

be it a character, an object, an effect, a design, an animal, whatever.

We kind of talked about it a little bit in the first character design lesson,

but we need to really understand

the range of movement and the materials

and the properties of the character

that we're going to animate.

You need to understand

what are the character's proportions,

how their joints work,

how flexible they are,

because these questions will help you understand

which poses you can actually create

while keeping your character in model and the movement realistic.

Think about how the proportions affect their weight distribution

because, for example,

a character that is very tall and top heavy

will have a harder time to balance

while shorter and steadier characters

will have easier time to balance,

but might not have the same amount of range of movement.

If they have unconventional body proportions,

they might have more difficulty moving

certain limbs or creating certain actions

because of the overall shape.

Another thing to consider is what the character is made of.

I know this might sound like a weird question to ask,

but in the world of animation,

some characters are going to be made out of rock or fire or water

or the other uncommon material.

So while seeing

regular characters made out of flesh move in realistic way

is almost a staple of cartoon,

if you're creating a character

which is made out of interesting material,

you can't find a reference for that,

you need to understand how it moves by itself.

By deciding how you're going to style your animation

and how the character design is going to affect,

how they can possibly move,

you can create the rules of your universe

and understand

how you can make aesthetically pleasing animation

and break down the movement.

Of course,

you can just choose to ignore all the implication

of your character design

and basically not follow a certain rule of physics

in your animated universe.

But then you will have to consider

each case of animation by itself

and it can be kind of difficult to create aesthetically pleasing animation

because they are unrelated to reality.

Now that we thought about the design and the implication of it

in regards to the animation

and proportions and range of movement,

it's time to combine our animation techniques from our last lesson

and our understanding of the character

and create actual animation.

In real life,

force, mass and acceleration

are all dependent on each other.

When a force is acting upon an object,

it will always create some type of change

in the state of the object.

It can be either in the object position,

its shapes, its temperature or combination of these three.

The direction from which the force is coming from

will decide the direction of the change

which is applied to the object

and the size of the force decides the amount of change.

We can visually represent this change

by doing different types of manipulation

on the object of animation.

So this will be visually represented by acceleration,

mass and the connection between them.

To simplify,

a force is shown by how quickly an object of a certain mass

is going to accelerate

or show a change in its initial state.

This might sound kind of confusing,

but it's actually pretty simple

and I will explain it with these two scenarios.

In the first example,

we have the same force affecting objects with different mass.

Because the force is the same in both direction and size,

the only thing that changes how it's visually represented

is by how it's affecting the object of different masses.

The bigger the mass, the smaller the amount of acceleration

that the object is going to have,

which is expressed by smaller changes in position between frames

and the smaller overall trajectory

as well as an increased rate of the ease out animation pattern.

The smaller object, on the other hand, will move quicker

and accelerate more slowly

until it reaches its final resting position.

In the second example,

we have different forces

affecting the object with the same mass.

Here you can see that

the object with less force is going to move a lot slower

and have smaller trajectory as well as decelerate faster

in comparison to the object

with the larger amount of force acting upon it.

The reason that it's important to understand this concept

when trying to animate complicated movement

is because you can ultimately divide a complicated object

into a bunch of independently moving simple masses or objects

which are connected to a single object

and by understanding the mass

of each part of the object or the body,

you can predict the way that moving certain part of it

will affect the rest of the body.

Now that we understand how independent objects

are connected to mass and force,

let's see how we look at an object

which is more complicated

and is made out of multiple different masses,

which can move independently of each other.

So each object has its own center of mass,

no matter what shape or material it is made of.

This is the one point

on which the entire object can be balanced

and it is dependent on the object's weight distribution.

Think about the way

that you balance a spoon on your finger.

Even though the center of the spoon is in the middle of it,

its actual point of balance

is far closer to the bowl part of the spoon,

where most of the mass of the spoon is.

Understanding this concept is important

because when you understand the character's point of balance,

you can understand how many poses you can make

and how to connect them

while keeping your characters movement natural.

Basically,

any type of action is just a series

of balanced and unbalanced motions.

This balance affects the entire position of your body

because it will always try and self-correct itself,

unless, of course, you're making a motion which is too extreme

and the entire balance of the body collapses.

When we're trying to create realistic poses and animation,

what we are actually trying to do

is find those checks and balances

that help the characters stay grounded

and the movement have a feeling of weight to it.

