SBW - Inbetweening and Timing Charts Demo

hi everybody after countless requests I have finally recorded footage of me doing a timing chart and inbetweening demo today I'd love to show you that overall process again in-betweening is the process of tying down the timing and smoothing out the overall movement with your drawings check out my previous video about inbetweening to learn more about the concept itself and why it's so important for 2d animation so without further ado let's get started there will be a number of essential things I'd like to dress in this video in this video we'll be timing our animation within the timeline then we'll be applying and utilizing timing charts on our drawings I'll be showing you guys some important basic skills and techniques that you can use to keep your drawings consistent for example I want to show you guys the point-to-point technique next in the actual in-betweening phase I'll talk about what order to do the drawings in and utilize flipping techniques I'll discuss things like keeping form and maintaining arcs and dealing with two different timing charts in one drawing when we have the most basic in between foundations down on our tests then we can talk about using the light table of areas of very tight spacing last thing we'll be doing is correcting and revising some of my in-betweens and explaining why I'm making such changes anyways let's get right to it the character I'll be using is a mouse named Richard submitted by Patrick standard according to Patrick he started out as a fan character based on the secret of NIMH universe come to think about it I can definitely see the Don Bluth influence and some of Richard's drawings Patrick uses Richard for his own animation demos in which he has done in his own regarding the same in-betweening topic so to pay honor to that notion I thought using Richard for the same topic with my own take will be an interesting way to go go check out Patrick's work on patreon at the link below also the man's a beast animator and clearly his work shows his loving passion for hand-drawn animation the software I'll be using is TV paint but honestly you can use other software's like flash Toon Boom any software that's capable of doing it all right first of all I want to talk about what we're working with over here here's a character that I'm working with Richard as you can see I've already done work with him to save time I've already tied down the major key poses and it's break downs this is because I want to keep this video more focused on timing charts and in-betweening so we're excluding everything such as starting from scratch or trying to discover what we're trying to animate none of that anyways let's roll through the drawings the character takes a sidestep and as he reaches to the other side he dips down and flashes a pose then using his fists behind him he gestures he punches the air and flashes another type of pose yeah gesture let me roll with you the overall performance once again let me just get back to it and yeah and then another yeah and since we are working with a digital timeline I'll manipulate the frame so it matches the timing I desire one of the benefits of animating digitally it's fast now think of this process like timing your regular drawings on an exposure sheet except in this case it's digital like what I would do on paper I would label my drawing so I know what order they go in which are key frames which are breakdowns and which are secondary breakdowns I chose to label my drawings as letters for example the drawing here I labeled as a one is a single underline to me this means it's a breakdown the drunks I have where the letters are circled that means I'm telling you guys this is a story key or a key frame and what we want to do with these drawings is to space these out in a timeline or the digital exposure sheet over here and we want to be able to finally add the timing charts so I'm going to start spacing these out and I'm going to elaborate more and my thoughts process on why I'm making such decisions so from drawing a to drawing B I kind of wanted to gain momentum so I wanted to start pretty slow and it end really fast we're working with 24 frames per second over here I'm probably going to make the trends go for about four frames but most likely I'll change it to something else since the spacing between a 1 and B is still pretty huge I'm gonna play it safe and make that last for at least while at max 4 frames as well and since it is gaining speed and momentum I guess I should really emphasize this in the first drawing so I'm going to make the transition between drawing edge drawing a1 last a bit longer let's say 6 frames from b2 b1 it might go really fast so I'm just gonna say 2 for this one from drawing B want to see I'm thinking of on a slow in so I'm gonna see how six frames go for this one anyways I should advise that you guys keep rolling or drawing so you kind of get the overall movement in the overall momentum your drawings have because that can play a huge role when you're setting your timing or when you're manipulating the placement of your frames like for here I'm already sensing where the slow in and slow out to happen so I'm matching those frames to a timing that I want like already here I can read that it's gonna have a lot more time in the beginning and then it'll go by the middle really fast and then there'll be more time of it slowing down that's why there's more drawings needed in the last bit sometimes when I'm struggling about having a clear idea of what the timing is I'll usually set as a 4 as a placeholder and then later when I'm more confident with it I'll go back and adjust it I'm constantly rolling through my drawing so I'm I'm just trying to feel the overall drawings and for this part where he snaps his pose it looks like it's going to be really fast so I'm guessing around in twos or ones so just feeling these three or four drawings I already know it's going to go fast I don't need to put as force I know I'm gonna put as a two or one so when he bounces up to this pose I don't want it to go too fast or else the overall movement won't read so I guess I'm going to resort to fours so when I in between and twos it's going to read but which I will get into later I am going to time different parts of the body differently like the head will move differently than the body and I'll show you guys how to do that later on all right