Victor Navone on Planning

Victor Navone has made a couple of posts on his blog about planning for an animated scene. In this day and age when animation is involving less and less drawing, planning is becoming more and more important. If you're animating a rig in 3D, Flash or After FX you don't start with a blank, you start from the last key frame. The danger is that each new key just becomes an amendment of the last, when you plan with sketches you are forced to redesign the entire character pose from nothing each time. Victor explains it better than me, the article is in two parts. Part1. Part 2. In Part 1 make sure you follow the link to the gallery of thumbnails, priceless stuff.

9 comments:

frank said...

Thanks Ian this is a timely post for any animators considering having a go at the December, 11SecondClub exercise. http://www.11secondclub.com

frank said...

"Ah well, animation is never finished, only abandoned." Navone talking about his one shot on Ratatouille

frank said...

Hey Ian. What's the term 'blocking' mean? The Yanks use it all the time. Is it something like key frame line testing?

Ian said...

Blocking is used to describe just butting in the basic poses. In a plan, storyboard or animated scene. In animation its your first run at a scene. The bare basics to tell the story in that scene (remembering the dif between an animation "scene" and a movie or play "scene". Usually no work on faces, follow through, anticipations, arcs and so on. Just the Major keys needed to communicate what physically happens in the scene. :)

Good Question as always Frank.

Ian said...

hee that should be "just PUTTING in the basic poses"

frank said...

'butting' worked as an explantion just fine for me. Sounds right when put up against 'blocking'. Or should that be: but up against plocking?

Hey, hang on a mo', the 'p' and the 'b' are way far apart on the keyboard. I think your typo was Freudian.

As for scenes and sequences. Nup, I have real problems getting my head around that terminology. But I did take some notes on the 26th of Feb 2007 that said:

"Each SHOT (common film term) in an animation SEQUENCE is called a SCENE. An animation SCENE is the action that occurs between two CUTS."

Is that correct?

Butt then Victor Navone uses a film term when he says, "I only animated one shot on Ratatouille." Which would be the action between two cuts, but wouldn't it be that he only animated one SCENE in Ratatouille?

Ian said...

Your notes ring true.

Victor my be using the term Shot to avoid confusion among non indusrty readers. But even then there is no reason why you can't use the term shot when talking about your animation, its just that when you say scene you mean the same thing. :)

I would be interested to know if the Games industry follows the same terminoligy as the Film of Traditional Animation industries. Maybe one of the ARC friends will read this and let us know.

Lisa said...

hallo hallo. yes, in games we use the term 'blocking' all the time. It refers to the basic keys and timing that will make up a scene/shot/action....then after this process you can 'polish' the animation. No particular fancy when it comes to calling it 'shot, scene or action'..

Ian said...

Thanks Lisa :)