Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Animation Timing
The term
animation timing
aims to describe the speed of a single movement
of a character, object, or animated effect. Animation timing does not deal
with the overall narrative or the acting or performance within a narrative;
instead, it deals with such issues as the speed of an object's actions. This
covers all actions, everything from a bouncing ball to a man's hand reaching
out to pick up a cup of tea, a bucket of water falling over and splashing its
contents onto the floor, a child turning her head, or leaves blowing on a tree.
Animation timing is not restricted to naturalistic animation; it also refers to
cartoon-based animation and even completely abstract action. The wonderful
animation created by Oskar Fischinger depends no less on a profound
understanding and mastery of animation timing than does the figurative work
by master animators such as Barry Purves, Hayao Miyazaki, or Glen Keane
and Andreas Deja. Regardless of style or technique, format or audience, it is
animation timing that gives meaning to motion.
The basics of animation timing are really very straightforward: The closer
images appear to one another on subsequent frames, the slower the
movement will be. The further apart the images appear on subsequent
frames, the faster the animation appears. It is as simple as that. However,
it is the complexity of the variations in the movements—fast and slow,
acceleration, deceleration, and constant speed—that forms the basic currency
of animated dynamics. Using this basic currency of timing, animators are
able to construct all manner of sophisticated movement, making elaborate
performances possible.
Things in nature seldom move at a constant speed. They have a tendency to
accelerate and decelerate at different moments within an action. Movements
begin and finish at different moments, actions instigate other actions, they
overlap one another, they repeat and they cycle; actions reverse and they
progress at different rates. Actions are immensely complex.
In all forms of animation, regardless of process, timing is the one thing they
have in common, and the one thing that all students or practitioners of
animation should bear in mind all the time is that
timing gives meaning to
motion
.
The Hierarchy of Animated Actions
When we look at the nature of articulated movement—that is, movement
in subjects that have constituent parts such as limbs or appendages and
are not simple objects with no discrete and separate elements capable of
independent animation or movement—we may witness a form of
hierarchy
of dynamics within the movement of the subject. More simplistic objects,
such as rocks, planks of wood, tables and chairs, apples and pears, cups
and saucers, and any single-celled creature that does not have articulated