3 Tips to improve your SENSE OF TIMING for animation!

three tips to improve your sense of timing for animation now if that's not a clickbaity title i don't know what it is but it is youtube you gotta die like this but it's also not quite true yes three tips in terms of three categories and i can spell them right now tip number one it's all about observing real life and reference tip number two look at the animation that you want to do that you want to emulate and then tip number three it's all about practice and repetition again that's very simplified and you can break these down more so i'm gonna go beyond the clickbaity stuff let's go one by one observing real life in reference so what you got to do is film yourself or film a friend or find some footage that you can analyze you have to look at what is going on in terms of the movement the body mechanics anything that you want to animate and then go frame by frame look at what is the pose on frame 1 frame 5 10 or 13 or whatever take notes and look at how long does it take for that arm move or the head move just kind of familiarize yourself with those movements but i still would recommend that you act things out so you know how it feels when you do it yourself if you just look at footage it's not quite the same so act things out film yourself you don't want to show it to anybody that's okay it's just for you it's a learning experience to get your muscle memory in but you have to look at real life why because it's life it's true to life it's more original it's more personal it's something that will feel new and it will go through your lens and your filter and your interpretation and stylization to create some new performance versus finding something that someone else has done and taking that which has already been interpreted and then reusing that's kind of a copy of a copy and it's also a lot easier because it's all around you you anywhere you go take a sketchbook film something obviously have permission to fail but it's everywhere where you go just always kind of look at how long does it take to move something get out of the car get into the car to turn something on to get your clothes on anything you just kind of start looking at patterns and just the rhythm of movement but of course you can't always do that everywhere so look at movies and tv shows there's a lot of stuff out there where you can look at real actors in terms of how they perform and how they move i would highly recommend stand up comedy it's a certain rhythm and delivery in for each specific comedian that will help you with a sense of timing if you're at home and you can't go out to look at things they're a bunch of youtube channels their channels are specifically for reference this can be for animals or just for humans there's so much out there where you can take those clips download them and go frame by frame and analyze and in terms of like a subcategory i would also recommend music because you do want to think in terms of rhythm the sense of timing for me is always a sense of ebbs and flows and like certain amount of punctuations and just contrast and for me music is great too so listen to music not saying you have to go and study music and do a whole other degree and maybe that's just me but it always helped me to kind of have music in the background animate with music just think in terms of a melody and rhythm so that you do have contrast in your movement and the performances now once that is done and it's not saying one two three this is all kind of mixed together but you can't just look at real life because the thing is once you start animating you still have to stylize it and caricature your shots and your animation even if you work in the effects animation you can't just do a one-to-one copy it'll feel a lot of times it feels kind of soft and kind of weightless you still have to go in there and punch it in and just kind of add something to it now if you do cartoon animation feature animation you'll go through an extra step of cartoonifying stylizing and caricaturing certain elements where it's your height in a certain moment and if you're new to this then look at the material that you want to emulate so if you want to work at specific companies screen cap the work can be a shock can be a sequence and then go frame by frame how long does it take for a bling for head to rim for a gesture all that stuff so you can see okay this is real life this is animation how does it change from there to there and if you don't have the time or you have the material to look at that you can always go online there are a bunch of accounts either on twitter on youtube that do that for you they break down shots to look at the timing or just collect a lot of progression reels where you can see how things change from layout to blocking to final polish animation but none of that matters because you can observe observe observe read about it watch things but if you don't actually animate it's not really going to help and the last tip or category is probably the most frustrating one it just takes time and practice so even if you take a whole day and look at all those clips and everything and you watch tutorials and all that stuff you won't be able to do exactly that that evening you will have to open up your whatever software you use and then practice and go step by step if you're new to animation bouncing balls and then build on top of that but what i would highly recommend is to keep the shots short and my students if they i don't know my students watch my clips they'll probably be sick of me saying this but keep things short you don't want to attack a 20-second shot because you're going to be involved with just getting the whole thing done wrangling all the mechanics and maybe camera work i know what you're doing but it's going to be so much work it's going to be frustrating you're going to run out of time and you won't have the motivation to continue and so for me when you take a short shot you will have time to finish it you will go from the full process of layout to polish and then you can start something new and if you break things up in terms of just gestures or head turns body parts just small body mechanics it's like i said i think the previous clip it's like lego pieces you practice by building little pieces right or you have one little piece and once you attack a longer shot it's not going to be as daunting and and maybe you know frustrating or intimidating because you have done all the little pieces now you put them all together and now you have a longer shot and just because the shot is short doesn't mean that you can't show off what you can do my favorite example is the one from maximum is entangled it's a short shot but the timing is so good it's so funny it's entertaining snappy timing good mechanics a little extra details in the stirrup of the saddle and the tail it's just a great shot it's short and even though i constantly talk on my channel about props and sets and cameras and things this is just a character an empty scene but that's all you need especially when you practice and after you've done all of this it's a rinse and repeat factor where you just again observe always look at other things look at not just you know people that look like you in terms of the size or how they move look at people that are bigger and skinnier and smaller and children and then animals like there's so much you can observe every time you do something different you're going to learn something new that you might plug into another shot and then again vary the sources of reference so real life yourself film yourself then look at movies tv shows look at animated movies animated tv shows different styles just look at all that absorb but especially write things down analyze how long does it take how many frames emulate this you can take anything that you just found from footage or from real life put that into mine and then rotoscope it you're never gonna show it to anyone it's not gonna be in your real but it's good to just copy it so you can see what is the spacing what is the timing how do your poses move from one frame to the next practice it gets kind of like a muscle memory mental memory and then you start animating your own shots and slowly all that stuff will mesh into your own preferred style your own method your workflows and i can guarantee you over time your sense of timing is going to be better over time sense of timing yes but you got to be patient and some people will get it faster some people have an innate sense of timing maybe it's because of i mean my dad used to play saxophone at home and he deserves jazz and classical music i always listen to music when i was small and to this day and i think having that constantly in the background and watching movies and analyzing like the acting analysis clips i do this on a weekly if not daily basis it just helps it's just that constant exposure and kind of soaking up just even if you don't always specifically analyze things you will still get used to a certain pattern and rhythm and it just helps so consistency and practice is key and unfortunately all that takes time so be patient be patient with yourself but be consistent and practice you can't just do it once three months later do it again it's just that it's going to be a long road if you do like this and personally i put timing over poses poses are great obviously but you can have beautiful poses and your sense of timing is completely off and it's just not gonna work and you can have fairly crappy poses but if the timing is just fantastic it's still gonna work obviously you want both to be great but i put more weight onto timing so timing and spacing really important timing for how long it takes and spacing how things move how your poses move from one frame to the next i think that to me is always the biggest thing to look at and of course followed by poses and biomechanics all that good stuff so there you have it these are my obviously subjective tips but if you have something else like maybe i'll comment i don't know comments are always open what were your ways to get better at timing how did you fine-tune your sense of timing very curious again this is all very subjective this is how i do it this is how i do it so let me know how you go about this i'm very curious but that's it thank you for watching that's so hopefully shortish it's not that short it's not that i mean if you're still watching as always thank you for watching and hopefully it was something that was helpful and if you want to miss any of my future uploads you know the pitch at the end clickbaity titles at the beginning youtube picture at the end youtube subscribe so you don't miss any uploads you know like that stuff that people say and i say that as well but thank you for still watching i appreciate your patience and hopefully i'll see you in my next clips you

Channel: Jean-Denis Haas

Views: 51,807

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Id: yaQqg3VtrUo

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022