Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
Ad
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
I'm almost sure that many people would like to know the answer to this question, how does one make an animation that looks lifelike? Now, I am not talking about animating at 24 FPS, I mean at traditional 15 FPS. How many frames should it take for the arm to reach half way? How many frames should it take to turn a head? These are questions that I would love to know the answers to.
If you really want to know the exact stuff about this, maybe you should study real movement.
You could, possibly, record yourself loosely acting out the scene, then reduce the frame rate to 15 FPS. then watch it very slowly, and count frames. It also helps to have stuff ease in and ease out, by making movements slower at the beginning and end. Also, some times, you should ad pull back to your movements. So when something moves after the end of the movement have two or three frames of it going back just the sliiiiightest bit.
Read from the above people, as they are wise... 
well, getting good looking lifelike animation is an art; kinda like getting a painting to look lifelike. the more you animate, the better it'll look (hopefully)
there's no magic formula, but here's some tips that i've learned over the years:
Ease in and ease out. That means that when something is moving, it starts out slow, gets faster then slows down again. The only exception is when something runs into something else, then it can stop suddenly
Avoid jitter. Jitter is basically when you accidentally bump the minifig when you're trying to move it's arm or head or something and you try correct it in the next frame. GET RID OF THAT! if you accidentally bump the minifig, do your best to put it back where it was with the onion skin. Then, in the next few frames, continue that same motion but ease it out.
play stuff back all the time. Whenever, i capture a new frame, i play back the animation from the beginning to see if it all looks good and flows well. sometimes, i'll go a few frames before playing the animation back, but i'm constantly playing it back. If it doesn't look good, throw it away.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE take a look at my earlier films... everyone gets better over time as they practice more and more
Last edited by StanTheLegoMan (April 23, 2011 (12:58pm))
In addition to easing in and out, you also need anticipation, bounceback, and inertia. Anticipation is when a minifig is going to raise his arm, he moves his arm back a little bit before he brings it forward. The more forceful the movement he is about to take, the more anticipation is needed. Bounceback is when after the minifig raises his arm, he puts it down and the arm swings back and forth. It's basically the opposite of anticipation. Again, the more force in the movement, the more bounceback. Inertia is when the minifig's arm is raised, the body moves back a little. Other parts of the minifig are following the primary movement. This is also known as secondary movement. Moving the arms while walking is another example of this.
EDIT: Bounceback is also called "elastic rebound".
Last edited by minifig051 (April 24, 2011 (11:16am))
Thanks guys, this is really helpful.
Wow Minifig, I completely forgot about all those things. 
I'll need to be thinking about those kind of things more often. And coolasice is right, that should go in the Resources section.
This is how I do it.
1. Record myself doing such movement
2. Open the file in Quicktime
3. Watch frame by frame of how the movement goes
4. Animate while flipping through frames.Gives quite a nice sense of timing once you get a hang of it.
-Tejas VIM
That is exactly how that guy who made wallace and gromit did 
Posts [ 12 ]
