Animation Tips & Tricks, Volume I - Animation Mentor

The end result, of course, is a far stronger and communicative pose that is full of life. As with any art (usually!!), the more interestingangles and twists you can put in without hurting the core idea, the better. (Obviously you could take this idea too far, and quicklyend up with a pose that looks like more like he's being electrocuted than preparing for a hug!)So, to recap: a twinned pose is a mirrored pose. It's boring, and shows extreme inexperience - mostly because you have to ignoreso many other animation concepts (dynamic posing, line of action, arcs, contrast, weight, etc) to get there.Yikes, this is getting way too long. Man, am I terrible about that or what?! Ok, I'll keep this next section shorter, since hopefullyyou're getting the idea now...The other type of twinning, and by far the more common one, is twinned timing.Now that you're understanding what twinned posing is, I bet you'll have a much easier time figuring out twinned timing! Yup, it'swhen the spacing on the keyframes of your character's limbs/body are all equally timed out. In other words, it's when the left footstops moving on the same frame as the right foot, or when a cheering character's arms both hit their extremes on the same frame.The most common type of twinning I see is when inexperienced animators skip over all the tried-and-true animation assignmentsand decide they want to jump immediately into acting scenes and dialogue tests. Unfortunately, this (understandable) impatience,leads to nothing but a waste of time and effort, and 99% of the time simply results in a dialogue shot that does more to show offtheir lack of animation knowledge than anything else.We see endless demo reels full of acting tests that might have some interesting acting choices, but clearly show no knowledge ofbasic body mechanics (weight, balance, anticipation, force, etc), bad arcs, and twinned timing. A character's right hand will rise intoa gesture and "hit" that extreme of the gesture on the exact same frame that the head stops moving, which happens on the exactsame frame that the left hand clenches into a fist.Similar to the way it affects posing, this "twinned" timing shows that the animator is not thinking about anticipation, overlap, or arcs.A scene with proper body mechanics and arcs and overlap cannot, by definition, result in twinned timing. Worse, twinned timingcreates an extremely robotic feel to the whole piece, and becomes a huge red flag for recruiters.Now, if you see this in your work, don't panic! It is incredibly common, especially in student work, and just as with twinned posing,it is very easy to fix.Once again, I'd just dive into the curve editor, and experiment with offsetting some keys. First, I'd make sure that my gesturing handis hitting it's extreme on the correct frame (which will almost always be the vowel of the sentence's Operative Word, remember, fromlast year?), and then I'd adjust everything else around it. I might let the head hit it's extreme a couple frames early, and delay the fistclenchof the other hand by a few frames. (Oh, and just for clarification, I'm not talking about moving the entire curve and offsettinga controller's animation globally throughout the whole scene, I'm just adjusting this one area of the shot).Even just those simple adjustments should make a world of difference to your scene, and once you find the amount of offset youlike, you'll still have to go back in there and make sure your arcs are correct, your overlap is working nicely, etc., but this should giveyou a better foundation to build upon.The other way you might hear "twinning" used, is in reference to the timing (or posing) of multiple characters. Do your charactersstop walking on the same frame? Twinning! Do your characters wave at the same time? Twinning!! Do your characters both stopwith their right foot forward and left hand on their hip? TWINNING! This is the worst type of twinning, and is the most unnatural ofall, so avoid it at all costs.One of the reasons this comes up so often is because people DO move in twinned ways at times. A sports fan on the edge of his seatwill explode into the air when his team scores that goal, and both of his hands might fly up into the air and "hit" their extremes atthe exact same moment of time. A music conductor's hands might (for brief periods) move together in a very lyrical and powerfulway as the music crescendos. A couple holding hands walking down the street might have the exact same strides, their feet hittingon exactly the same frames. A man bowing and praying might have his outstretched arms not only stopping on the same frame,but he will likely be twinning his pose as well.59Copyright 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.