Corporeal Narration.

The Muppets puppeteers will forever kick my ass at animation. And yours.

No Blocking.

Since I've received some comments about my five frame rule I realize that I should have clarified that that is not the end-all-be-all animation solution, it's just how I typically work. That's not to say every animation ends up with keys spread apart every 5 frames. Sometimes I do have to make timing adjustments but the point is that doing so is much easier to do when your file and your columns are clean. If the timing works out then that's great; If it doesn't all I do is slide neat little columns around.

The other day one of our animators was referencing a file from God of War III I did for the Hermes chase. During that particular level Hermes taunts Kratos, egging him on, teasing him, and generally being a pain in the ass. Throughout the sequence this other animator and I were tasked with doing all of Hermes' animations. We protested that it could be done with about twenty animations scripted through AI but we instead went the more tedious (and time consuming) route of making unique animations across the entire level. This meant unique transitions for unique geometry, unique taunts, and unique idle animations; It was a TON of work and we had to hustle to get hundreds of animations done in a very short period of time. Luckily he and I both came from the first pass/final pass school of thought, have a similar workflow, and knocked them all out pretty quickly. They weren't our greatest animations but they worked.

The animation my friend happened to be looking at was a rather long stretch where Hermes climbs up a bridge that has fallen. He jumps and climbs and flips acrobatically throughout the whole thing. While looking at this particular animation the animator remarked, "How did you do this? I would have had twice as many keys."


(Swear I'll eventually get a video of my own for this.)

This got me to thinking about how I actually go about planning animations and I realized that most animators do a lot of blocking where I do none. In fact, I often refuse to do blocking because it's quicker for me to just "Go." I work this way because my animations are all key poses anyway(Keep in mind that I work on in-game player animations so this might not apply to a cinematic, but generally speaking I work from start to finish without turning back).

I've found that like the Animator's Animator/Designer's Animator dichotomy, there is another one in the form of Physical Actors and Mental Actors. Occasionally I will see one of our animators get up and act out a move. They will grab a fake sword or weapon and physically imitate what they are going to animate. I do this as well when I'm stumped but if there is any planning at all, it's usually done in my head. The majority of the time I allow motivation and personality to let gravity take the character where it needs to.

In the case of Hermes climbing the bridge there wasn't much forethought at all. The only thing I had to worry about was that Kratos couldn't catch up to him. This meant over a certain amount of frames Hermes had to travel upwards to a distance of x. The movements he makes all came from a necessity to travel that distance with an acrobatic flair and I let his momentum take him, varying what he was doing enough to make it interesting. In fact, if the player completes the sequence perfectly Kratos ends up right on Hermes' heels and just slightly out of reach.

Since we were working rather blindly from level design and cameras(and they from us), a good many of the "Hermes Run" animations weren't seen. This was so frustrating because the cameras could have showcased both Hermes and Kratos but that ended up not being the case. The bridge sequence was one of the few that was clearly visible. It's also an example of a five frame rule animation that had timing changes. Because Hermes was so damn fast most of his anims received a timing change. Often this was done by scaling all of the keys back but the bridge in particular needed several footfalls and hand grabs on 2s or 3s. In the end the file still came out mostly on 5s but it's obvious that most of the points of contact with the environment couldn't have been done that way.

The Hermes run was really fun to animate because there were so many different motions we got to play with, though virtually all of them, hundreds of animations, went unseen. At the time all we had to work with was rough level geometry (which sometimes changed), temporary cameras, and a predetermined destination for each transition animation. The only way we could have gotten all of those animations done was to simply, "Go."

Five Frames.

Along with first pass/final pass one of the earliest rules I learned as an animator was very simple and very important: Keep your poses 5 frames apart. Our art director at the time was more like a lead animator and he stressed this idea upon me any time I handed off an animation. I have worked this way for ten years and rarely adjust timing because of it.

Whether at 30 frames per second or 60 this workflow will ensure that your files are clean and well organized and, over time, surprisingly precise. The basic idea is to think, "Where does this character need to be in 5 frames?"

Once you start to think in 5 frame snippets you will begin to see a marked improvement in your posing as well as your timing. The amount of frames between keys will show you exactly enough information for adjustments. If you stop playback somewhere between your keys and the pose doesn't look good you either need an in-between, more frames, or need to rethink the bookend poses.

The 5 frame rule also helps me animate from start to finish without having to revisit sections or go back in to the middle of a file. I'm constantly thinking about where the next pose needs to be and simply shaping it out of the pose that came before. In this way I'm very minimalist with my keys(though most animators should not be). If something moves, it gets keyed. If it doesn't change, I might not key it at all (Very true of feet) and can instead stay focused on the moving parts. If I need to go back and move something static later I know that it's safe to key it on a multiple of 5 because everything else is. When an animation is finished only then do I bother making nice clean rows of keys for every control but, for the most part, all the controls already are in nice, clean rows every 5th frame.

