1. Animate without arms,
2. Think of the fluidness, you have to think before you act/animate
say you want to animate a
jumping up
1. frame pose
20. frame preparing
24. f. he's down, bending a lot
26. f. jumping
27. f. air
28. f. he's at the top of his jump (he's highest, or whatever I want to say :D)
29. f. falling down
31. f. landing
35. f. standing pose, maybe preparing for another movement
thats the basic timing, now you have to adjust it, if you use the fps of 20, now is your animation like almost 2 seconds long, thats really not what we're looking for, we need like 2 seconds for the beginning, where is your stick just standing, we need 0.3 seconds to go down, 0.1 seconds to stay down, 0.1 seconds to go up, 0.2 seconds to be in the air, 0.3 seconds to go down, 0.2 landing, 0.3 another pose.
That's 3,5 seconds, we have to use like 70 frames, lets adjust our timing,
1-40 standing
40-45 going down
45-47 down
47-49 going up
49-52 in the air
53-56 falling down
56-61 landing
61-66 standing/preparing for another pose
THAT is timing, timing is really important, I dont say you have to think like this about all of your movements, but keep this in mind.
How to try out your timing ?
Just do that
extreme frames, its like triple double and single framing, draw a guy stading (1) being down (47) air (52) down (61) standing (66) now add
inbetweens or "
passing through positions" going down (43) going up (48) falling down (54) standing up (63)
Now, if it fits, if you feel it, if you feel he's jumping, add the
easing, if you dont feel it, if you think he's staying in the air too much, or if he's falling down like a feather, just go and move that frames, then when everything seems perfect, go and ease it !!
That was timing.
Another thing that Im talking about really REALLY often is what I call the
animation flow its how the parts of the body, the story, the bg, how everything continues, hows everything fluid, to solve this, think of curves, animation is one big curve, watch good animations, Terkoizs for example, watch the head, if you can, dont think of anything but the head, the movement of the head, if you connect all places what the head passes, Im pretty sure that you'll get nice curve.Or another example, go to the portal and watch some animation that has 2/10, watch the head, what will you see ? Some thing like
(google picture) I think it would suit some sort of "noob-made-by-running"
instead of this, Pro head motion,
That's the critism to your animation.
