Graphics Reference
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Achilles and Patroclus together.
I'm always encouraging animators to get their puppets touching. There is dei nitely a frisson
when a puppet responds to another. Sometimes I have taken this quite far in my i lms, with
various sexual scenes, but even with the mere holding of hands, something extra comes across.
These lifeless bits of wood, brass and silicone suddenly connect with each other; not only have
we appeared to give them life, but they are responding to each other. However, such intimacy
is often quite hard to animate. Holding hands, for example, can present problems peculiar
to stop frame; well, that's not quite true. Most animators have problems locking two objects
together and moving them forward, but for puppets this can be particularly dii cult. Imagine
two separate puppets, one pulling the other forward, with their hands folded round each other.
If you move the leading puppet, ideally you need to move the puppet behind at the same time,
but as the animator only has two hands, this becomes a tricky task. It's not just a question of
moving the i rst puppet and hoping the second will follow. Practically, you need to untangle
the hands, move the i rst one forward into an appropriate position, then move the second one
to catch up. It's repositioning the hands in the same grip that is dii cult. The angle of the arms
will have changed in relation to each other, and having taken the hands apart and put them
together it is unlikely that you will get them in exactly the same position, and they will twitch,
making it look as though the characters have a very shaky and loose grip with
each other. One way to get round this is to give the arms a very dei nite movement
of their own, such as a swinging movement, so that any twitching about in the
hands is disguised in a larger progressive movement. Very often it pays to distract
the eye away from a necessarily insecure movement with a much larger controlled,
clear and coni dent movement. You won't notice anything weak going on
elsewhere if there is something good to hold the attention.
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