The anatomy of motion in animation
In this post I wanted to present how movement drawings are created and what are the inbetweens and what are keyframes, what is the line of action and what are the extremes. I decided to draw the movement drawing myself because I thought it is a good opportunity to practice poses and motion drawings. This is very important in animation, so any chance to improve is great.
This is what I drew for this exercise:
I am quite happy with this action path. An action path is exactly what I presented above. I think it looks nicely and the motion is clear. It is obvious that the character is jumping. I like this a lot, I think it was a good practice.
Next I have added text to show what is what. I think this is a really good example of this sort of drawing of keyframes and inbetweens.
I think I did a great job with this sketch and I am happy I decided to draw it myself as a practice instead of taking one of off the internet. It helped me practice and I am proud of that.
Understanding someone moves is as important as understanding the structure of the human form - you MUST know the Eardward Muybridge photographs of movement from the late 1800's? Perhaps you could look at his work and follow up on this with some (short) research into his work. Couple of examples here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.laughingplace.com/w/articles/2016/01/14/contemporary-character-animation-classic-techniques-james-baxter/
https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/eadweard-muybridge-motion
For further background research ( and if you have a model) it might be worth making your own photographic research as a way of better understanding movement and form.