Exercise 5 : Moving Holds

Posing Assignment II: Moving Holds from randolfd on Vimeo.



Introduction:

In what is considered to be the animation bible The Illusion of Life, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, when first developing the process for animation, found that when a character was in a pose that he had to hold for long time, that it was essential to add “moving holds” (Thomas, Johnston). These were considered to be small movements in the eyes, brows, joints, jaw, spine and if the character was an animal, movement in the tail, ears or clothing. This was necessary in order to emulate real life.

In reality, things are in constant motion, atoms keep moving, cells keep dividing, air and wind moves things around, and when things move, there is always some kind of secondary or overlapping action. In an animal, when it jumps and lands, the body stops while the tail and ears keep moving and slow to a complete halt. The action of the tail slowing to a halt, or if the tail is flowing because its affected by a slight breeze, is a moving hold.

Other moving holds are eyes and clothes. In the eyes, important moving holds are eye darts, and eye blinks, just think about how we see in reality. Our eyes are constantly moving, focusing on different things every moment. When eyes don’t move, they seem to have no life and may seem robotic. Think about how much your eye moves while you are reading this document. You’re probably sitting still in a chair or at table, but your eyes keep moving. Your eyes are moving because they are gathering information. Your animated character could improve if you apply the same principle to his eyes as well.

(Link to Example Here)



Assignment Description:
Using the CG posing assignment from Exercise 4, add moving holds, in either of the following or a combination of movements between the eyes, brows, mouth, spine shoulders, hands, arms and legs to each of your poses in order to make it seem the character is alive.

Competencies:


By the end of this exercise, the student should be able to:

• Apply subtle movement to a pose to create a moving hold.
  
• Apply the moving hold in eyeblinks.
  
• Apply moving holds to eye darts.
  

PrePlanning:

Before you begin, view your poses and ask yourself what moving hold could be added to each pose. Make a list and then apply them. In all of your characters there should be subtle movement in the joints, spine and eyes. 


VIDEO REFERENCE:

Look at an existing animation, and step the animation (slow motion) and see how many frames it takes for various moving holds to occur. Below is the video reference that lead to the animation featured above.

Posing Assignment: Video Reference from randolfd on Vimeo.

ANIMATION PROCESS: 

Below is a link to a video tutorial that walks you through a process on how to pose a character by "bookending" the keyframes. It also covers how to use the Maya script editor.

http://www.randolfdimalanta.com/tutorials/bookending/index.html



EVALUATION:


Here are some questions to consider asking yourself to make sure you are on target with this assignment.

• Do the moving holds add to the life of the character?
  
• Is there anything that is not moving that needs to be moving in this pose?
  
• Do the moving holds interfere with the readability of the main pose?

Moving holds are essential for keeping an illusion of life within a character especially in CG computer animation. The computer helps us in the animation process in many ways, but it does not know how to integrate the moving holds. The computer will also hold the pose perfectly, so much so that it will seem to be a robot. Its our job as the animator to add those subtle movements and to prevent that robotic look, to make our characters seem like they are alive, in constant motion like all things living.