So when you understand how and when your character is balanced,

you can basically always know which poses

you're going to draw in order to create the correct movement.

So let's see how we're going to find the character balance.

In general, the object will be balanced

as long as its center of mass is above the base.

Now the base is any sort of contact point

between the object or character and the environment

Usually it's going to be your legs

as you're standing on them

but when you're making a length position

or when you're using any other object,

such as a cane or the chair or a branch

to give you additional contact points,

you can enlarge your base and change its shape.

The bigger your base is, the easier it is for the character

to stay balanced and stationary

because the longer the center of mass needs to travel

in order to get unbalanced.

As you can see here in this example,

the higher the center of mass is,

the easier it is to unbalance your character.

The angle

that is required to make the character fall

is a little bit smaller than the shorter character,

especially if they have a good stance,

but even if they are in a more unbalanced position,

it is easier to topple over the taller character.

If your character is disproportionate,

the location of the center of mass is going to change a little bit.

So if they have really thick legs,

for example,

it's going to be lower and it's going to be harder

to topple them over,

or if they have a much more top heavy design,

it's going to be easier to unbalance them

even if they are using a more balanced stance.

It's important to analyze

where is your character's center of mass is

because this gives you

the best understanding on the movement range of the character

before you are required

to make extreme motions and poses.

Otherwise,

you might accidentally create poses or animation

which does not look correct

because the balance is weird.

When your characters are more easy to unbalance,

the range of movement is actually going to be smaller

and the effect of each one of the movements

is going to have on the overall balance

is going to be much more noticeable.

Because the body always strives to stay balanced,

each time your object or character is unbalanced,

you will have movement

and by understanding where the center of mass is,

you know how much movement you're going to have.

In the last two section, we've looked

at how force, mass and acceleration are related

and how the center of mass affects your character movement

by changing its balance point,

which affects its overall range of movement.

Now we will combine these two concepts

to see how the movement of a certain mass in your character,

such as a limb or the entire body will affect the rest of the body.

The thing that connects these two concepts together is momentum.

This is not actually the scientific definition,

but for our purposes,

momentum is the force

which is created by a moving mass.

When one part of the body moves independently of the rest of it,

this creates its own force.

And the bigger the mass,

the more force is required to start and stop the movement.

As I've told you at the beginning,

you need a force to start the movement

which creates acceleration,

and you also need force to stop a movement.

The momentum is not a real force

which is continuously acting upon an object.

It's basically just the residual force

which initially created the movement

and what keeps the movement going

even though there is no active force

which is acting upon the moving object.

As we've seen before,

the bigger the object, the harder it is to make it move.

This is the same for when it stops moving.

So if your object is already moving

and has a large amount of mass to it,

it's going to stop a lot slower than a smaller object.

This makes it

so it has its own independent trajectory

which actually affects the rest of the body.

So when we're trying to animate more complex objects

with more complex movement,

what we're actually doing is basically connecting

different types of momentum in different types of trajectories.

Basically, each moving part of your body creates its own momentum.

This momentum acts like a force on the rest of the body

and creates a chain reaction

which shapes the way

that we're going to pose the characters.

And because mass, acceleration and force are connected,

we're going to see three different scenarios

on how we express this momentum,

how we're going to use it,

and the balance point of the character

to choose the correct poses for our animation

as well as connect them in a realistic manner.

My thought process for animating relies on understanding the forces

which are acting on each part of the body,

how they make it to react,

and how the body tries to balance itself

to find the poses that are most suitable for my timing

and the movement that I'm trying to show.

In this example,

I'm going to show you how to express mass

using momentum and balance with the body.

So in this example,

we can see that the hand has its own mass

with the way that it's accelerating,

but the movement doesn't look very realistic

because it's not affecting the rest of the body.

The momentum is missing.

Now, the more mass a certain body part has, the more momentum it's going to have

and the more it's going to affect the rest of the body.

To create balance,

the body is going to move to the opposite direction

of that of the hand

to try and shift the center of gravity onto the base,

on both side of the connection points, which is the leg.

Now, because the hand is quite big,

it has a lot of momentum

so the force which is required to stop it will be bigger as well.

So the overall range is going to be bigger

because it's going to take more time to stop it.

And we're going to be using more frames

to show the delay in the the deceleration

and the re-acceleration of the object,

because it has more mass to it.

Basically,

we're going to be using the delay technique

that we've seen in the last lesson

to emphasize the weight of the hand.

