Animation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 189

Figure 11.1 A good confi guration for animation work
Animation Basics
Okay, I lied. It's not quite time to animate. Going into it, there are a couple of things you should know.
This topic is not meant to be a stand-in for a good education in the basics of character animation. Entire
tomes have been penned by master animators of which you are encouraged to avail yourself. If you're the
diligent sort who already has that covered, or if you're the type who hasn't but fi gures you'll just plow straight
ahead anyway, here is the briefest rundown of what you need to keep in mind while animating.
Computer animation is a combination of puppetry, engineering, and acting. It is a performance. And, just
like an actor's performance in a movie or on the stage, the goal is not to exactly mimic reality. The goal is to
present a believable character whose actions tell a story. Because the performances in animation (especially
in CG) are engineered or constructed, a set of guidelines has grown up around the industry that can help to
push those performances toward believability.
Consider a very basic scenario: A character holds a ball in the middle of a fi eld. The character throws the ball.
In its simplest form, an animation of this would consist simply of the arm moving from one position to
another and the ball fl ying away. That, of course, would be terribly boring (Figure 11.2).
Anticipation and follow through. With the throwing motion starting and ending exactly as seen in the
fi gures, this would be horrible and very mechanical. Well, he is a beast. However, no one, not even a robot,