How To Time Action For An Animated Film Or Music Video Part 2

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Neal_R_Warner]Neal R Warner
In timing character movements in animation at 24 frames per second, the industry standard, time is broken down into one second increments. Each second consists of three eight frame sections and each drawing is shot twice and shown for two frames therefore each one second of screen time requires twelve individual drawings for full motion.

Each of the eight frame third of a second is called a "beat" and all three can be estimated by counting "one, one hundred". The fastest, smoothest move that can be done is an eight frame beat. This is because it consists of an main or "extreme" drawing at either end of an action which represents the starting and ending position, a middle or "breakdown" drawing that links the two extremes and a "slow in" and a "slow out" drawing which shows the action smoothly getting up to speed and smoothly slowing into it's final stop position. This requires a total of five individual drawings. To omit one is to have a jerky start or jerky finished to the action. If these beats are designed as smaller units of a larger action, and breaking up a large action into beats makes for better animation, then the slow out drawings may be held until the appropriate place at the end of the total action and there are cases when a jerkiness of an action is desirable. Animation is an art, not a science.

Legendary animation director Chuck Jones once gave a talk to the students of Cal Arts and complained that some studios "over animate". He claimed if you want to pan across a forest to get to a meadow you only need a couple of drawings to do so and to have a spider crawling on its web in the foreground, a flock of geese flying through the sky in the background and a chipmunk scurrying through the underbrush in the mid-ground is completely unnecessary. Most people won't even catch these details and are a waste of time and money he argued. But it all depends on your style of animation and your style of storytelling.

In a Bugs Bunny episode which is a highly stylized comedic cartoon, such details would certainly be out of place and even a distraction but for a more realistic environment, God is in the details. Yes, you may not notice the dew drop rolling down the leaf as the camera pans but subconsciously you will be aware that there is something there that you're missing. Just as a real forest seems alive with animals, birds, insects and even other people when you really can't see beyond the first row of trees, if you animated at least some details into your scene the viewer will get the feeling that there are more dimensions to it than he or she can take in with this amount of limited time with which to see it all.

A Bugs Bunny cartoon is essentially a joke and all that needs is a setup and a punch line. Erroneous detail is detrimental to a joke. But a Disney fairy tale wants to take you to world that's lush and real so having "life" animated into every shot gives that sense of reality and that's why Disney is Disney.
Neal Warner is an artist, writer, filmmaker, member of the multimedia band, The Tooners and founder of Director's Clip, The Internet and Music Video Sponsorship Site ( http://www.directorsclip.com ) and Rock & Roll Rehab, For The Control of Rock & Roll ( http://www.rocknrollrehab.com ).
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-To-Time-Action-For-An-Animated-Film-Or-Music-Video-Part-2&id=6724622] How To Time Action For An Animated Film Or Music Video Part 2