Consistency of Image Over Time

[Anim8tor Cathy]

So I am practicing and practicing and noticing that I do not have good consistency of image as I go along. For instance, I start with a little rabbit and I want him to flick his ear – but as I draw him in sequential images he seems to deform and degrade … is this a common problem for beginners? I have no problem drawing the FIRST rabbit ... but then it's like it just falls apart as it goes on.

[Peter Wassink]

– but as I draw him in sequential images he seems to deform and degrade … is this a common problem for beginners? I have no problem drawing the FIRST rabbit ... but then it's like it just falls apart as it goes on.

This is indeed a very common problem and part of the reason why animation is a hard art.
Its one of the oldest problems in animation. Example.... in the thirties, Mickey Mouse ears where famously drawn using coins to keep them consistent in size !
Keeping your character 'on model' is the technical term.
It is one of the reasons 3D animation has become so popular, in 3D you don't have to actively keep your characters 'on model' and 'on volume', because they are puppets and will do so themselves (this saves money).
when a character is not on volume it means that while a character can still look right, its mass or the mass of its bodyparts can seem to vary from drawing to drawing, especially tricky to avoid during turns.

Through animation history several methods have been developed to keep handdrawn characters looking the same throughout a scene or film:
-First for the animator to better be able to draw the character from all angles and in all poses he/she needs to spend time drawing the character...a lot.
-Then, the use of a modelsheet, a reference image showing the character in all its typical poses and with its typical expressions. a modelsheet is particularly useful when a team of people have to draw the same character and forms a reference so everybody draws the character exactly the same, but can also be useful when you work alone.
-Set up your animation with use of keyposes, by carefully planning your scene and drawing the 'storytelling poses' first you can spend time to make sure these will all look like your first rabbit. Having established your keyposes you now can animate from one pose to the next which reduces the chance of it completely falling apart, these drawings function like the pillars of a bridge. In this 'Pose to Pose' method always lies a risk that you loose some spontaneouity or that the acting becomes wooden .... animation is a hard art.

Finally, as i mentioned before, 3D animation will keep volume perfectly, so you can't really compete with that. At Disney in their traditional feature films they had massive teams al working and striving for perfect 'on model' animation, so i would not advice to try and compete with that either.
Instead i would suggest you try to find your own way of doing it and also really ask yourself whether it is such a bad thing that the rabbit gets 'off model'.
As long as people can see it is the same rabbit in the scene and you succeed in making him show us he is alive. Some deformations won't stand in the way of that. You are never going to convince anyone it is a real rabbit anyway, so why not proudly show it is hand drawn!

[Klaus Hoefs]

in addition to Peter's reply:

I always set up an extra-image layer (similiar to a character sheet) as a reference which can be set to hidden if not needed and also be transformed in line.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Peter, you wrote that so well it sounds like you copied it out of a book -- and a good book too. The best way to stay on model is to spend a lot of time with the main poses -- particularly the first and last frames; then of course the one in the middle, but also the ones between those ... if you get my point, you should always keep an eye on where you are going and where you are coming from.

I'm guessing that you are drawing what is referred to as straight ahead animation, which means you start with drawing # 1 and then you go to # 2 etc., until you are done. This can be done successfully but only after many years of practice. But I agree with Peter; even if you do get off model, so what? This is why I always suggest that animators should design their characters and develop their style through animating the character straight ahead for awhile. If you do this right, your final model will not be the first drawing and probably not the last one either but somewhere inbetween is the one you will learn to like best and stay with.

So think of what you have done with the rabbit as a search for the style, not yet the beginning of the film.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sometimes, after contributing to a thread such as this one, I can't get my mind off the topic, and this has happened to me here again. As I work on my current scene, I keep thinking that there's more to say about keeping a character on model and it suddenly dawns on me; it's in the acting too -- or mainly, even. Once my character has a clearly defined "character", a personality and voice and mannerisms, it matters less whether I am diligent about keeping him on model. As long as he behaves and maintains his god given (me) character traits, he can't that easily drop out of model.

His form might change and he might even at times loose some parts (as Cathy says, he might start breaking apart) it will all become part of his act. This is very important; to know one's character's character and to stick to it and to draw him in such a way that the viewer understands what you want to say through him and who he is in your mind.

A note to "him". I use it it selectively because the character I am working on right now is a He dog, not a him/her dog.

[Klaus Hoefs]

I think what Cathy meant was e.g. a mouse turning the head is suddenly growing bigger with the continuing frames.
Unless the mouse eats up a cheese with every turn and ending up as a flickering monster mouse this could be seen as a technical issue, a missing drawing ability.

But I agree, convulsive adherence of shape in motion may run into narrow minded stiffness of character design. And who likes illiberal animations ?

[Peter Wassink]

Peter, you wrote that so well it sounds like you copied it out of a book -- and a good book too.

Thanks Paul, i have learned a lot of this stuff from you, so 'good book' is about right

[Paul Fierlinger]

Peter, you wrote that so well it sounds like you copied it out of a book -- and a good book too.

Thanks Paul, i have learned a lot of this stuff from you, so 'good book' is about right

No wonder I liked it so much...