important note here try and make it uneven as possible when you look at your timeline try and look at where your frames are and whether the spacing between the frames are even or uneven and having less even spacing of your frames makes things more interesting it's the same matter of working with asymmetrical designs and asymmetrical designs except here it's based on time and motion but the overall feeling still applies so it's important to think about things like rhythm rhythm creates things like weight and variety and interest whereas if you have everything that's evenly spaced in your timeline and when you play it oh it's gonna feel very floaty and the problem with that is that it's going to make things uninteresting waiting lists and just not interesting anyway sorry I got a bit off-topic from the actual animation but as you can see I'm already thinking about things where the motion slows down where it gains speed and where things go by really quickly so for my drawings g2h I kind of want it to be a very slow slow in so it creates a lasting impact it will go for about 16 frames oh man that's gonna be a to in between well there's my past let's see how this little goes all right okay um I guess it's a timing I sort of want I might change it later during production but I think this is good I think this is blood we're gonna work with it it just feels about right so let's start setting those timing charts just now before we add the timing charts I just want to say that other animators usually prefer making the timing charts before they make breakdown drawings I chose to do my breakdown drawings first so it'll be easier for me to explain utilizing an understanding timing charts in general alright now I already have an idea of how my animation is timed out I tried to keep each movement uneven and I'm constantly thinking about how fast how slow how long and how short each pose is supposed to last for and how they should transition so if I play it timing is all there everything seems to move at a rhythm I want and you can see the variety and timing when Richard hits opposes I want the question I'm asking myself is how do I give myself that special instruction guide for inbetweening as you can see I timed out my frames before adding the breakdowns and before adding the frame numbers once I'm actually happy with where my drawings are on the timeline that's when I begin to add and replace my labeled letters into actual numbers we're drawing a starts will be my frame number in this case it's 1 and I usually match it with my letters it's a keyframe I'm going to circle that my next drawing a 1 is breakdown and it looks like it's sitting on 7 frame 7 in a timeline so as you can see I'm basically matching my drawings to its placement in the timeline I'm adding circles and underlines to indicate their breakdowns and key frames this is so that these drawings are now part of an actual footage and not just placeholders of where they should be timing wise thankfully I labeled my letters with indications of what kind of drawings they have so it'll be easier for me to real able them when giving them actual frame numbers I notice this animation has a lot of keyframes a lot of circle drawings and that's really just how I work I find it easier for me to organize my drawings this way some of you may prefer to label your drawings differently and that's totally fine as long as it works in your favor and that you're not struggling with it then it's probably for the best alright so remember how I said other animators prefer to do timing charts before they add any breakdown drawings well this because the timing on these keys may actually affect how the breakdown is supposed to look how fast these joints move will determine how intense or how pushed your breakdowns should be to match the timing or how subtle and soft these breakdowns should be so after all my drawings are finally labeled as frame numbers I think it's finally time to add our timing charts so when putting these down I always like to roll and flip through my drawings to understand the movement and I'll talk to you guys through the step-by-step to further elaborate on my thoughts process so from frame 1 to frame 7 I kind of wanted to start really slow and then slowly gain speed so just by hearing the sound of that it sounds like a slow out so let's make a chart between those two frames so since the slow out it looks like the midpoint of these two drawings would be the one that's closest to the next drawing and it looks like it's going to be on twos and it's going to be an even half so it's going to be 5 5 will be the even half between 1 & 7 so between frame 1 and frame 5 it looks like frame 3 will be an even half between 1 & 5 and if you see the spacing on the charts it starts out as really small and it just gets bigger this will give the illusion that it's gaining speed and because there's so much more drawings in the beginning part it's going to feel more slow now when I flip between 7 and 11 the gap between them is so big and it looks like I'll only be doing one drawing I'm going to give this an even 1/2 because it looks like it's constantly moving so I don't need to pull off any thirds or favoring so I'm going to make the chart in between 7 8 11 is frame 9 and when I add frame 9 and chart it's an even 1/2 so it's basically the midpoint between frame 7 and 11 so I'm just going to indicate this is our even 1/2 now I'm flipping through 11 and 13 and I'm noticing that this is such a huge huge jump huge spacing and very little time so it looks like for me to really do this justice going to have to make this into ones even have for these two is 12 between 13 and 19 it looks like the action is starting to slow down so the timing chart I'll need to make is called a slow in it's when the action loses its momentum and that's kind of what I want so when I'm making these charts between 13 and 19 I'm going to do the join that's closer to my previous drawing so in this case it'll be drawing 15 so we need to do 15 first in order to get information for the in-betweens between 15 to 19 and then finally 17 to 19 and you'll notice it's just getting smaller and what I'm referring to is the spacing between how far these drawings are from each other looks like our next set of keys will be slowed out so it's gaining speed this is when he's building the anticipation to whip out that other pose sometimes when you roll through your