Animating from start to finish also means that my poses flow kinematically into one another. There is only so much change that can happen in 5 frames and pulling the next pose from the one before it leads to better, smoother arcs. Some people may argue that animating this way eliminates secondary motion but that's entirely untrue. Smart posing includes secondary motion. You are constantly working in moving arcs that pass through points (key poses) at varying speeds that you can control. When you define the speed of the "in" and the "out" you don't need to add extra keys. Adjusting your curves later on can only improve how much or how little secondary motion occurs.

Of course there are moments that need to snap on a frame or animations that require different timing or in-betweens but, generally speaking, posing across 5 frames is a great organizational time saver. Every project I have worked on always has that one animator who keys on ticks or percentages of a frame. I hate that guy. 5 frame animating eliminates that guy. It ensures your files will be clean and easy to adjust. It will also make you faster not having to worry about where your keys are. Another benefit of this method is that it becomes clear to others how your file is organized. Other animators won't have to figure out why there is a sea of keys on every frame because you moved a toe or adjusted a foot in an off key. As a final bonus designers will be able to see your poses better and break down where to add their magic, too. Cleaner animation leads to better work all the way down the pipe.

Strangely enough this concept somewhat mirrors Japanese animation, which is often animated on 4s. To save time and money less frames are used for animation which forces animators to work in smarter, cleaner poses. Less space to communicate ideas results in a need for clearer language of motion. Denying yourself the ability to do in-betweens will force you to be clearer in your language, too.

If you still doubt this workflow, take a messy file with a lot of keys and grab all the controls. Key them all every 5 frames and delete anything in between. You'll be surprised how little the animation changes.

Animation Nerds.

I've often joked that talking about art is like talking about sex. It's much more fun to just shut up and do it(yes, that is a dumb joke). This holds true for talking about animation as well (yet here I am doing it). While I only briefly attended CalArts it was clear to me that I was not surrounded by other animators, but by animation nerds.

When I was a student there was only one other classmate who was older than me. The rest of the class were relatively young, inexperienced, and somewhat naive kids who all shared a love of everything Disney and all things animation. They loved discussing their favorite animation scenes and moments. They were all there to learn anything they could about 2d animation. Having had some 2d experience and a 3d animation job for a few years already, I wasn't there to talk about animating; I was there to see what else I could learn about it.

Although I feel like my career choice has been validated many times over I am still not a great animator. I'm not the best artist or draftsman or story teller, either. Sometimes I hardly feel competent. Sometimes I wish I was just an idea guy. However, the one thing that I know for sure is that I am not an Animator's Animator. I am a Designer's Animator and more specifically, a Game Designer's Animator.

The first time I ever realized that instead of just watching animations I actually wanted to make them was while playing Earthworm Jim. The creativity in that game just blew my mind. There are so many simple, special moments in Jim's library of motion that I could hardly believe it but most of those ideas, and I'm not certain about this, seemed to stem from a design necessity. The sequel only further confirmed that I might be right. Practically every level has a new design mechanic with new, accompanying animations.

I wasn't amazed by the animation in EWJ, though it is great, but instead marveled at how it applied to Jim's purpose. I remember crossing and recrossing the gap where the suit first uses Jim's body as a whip to traverse it. The first time he literally pulls himself up by his bootstraps I was awestruck. It was so brilliant and so goofy. There was so much inventiveness, so much personality, and such a defined (if completely unbelievable) universe. I immediately thought, "This was an animator making a designer's needs happen."

I also thought, "I can do that."

I'd made flip-books before but now I was sketching out design ideas and posing out character movement with functionality in mind. I also staked out corners of book stores and coffee shops drawing people doing the boring and the mundane. What I realized was that each one of them always revealed something they probably didn't even know about themselves. Everyone has a unique library of movement. People exhibit Corporeal Narrative in everything they do and it's only in the understanding of that language that you break from the typical "squash and stretch" mentality and really get to know someone.

This rule has been no more realized than while walking around the studios I've worked at. The personality types that make up a game development studio are drastically varied, but no more apparent than while walking through the halls. The Artists (concept, character, level and animation) tend to move in meandering, dreamy fashion. They are spacey, somewhat unaware, and lost in their own worlds. They are the day-care moms in the parking lot. Programmers are unsure how to navigate and sometimes apologetic but always aimed towards a definitive goal, as if they are lost in deeper thought; As a result, they get out of your way immediately, almost as if they've found a work-around hack. Designers are more confident. They're more in tune with the nature of relationships and how it applies to functionality. They, generally speaking, are the folks who do not have to budge when it comes to crossing paths. They don't need to because they know that Player 1 and Player 2 are having to move through a space together cooperatively and adjust accordingly. I'm generalizing, of course, but personality types do play a large role in how we communicate.

