chapter 9

the mechanics of movement

I must have been into animation. Even when I was 17 I'd rush home to watch Morph. I loved Morph – Pete (Pete Lord, Aardman) said it hundreds of times – it's the performance. The potential of all this really made an impression on me – it was amazing to be able to tell quite emotional stories through this small scenario on your table-top. And make a proper story that has a tactile reality. Plus you can muck around with lighting and do all your own film-making!

Jeff Newitt

This chapter goes into much more detail about the actual craft of animation, and I am giving you examples taken from observation of natural movement. Once you have a feel for creating natural movement, it becomes easier to create comic movement, and develop comic timing.

studies from observation

using live reference

Your best reference for human movement is yourself. Work with a large mirror, feel the movements you are doing, where are you putting your weight? Which muscles are you using? Which part of you touches the floor/the chair first? How do you pick something up? Get hold of a VHS player with a frame-by-frame viewing function. Make videos of yourself performing actions, study them, time them.

the invaluable Muybridge

A book originally published in the 1880s is still used by animators for reference today: the perennially popular Animals in Motion, and The Human Figure in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge. The story goes that for a bet, Muybridge, an accomplished Victorian photographer, needed to prove that a trotting horse takes all four hooves off the ground at sometime in the cycle. He set up 25 cameras along a racetrack to take 25 sequential photographs in one second. The result proved conclusively that horses do take all four hooves off the ground at a stage of the trotting sequence. Muybridge then went on to further analysis of human and animal movement, providing us with very clear reference material.

Figure 9.1 Galloping horse. © 1887 Eadweard Muybridge, courtesy of Kingston Museum and Heritage Service, Surrey, UK

When you need to research something specific for your animation, you should view as much material relating to it as you can. This is not to mimic, but to understand. You can pick up characteristics and timings that will add weight to your character. You can look at frame-by- frame analysis of human or animal movement, where you can see the muscles moving, the inclination of the head, mannerisms, all the things that build up a character.

Drawing from life is a very good way to help understand the body and movement. You don't have to be able to draw, but it certainly will improve your drawing if you practice. The idea is that you will really study something if you are trying to draw it. Drawing something in motion is even better, because then you start to understand the ’essence’ of the movement. It's a good idea to use charcoal or conte crayon, as you will work in a quicker, looser way, and get a more instinctive feel for it. Many model animators or computer animators shy away from life drawing, but one shouldn't think of it as having to produce a finished artwork. It's merely one way of learning to co-ordinate or link your hand with your eye and brain as an aid to interpret movement. It could involve sketching people or animals in public as you go about your daily business, or attending life-drawing classes at your local college. If this is the case, discuss with the tutor the possibility of doing some fast drawings: 20/30 second poses or 1 minute poses.

Figure 9.2 Students drawing a moving dancer. © Animated Exeter

Figure 9.3 Life drawing examples. © Sara Easby 2002

posing the model

Before getting onto more complicated moves get used to putting your puppet into poses, manipulating it into positions that tell a story.

balance

Stand your puppet on the set, then look at it from all round: is the balance equal on both legs? Are the knees bent or straight? If someone is standing straight the knee joint will be ’locked’ (unless it's an old character) with the arms hanging. Is the weight all on one leg? If so, the weight of the body should be right over that leg, so that the other leg carries no weight, and is relaxed. Are the arms looking really relaxed? If the arms are relaxed, the elbows will be slightly bent, not held down stiffly. Hands – unless your hands are cast, and in which case they should be cast in a relaxed pose – won't be stiff with the fingers pointing down. Look at your hands when they hang by your side – the fingers curl in toward your body. And most important of all, are the feet flat on the floor? This is important to register your character's weight.

Figure 9.4 (a) Puppet posed standing straight – weight evenly balanced. (b) Puppet in relaxed pose – weight on left leg, with left foot centred under body. Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

line of action

Put your puppet in an ’action’ pose, hitting a tennis ball, kicking a football or doing the ironing. You might want to make up a few props to help.

