Tysons animation workflow?

Hey all !

Im new just foudn the forums through Tysons site!

looks like theres great work all over this forum

I wanted to ask Tyson specifically about his aniamtion workflow, Im sure there is other posts about his animation workflows but I could get the search button to work
I saw that he said (on CGtalk)he moved the centers of gravity first then the legs and other limbs?

Thanks for any help!!

-Tobes

Hey Tobes, welcome! Glad to hear some people are coming here from cgtalk

Anywho...yes....my animation workflow is a bit weird...let me explain:

-First I start off by blocking out all of the animation in my head...making sure I've thought of every movement that I want to add in, and when

-Then I block out the entire animation by animating the characters' centre of gravities. You can see an example of me doing this, in an animation I posted in the "Seinfeld" thread in the factory forum a while ago. If you can't find it just do a search for "seinfeld"

-Then I'll usually animate the legs and feet....then the spine....then the head...then the arms...then the hands, and finally the face. That's pretty much my current workflow, and that's how I've basically done it since the beginning.

I'm currently trying to self-peer-pressure myself into blocking out my animations in a pose-to-pose style though......haven't tried to do that yet....but from what I've seen I think that's probably a better method than what I'm currently doing. I guess I'm just so used to my current workflow though...that I'm afraid to switch!

Rather than creating a new thread, I'll ask a similar workflow question Tyson...

After studying your animations for a while now, I've noticed they are very quick.
Its is difficult for me to control the speed of my animations "overall" if there is multiple elements.

But I was reading in After Effects about the "Time Stretch" feature. I tried it an found I could control the overall speed fairly well.
Do you have any experience with this feature (Time Stretch) in a production environment? Does this cause problems?

Thanks
Fess

I saw every playblast by Tyson, from here to CgTalk, and I can say that they give a good explanation of the steps he do to animating. And... Tyson, when some new playblasts?

ah! excellent,
cheers Tyson
where did you learn to do it that way?

Do MAKE just let you get on with it? or do they check on your animations at various stages?

Hey Fess,

Personally, I would NOT ever use the After Effects time stretch method!

Basically, what it's going to take is lots of practice. Usually now, since I've had about 5 years worth of practicing...I can get an animation to the point where I want it on the first pass. That means, that after blocking out the center of gravity, I don't usually ever go back and make any major timing adjustments (lots and lots of minor ones, sure...but nothing huge). I guess it's just getting a good sense of where/when you want specific timings to happen before you start to animate that can really help.

That being said....if you REALLY need to use time stretch or something like that, I would suggest AE's time remapping instead. Time stretch is a linear change...whereas with time remapping you can ramp-up and ramp-down and do all sorts of other coolness

Hey Polecat...haha.....thanks man...haven't had a chance to do much animation lately, although in the States here there's a long weekend coming up so I'm hoping to do a little something during that.

Tobes: Hey again ....I guess I sort of just taught myself, by trying different methods and then sticking with the one that was most efficient and comfortable. I can't pinpoint a specific source of my method though....

As for animating at MAKE....I pretty much just go at it. My boss Danny will usually give me advice for certain poses or acting or such things...but I can usually hold my own weight when it comes to the technical side of animation, so I don't get too many comments/critiques on that. That being said, Danny still likes to see progress....so he'll usually get to see the whole progress anyways