I also added a secondary movement of the other hand raising up

because we want to show

how the body is trying to balance itself

by extending the mass of the other hand to the other direction

and shifting the center of mass

more to the opposing side of the moving hand.

Finally, when the hand comes down,

we want to show its mass

by making the initial movement slow

because it requires a large amount of force to accelerate

and we're going to make the acceleration itself

a lot quicker and uneven

because the character doesn't have enough strength

to resist the acceleration of the large

mass of the hand on the way down.

By moving the center of mass quickly over the base,

we create more balance and see the character straighten again.

Like the example,

let's see how we're going to use momentum

to show force as opposed to mass,

like the first example.

Here we have two variations of a punch.

The one on the left doesn't look very strong,

even though we use the acceleration

and overshoot to give it extra energy.

Again, this is because it doesn't have momentum

which affects the rest of the body.

Before,

when a large force is applied to a small object,

it accelerates quickly and move fast.

To show this,

we simply make the punch change position and accelerate more quickly,

meaning that the spacing between each frame

is going to be bigger than on the punch on the left.

To compensate for this larger range,

we're going to shift the pose of the entire body

to make it seem more realistic

and actually give the larger range to the character.

Now the hand movement creates its own momentum

and even though the mass of the hand

is small in comparison to the body,

the amount of force behind it is big

so we want to still show a large momentum

and we will be showing this momentum

by the effect it has on the rest of the body.

Because we're trying to increase the range

and because there is a large force

which is affecting the body,

the center of mass is going to move more to the side direction as the punch.

It will always try and balance itself.

So when the momentum

makes the center of gravity follow the punch and unbalance,

you will have to change the pose

in a way that shift the center of mass

back to the other direction.

This can be done by extending the limbs to the other direction

to get more mass over to the base,

by actually increasing the base

or even by changing the location of the supporting leg

and just changing the overall position of the character altogether.

If you're really trying to sell the idea of force

behind the punch or movement,

you can just to break the balance completely

and make extreme movement and unbalance your character

before making it shift to another position, stage or even make it fall.

In this example, I still want to keep my character balanced.

So by making it extend the leg,

we both make the base bigger

and move some of the body's mass

to the opposite direction of the punch,

which keeps the center of mass

over the supporting leg and keeping the character balanced.

Here, the body's actually at the very edge of its balance range,

so as long as we keep its proportions correctly,

we know where the movement and the poses

has to stop for the maximum effect.

If we go above this range,

the character will become unstable and fall.

If we go below this range,

it wouldn't seem like the character

is putting all the force behind the punch.

So basically

when you're trying to create complex animation

and figure out which poses you need to make,

we just need to think about how and when your character is balanced

and how to break this balance.

or get to the very edge of the movement range,

to show the maximum amount of force behind the movement.

This is true for any type of actions that you're trying to animate

with any types of object.

So it's a good idea to try and figure out

the forces working behind each movement

that you're trying to draw

before actually thinking and planning it.

Even if you just write it as a note,

you don't need to actually calculated or anything.

For a third example,

let's see what happens when the body is affected by an external force.

Up until now,

the character itself was the one instigating the movement,

so they have control over it

but a lot of the time,

you will see external forces affecting characters.

You can see that in fighting,

you can see that with terrain,

or you can see that with additional weight

or specialized item and clothing.

You can also show external forces using momentum.

In these cases, similarly to internal forces,

you need to recognize the direction

each force exerts on each part of the body.

This is where understanding

how the momentum creates some kind of chain reaction in the body

becomes really important.

Because the amount of momentum,

each body part exerts on the rest of the body

is going to affect the amount and direction of the movement

of the rest of the body.

Because this time,

we don't actually have the body balancing in itself,

or a base that we can compel the center of mass to.

In this case, a force which is too big for the body to counter

is acting on the hand.

I'll be showing this by using quick acceleration of the hand

and by making it travel a large distance on the screen.

Now the hand applies force to the rest of the body

because, well, it is connected,

so the rest of the body is going to follow the trajectory of the hand.

But because the hand's mass is smaller,

it's going to accelerate much faster

than the rest of the body,

which has larger mass.

Meaning that there is going to be a delay

between the hand and the body

because one is going to accelerate for a longer distance

and much quicker than the rest of it.

We're going to express this by changing the angle

that the body creates,

because the main body

is going to travel a shorter distance

due to it having a smaller mass and having a smaller force acting on it.

