Animation Tips & Tricks, Volume I - Animation Mentor

That's 40 years of inspiration. 40 years of laughs. 40 years of 3-year-olds mimicking King Louie's dance and making their parentslaugh....40 years...Maybe it's silly, but it really hit me in that room that no matter how trivial some of our work is, or how bad some of our projects turnout to be, we're all working towards nailing that one show or game or film that will be entertaining people long after we're gone.It's like we have a chance to not only inspire people, but to bottle that inspiration into a time-capsule, and launch it into the futureto inspire future generations.For me, THAT is inspiring, and as worthy a goal as any other. ...Well, okay -- other than curing Cancer, feeding the hungry, shelteringthe homeless, ending poverty, etc. Those are the "Big Goals" with a capital G. I'm talking about wimpy artist goals, and we mostly usesmall g's. Making people think is about the best we can usually shoot for, but using media to get people to think can be a powerfultool, and we can be a part of it!Okay, enough of that. Tip time! Are you ready?*TIP #16: Constrain TO Props, Not To The Character!*So, if you're animating characters, there's a decent chance that at some point, someone is going to ask your character to interactwith something. He'll need to hold a broom, or she'll need to hold a sword, or whatever it is.The natural inclination of the beginning animator is to constrain that prop to your character's hand, and then as you animate yourcharacter's hand, the prop will go along with it.With some exceptions, this is generally a big mistake, and if you care about arcs at all, will often lead to some big headaches.Now, I'm going to just assume that you're using IK (inverse kinematics) on the arms rather than FK (forward kinematics), even thoughI know that some of you probably DO use FK. Personally, I hate using FK on the arms, as I feel like it creates a lot of counter-animationwork for me. I know some of you love it, but we'll just have to agree to disagree here.If you really have to use FK on your arms, then you'll probably have to constrain the prop to your character's hand, and that's that.If so, you might as well save yourself some time and move along. Hopefully the Disneyland story was enough to feel like you didn'tget ripped off this month, and I'll see ya next time!Ok, you IKers still with me? Let's get back to our regularly scheduled program:So.... why on Earth would it be a bad idea to constrain a prop to a hand?Well, the biggest problems arise when you have a large or long prop.Let's say it's a sword, for example.If you constrain a sword to your character's hand, you will have a fine time blocking things in, and everything will be fine. At first. Butif you are animating a sword, you know that you need to make sure that the tip of that sword is traveling along nice figure 8's andsmooth swirling arcs (the only exception is when it makes contact with something. No matter what!), so after your blocking is done,you'll eventually need to go in there and track your arcs on the tip of that sword, right?Well, if the sword movement is based on the rotation of your character's wrist, you've just created a big pile of unnecessary work foryourself.Why?53Copyright 2008 by AnimationMentor.com. All rights reserved. This ebook may not be reprinted or distributed in electronic, print, web, or other format withoutexpress written permission.