Getting back to animators there are, specifically, the two types I mentioned: Designer's Animators and Animator's Animators. It's rare to find an animator who actually understands game design(everyone thinks they are a designer but, no, you are not). The nuts and bolts behind what a player is feeling and what they are seeing unfold on screen are what truly shapes player experience, and it's important to strike the balance between presentation and feel. Animators, like most artists, particularly care about how their individual work looks. They want every little subtlety to be apparent, every action to be fluid and smooth, every frame to shine. When it comes to character creation, however, it is always a collaborative effort and one where compromise is important.

Animators need to know their role. They're supposed to sell moments; Moments that are often defined by designers. Likewise, designers need to know if their moments can work through motion. Just because you can picture it in your head doesn't always mean it can work, or should even work, for that matter.

I have a feeling that most designers hate working with me at first. I push against any ideas that I feel can't work through motion. I've had to explain the "why" something can't physically happen to designers more times than I can count. Instead of just trying things out their way I work towards a compromise, and often a design solution is found through motion instead of driving it. The hard part about having a design that doesn't make sense via movement is that ultimately, I want to sell the concept. That's my job. If an idea requires movement that isn't possible it's not a solid idea and we need to work to find a solution together.

A lot of animators do exactly what they're told and, to be honest, most of them should. Many of them don't understand player experience and solely focus on how their animation looks when it's played by itself on their own monitor instead of how it plays out in the actual game and ultimately ignoring what the player is experiencing when that animation occurs. The difference between being a good Animator and being a good Game Animator is understanding design with regard to player experience. You don't have to master it but you should at least be familiar with what a designer requires and how to sell those ideas. Animators working in games don't need to stop being animation geeks but, eventually, they do need to become Designer's Animators.

Thanks For the Violence.

As a video game "combat animator" I have often had ridiculous, violent tasks thrown my way: The laughable fatalities in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, super moves in X-Men: Next Dimension, and even an axe lodged in a woman's skull in Gun. During God of War III I animated a sequence that involved our protagonist, Kratos, violently ripping the head off of the sun god, Helios, with his bare hands. It will likely be the most talked about thing from my entire career as a game developer.

I've been an animator for a long time now and it seems that what I'm best at is violence. I'm not a violent person but when people ask what I do I jokingly tell them that I make people hurt each other. This is true to some extent but what I really do is help shape characters within a universe.

While I was not Kratos' main animator I did get to make him kill some of his enemies. Within these "context sensitive moves" Kratos still moves as Kratos. He still has the same rules for my cs moves that he has when our lead, Bruno, works on navigation animations or attacks. For the most part I always tried to keep Kratos true to form but the Helios head rip, while admittedly over the top, is flirting with being comical and outside the nature of Kratos. It's almost spectacle just for the sake of it, which I would have liked to change. At the very least it would have been nice to show that Helios' sight does, in fact, reveal hidden things beforehand but, hey, I ain't a designer.

The simple idea that there is a rule set for a character's movement is so important to telling a story using action without dialogue that I often have to wonder if other developers take this philosophy to heart. Since "narrative" seems to be the latest game developer catchphrase, let's call this "Corporeal Narration." It's wildly apparent in most 2d and 3d feature films that personality through motion is important but it seems as if the majority of games today are lacking this quality. This is becoming more and more evident with the rise of "plug and play" animations that have very little to do with personality and more to do with producers thinking mocap expedites animation time.

I am wary of writing about Ico because of how many others have done it before and done it better than I can but it has brilliant corporeal narrative. Ico also illustrates just how important character performance is. Many games these days use motion capture with such generic performances that it's, honestly, a little disheartening. Motion capture actors often over-emote, use their hands too much, and generally exaggerate their movements to excess, all the while managing to escape any sense of the character they are portraying. Ironically, motion capture excels at recreating exactly the opposite of what many actors do when put in a suit. All of the subtleties of motion as it relates to personality and character are typically unexplored. Admittedly, this even occurred in some of GOW III's cut scenes(I never want to see Kratos point at anything ever again).

Poor mocap performance exists in nearly every title that uses it but it's not the technology's fault; It's the actor's and it's also the director's. Sometimes it's the animator. Sometimes it's even production. A character may not be defined when mocap shoots are scheduled to happen. Sometimes there isn't even concept art for the actor to reference. Many things can limit a character's representation but poor performance results in watered down, generic character action.

My original thought for this post was to express how having to animate Kratos killing made me think about him as a character, how he behaves and how he moves, how he always travels directly towards his goal. In everything I worked on I tried to follow the rules of who he is and how that applies to motion. Even though I was required to break the rules by designers I stuck as close to them as I could. That same treatment should be true for every animator for any character. Everything a character does stems from a unique individual place, with motivations and decisions driven by their personality. Remember that characters are always performing, even during inaction.

Gesture central

Here's something every animator could use:
http://www.pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html

Great site devoted to helping with gesture drawings. Not only humans, either.

Human Planet

Can't recommend this series enough to animators, designers, and artists. Cheap as hell on Amazon right now, too.