Look at your character in its pose from the audience's point of view: does it present a clear image to the camera? Imagine your character in silhouette, just in outline – then is it clear what your puppet is doing? If the silhouette is clear and obvious, then the effect will be clear to your audience. The best way to tell a story is with simplicity and clarity, to make the actions stronger than they would be in real life. The silhouette is probably more important in 2D animation, when lines can become confusing, but it's good to think of in 3D in terms of expression.

Figure 9.5 (a) The action is unclear from this position. (b) Same pose from a different angle – this tells the story. Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

Look at the line of movement in your puppet – you should be able to draw a line that indicates where the energy of the movement is. Ask someone else to look at the puppet and tell you what the puppet is saying.

Barry Purves comments:

It's easy to forget where the camera is when you're animating. It's got to read for the camera, not for you as an animator two inches away looking at it thinking ’Oh this looks good’ – look at it from the camera's point of view, because the arrangements of the arms may look ugly and may not read. There's no point doing something the camera can't see. Be aware of the camera; be aware of the framing, be aware of what shot you're coming from and what shot you're going to.

timing

It always foxes me, timing. I never feel confident enough to tell someone ’just hold that for 16 frames and move on’ I can't do that. I'll say ‘hold it for just the right amount of time’. Because if you hold it for too long then it looks really stagey and you've lost all credibility. I remember Chuck Jones talking about rules and I'm so jealous – that would make life so easy.

Pete Lord, Aardman Animations

Although you may start out timing everything with a stop watch, you will begin to develop what in the end becomes an instinctive feel for timing. Because animation is a created process of actions in time, you are the creator, you have to calculate how things work in fractions of a second. If something's falling you have to look at the object and assess, by its nature, how fast it will fall and what its impact will be. If someone is throwing something to someone else: how strong is that person, how heavy is the thing they are throwing: how far back will they need to lean to give the impression of the force they are putting into that throw?

The biggest mistake young animators make is assuming timing means live-action timing. It's not! It's not the same timing. You need to emphasize things differently. If someone falls on the floor you need to spend a few more frames developing that weight than you can in live action. Because in model animation we're deprived of blurring the image – you've got to find different ways to address that weight.

Barry Purves

Figure 9.6 From Achilles directed by Barry Purves © Barry Purves/C4/Bare Boards Productions

I think my style is all about timing. The timing has to have believability. I plan it roughly, especially with the framestores and playback. I want to go off on little explorations to do with timing. Look for those natural little flicks.

Jeff Newitt

weight

The illusion of weight is created by a combination of observation and timing. Watch a weightlifter tackle a heavy weight. Because what they are doing is so extreme it is useful to study, as an animator. I watched an acrobat setting up her trapeze in a field recently. A slight girl wielding an enormous mallet. She moved very slowly, feeling her way with the weight, and it was that slowness of movement that told of the weight she was moving. She shifted her body to control and counterbalance the weight.

If you haven't observed how a weight is lifted or pushed, you will not be able to create the illusion. And your animation could appear as in Figure 9.7.

Figure 9.7 How not to animate lifting a weight! Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

Figure 9.8 Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

In Figure 9.8 the girl looks as though she is leaning on the box, or at least bending over it with no intention of doing anything. Even if she were to lift it up, we would assume the box was made of polystyrene – otherwise she would do terrible damage to her back! The anticipation in this should be the girl conveying the intention of picking up a heavy box.

lifting a heavy box

Lifting something heavy needs preparation. You can get more out of this move if, rather than going straight for the bend and lift, you have your puppet study the weight first and then prepare to lift. (Hold that anticipation.) Where does the movement start? Practice yourself – you can't very often see just from a videoed performance where a movement starts. You need to feel it in yourself. So practice the movement and decide which part of the body leads you into picking up that box? You probably bend at the hip and then the knees. Again the movement is slow – look for the slow and the fast bits. Once you're down (hold) – the hands shuffle about to get a good purchase on the box. Not all the body moves at the same pace. In order to get the weight off the ground the body will lean back to get the centre of gravity (the hips) under the weight. Once the weight is lifted, the action is either to stagger around with it and drop it, or to be in control (hold), and walk with it. Any walk with that weight will be slow, with the weight causing the feet to barely come off the ground.

