I've seen people talking about building a turning head for characters, so I took a stab at it using switch layers. Basically its a single switch layer with three states: profile, 3/4 view, and full front.
http://www.studiojer.com/aninm.html
Opinions, suggestions, headaches?
...now to make her speak.
My first stab at the infamous turning head.
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Nolan Scott
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Not bad for a first head turn.
I think there are some problems with volumes (and therefore shapes), if you don't mind me giving positive critique.
Compared to the front view, the cheeks have a little too much volume in the 3/4 view. Also, the eye are not bulging, but seem to be flat or hollow in the 3/4 view. I think that is caused by the exact shape of the lower eye line not being correctly foreshortened. And lastly, in the side view, the nose appears to be slightly narrower than in the front view. Of course, it could also be the position of the mouth, that is incorrect in the 3/4 view. The center of the mouth should be on the imaginary line between the two eyes.
I have only little experience as a draftsman, but a fresh pair of eyes never hurt. I also hope you are not offended by my critique, which is meant as purely constructive and to the point.
I think there are some problems with volumes (and therefore shapes), if you don't mind me giving positive critique.
Compared to the front view, the cheeks have a little too much volume in the 3/4 view. Also, the eye are not bulging, but seem to be flat or hollow in the 3/4 view. I think that is caused by the exact shape of the lower eye line not being correctly foreshortened. And lastly, in the side view, the nose appears to be slightly narrower than in the front view. Of course, it could also be the position of the mouth, that is incorrect in the 3/4 view. The center of the mouth should be on the imaginary line between the two eyes.
I have only little experience as a draftsman, but a fresh pair of eyes never hurt. I also hope you are not offended by my critique, which is meant as purely constructive and to the point.
Rasheed - Looking at it, I can see your point. In the 3/4 view it looks like she's got a really large indentation on the philtrum since the lips pull too far to the right.
That eye line was killing me...I couldn't get it to straighten out enough to my satisfaction (thank goodness the back one is hidden by the bridge of the nose, because its got a nasty kludge).
I'm thinking that the angle on the nose looks wrong in the 3/4 view now that I'm looking at it. It pulls too far to the left and needs to be shortened out to more of a halfway point. I'm thinking that will be an easy fix by trimming it down a bit. I was kind of exaggerating on the nose and mouth because I didn't want the traditional anime huge eyes, teeny nose, small mouth (when closed)...but in retrospect I'm thinking I took it too far.
Honest truth is that proportions are not my strong point. I've got a hard drive crammed full of characters with limbs, extremities, and features that just dont fit the rest of the figure. Picture Pablo Piccaso drunk and blindfolded and you get the idea.
That eye line was killing me...I couldn't get it to straighten out enough to my satisfaction (thank goodness the back one is hidden by the bridge of the nose, because its got a nasty kludge).
I'm thinking that the angle on the nose looks wrong in the 3/4 view now that I'm looking at it. It pulls too far to the left and needs to be shortened out to more of a halfway point. I'm thinking that will be an easy fix by trimming it down a bit. I was kind of exaggerating on the nose and mouth because I didn't want the traditional anime huge eyes, teeny nose, small mouth (when closed)...but in retrospect I'm thinking I took it too far.
Honest truth is that proportions are not my strong point. I've got a hard drive crammed full of characters with limbs, extremities, and features that just dont fit the rest of the figure. Picture Pablo Piccaso drunk and blindfolded and you get the idea.
Good point, and I realize as well, that being to able to do life drawing convincingly is a key skill for an animator, both professional and amateur (hobbyist). It's a slow painful and humbling process to get all the proportions right. I'm convinced once you somewhat solved most of the life drawing problems, your animation will be much more controlled and accurate, though still time consuming.studiojer wrote:Honest truth is that proportions are not my strong point. I've got a hard drive crammed full of characters with limbs, extremities, and features that just dont fit the rest of the figure. Picture Pablo Piccaso drunk and blindfolded and you get the idea.
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idragosani
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Good job!
One thing that can help get the correct proportions when turning the head is to draw (sketch out on paper) the head turn from the top. Make it fairly large, then underneath, you can map the places where the cheeks, nose, etc are on the main head turn, like this:
(Taken from Don Bluth's Animation Academy, http://www.donbluth.com/academy.html).
Have the head dip down slightly on an arc will also go a long way to making the turn more fluid and not mechanical.
