6 steps in making your animation work process faster
Anybody can manipulate their workflow process for it to be faster and more optimized. Altering shaped curves and selection handles is just the start of creating movement. But it takes a true animator to bring a once inanimate object to life. As you can imagine, making something emote and respond to its surroundings can be hard and time-consuming—a task that shouldn’t be rushed.
In this article, we hope to share a handful of tips that should help you to avoid the hang-ups associated with working virtually and speed up the production of your animations. Use these tips and tricks to have more time to do what you do best––and that’s to animate.
Learn the script!
A script is the starting point of most projects. It’s not surprising that knowing the story flow saves you time. Just a quick read through and you’re able to coordinate all the next few steps in your creative workflow for the output.
By closely following the script, you can start conceptualizing the design of the character, props, and location. It is also the foundation for your whole storyboard and the skeleton of your end animated videos. So knowing it by heart and applying it to your work output is one of the most certain ways to lessen all those revisions.
Make a clear storyboard
Outlining the beginning, the end, and a few frames in between is a very important step that gives you the necessary clarity before you start coding. Spending a good 5-10 minutes on smaller animation concepts will save you hours and hours of animating and experimenting.
Also, break down larger concepts into smaller pieces for a well-detailed storyboard. It’s easier and everyone in your team will be able to understand better and appreciate the story they’re building.
Blocking out key poses and limiting your key placement
Details are important. However, don’t be caught up refining each motion before you move on to the next. Focusing on one area at a time will mean you are not seeing the bigger picture. As a result, elements will move at different speeds and you’ll end up with unnatural-looking action.
For an animation to work, everything has to sing to the same tune. View the character as a whole and focus on the larger movements is always the best starting point.
As you start to build up your movement, try to restrict your key placements to set frames. Maybe this is every tenth or fifth frame, it doesn’t matter in the early stages of development, so long as you keep to these numbers.
Don’t clutter your timeline with frames dotted all over to avoid confusion. Keeping things focused is essential as you block out the main poses. Once you are happy you can then begin to move these keys, making the animation a bit more fluid and natural.
Copy/paste animation keys
Working on repetitive motions like a walk, for example, can be a little tedious. It’s in these cases that you can always cheat a little and simply copy the motion from the main side over to the other using the copy and paste tools.
This wouldn’t work initially for a walk or run, but you can always offset the keys on one side to achieve the correct strides. And, remember that you can also copy and paste animation between characters too, to speed up things.
Let the app animate for you and plan your approach
Even though you’re probably working with a high-end 3D application, you’re still animating in a relatively traditional way. Moving the joints and placing keys does take time. Don’t be afraid to let the program take some of the strain and animate for you.
Secondary animation is where the application can prove most useful. In most cases, a simple dynamics simulation can be applied to hair, clothing, or a creature’s tail to make it realistically follow the main movements. All this can also be performed automatically, leaving you to focus on key motions.
Also, when given an animation project, it’s tempting to pick up the character and get to work. Seeing them move and express emotion is quite rewarding, but having to redo work over and over isn’t.
Before you begin posing and setting keys, think about what your character is going to do. The way the scene is shot, the lighting, camera angle, and the mood have a bearing on the animation too.
‘Fun’ is a must!
“If you are not smiling while working, then nobody will smile when they are looking at your animation.”
More than a tip, it is a must! If you are not enjoying what you are creating then it will show on the final animation.
Right tools and techniques make animation easier
When working with the overall motion of your character, hide the high-resolution model and animate with a simpler proxy model. This could be a reduced version of the character, or even a few boxes scaled to loosely fit the proportions. This version will enable you to fluidly work on the main areas of movement before you bring back the high-detail model for the finer detail work.
You can make things work for you by using the right tools and techniques. Ultimately, it makes animation easier and more optimized to fit well in your tight schedule.
