A Progress in Work…

Of Beats and Poses

October 6, 2009 on 9:40 pm | In Ramblings, Requests | No Comments

Mmmm, more animation practice goodness to share.  This time we had to do a ‘Swoon’, a character swaying to one side then losing consciousness as they fall and pass out.  The excercise was definitely very challenging…keeping up with all those joints and the idea of it the movement was conscious or just a result of gravity after the figure passed out…definitely a fair amount of brain power excreted (yes that is the word I mean).

However, an interesting point came up when I was doing mine and showing it to folks for feedback.  I had decided to give the character a reason to be passing out….well, this resulted in me putting in a bit of acting stuff, and one of my friends told me to be careful not to be too ‘Posey’, and always make sure my character was in constant motion.  This is a bit weird, because I just thought I was putting in ‘Beats’ for the character, like an actor breaks down a script.  Since I have an acting background this seemed the normal way to do it.  I decided to see how it looked with some of the bigger ‘beats’ removed, and while more fluid I found I liked the ‘performance’ better with the beats, that it was funnier.  I showed a friend with an acting background, and just asked which she preferred without any context….she liked the beats more….another friend complained (unprompted) that one version looked ‘choppy, like it kept freezing.’  Since timing is of interest to me in animation, I’m interested to see what my opinion with evolve to about this, but thought it’d also be fun to see what others think.

So below I am posting both versions…if you’ve any opinion at all I’d love to hear them and why…help fuel my education!!

Poses:

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Pose-lite:

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