[Paul Fierlinger]

I think what Cathy meant was e.g. a mouse turning the head is suddenly growing bigger with the continuing frames.

But this is a good example of what I mean about awareness of character. If the mouse is an aggressive bully, the distortion would fit into its character and become just part of its act. But if the mouse were to be a timid church mouse, and Cathy had this self-drilled into her mindset as she drew, it most likely would not happen and even the opposite could happen, where she would grow into a smaller mouse and no one would notice.

[Klaus Hoefs]

But this is a good example of what I mean about awareness of character.

So let's see Cathy, what's up with that mouse / ähem, rabbit ? Cathy ?

[Sierra Rose]

Wow Peter. Everything you said perfectly mirrors my experience. Especially "spend a lot of time drawing the character..a lot". I have been doing this so much that it's like I "speak" little girl fluently, can get along in the language of "little boy" but only speak "broken" parents. It's so obvious how time spent with the characters is important.

To Paul's and your point about it not mattering if you get "off model": it really seems to serve as a reminder that the work is hand-drawn if it doesn't go too far off. It adds charm. Somehow it's part of the acting.

At the stage I am at with animation, I was delighted to read your wonderfully accurate post. Yes it's a hard art and very demanding.

Edit: I just remembered something: about 4 years ago or so, you took one of my sequences of a little girl twirling and worked it yourself to show me how to improve her center of balance. That lesson has stayed with me forever and helped me a great deal. Then you disappeared from the Mirage forum and I don't think I ever got a chance to thank you. So now I do.

[Anim8tor Cathy]

.... animation is a hard art.

Well, that pretty much sums it up.

So let's see Cathy, what's up with that mouse / ähem, rabbit ? Cathy ?

At the rate I am going I'll have something to show you in about 10 years.

[Sierra Rose]

Cathy,

When I started, I posted such terrible, stiff, badly drawn stuff that I'm surprised anyone took me seriously. But they did and very kindly and graciously did me the dignity of giving real feedback without worrying about my delicate ego. That saves tons of time in the long run.

[Gochris1]

Paul is right. If you animate straight ahead, you have to contend with a character growing or shrinking during the course of a scene.

But if you animate pose-to-pose, that is not so much of a problem.

I draw on a light board, then scan my drawings into TVP.

The book I learned to animate from is "Character Animation In 3-D" by Steve Roberts. It teaches how to animate in both 3-D and with pencil and paper. The author's thesis is that you can't be a good 3-D animator if you don't learn 2-D animation.

He teaches pose to pose:
If you have a scene that uses 30 drawings, draw the basic keys: frame 1, frame 15 and frame 30.
Put drawing 1 and drawing 15 on your light board. Draw the frame beween: frame 7.
Put drawing 15 and drawing 30 on your lightboard, and draw the frame bewtween, drawing 22.
Then put drawing 1 and 7 and the board and draw the frames in between which are drawings 3 and 5.
Follow this method and do all the in betweens: 9, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29

What I was surprised to find is how often I trace parts of drawings from earlier in the scene to drawings later in the scene. That keeps me on model. For instance, if my head doesn't change from frame 3 to frame 11, I will just trace the head from frame 3 to frame 5, 7, 9, and 11. Maybe during those frames the rest of the body is moving, so I will have to animate the body, but for those frames I will just trace the head.

You can see this technique in Looney Tunes. Often a character's feet are anchored to the floor while the rest of him movies. They would draw the feet planted on the ground in one layer, then draw the rest of the moving body on a separate layer under the feet.

So I do a lot of tracing of previous drawings so I can keep the volumes and proportions of the characters consistent. I have to, because I'm a very inexperienced artist. But animating this way is not so daunting.

What I learned from Richard Williams' book is that the real character and creativity does not come in the keys, but in the in betweens. I like Jim Tyer's animation, and in his inbetweens he did NOT stay on model at all. You don't have to either if you don't want.

So try pose-to-pose animation.

GoChris

[Paul Fierlinger]

For instance, if my head doesn't change from frame 3 to frame 11, I will just trace the head from frame 3 to frame 5, 7, 9, and 11. Maybe during those frames the rest of the body is moving, so I will have to animate the body, but for those frames I will just trace the head.

In my opinion this is excellent practice and I've been adhering to that way of drawing everything for all my working life. It brings more life to the film because a retraced line shimmers with imperfection, adding life to the screen.

There is another, tremendously important bonanza that stems from retracing objects (opposed to merely placing them on another layer to save work) which is that in time, one becomes bored with drawing the same lines over and over again and begins to add slight variances, such as a nod or a blink or a smirk, if it's the head. It separates the men from the boys, as the saying goes; this is mature work. Anyone who animates this way has lost his/her intimidation of the sight of hundreds and thousands of individual drawings down the road.

My guess is that you are beginning to live in the drawing; the equivalent of "living in the day". Animation is hard art but the difficulty can be overcome by such Zen approaches to work.

"I am washing the dishes to wash the dishes, because I am washing the dishes". Transfer that philosophy to drawing inbetweens and the drudgery is gone and the animator's life becomes sublime.