drawings you don't really need to add an elaborate timing chart you just have to look at the drawing and I'll do most of the work for you from 19 to 23 I'm just going to put an even half in between it's because of the spacing within those drawings are so small already and that spacing between 25 2008 a second actually I'm actually going to pull off a favoring here I really want 19 to read so I'm going to favor my in-between to that but not too much I'll probably make it a thirds and then when I roll through 23 25 and 27 it looks like it's already gaining speed even without the in betweens so because I see these drawings flying by really fast I'm thinking up in between these as ones later no in-betweens and twos so for these I'm probably just going to chart these as ones from 23 to 25 I'm going to put a 24 for example from what I have already it's already happening really fast I'm just going to make it smoother later in the future so there will be a 26 as an even halves now when I actually look at 27 to 31 this is tricky because I don't think for something like this I just in between it as it is I'm really going to have to think about the context of the overall movement and what's actually happening at this very point he's actually dipping down and what happens after is he slowly moves into his next pose but to keep things natural and fluid you have to think about how each body part will move so when I'm flipping through these drawings the head and the torso is going to move differently from let's say the ears and the arms because in the previous drawings I actually have the arms having a lot of overlapping action so it's going to be doing stuff like delays from the body movement and overshooting in other words I'm probably going to have to make another timing chart for the arm alone and maybe I'll just have the body move normally or just as an even half I'm going to make the arm favor the next drawing or to be more specific the next drawing of the arm so let's go ahead and do a reference timing chart for that so between frames 27 and 31 I feel like we're going to favor the next round which is 31 so I'm going to put my 29 very close to our frame 31 so yes it looks like I'll have to deal with two timing charts at once I should have chosen another an example that doesn't have to require this so between frames 31 into 39 it looks like it's going to be a slow in he's going to settle into that pose so the midpoint of the chart will be closest to 31 which is 33 and it'll just get smaller and smaller as it goes down from 35 to 37 etc etc yeah honestly guys I should have chosen something that's a lot more simpler I'm really sorry about that hopefully I'll be smarter and more simpler in my next tutorial which is making breakdowns and how you can make timing charts first before you implement those breakdowns alright so between frame 39 to 47 it's going to be a slow out so it's going to gain momentum so since I'm doing this in the basic twos and all in even halves my midpoint will be for you looks like it's gonna be a 45 and then when I add 4341 it's gonna start really small and it'll just gradually get bigger spacing wise so since 45 is my midpoint of 39 and 47 I'll do that and to get 43 I need to do 45 first so I'll use 45 and 39 as my guide and then once I hit drawing 41 I'll use 43 and 39 as my in-betweening guide some of my breakdown and timing is already very tight and I don't really need to add much timing charts so in some cases they'll just be straight in betweens when you roll through your drawing so you're just gonna already feel the movement and at this point it's intuitive when you're just working on it or just rolling through it you're gonna already feel the movement okay so I noticed something between 51 to 55 it looks like it might be a weird favoring thing like I did with the previous ones so I'm thinking for the whole body is just going to be a normal even half but I feel like the hand is going to start the action a little bit it's going to start earlier than the body and ahead so I'm going to have it punch earlier and when I do chart it I'm going to favor the next drawing after this so here's the thing I feel like my approach has always been different when I switch from traditional animation into the digital medium it's because of the ability to roll through or flip through virtually many drawings and I don't really place timing charts because skills like rolling and flipping through makes me more of an intuitive animator it makes me feel the movements already so basically in between my eyeballing which I'd say is not a good habit to have and unfortunately I do have that habit however when I'm animating on paper I realize I'm more careful in my timing choices I'd have an exposure sheet by my side and an exposure sheet is basically a traditional version of the timeline here I'd use an exposure sheet by my side just to indicate where my drawings are how far they are from each other and really think about the timing from here so like in my last video this is why I recommend animating on paper once in a while it makes you more decisive the digital medium will always be a faster choice for me but I realize now when I work with it I tend to be more experimental in my approach to timing so in other words I'm going with my gut feeling and you know what that's not always a bad thing because you sometimes need to experiment with timing for a thing that you're not familiar with or an approach that you've never really done or handled it before so here when my timing charts get too big I actually make another mini timing chart that basically just continues the later numbers of my in-between this is just for clarity's sake really and another thing I have to admit about my work is that I'm very messy when it comes to establishing my timing charts because I'm always figuring out if there are better ways or better options for timing so from 59 to 75 it's a slow end so it's the movement the spacing of the joints is just going to get smaller and smaller until it reaches to a full stop all right let's roll through my drawings he starts off very slow and then whips to the other side really fast his whole body dips down his arm overshoots and he quickly gets up bounces up and while he's settling down into his new pose he there's an anticipation on his armed behind him he does a quick swing which drives the whole body then with his rock on gesture he slows in into