Figure 9.9 (a) Positions for lifting a weight – anticipation, (b) bend knees taking body right down, (c) lift by tipping body back, (d) success! Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

The illusions you are creating depend very much on the size of the thing that is moving. If it is a small mouse, it will run and scurry about. It wouldn't walk or run at the same speed as a human. Giving it speed in its movements and using single frames will make it seem light and small. The bigger something is, the slower it should move and that will give it the illusion of weight. When filming buildings collapsing on a model set to be mixed with live film, the collapse would be filmed on high-speed cameras making the buildings seem to fall much slower, and therefore giving them a sense of weight and mass.

pushing a weight

Leaning against it, the wall is not offering resistance so much as something that stops the body falling over. Whereas if you are pushing against it, the wall does offer resistance and the body pushes at an angle to the floor while the feet slide back in an attempt to push the body against the wall. The difference between leaning against a wall and pushing against a wall seems obvious, but once again, it is important to get your line of action clear. The poses in Figure 9.10 here are extreme, but her intentions are absolutely clear. It can be easy to go wrong as shown in Figure 9.7 with the box – getting your angles wrong.

Figure 9.10 Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

A leaf will float to the ground, making no impact on the ground as it lands. A rock, crashing down will either embed itself in the soft ground or shatter on impact with hard rock. A tip here: if you have a very heavy weight falling, you can exaggerate the effect with a bit of camera shake: pan your camera a few increments left and right for one frame each way.

anticipation, action and reaction

Some people say this is what animation is all about: everything boils down to these three words. Before an action there is the anticipation of that action. The anticipation gives weight to the action. An action causes a reaction. Charlie Chaplin is quoted as saying ‘‘Tell ‘em what you're going to do. Do it. Tell ‘em you've done it.’’ Which is another way of saying anticipation, action, reaction. Make it clear!

For example, serving a tennis ball:

anticipation: raise the ball and prepare racquet

action: throw ball and hit

reaction: ball travels – player follows through movement.

Figure 9.11 (a) Anticipation – preparing to throw ball in the air. (b) Action – hits the ball. (c) Reaction – after hitting the ball, the reaction is the ball travelling, having had the force applied to it, but the reaction of the body is to follow the movement through. Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

Another example: picking up a heavy hammer. The hammer would then be held up for a moment, checking the aim is right (anticipation), then it would come down fast (action), and bounce up after hitting the nail (reaction). This is a recoil movement that is emphasized by the sound (put the sound one frame after the hammer connects with the nail).

To get expression out of the movement, exaggerate it. So the ‘hold’ when you bring the hammer back would be given a longer time than in real life. Similarly, the reaction after the hammer hits the nail could be more violent, with the piece of wood flying up, or the person's body shaking. These movements take the natural effect and make much more of the reaction.

The next stage is to get rhythm and pace into your movement. It's not just a question of breaking the move down into evenly spaced timings. Each move has its own rhythm:

Hammering: lifting the hammer is a slow movement. The movement starts with the muscles in your shoulder. The elbow works as a hinge, pulling the arm up, with the hand following and, last of all, the hammer. The arm will slow down reaching the top until the hand and then the hammer comes up and back over the wrist – note the flexibility of the wrist. This is a key position – hold – then the arm comes down fast, dragging the hand and the hammer, and the hand followed by the hammer pivoting over the wrist as the hammer hits the nail – hold – and the arm relaxes, bouncing up (with hand and hammer) ready to go back up again. You could hold here unless you are going to carry on.

Figure 9.12 (a) Anticipation, (b) action, (c) reaction. Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

Digging a hole: In order to thrust the spade into the ground, she will first bring the spade back and up. The back is then bent over to drive the spade into the ground. The hip comes forward to help lift the spade out of the ground, arching the back and bringing the spade up.

Figure 9.13 (a) Anticipation, (b) action, (c) reaction. Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

The bigger the movement the more of the body we use. The gardener digging a hole is arching the body back and forth to lever the earth out of the ground – once she has lifted the soil, her body arches back to throw the soil, then the arms swing round and finally the soil flies off the end of the spade. In tennis or cricket, serving the ball or bowling uses the whole body; the energy ‘uncoils’ from the centre of the body out to the extremity.

