According to myself and a few designers I have worked with I am a fast animator. I'm fast as all hell when it comes to making 3D animation and that doesn't mean I'm the best. It just means I'm fast. I can quickly make an animation that suits design purposes and maybe even animation purposes, but really, I'm just fast. It doesn't mean my animation is superior with regards to motion, or performance, or even action. All it means is that I can make animations very rapidly with regard to turnaround time. What takes some animators days takes me hours or perhaps minutes.
There has been a saying or a joke or what have you throughout my entire career that if a designer needs something done in a short amount of time they ask for a, "Mike Carr Special." That means I make a short animation in about ten to twenty minutes. Something simple, but also, something shippable. This happens a lot. First pass/final pass has always pervaded my workflow but speed is equally essential. Because I work in games and not film there is very little finessing that occurs and, to be fair, it probably shows.
Most of the time what I create has to do with an understanding of a designer's needs but while I work I am also considering the end of the day, the end of the project, and what I am putting my name on. I want it to look good, like most animators do, but a necessity for being fast can crush that idea.
This has a lot to do with how I've made a workflow that is superior for me and specifically, one that organizes most of the options popular software packages out there allow animators. My work setup is alien to others because I am left handed(and most people are not) and because I don't use a majority of the tools that 3D software packages offer. Still, the tools I do use are basically what anyone wanting to execute 3D animation also needs to use, all there on a little number pad with no need for complex inputs(I don't even use ctrl+z for undo anymore). What this really has to do with, however, is that I only work in key poses.
I've heard other animators say that if it looks right it is right, no matter the work flow, whether IK or FK, whether with scattered keys or organized, but that isn't the case. 3D animation is a simplification of animation principles. Key poses and automated interpolation are, at the core, why 3D is immediate. It's why 3D is so much faster and, in my opinion, generally cheaper.
Occasionally I am forced to work on another animator's file. You will never see me more upset or confused when this takes place. From what I understand, in the 2D world this rarely happens. Those scenes or shots are an animator's babies. They are nuzzled and muscled and sculpted into that singular animator's vision of what the director wants. Because it's very rare to find two animators who think exactly alike, when you have to work on another person's files there is always a period of time where you will have to reverse engineer their thinking. That little chunk of time to consider the other animator's work and thought process can sometimes eat up a lot of work hours, and can also lead to a lot of reworking animation.
Perhaps my brain is slightly more middle of the road than other artists with respect to left/right hemisphere dominance (although I doubt it) or maybe I am just a little OCD when it comes to being organized in my files. Perhaps other animators see the act of sliding keys around as part of the animation process. I can assure you, it is entirely unnecessary and contradictory to the very nature of 3D animating; It's contradictory to the nature of animation in general, to be more specific.
The idea of Persistence of Vision gave rise to more scientifically accurate theories, Phi Phenomenon and Beta Movement, both of which examine how the eye perceives a sequence of images with slight changes. These ideas are essentially the basis for why animation works. Your eyes sense change and can therefore make links between individual images to see them as moving pictures/images. If those moving images convey what is necessary to describe a movement, the movement will look correct. 3D interpolation is what this is all about. You don't have to make all those frames, you just have to push the pieces through the right poses at the right time.
I've stressed before how important keeping clean files is but I think I should repeat that sentiment. The bottom line is that 3D animation is not about shifting pieces of a character around to create motion. It's simply about key poses and letting the program do the in between work for you.
A lot of animators(I'm lookin at you, Mentor students) take the idea of squash and stretch to extremes these days, which is unfortunate. The emphasis on creating all of that overlapping, unrealistic motion will often create sloppy, disorganized keys and can, ultimately, slow a project down. Perhaps it's that the dope sheet is a much quicker way to make adjustments than the graph editor but the latter is really where adjustments to timing should be made. The in and out of a trajectory is what animators should be changing, and not the keys.
I will forever praise Valve for the sheer joy that I feel when playing Team Fortress 2(more later on that gem of a game), but the true victory of theirs lies in the character introduction pieces. Of all the, "Meet the," shorts my favorite is the Engineer's. Everything in the clip is just perfection: The offset timing of the kill counter's rotating numbers, the subtle grin he gives as the turret hits its' target, the little shift of weight when preparing to kick the dismembered arm, the left/right sway of the jaw, the voice work, the guitar playing, the fact the song is Jeff Tweedy's, "Someone Else's Song." I could go on for a while.
Although I can see very clearly how I would break up this animation into the parts that move at similar pacing, this scene would destroy my workflow. It is so complex and nuanced there is no way to make a file like this in clean columns, with organized spacing, and straight key posing. The left hand alone would be a sea of keys with their own unique timing. In short, when a scene calls for it, be prepared to get messy. It's hard to convey when that is called for and when it is not without a counter example, so consider this page of animations: Vanessa
Every single one these animations could be done quickly in 3D using only key poses. They are fighting game animations, after all, which are the easiest actions to do with major poses, but even most of the in between frames would be taken care of by automated interpolation. Knowing when you need to get messy and when you need to stay organized are two huge factors in becoming a faster, cleaner, and better animator. I hope the idea catches on, because I'm kind of tired of batting cleanup.
