Using the Body - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 241

I have tried to use rigs as little as possible, and have managed to cheat a lot by clever editing or
supporting the character out of shot, or equally dubious methods. This is me still trying to have
the shots as pure as possible in front of the camera, which is a somewhat outmoded approach
when digital technology can help so much.
Jumping, like all actions such as running and walking, take a lot of practice to get right.
Expressing the choreography is one thing, but getting the right balance between the ef ort and
the length and elevation of the jump is much harder. This is an essential point: do the ef ort and
energy match the ef ect? When I started, they did not. My i rst jumps had characters rising to a
great height with the smallest of preparation, or showing a huge amount of ef ort, but jumping
only a fraction of space. This may be what's required, but you still need to learn how to time
and express a jump before you can deliberately get it wrong, and this applies to most things.
A dancer in full fl ight with clear shapes (Petros Papadopoulos).
Like a dancer, animators need to think ahead with a jump. A dancer knows how many steps
the run-up will be and more or less where they will land, and how long it will take.
Inexperienced animators can misjudge the space needed for a jump, resulting in
cropped i gures or ugly compositions; there's not much point in going to all this
trouble and then not seeing the animation, as the character has moved out of shot.
Much of animation is about anticipating the frames ahead, not just anticipating
the use of space but also anticipating the choreography. Is the character on the
appropriate foot and how many steps will it take? A movement is not just that