his final pose oh well this looks like it'll be an to be in-betweening all right now I want to show you guys a technique that will help you improve your inbetweening work this is a practice that was introduced to be by my mentor Scott right and it has helped me a lot in retaining consistency with my drawings so I'm going to make my first in-between drawing now looking at the chart which drawing should i do first considering that the even half for one and seven is five and a lot of other in-betweens referred to five I'm going to do five first here's a hint you want to do an in-between that the other smaller in-betweens might need to refer to first for example in this chart you cannot do an in-between of three without having five done first because three isn't even half between one and five so I'm gonna make drawing five first so I'm going to clear frame five so we can make a totally new drawing for the in-between now there are two things I want to elaborate on which is the technique itself and relying on flipping over using the onion skinning or light table tool notice how I'm flipping rapidly between my previous drawing and my next drawing the more you flip rapidly you'll be able to notice the change in form and shape this is useful for doing in betweens with huge gaps between the joints now the in-betweening technique I want to show you guys is what I would like to call the point to point what you do combined with the skill of flipping is that you implement dots and points that represent the specific accent of what needs to be in between if there's a sharp turn or change in direction within the lines you want to make a visual note to yourself that you'll need to keep and track with these things during in-betweening how well in this example I'm drawing points and dots first this is a technique that improves observation skills training your ability to see arts and other hidden movements I'm adding points based on where my accents are or where there's a lot of change within the lines and patterns then I would connect the dots like as if I was doing those paper activities where you draw a line and connect the dots to make a picture so I'm using that same principle for these in-betweens I'm placing dots and points on things like where his hair is where his eyes meet where there's more fur or there's less for where the head meets the neck just important aspects that you might want to keep track of the work of inbetweening is more than just adding lines in between the lines of your drawings it requires maintaining a consistent performance as well and that requires being careful with how you treat important accents within your character or whatever it is you're in between anyways I'm going to in between this I'll speed up the video a bit so we can get to our points faster but notice how my light tables off so I can just focus on seeing the clear arcs the movement and making sure the accents of the character are consistent also stick to your gut feeling sometimes you're going to have to do an in-between where it won't make sense if you just in between or keep track of the shapes sometimes you'll just have to make a completely new drawing that doesn't really match with the in-betweens it's fine you'll just you'll basically just have to fill it out it leaves in-between of frame five using the dots dot method or the point-to-point method it sort of helped me maintain a consistent in-between between the two key drawings so if you're trying to get better at accuracy and consistency I totally recommend doing a point-to-point approach to your in-between drawings when you're doing breakdowns as well but remember this is just one in between out of whatever umpteenth you have to do so let's move on let's work with frame nine now an in-between for frame seven and eleven now remember when I said that there will be cases where we'll have to in between huge gaps and it will require to do more than just making in between lines well let's say you have a character that's also turning their head during the motion if you were to use a character like let's say Richard over here and if I were just to in between the placement of the snout and a nose evenly from its first pose to the next pose it's probably going to lose form why because most likely we're not thinking about the perspective or where it is spatial wise 3d wise I mean so with that in mind this is tricky but you do have to treat the objects you're working with its form its structure in mind and how it's going to look basing different directions in perspective it's because of his nose extruding outside of his head I feel like his 3/4 front view of the snout would be closer to the previous drawing or where he's turned sideways it's because we're really taking consideration of the length of his snout well let's try and think it this way think of it as an arc that's happening at a bird's eye view of the character the nose and the snout does follow normal arc but if you were to look at it in a normal perspective like this you'll notice that the snout would probably favor one side or the other because it's adjacent to the arc on the bird's eye view it's probably a strange concept to think about it first but I think once you get the concept and idea down you'll definitely try implementing it in your drawings also if you feel like you've become more comfortable in being more bold with where you're in betweens are you can become more gestural you can just draw the basic shapes of the character you can just draw them immediately without having to do the point-to-point technique that I was showing earlier if you feel more confident and if you want to be more decisive with your in-betweens that being said you should always still do the point one technique I still do it when I in between anyways throw be many times where I'll speed up the video because in-betweening is a lot of work and I feel like just watching someone in-between for the hell of it is not fun at all so it's just best for the video consistency to just speed things up all right the next thing I'm going to do is make an in-between for frame 13 to 19 so when I look at my chart and when I roll through my drawings I can see that the action is slowing down this is a slow end and it's not just one drawing I have to do it looks like I'll need to do six frames so that could be two new drawings in twos so I'm going to ask you guys what drawing should i do first