Mini-tuts/ramblings on concepts and principles that animators should remember will go in here

One of the things that I notice that a lot of people (even veterans and elites) forget often is one of the most basic components of animation posing and drawing, which is the flow of the pose. There is much more expression and a more consistent illusion of movement when the pose of the character is stylized to form a "Line of Action"- college taught me that word, although I had been subconsciously adhering to the principle my entire animation career.

Here is a basic example of 3 poses. the green figure is what the figure "should" look like given the animation standard of line of action, red is the pose without influence of a line of action.


It probably doesn't make much sense to you at this point, one pose just simply looks more bent than another one, but the balance of the figures weight distribution on his center axis, and the general direction/flow of movement are being taken into account. To give more examples, I will use animations from around the forum with poses I would consider "stiff" and explain the error and how it could be corrected.


Above is an example of how not to do poses. These poses, although in an intense action sequence, still look stiff and static due to the non-unified direction of the flow of the body. limbs are shooting every which way with no relation to the direction of the hips and ribcage, which is where the center of mass is.

I understand you're explaining poses specifically, but I don't think there's such thing as a "flow of the pose." From what I understand and have been saying to others for a while now, "flow" in a fight sequence context means the transitioning from one pose to another, so just one pose can't possibly have flow.

I do think the concept of "line of action" is a helpful contribution here, and should be added to all the animators' vocabularies. I've noticed it too, however I couldn't translate the concept properly and I just say "your back is a little too stiff, try to make it move with the body with each attack," which admittedly doesn't make much sense, especially when the person is just new to animating. Cheers for this, I hope this gets more attention.

Line of action is a legitimate principle of animation posing. when I say "flow of the pose" I just mean how much the character itself adheres to said line of action. I try to use actual animation terminology in my tutorials. A lot of the people around these forums are very good, with their know-how and the correct terminology, they can market themselves as animators and make a killing freelancing. It's what I do.

Actually, I would argue that smile.
From the looks of it he is spot on for certain things, poses will always look odd but keeping in perspective of the "Balance" of where your center is, as well as keeping said balance is actually pretty important.
Making a line for the balance as well as the bend of the back, this actually helped me out quite a bit. Explains why my stances always look a bit off, draw a line for center of balance on those poses where mine looked off and it was no wonder.

Quote from Equinox Fox

Actually, I would argue that smile.
From the looks of it he is spot on for certain things, poses will always look odd but keeping in perspective of the "Balance" of where your center is, as well as keeping said balance is actually pretty important.
Making a line for the balance as well as the bend of the back, this actually helped me out quite a bit. Explains why my stances always look a bit off, draw a line for center of balance on those poses where mine looked off and it was no wonder.

I was pretty much agreeing to his "line of action" thing. I was just clarifying what I understood to be the colloquial definition of "flow" in this community.