The character is going to come to rest once again

and when the center of mass reaches the point above the base.

In this case, the character is too unbalanced

so it's going to reach a complete fall.

Here,

I'm going to use secondary action

and the due to momentum,

the second hand,

which is still not at the resting position

when the rest of the body hits the floor

is going to continue its trajectory

because of its own momentum

until it's going to hit the floor as well, which creates a delay.

The important thing to remember about momentum

is that it's not something that comes directly

from the muscle or a propelling force

but this is something that occurs

because your object is already in motion.

Momentum alone will not start the movement,

but it will try to continue an existing one.

So basically,

a momentum will keep each object moving in its own trajectory

unless there is a larger force

which is acting on the force,

which is acting on the object and changing its trajectory.

This will come into play when you try and stop an action.

And why we usually show momentum in animation

for the way it affects other object,

for delay in timing and making larger projectories

on the details which are following the main action.

By following the thought process of where the force is,

how much momentum it's going to create,

and how this affects the trajectory of the rest of the body

or the details of the character design,

we can predict how we're going to plan the action

and which poses we're going to draw

to make it look more natural.

Now that we have a better idea

on how momentum and force are going to affect the action

that we're animating, both the timing, spacing,

and the amount of frames that it's going to take

and what poses

we're going to make in order to keep our character balanced

and show the force behind the movement,

we want to actually try and connecting multiple different actions together.

In this exercise,

I'm going to show you my thought process

when animating multiple actions together.

Basically what I'm going to do is connect multiple different poses

in a way that makes sense and keeps a certain flow and energy.

I'm going to show you around four poses,

but you can do either one or two

or play around with both full body

or certain parts of the body moving independently.

The point of this exercise is to learn

how to analyze forces acting on different parts of the body

and how we're going to use the animation techniques

that we've learned in the last lesson

to connect between multiple different actions.

So to remind you,

we show speed by changing the distance between each frame,

and we'll create an acceleration and the deceleration

which show that force and mass

by changing the actual size of the spacing between each frame.

To help visualize speed,

we are going to use smear frames and the idea of squashing stretch.

And to show impact,

we're going to use over shoot and impact frames

as well as emphasize certain actions using delay in timing.

When you're choosing your action for this exercise,

make sure that you're trying both full body actions

and the individual body part actions

to get the best experience

and see how you get full body effects in both of them.

For the first 15 poses,

the entire body is going to change position,

meaning that by necessity,

the arms which are connected to the body

are going to be changing position as well.

But I'm going to also move the arm independently

from the main body movement,

so it's a secondary action.

This movement of the arm makes it

so that they have their own momentum,

but it doesn't have enough mass or force behind the movement

to make a significant change in the position of the center of mass.

Especially, since we're making the base bigger

and lowering the center of mass with the new pose.

We're still going to be using over shoots

in both the squatting position and in the range of the hand

to show the energy of the movement.

Without using the overshoot,

it would seem like the character is slowly easing itself down

instead of crouching down with a large amount of energy.

The second shift in position, on the other hand,

does have a lot of force behind it.

So although the mass of the arm is smaller than the rest of the body,

the center of mass does change its position

to accommodate for the movement.

The momentum of the hand is going to make the rest of the body

follow the hand's trajectory,

and the body will try and balance itself.

So it's going to overshoot to show the force behind the movement,

but then it's going to go back

to show the balance of the body.

Next, we have a shift

in the amount of contact points and the size of the base.

We want the character to completely change the position

of the center of mass,

to go above the new contact point and the smaller base.

So first, we're going to show a new force

which is coming from the character's legs

and pushing it over to the position.

But this new force can only work on the character

for a single moment

because then it raises its leg

and it's no longer in contact with the ground,

so there's nothing to push.

What actually helps the character

to complete the new changing position

is the momentum that this initial kick creates,

as well as the additional momentum

which is created by shifting the arms of the character

to the other direction

and closer to the center of gravity above the new base point.

This shift in both mass and force

help the character reach a new position more naturally.

This also helps us understand where we need to position each limb

at each point along the trajectory.

Remember that the force is acting on the character

only at the bottom part of the trajectory

so it's going to use an ease out animation pattern.

We're going to have large changes in pose

at the beginning of the movement

and then as the character reaches to a stop,

we're going to have a small amount of changes in each body part.

Lastly,

we're going to see how the character is keeping balance

after making a very abrupt and big movement.

