Animation Ramble - Drag

Gardening and physics come together in this ramble about animating drag.

7 comments:

Danielli said...

my god, ian in thongs i never thought i would see the day. also i like you garage/shed, i need a garage/shed, are you willing to sell that garage/shed.
that was some interesting stuff about the drag thing too.

Ian said...

Keep your eyes off my shed man, do you know how long I had to wait for a home with a goog shed? A mans shed is his castle.

I'm glad you did read the stuff about Drag too :)

Anonymous said...

Is a goog shed where one keeps googy edds?

Ian said...

Its like a good shed, only googier.

I just get a new laptop and they keyboard is smaller than the last. As if I didn't screw my typing up enough as is. :)

Any actual comments about the post would be nice too.

Anonymous said...

Things won't move until they are forced to... sounds like an animation student and their major project.

frank said...

I remember that Ed Hooks said something to the tune of, "a character should keep acting along a line of thought or motivation until something happens."

Until something happens...

Hmm, seems a bit similar to the physical forces on an object. The object stays in place, doing its thing, communing in comfort with it's good mate gravity, until something happens to make it move.

The comfort was so appealing and the power of gravity so strong, the object has to be dragged away like a child from the polar bear enclosure, always looking back reaching out for the big fluffy bear.

I think your hibiscus branch gave it's life for a noble cause and demonstration of the way things move.

You have demonstrated the beauty of force and drag in a real world situation. A good thing for students to master.

But what happens when animators add magic to it? What is the thing that as you say "the sort of thing that can send a shiver down your spine as you watch it"?

Ian said...

Magic works in animation when we believe it can happen for real. Drag and overlap is a real life phenomenon animators often layer over unreal events to tie them down in a real context, to make the unreal seam plausible to the audience.

Sure you can choose to disregard or break the rules of drag if it suits you creatively, but you should master how to apply the rules first, and you will have to prove it to employers. They are unlikely to accept that you chose not to demonstrate your understanding of drag intentionally because you were animating something magical.

Ahhh its good to have a Frank back on the blog to ask questions, challenging me to articulate myself further :)