we'll ask yourself what drawing will the other smaller in between need to refer to I can't do 17 without 15 and 15 isn't even half between 13 and 19 so I'm going to do 15 first so once I'm done with that I'm going to use that drawing to do frame 17 so again my top advice is to do the drawing that the other in-betweens need to refer to you can also look at how big the spacing the drawings take within the timing chart that can also help with choosing which drawings to do first then just work your way getting smaller let's lie in between you'll notice that I'm always constantly mixing between flipping doing the point to point technique and being gestural in my shapes another thing I want you guys think about is the context of the in-between this is such a fast motion what I'm animating here between where he whips his hand across the screen so I'm also going to think about dragging or overlapping action where when he does whip his hand his palm and his fingers would have this somewhat dragging motion to emphasize the force another thing I'm thinking about is I don't want the arcs to be too big I want the in-between to be more straightforward and just easier to read so I'm not going to move the placement of his hand too much so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull off a foreshortening where his hand comes closer to the audience it gives it also more of a popping out feel something that could add that extra oomph in a very quick and whip lashing moment so again I'm an advocate of thinking about the context before actually implementing it in between itself like how fast he's moving and the intent I'm probably thinking a little too abstract right now but I hope you guys are getting what I'm trying to say all right now I'm working with frame 17 one thing I noticed is that there's still a lot of drastic change in the part where he whips his arm in the previous drawing I guess 15 in this point the arm is more extended whereas in the next drawing it's bent and his hand is now behind him it's way past his torso if I were to just do a dead on in between it would look as if his arm is losing volume and that he would have missing joints so again imagine you're looking at this character from a bird's-eye view and imagine your in-betweening his arm from this bird's-eye view at the same time you're trying to maintain the arc of where's elbow moves where his hand moves and how his overall limbs move and then once you grasp that idea and when he translated into a perspective drawing like this then you'll notice that the arm sort of overshoots or extends way more out than the next drawing so don't be afraid to overshoot some parts of your character or whatever your in-betweening in fact it could work better for them it's kind of like choosing colors for painting sometimes you'll work with a color combination that doesn't look like it will work at all but when you do use those colors and when you do improvise with them its seaming Leslie works together so part of the art of in-betweening is actually learning how to take risks with adding new arcs all right so let's see what we have so far because I'm pretty curious how it looks like when we play it all right so when I watch it I have to say I'm not really a big fan of how the ears are working it's because they feel a bit too mechanical and there's just not enough character and I feel like we could add things like overlapping action so I'm thinking what are the ear dips down as soon as Richards head pops up using frame thirteen where Richard's head pops up I'm going to erase the ears or what I have of the ears and actually make it favor a down pose to give it the illusion that it's actually being dragged by the head which is going up just think of things like weight distribution it just creates more of a believability that there's a weight difference between his head and his ears which which which are more floppy alright so in order for me to do frame 21 I'm going to have to pull off on an in-between and thirds and it looks like frame 21 is favoring drawing 19 and again it's in thirds not favoring now doing things like thirds is really tricky because it's not exactly full-on favoring one drawing over the other you're taking consideration with the other drawing that's not favorite as much but it looks like it still has an influence whereas if you were to do a straight favor it's easier just to favor one drawing but in thirds you kind of have to find a way to mix both but really show that your favorite one over the other now again there's a few reasons why I put this as thirds one is because it's not it's going to read pretty fast and two I want to give a more snappy feeling between the transition and if I were to even happen it might feel a little floaty because you won't be able to read the pose where he's standing straight up I have to say thirds I always find difficult and very annoying to do because it's there's a lot more thinking involved when making drawings for thirds and the only time I see myself using thirds is when I really really want to keep to read or when I'm animating something with a lot of very slow and subtle movement and that's why I had Richard do something quick and very simple because it's easier for me to show you guys the basics of a timing chart and how to read them or utilize them well I hope it's helping but yeah now you might be asking if there's anything else that's trickier than doing a thirds well what if you're dealing with two timing charts instead of one and you have to show those two timing charts in one drawing that can be a real but it's one of those things where you have to keep in track with what's moving in the context to again the context so the primary timing chart I have on the upper right features Richards head his body um his overall primary bodily movements the more bold gesture the second timing charts focuses on his arms I even labeled it hand arm or whatever but as you can see I'm favoring the next drawing honestly if you just keep flipping and if you keep observing which which is moving and what moves first then I think it's actually not that complicated it's just that you're using other things like secondary movement overlapping action and you can even show those in a timing chart like I'm trying to do in this case when the head and his body pops up I want the hand to come down and stay down for a little while so here's one advice one is just to focus