Pixel Joint Forum: Pose to pose animation

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   Is animating a character from one pose to another just a lot of trial and error? I think I'm okay at drawing characters now, but taking an existing character and manipulating their body into another pose can sometimes take a while. Idle animations are easy, however things that usually involve a lot of limb and spine rotation can be tricky. For example if I draw a sword swing pose sometimes I'll get the sword and arm proportions right, but forget to tilt the legs and torso first. Thanks for reading! 😊

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imonk Midshipman Joined: 04 April 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 21	Topic: Pose to pose animation Posted: 23 August 2019 at 2:24pm
	Is animating a character from one pose to another just a lot of trial and error? I think I'm okay at drawing characters now, but taking an existing character and manipulating their body into another pose can sometimes take a while. Idle animations are easy, however things that usually involve a lot of limb and spine rotation can be tricky. For example if I draw a sword swing pose sometimes I'll get the sword and arm proportions right, but forget to tilt the legs and torso first. Thanks for reading! 😊
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yrizoud Commander Joined: 03 May 2021 Location: France Online Status: Offline Posts: 343	Posted: 09 September 2019 at 4:16am
	Books / tutorials / training about traditional animation (cartoon) can help a lot. In an animation, what's important is that the movement flows well, not that each frame is pixel-perfect. For low-detail sprites, instead of working with the outlines, you'll often design and check animation with flat filled colors. After you have checked that the movement plays nice, is time to add pixel-level details. At this step, it is possible to introduce mistake because the details interfere with readability, so be ready to step back and keep things simple. Note that in traditional animation they usually have a constraint of a fixed time step (ex: 12 or 24 images/s). On the computer you are more free, so you can always split a time interval and insert an intermediate frame.
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imonk Midshipman Joined: 04 April 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 21	Posted: 12 September 2019 at 10:55pm
	Thanks, I've learned a lot about animation on my own recently and I had fun. 1. It takes long 2. GET THOSE KEY FRAMES! 3. To start new poses, rough out the big shapes until your brain can tell what's going on with the motion. Then "carve" the big shapes until all the line work is mostly in proportion. Now you can finally do the long daunting part, add the details flipping back and forth between frames, THEN start on your "tweens". In other words, there's no secret.
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