You can bring this pattern down to smaller movements. For instance, with hands, if the arms are waving up and down, the movement starts at the shoulder, flexing at the elbow and then the wrist. The hand is the last to move and will flip over the wrist joint when it gets to the top of the move, and then when you bring the arm down, the hand will flip over the wrist joint again – giving fluidity to a movement. If the arm was waving a flag, the movement would originate at the shoulder joint, with the elbow and wrist each acting as a pivot.

One of the most painful things for a musician to watch must be a cartoon violin or cello player animated by someone who hasn't looked. The arm saws stiffly up and down over the instrument. What actually happens is, to keep control and flexibility over their bow, the musician leads the movement with the wrist, rather than ‘driving’ it from the shoulder.

The wrist is raised as the bow is brought up to the heel and then the wrist drops, pulling the bow back again.

Think of the delicacy of a hand sewing. The same flowing action follows through to the finger tips as the hand lifts and lowers the needle. The wrist raises the hand and the fingers follow and as the wrist drops again, the fingers are reaching the highest point, then they lower following the wrist.

The foot has a rotary movement at the ankle and a hinge at the ball, helped on a walk by having a hinged plate in your armature. The heel hits the ground first, followed by the rest of the foot. When the foot is going to leave the ground to come forward, the heel lifts first. In the same way that the hand follows the wrist, the foot follows the heel.

follow-through

Actions have a natural follow through, like a bowler throwing a ball. These moves are a continuation, a secondary reaction. In other words the main action, as in serving at tennis, is the ball being hit. The follow-through is the arm coming down, the tennis player being carried forward as a consequence of the force used in the action (see Figure 9.11c).

This can be seen in many different situations: in the shake of a head, the hair will follow on after and then settle. When someone stops running, the body doesn't stop all in one go – the body staggers forward, hair and clothes carry on with their own momentum, as far as they can. This is also described as overlapping action; not everything in a figure moves or arrives at the same time. When the walk stops, a skirt keeps moving and catches up. If clothing is loose it will follow the limbs later. Usually this is avoided as clothing is made with foam latex or stiffened fabric. But if it is important to the story to have the realistic swish of drapery following the body, the fabric would have to be stiffened on wire or stuck to heavy- duty foil. See chapter 5 on clothing.

snap

There is a point at which too much flexibility and flow in your movements can tend to make everything look rubbery, and the movements all seem to have the same sort of rhythm. This is when you need to know how to give some snap to your animation as well.

For a simple example of getting that impact into your animation, you can go back to chapter 3. In the section on planning, Pete Lord describes a fist slamming into the table to create a convincing illusion of speed, weight and solidity.

Another example that helps to counteract too much rubberiness: when you point your finger, that is an emphatic movement which would be entirely ruined if you kept the same rhythm of movements forward from the elbow through the wrist to the finger. To give this pace, make the finger ‘jab’ forward fast. To make that jab emphatic take the finger to the end of the move, and then make it go a bit further and bounce back.

breaking up the movement

To make your animation more interesting, break up a move – so that for instance, the whole body doesn't turn at one go, but it turns in sections. So if a person is turning, imagine they are turning because something has caught their interest: first their eyes glance over, followed in a few frames by the head turning, then the shoulders and the rest of the body – almost like an unwinding.

You can reverse that for a different effect. Someone really doesn't want to leave but is being forced to: the hand is being dragged, the body follows but the head is still facing where they want to be, and the very last thing to turn away is the eyes.

walking and running

People aren't choreographed when they move. There may be a natural element to certain movements that on the face of it looks unwieldy, you try to find those natural elements and incorporate them and then it looks right. But to do that-you can't ‘think’ it – you go looking for it.

I always think that everyone knows how things move, you know when things aren't right. But I suppose it's whether you want to see what's right and wrong. Especially on figurative stuff – just how you shift balance. The main movements are easy enough, but you kind of go searching for those little changes of balance and how that will affect how you'll move an arm. That is what's really fascinating.