Here, I made the character balance after spinning

by making it extended limbs in opposite directions

to counterbalance the momentum of the body movement.

Here, the goal is basically to create a new momentum

by using the trajectory of the limbs,

which is opposite to the direction of the spin.

We extend both limbs

because we want to keep the balance of the mass of the body.

In this demonstration,

I decided to let the character keep its balance.

But if I would have changed any type of conditions

within the movement or the character design

would have resulted in a completely different action.

Each increase in the force of each action

or the mass of the limbs

would have created a momentum

which is too strong for the character to balance,

which would have made it fall or stumble in its action.

If not enough force was added to each movement,

the character might not have enough momentum

to complete the trajectory when shifting between poses.

Its change would have given us

a completely different outcome for the movement

so you need to understand the concept of momentum,

mass, acceleration and balance

to choose the correct poses, timing and spacing.

Up until now, we've talked about animation

in a pretty straightforward manner.

Basically, you just see

what forces are acting on each part of your character,

analyze them,

and then decide your trajectories according to them.

But we haven't talked

about how to make your entire animation

more appealing and good looking.

But we haven't talked about

how to make it more realistic,

more appealing,

and make it stand out in comparison to other animations.

For this,

there are two important things that we need to think about

whenever we're trying to animate any type of movement

beyond the regular understanding

of which trajectory we're going to make

and what poses will make it look good.

The secret to doing this is using your timing correctly.

By using it correctly,

I don't mean to understand the timing of each individual movement

in your entire sequence,

but actually how to time

every single movement in comparison to each other.

Most of the time when people animate,

they either make each movement separately from each other,

one after the other, like a chain,

usually with each new movement

lasting the same amount of time as the one before it,

or they try and make multiple motions together,

but they don't actually affect

or relate to each other all that much.

And a lot of the time,

the body will move as one mass

so there wouldn't be a delay between each part of the body

aside from what you will see from regular momentum.

But good looking and realistic animation is actually created,

by creating a good pacing between each individual movement

as well as creating different beats for each length of each action.

By this, I mean,

that whenever you're trying to animate a sequence of movements,

you need to make sure

that each part has a slightly different timing and overall length

to create a more realistic and nice looking pacing.

Another important thing to consider

is that the actual movement of the body or mass is going to take time.

You need to make sure that each movement that you're making

has enough time to start and stop naturally,

as well as give some delay

for the audience to perceive the movement.

This relates to the principle of anticipations

that we've talked about in a previous lesson.

Basically, you want to give enough time

for wind up and wind down of every movement

that you'll try to make.

You want to make sure

that the action trajectory

is always completed between movement

and that you have enough time to perceive it.

By completing the trajectory,

you'll usually going to shift the character's center of mass as well,

especially if the movements are quite big or quite sudden.

This means that you want to shift the entire body

into different direction,

adding the additional movements that created by that.

Ideally,

you want to have a slightly different

pacing and timing for each body part of your character

whenever it is making big movements like that

and have enough time

for each part to complete its own trajectory.

You will also want to have some variation

with the entire movement.

So for example,

if you're making your character stand up or down or spin,

you want to make sure

that each part that follows the initial action

has a slight delay and slightly different timing

to create more appealing movement.

So basically,

the formula for creating nice looking movement and pacing

is to break down your initial actions into main body action

and slightly different secondary actions that result from it,

and then create some changes

with the timing of each action of each body part.

Finally, you want to give enough time

for each action to be complete,

as well as make sure that the entire body weight shifts accordingly.

When your action is only starting,

you want to give enough space and a little bit of a wind up

before you actually perform the main action

so your character may go backwards

to enlarge the overall trajectory.

This also requires some delay

and some additional pacing of different body parts.

You might even want to add some secondary movements

of other body parts

that don't participate in the main action

in the middle of performing other part of the main action.

This will help you to have more detail

and more natural pacing to the overall animation.

I can't stress this enough,

but the secret to good looking action

is having contrast between your fast and slow actions.

You want to have enough variation in your pacing

to create something that looks interesting and natural

with the weight shifts of your character,

both with the main body action

and the secondary actions that result from it.

And if you feel that your animation is looking kind of bland or unnatural,

try spicing it up

by creating variations with these ideas in mind.

Up until now, we focused on

how the forces affect the actions and trajectories and poses

that we are going to choose.