One thing that can help get the correct proportions when turning the head is to draw (sketch out on paper) the head turn from the top. Make it fairly large, then underneath, you can map the places where the cheeks, nose, etc are on the main head turn, like this:
(Taken from Don Bluth's Animation Academy, http://www.donbluth.com/academy.html).
Have the head dip down slightly on an arc will also go a long way to making the turn more fluid and not mechanical.
Brett W. McCoy -- http://www.brettwmccoy.com
Anime Studio Pro 8.1 : Intel i7 2600 3.4 GHz : 8GB RAM : Ubuntu Studio 11.04 : Cintiq 12wx
Anime Studio Pro 8.1 : Intel i7 2600 3.4 GHz : 8GB RAM : Ubuntu Studio 11.04 : Cintiq 12wx
I'm not sure if the following applies to animation, but when I taped my own head turning 180 degrees (left profile into right profile), I noticed that it took 48 frames at 60 fps and that I was looking straight into the camera at frame 28 and not 25, as you would expect. I think it means the head accelerates and decelerates during the turning of the head.
I also did some basic and simple investigation what the effect of an object sticking out of a turning sphere has on how to draw that object. I saw it had a profound effect. This probably means that everything that sticks out of the imaginary sphere is deformed according to how much it sticks out. As we all know, a sphere doesn't deform by foreshortening, so we can construct points of a 3D shape during a turn by using spheres with different radii that intersect with those points.
See: Head turn explored on YouTube.
Also note that a fixed surface on a sphere deforms by foreshortening, depending on where that surface is located on the sphere, relative to the observer.
In short, there is a lot going on while a head is turning, and you'd better use a simple method as mentioned by idragosani to simplify matters, otherwise it's going to be very tough to create a convincing head turn.
OTOH, you can break the rules, if you need to. That is the beauty of 2D, you have much more freedom than in 3D and can bend the rules a little and still have a convincing, though not truly realistic, animation.
I also did some basic and simple investigation what the effect of an object sticking out of a turning sphere has on how to draw that object. I saw it had a profound effect. This probably means that everything that sticks out of the imaginary sphere is deformed according to how much it sticks out. As we all know, a sphere doesn't deform by foreshortening, so we can construct points of a 3D shape during a turn by using spheres with different radii that intersect with those points.
See: Head turn explored on YouTube.
Also note that a fixed surface on a sphere deforms by foreshortening, depending on where that surface is located on the sphere, relative to the observer.
In short, there is a lot going on while a head is turning, and you'd better use a simple method as mentioned by idragosani to simplify matters, otherwise it's going to be very tough to create a convincing head turn.
OTOH, you can break the rules, if you need to. That is the beauty of 2D, you have much more freedom than in 3D and can bend the rules a little and still have a convincing, though not truly realistic, animation.
The slower the head turns, the more obvious any mistakes become. One can get away with just a front view, a side view, and a 3/4 view for a long time - this makes for a dynamic animation style.
Most head turns I did in my time as feature and TV series assistant animator didn't last longer than 8 to 12 frames (at 24 fps), which would be 4 to 6 drawings, shot on two's.
The most common turns weren't from front to side view, but from one 3/4 view to the other 3/4 view.
Because of the mechanics of a human body the axis of the turn is slightly tilted to the front of the body, which causes the head to look down a bit in front view. This is further enhanced in animation, and most of the time the head turn also features a change of expression, at least some kind of blink.
In comparison to this, most software based head turns look like a puppet on a turntable which is anything but realistic. My advice would be to spend as much time and effort to those necessary 8 or 12 keyframes and don't let any program interfere with that.
Most head turns I did in my time as feature and TV series assistant animator didn't last longer than 8 to 12 frames (at 24 fps), which would be 4 to 6 drawings, shot on two's.
The most common turns weren't from front to side view, but from one 3/4 view to the other 3/4 view.
Because of the mechanics of a human body the axis of the turn is slightly tilted to the front of the body, which causes the head to look down a bit in front view. This is further enhanced in animation, and most of the time the head turn also features a change of expression, at least some kind of blink.
In comparison to this, most software based head turns look like a puppet on a turntable which is anything but realistic. My advice would be to spend as much time and effort to those necessary 8 or 12 keyframes and don't let any program interfere with that.
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Víctor Paredes
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that's clever (and make me feel a little bit idiot beacuse i never thought this).idragosani wrote:One thing that can help get the correct proportions when turning the head is to draw (sketch out on paper) the head turn from the top. Make it fairly large, then underneath, you can map the places where the cheeks, nose, etc are on the main head turn.
thank you!