Jeff Newitt

Most of the moves above involve weight transferring from one foot to another. In tennis as you serve, you would rock back on your back foot as the body leans back with the racquet – then you will transfer your weight onto the other foot as the arm comes over, hitting the ball. In the digging movement the weight rocks from back foot to front foot. A more elaborate example of weight transference is the walk. Weight transfers from one foot to the other to support the body as it ‘falls’ forward.

This is where you wish you were doing 2D or computer animation – where life seems safer! Walking a 3D puppet is very difficult – it's what people want to try first, but it needs a lot of practice.

Animators will use many tricks to avoid having to show a walk: a low wall or bushes. There are many ways to avoid showing a walk. In the planning stages decide how crucial to the story is a walk or a run and unless you need to do it, find another way of getting from A to B!

Walking the puppet is difficult. It will shift from side to side, fall over when balanced on one heel. If it's Plasticine, the legs will squash down to become enormous feet – it's difficult! The only point at which the balance is evenly distributed is at full stride, with the front heel touching the ground and the back toe about to lift off the ground: the contact position.

rigging

It will be easier to carry out the walk if you can prop your puppet securely. Either keep the puppet upright with something you can disguise, like tungsten wire, or fishing line (you can take the shine off these with candle wax). A prop from the back, avoiding the arm swing, or most securely of all, a rig that is attached to the puppet, holding it upright, that can be wiped in post production. That is the professional and obviously more expensive solution. The rigging point is built into the armature as a K&S brass ‘socket’ that will take the smaller gauge tube fitting into it (see Figure 9.15).

movement originates from the hip

If you study walks enough you will see that the movement originates from the centre of the body, the hip. The leg is pulled forward from the hip, the body rotates slightly from the hip as each leg comes forward, causing the arms to swing. The arm doesn't lead the leg, and the leg doesn't lead the arm – but, in a relaxed walk, the movement starts at the hip and moves outward – so the hand is the last thing to move forward, as it is at the extremity of the body. You will find moving your puppet by grasping the pelvis and manipulating the legs and body from the hip, means your puppet/armature will keep its shape much better as you walk it. Don't be tempted to pull your character forward by the foot, as the whole shape of the move gets lost.

The full stride is the point at which both feet are touching the floor; the size of this stride is determined by the speed at which your character is walking. And the size of the stride is how you measure the distance your character will cover, and therefore when to bring your character to a halt.

relaxed walk – 16 frames

When you walk the body sways from side to side because the weight is being transferred over one foot and then the other. When the right leg moves forward, the right arm moves back and the left arm moves forward. It's not unusual for beginners to get it wrong and swing the right arm and right leg forward together – I've even seen it on broadcast programmes – it's really a very basic observation. This sixteen-frame walk covers one full step (Figure 9.14, page 124).

fast walk – 8–12 frames (one full step)

In a fast walk the body leans forward more. The weight of the body is ahead of the hips, making the legs move faster to stop the body toppling forward.

In a 10-frame fast walk, the body leans forward, the arms are less relaxed with a bent arm swing; it's an altogether more urgent action with slightly more head up and down tilt.

If any of the walks need to go at singles, try to contrive that the step/contact leg position is straight for two frames, if not, it won't register and one gets a ‘Groucho Marx’ crouched action.

Figure 9.14 Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

run – 6 frames (4 steps per second)

The body leans forward, and the legs fling further forward, the stride is very wide (Figure 9.15). Unless it's a jog, which is a much more up and down movement, with short strides. A run or a jump obviously takes the feet off the ground and you will need to support the puppet either with hanging wires or a rig support. A six-frame run should be shot at singles or the movement won't register properly.

Figure 9.15 Courtesy ScaryCat Studio

Barry Purves’ first walk was on the job at Cosgrove Hall Films in Manchester. There was so little model animation being done in England in the 1970s that everyone learnt as they went along, and made up the rules as they went!