on the primary movement first so I'm just gonna focus more on his head and his torso and his body and I'm gonna leave his hand alone I'm gonna add that later so while I'm in between this I'm gonna try and think of other things to think about like overlapping action within a little hair tuft on his head or his ears which I might actually just eyeball later so I'm probably approaching this ear thing first as a normal in-between then I'll edit it later this is so that I have a bit of reference so when I do decide to eyeball and straight ahead the overlapping action of the ear at least I have a base reference of where I can transition to ear back to when I need to all right so once I had the basic in-between of his head his torso the primary movements I can now shift my focus on his hand his arm and his head yes arm whatever and when I indicated in a timing chart it's favoring the next drawing so instead of doing an even half of the hand transitioning to the next drawing I'm actually just you know what I'm just gonna like draw a more a pretty dead favorite to our next drawing so it's kind of giving the illusion that it's overshooting and it's really extended and that gives illusion the at the end has actual weight the bit where he does have his arms spread out will have more impact and wait because the overshoot join gives it a more forceful feel and that there's still a lot of energy within that arm so my top advice would be to focus on the primary timing chart and then later move on to secondary timing charts which which depend on the drawing within the primary timing chart I could just go through the whole animation talking about my every step of slowing in and slowing out drawings but I feel like I'd be repeating myself without giving any new points across I want to talk to you guys about flipping your drawing and using your light table or the onion skinning tool as I have stressed many times in this video and the previous videos flipping has many advantages such as being able to see arcs clearly changes in accent and shapes while at the same time implementing strategies such as the points point method in order to retain form using skills like a flipping and rolling allows you to feel the movements of the drawing without having to constantly play it to see what it looks like in motion so when I do flip and roll I'm not always second guessing where I should make the in-between or the arc as I showed earlier it'll give you opportunities to add new drawings in your in-betweens rather than just simply in-betweening within your previous and next rawlings but hang animation desks have light tables and flash and TV paint have the onion skinning tool some people are actually asking me through private messaging why I never use those tools but the truth is I do I do use the light table and the onion skinning tool it's just that I don't rely on it too much so when I do flip and roll it's mostly regarding big movements or things with a lot of spacing when I use the light table an onion skinning tool though I use it mostly to draw in the in-betweens for very tiny spaces when I feel the in-betweens are too small that's when I switch on the onion skinning or light table tool this is where I can see my previous and next as ghost images transparent images that represent the previous/next frames basically so from this point all I can do is pretty much just draw in between the lines literally I'll still time to time foot between my drawings just to make sure some accents don't get muddy but because the spacing in between the drawings are so tight now relying on flipping alone would just feel counter efficient so there you have it I flip when the in-between drawings are widely spaced from each other and as I get smaller in my in-betweens and when the spacing gets more narrow that's when I rely on the light table and onion skinning tool it's a rinse and repeat process for every step that in between when the spacing is big you flip it when it gets narrow just use the light table really so now that you guys have a basic idea of how I in between I'm just gonna go ahead and finish the rest of the in-betweens on Tues first because in-betweening is such a boring-ass process to watch I'm just going to show you a bit of clips of various stages of the rest of the in-betweens alright so here is a collection of sped up clips of the overall process I recorded a lot of screen capture of me animating and I feel like talking about each of these steps intricately would be redundant for the whole video so friends of mine have been suggesting that I get a patreon and have this idea where if people do support the workshop donate and make pledges they would for example have access to the footage of me animating with no edits and no time manipulation so people would have access to all my recordings of me animating in real time and with little to no voiceover so it's so you're basically gonna get raw footage if I were to do this what do you guys think of this idea would you donate just to see raw footage of my recordings of animation please let me know what you guys think that'll be really helpful for the future thanks so much for hearing me out anyways let's get back to it alright guys so after some time I've in-betweening everything in twos and too many including myself that would be considered a finished piece of animation already so as you can see I'm previewing the animation with all my in-between some twos and just by looking at it there are some things I want to change before I in between some of the things in one's personally I'm not really happy how the transition goes between 33 until frame 39 when he gets that down post it feels like the momentum just suddenly dies there's no slow in or slow out it just it just stops as I roll through the drawings you'll notice the stop is really sudden so I'm telling myself this thing needs a bit more cushioning the frame right before 39 where the post stops 37 just feels way too evenly spaced so there are several methods we can implement one method would be to stretch out the transitions so there will be more drawings for the cushioning the slow end that would be my number one instinct if I wasn't really strict with the timing but that that's the thing I don't want to change the timing at all and if I do I'm gonna have to real able every drawing after this so I'm gonna do my best to retain the overall timing this leads to Plan B basically