But another thing that we need to consider is the timing.

The timing is actually extremely important

because it both gives you the limit

on how many frames you're going to draw,

which will be done by either the actual length of the scene

or by your own workload.

And it also going to give you the pacing of your action,

which tends to emphasize certain parts of it.

Even if your overall timing is determined in advance

by the length of the scene,

you can still play around with the actual speed

and emphasis of the movement

by changing the timing and actions of your character.

We kind of saw that in the last lesson

with the way that each role in the animation pattern section

looks like it's moved in a different time than the rest of them,

even though the amount of frames was the same.

The general rule of thumb

was to make a small amount of frames for quick movements

and a large amount of frames for slower movements.

This is also very useful

when you're trying to connect different movements

and show different momentums

because you can basically break

any type of movement into smaller sub movements,

each one of them with their own ease

and ease out pattern.

In order to create nice looking and natural movements,

what you need to do is basically realize

where your character is stopping

and for how long they're stopping.

Once you know where they're stopping,

you can just add additional frames

to show the connection movement between each stop.

And by controlling the speed of the movement

and how much distance you have between each pose,

you can understand

how to time your entire animation correctly.

Here, you can see the difference

between the larger movement in the action,

which has more energy and impact to them

and the smaller actions.

I just let the character have more time in the key poses

to show the emphasis of the impact and the range of the movement.

While for smaller movements,

I let the character change position rather quickly

and not let them delay on the connecting poses.

Of course, on each small part of the movement,

I'm going to use the ease in and ease out animation concepts

as well as try and check the balance

and forces working on the character

and add secondary movement as necessary.

For this process,

I actually find that

using the pose-to-pose method of animation is a lot more useful

because you know which movements and poses are important

and just add the additional frames to create better timing

and pacing to the overall animation.

If you've been following along with your exercise,

see where you choose to pause and move your character

and how you chose to balance it

or make it fall and get out of balance.

See if there are any places in the movement

where you can emphasize

and give it more impact by adding additional frames

to create sort of delays, which lets us anticipate the action.

If you do have places like these,

see if you need to add additional frames

or if you can actually space your character poses a little bit differently

to create the same effect

while keeping the same number of things,

remember that

as animators, especially independent animators,

our goal is to draw the least amount of frames

that we can make to have the right effect of the action

that we're aiming for,

because each new frames that we are going to make

is going to be additional time and work on the production.

Also,

instead of adding and subtracting frames,

see if there are places

where you can create a delay

simply by making your animation

on 2s or 3s instead of 1s.

I myself actually go the opposite way

and draw everything on 3s

and then see if I can increase the speed of certain parts of the action

by making it on 2s and 1s.

This makes it

so that they have the most efficient animation

that I can make

because I start with the low frame rate

and then go on the higher frame rate when necessary.

The exercise in this lesson,

if you haven't been following along,

is to create your own version of the examples

that I've given throughout this video.

I recommend making a sequence of three movements,

but you can also make one or two actions

if you're new to animation

as long as they involve the entire body.

When choosing the actions for your sequence,

make sure that you have one shift in your center of mass,

one shift of a limb

which creates movement in the center of mass,

and one change in your balance

and base size of your character.

This will help you understand

how to create different movements

and connect them using momentum.

You can try and work with internal or external forces as you see fit,

and you can create different variations

where your character keeps or loses its balance.

The more experience with these types of animations,

the better you will standing on the forces

working on your character are going to be,

so the easier it's going to be to animate later on.

Make sure that you keep your character's proportions and volumes correct

and that you take into account

the different masses of your character design when animating.

Again, you want to make sure

that you're not having any jittering effects

so you need to have a clear path

and see that no parts of your character

is accidentally going backwards in the trajectory

which will create the effect.

This is especially important

if you have slow movements

which requires very small spacing between frames.

And lastly,

for the best exercise quality,

try and create your characters

while keeping your sketch to the minimum number of lines.

To recap,

in today's lesson,

we've learned the concept of mass, force and momentum,

how to analyze your movements according to them,

and how to show the full acceleration,

and shifting with your character balance

to create the correct poses for our animation

as well as playing around with our timing and spacing of the poses

to create more interesting and varied actions in our animation.

Next lesson,

we're going to learn about animating objects

and showing their characteristics and details

using different animation techniques

as well as how to apply these objects and techniques

to the details that we're going to add to the character design.

Thank you for watching and see you next time.

Bye.