Animation referencing

[kellz5460]

i dunno

I use lots of references- and i use the little wooden doll thing that poses for well..poses...

is it bad to reference so much rather than just...drawing it straight out of my head?

i also do alot of limited animation where i'll use like...for hands i'll make a bunch of different hand poses then animate them as the scene requires...

a couple ppl say its cheap animation and brings down the level of animation but i dont know....

[PARKER]

I wouldnt recommend making limited animation but you still can have a succesful series with it, or example Yogi bear.

[ponysmasher]

When I was younger I was very opposed to all kinds of references, I thought it was cheating.

Now I'm more sensible about it. You pretty much have to look at references, not only because it's impossible to keep a mental library how everything in the world looks from all angles but it also makes you develop as an artist.

For example, I always used to draw ears in a certain way and they looked okay, but it wasn't until recently when I really studied photos of ears that I realized some mistakes I was making.

So use references, and lots of them, I say.

And limited animation doesn't have to look cheap. There's lots of anime that's pretty limited when it comes to animation, but they compensate with strong poses and layouts.

[ponysmasher]

Speaking of limited, the project I'm working on right now is pretty darn limited (because of a very, very short schedule).

A lot of it is mostly still frames with some camera movement and maybe som blinking eyes, like this:


I try to compensate for the lack of animation with interesting images.



After the guy cocks the AK47 in the image above I would have prefered that he grabbed the handle but that would have meant making an extra hand so instead he just holds it with one hand.



Here, the natural thing would be for him to actually light the molotov but that would mean animation, so instead he lights his lighter and it cuts away. I think you get the idea anyway.

That's limited animation alright!

[Paul Mesken]

I use lots of references- and i use the little wooden doll thing that poses for well..poses...

is it bad to reference so much rather than just...drawing it straight out of my head?

Well, you won't be able to draw straight out of your head if you haven't made tons of drawings from reference. By the way : I've never used a mannekin, I don't even have one. I don't think it's a good reference and it doesn't give you anything that you can't do straight out of the head.

For poses, a good excercise is to pop in a DVD, freeze frame on interesting poses and make a 1-minute sketch of the pose. Make a 100 of such sketches a day (old 50s musicals are good for this, wide shots, good lighting, great poses). This will develop a good feel for poses, things like balance, line of action, etc. A mannekin is just a puppet but the people you draw from the movie are real, they have balance, weight, energy, emotion, attitude, etc. As you master real life poses and learn what makes them work, then you can take it further and make it stronger.

And then there are hands. Surely we can all draw a clenched fist, a pointing finger, a "flipping the bird" and all that from the head. But what about a hand cutting with a pair of scissors, or knitting with knitting needles, or rolling a cigarette? Unless you've drawn such things before, you'll need references.

Personality is another thing. You could have a couple of toons who look wildly different from each other. But if you draw them from the head then they will all move alike and have the same facial expressions. For example, for one of my characters I studied the facial expressions and movements of Regina Hall to get the same kind of energy and character that she has. Even something as simple as a smile is wildly different for different people. You wouldn't want your different characters to all smile the same way. You'll need references to get diversity.

And then there is movement itself. I've just studied by rotoscoping how someone falls on roller skates. You'll be amazed what happens in that split second. The body goes through a lot of motions. There's the off-balance, the quick reflex in the chest and arms to regain that balance, the slip because the reflex didn't take into account the roller skates (it's really funny to watch it), a stronger reflex to compensate which goes horribly wrong and then the bracing for impact and the impact itself. It takes too many words to describe it fully. They say a walk is the hardest thing to animate but a fall is really interesting. All this happens in a split second. You can't dream such things up, you need a reference.

And remember that the best in the field stress the importance of drawing from life and how Disney did tons of rotoscoping to get those beautiful movements.

There's nothing wrong with references, as a matter of fact : it's absolutely essential.

[kellz5460]

thx alot-

when I started I used to just grab any cartoon or movie and just go through it frame by frame almost to see what exactly they were doing

alot of it was animated in 3s with no tweens

idk why but i always felt guilty using refs

its good to see theres no reason to

[lovebiscuit]

In the past, I would have been in favour of 'drawing from life' and wary of 'drawing from references'. However, we must recognise the difference between the two used to be far more pronounced than it is nowadays. Drawing from references used to mean you were severely limiting your input - whereas nowadays it means increasing it thousandfold thanks to Google Images, by which I just mean the internet in general. Drawing from references has becoming more like drawing from life.

I am not saying we shouldn't bother with life. Stanley Kubrick was wrong never to leave his mansion and send relatives out with ladders and cameras for his last film which suffered as a result in my opinion! But the line has become blurred and I personally use thousands of references, without feeling they limit me. On the contrary, they inspire me.