My first job at Cosgrove Hall was something called ‘Grandma Bricks of Swallow Street’. It was a 2 minute soap opera: a street full of characters and this feisty old granny with a dog called Fusby. My first job was to walk her all the way down the street – and I thought ‘if I can do this I've got the job!’ We didn't have monitors or videos and you could only rarely look through the viewfinder, and when it came back it was all wrong. At first I couldn't see what it was – and then I realised! She was walking toe-heel, toe-heel! Her dog was OK though, he had long hair and you couldn't see his feet!

the illusion of speed

Moving the puppet or the background while taking the frame to create a blur, known as go- motion, is a very effective way of creating a sense of speed. The puppet is normally static – pin sharp when you take the frame. If you were to sprint across the frame in live action everything would be a blur. In model animation you have to work really hard to get those blurs.

You can blur the background by moving the background when you take a frame.

You can rig the puppet to the camera, so that they move together.

Puppets can be on a wire/rig and moved during each frame.

Pete Lord from Aardman Animations observes:

Someone like Jeff Newitt will run the puppet over in a chaos of limbs. The knees come very high, arms flap around – it's a jittery effect, but a very energetic effect. Every one of those limbs is a straight line on the screen: the very fact that the lines of the limbs clash and clatter together give an image of frenzied activity and a sense of energy.

A character crossing screen from left to right at speed can look clumsy. One way to get around this is to make a 3D blur in Plasticine. It does look quite ugly, but it works. 1. Make everything as blurred as possible because that gives a compelling illusion of speed and 2. Make everything as frenetic as possible because that gives a different illusion of speed.

Animation is always exaggeration – take the essence of something and then exaggerate it. The human being is so fiendishly clever at putting in the right amount of give in their knees that we barely bounce when we walk. I was looking at sprinters the other day. They are such efficient movers that their legs go like the clappers but the body and head hardly move up and down at all, the line of the head is straight. But if you copy that... it's actually rather disappointing and doesn't look energetic. So the animator should exaggerate the up and down movement to make the effect he or she is after.

One tip as you get more experienced with walks: If your character is walking/running into shot, start animating off the set: it helps your animation to get into a rhythm, and, if the lighting casts a shadow, the shadow should precede the puppet.

animal and bird movement

The best sources of reference for animal movement are the Muybridge books (see the beginning of the present chapter). Because Muybridge photographed humans and animals against grids we are able to see exactly how far and fast a limb is moving.

four-legged animals

On a walk, most four-legged animals put their feet down front right; back left; front left; back right, as shown in Figure 9.16.

This 12-frame walk can be adapted to most four-legged animals – during a walk the dog/horse/cat will keep two if not three feet on the ground. At a run, as Muybridge proved in his series of horse photos at Palo Alto, a four-legged animal will take all its feet off the ground. Things to note: the tail follows a wave movement and the shoulders will be prominent as the weight of the dog goes over the foot. The legs move asymmetrically, i.e. the front and back legs don't come down on the same frame.

Figure 9.16 Dog walking. Illustration by Tony Guy

lizard

This gives a good example of following a wave movement through a figure – as the body is pulled forward by the front foot, the head turns toward the leading foot creating a wave movement through the body. See Figure 9.17.

birds’ walk

A pigeon or a chicken struts, moving its head back and forth (Figure 9.18).

Illustrator Tony Guy, an experienced 2D animator who has worked on many different styles, comic and naturalistic from Animal Farm to Tom and Jerry, says: ‘I have spent many hours over the years trying to work out the relationship between the back and forth head movement and the steps – conclusion? There isn't one! But for animation purposes, throwing the head forward immediately after the step seems to work.’

birds’ flight

This illustration serves for most bird flight: for smaller birds such as sparrows, robins or blackbirds, single frame these movements; for larger birds like crows, double frame them. But look carefully at bird flight as the wing movement can differ – a pigeon has a more extreme movement. A bird coming in to land will increase the backward thrust of the wing to brake and come in more vertically to land.

Note: the wing movement will move the bird's body up and down in flight.

Figure 9.17 (a) Lizard walking: feet in symmetrical positions. (b) Lizard walking: feet in asymmetrical positions – this is the more accurate version, but (a) animates well to give that snakelike movement – and is easier! Illustration by Tony Guy

Figure 9.18 Bird walk, chicken, pigeon. Illustration by Tony Guy

Figure 9.19 Bird flight. Illustration by Tony Guy