change the spacing of that one drawing that's bothering me which in this case is frame 37 so for reference I'm gonna make a timing chart that'll show you guys what my solution is what my proposal is instead of having to change the timing for everything I'm gonna make frame 37 favor 39 so you get that cushioning effect it's really short so I'm going to adjust the spacing of frame 37 so it favors 39 and the reason is 1 it slows into this pose and 2 it's going to make 39 read a lot better which I felt was way too abrupt in the original preview so you could do a cushioning in thirds where it favors the last drawing or you could just do a direct favor which the drawing is basically almost the same as 39 with like a 10% influence of frame 35 your previous drawing I could do a direct favor it'll make things feel more snappy but kind of do want a bit of that spacing that's little spacing so I'm gonna go with thirds oh and another thing when I do use a lightbox I do use it for things with very specific spacing or timing like thirds or favorites while I would flip the spacing isn't broad enough so I feel like if I were to flip and add my dots I could easily mistake it as an even half so yeah I suggest using a light table in this at the same time flipping so you still get to keep track of things like volume form and just consistency things like thirds and favorites can be really tricky so you know just use whatever works for you in this case just to remind you the reason why I'm doing this is so that there's more of an ease or more of a cushioning towards frame 39 instead of having that abrupt and I feel like we can achieve a more cushioning effect it'll go by really fast it'll be really subtle so as you can see as I preview it it's the same timing but there's more of a subtle cushioning which is the effect I wanted to go for the next key correction I want to make is how the ears move between these drawings the transition or the placement of the ears just just snaps to its place and I kind of wanted to drag instead of having it snap it'll add more character and weight to those ears of his so in senora's like this I would sort of eyeball it I would keep what I originally did in mind because it shows the default placement of the ears at least but I do want to really play with that overlapping action with those ears so as you can see in my drawings I'm erasing the ears and replacing them and approaching it in a straight-ahead fashion so there's my other note if you aren't really clear on how the ears or overlapping stuff are supposed to move just add them later and do them straight ahead it's a more fun method and I feel like you can really get a lot of the character out by doing this once we're done we're inbetweening in ones this time all right guys were nearly done there are some in-betweens I haven't done yet and those are in ones if I play ten amis and as it is right now it works no one's mice nothing nothing um pass it on in between demo set it again actually try did something that a lot of some joints as you can see so it's important to have you can add a one time in between one so if you look at the timeline movements are show shot and again we look at the timeline those actions LAN that would make you action feel fast and most importantly smooth 24 we can assign you a joint and born frame that's it 123 65 and is so broad I this spacing is so big and I have it evenly spaced um I can just cable turn anyways I wanna talk to you guys ones in general while ones can make things smooth and give everything a high production value you have to be careful on when to use it because if you give every drawing that's in twos and even half in ones like everything you're gonna get something that feels floaty and that feels like it's moving too much the thing that's good about twos is that it's a graphical representation of how everything feels weight-wise think of doing ones as turning that graphical element into something that's more detailed and more intricate so in a way it can be harder and probably longer for it someone to really feel the weight within the animation so even in once you kind of do have to think about the spacing of the in-between so it works so my top advice if you're gonna do ones use them wisely because production value wise they're sort of expensive both work force and budget wise anyways since we're on the topic of ones there's another thing I'd like to show you that just as important for in-between work especially for fast motion alright so we talked about in-between ones but there's more to it than just in-between ones the next thing I want to talk about is utilizing the smear first of all what is a smear in my best description of what it is it's basically a hand drawn motion blur or a quick representation of a fast movement I have to make an in-between in these two drawings but the gap is so big and it's a huge powerful whipping motion so this is where I'm thinking a smear would be good for this part so I'm going to draw a smear frame in frame 26 when it comes down to smears or really big dramatic movements I like to focus on the thing that has the biggest movement in this case it's it's right hand so the way I'm drawing this hand right now is I'm stretching it I'm giving it a stretched drawing so it gives that illusion that there's there's a motion blur going on in a way yeah I am breaking the form and I am breaking model but this is fine because one it's a really fast movement and two it's basically a stylized motion blur so it's meant to be felt but not seen I mean yeah you'd be able to see it but the important thing is the smear adds to the feeling of how fast it is so I'm flipping back and forth while I work on the smear this is just to see the relationship between one drawing to the next and the way I'm treating the smears I kind of wanted to match the arc it's going through my advice for smears unless you're going for a stylized look is that it's best for things with fast and short movements unless you're going for a very stylized look I wouldn't recommend using smears for things on twos or UG smears all the time because what happens is that smears do give your character a rubbery feeling and while that does look cool you kind of have to consider that it'll just make everything feel wobbly rather than having a concise form a lot of classic MGM cartoons really utilize the smear you guys should check out this old animated short called the Dover boys it's sort of very limited in terms of how its animated but the way everything snaps into place and the way they utilize the smear is pretty good and to me I just think it adds a lot to the comedy in the animation alright so I'm going to preview this animation and as we can see the smear is in place but because it plays so fast you won't be able to see it quickly but I hope it gives the impression that you're feeling a sort of motion blur going on if you look up images of smears online you'll notice that there are so many ways to draw smears such as jarring a swipe or a trail of multiple drawings with the same frame sort of like a boy bridge photo all right we're beginning to hit the finishing stage this is actually going to be the last part I believe and there are things I want to address before we end it there's still a bunch of in-betweens on ones and smears I have to make so I'm just sort of gonna adjust them quickly within my animation there's a part where he dips down and basically whips his hand down I'm coming back to this because I realized there's a lot of in-betweens I need to do for this and that there's a lot of more subtle things I need to address and also since it's fast movement there's gonna be a lot of ones or in-between and ones now this is tricky I really love the drawing dots on frame twenty seven I feel like if I left it on twos I could just be happy but since there's a hand whipping motion and his cloth is all over the place and his fur needs to be addressed in a dragon motion I'm going to add an even half 4:28 but I really like the head so I'm going to make a new timing chart we're 28 actually favors 27 so when I do play it it'll feel like the head is somewhat still on twos or has that weight as if it was on twos and then everything else would be constantly moving and that's the sort of thing I I want to achieve so I've made a timing chart addressing this making 28 really close to 27 so I guess that's another thing why a lot of people are reluctant to add ones because when you already have a drawing that reads really well in twos like you feel the weight you feel the idea and drawings just work well with you then I would just advise the same thing just leave it as it is but if you want to add that extra oomph or give it that extra snappy field and yeah you can't add ones but you might need to think more about it because again sometimes adding in betweens or ones in everything might give the illusion that things don't really have weight and that's something I'm trying to avoid but if you do manage to make it work in ones and everything reads well the weight is retained it can make the animation feel more complete more done and it'll have that extra oomph I keep saying that and I don't know why maybe Chico's I was playing hitman blood money recently and there's a bit where you have to sneak in aphrodisiac into some dudes drink and the guy who gives it to you is like saying yeah this stuff is the extra oomph and everything so I think that's where I got it so when I just previewed my animation just now yeah you can see it has that extra oomph I was trying to go for it just feels complete so I'm just going to move along and find out all the ones I've placed out all the remaining in-betweens I have to do in ones there are stupid things I have to figure out like head rotations umm arcsine you still need to figure out so again this is a laborious task so I'm just gonna keep making the in-betweens I'll just keep flipping between the drawings if I was in between cleaner lines and not going this rough as I am here it would take me forever and honestly I just wanted to make a video or demo talking about how to do basic in-betweens how to track objects how to time things with a timing chart and how to know when to use ones and smears and I hope that you guys got something out of it and when I was making this video I noticed that there were things that I felt were too confusing at the time to explain so I'm just hoping that you guys got the basic intent I was trying to do but I'm gonna admit third time's where I do want to make things a bit complicated to show you guys my thoughts process on things like that but I do realize that in order for you guys to understand in we even for those who've never done it before to do more basic demonstrations like a bouncing ball or just some guy rotating his head but I kind of wanted to show you guys how you can implement it in your normal animation work such as character animation tests basically applying them to situations where you do need them for so it's weird I don't want it to be too confusing for you guys but I also don't want it to be too basic I kind of want to get into that spectrum where basically anyone can follow up and I'd say I've learned a lot doing this it was kind of a big learning experience for me trying to articulate my ideas to you guys and how to explain my thoughts process that's something I never usually do and I just want to say thanks for checking this video out I realized that making the string Bank videos have been taking a lot of my time and I recently got back into full-time work so this might be my last big demo in a long time all I want to keep making demonstration videos but time is an issue I do have work and I do have projects of my own that I want to grow I love sharing knowledge but I don't have the time to teach and that's why I make these videos why I make the string bang workshop is to share my knowledge through these video formats all right guys so I've already in between everything in fact let's play that sucker right now there it is Patrick standards character Richard doing his thing and all ones and twos I've stated before that I really love making these videos I I want to find time to do it but I'll have to do them rarely nowadays because of the workload I have now in that I have projects of my own that I kind of want to develop but thanks for watching and there will be more to come as always see you guys you

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 106,999

Keywords: Animation, Hand Drawn, Traditional, Pencil Test, Rough, 2D, Inbetweening, Tutorial, Advice, Digital, Software, Toniko, Pantoja, TVPaint, Development, Drawing, Film, Short, Instructions, Demo, Demonstration, After Effects, tips, basics, beginner, advanced

Id: 0rp3zXBEhCE

Length: 57min 56sec (3476 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2016