About Animation Methods

3D animation Is always changing and evolving into better and newer technology.
Computers get cheaper and faster, software upgrades and we improve tools. But something
that hasn't changed much is the way we do animation.
Animation has been around since the early 1900's and the basics of how animation is
done still applies in ways which we do animation today. The purpose of this book is to help
you understand what has already been discovered by the great Disney's Nine Old Men and
show you methods to learning 3D animation for beginners.
There's a lot to learn when it comes to 3d animation. It's not just about learning software
and wiggling your character around a scene. We need to get over the technicality issues of
using software, so that we can focus more on the creative process of animation.
This book will only focus on animation and the important methods for becoming an
animator. From getting a job in the industry, learning Maya, body animation, and facial
animation.
We'll start the book with learning about the industry, creating a demo reel, salaries, and
interviews. Then we'll go into understanding the basic tools of Maya so that we may begin
feeling comfortable when it comes to animation. Lastly, we'll go through two simple
exercises to get familiar with animation tools and finish off with two other main animation
projects. By the end of the book you'll learn how to animate a character's body and how to
approach full facial animation.
This book is specifically designed to help fresh-new people who want to get into 3D
Character Animation, learn it all and get them to a level where they can hit the floor
running. If you're an intermediate user there's methods and approaches you can benefit and
apply to your professional work.
These are the same methods I use when I work for film and game studios. There will be
no secrets and I will explain everything I learned to get to the level I'm at today.
Credit

I’d like to give a big thanks to these great artists for allowing me to share their work in the
Animation Methods book.

Nissan 370Z
Rigger: Md Abid Devecha http://www.sterlope.ueuo.com Modeler: David
Rodriguez

Morpheus Josh Burton

http://www.journal.joshburton.com

Caveman Austin Broder

http://www.austinbroder.com
http://www.creativecrash.c0m/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/caveman

Alice
Joel Anderson http://www.joel3d.com

AY >

Horse
Rigger: Joel Anderson Modeler: Hung Vodinh
http://www.joel3d.com

Rhett the Clydesdale Rigger: Chris Carson

Modeler: Tim Mayo http://www.noxlabs.com
http://www.noxlabs.com/rhettDocumentation.html
 INDEX

Credit 3
Introduction 6

I. THE ANIMATION INDUSTRY It Animation What You Want To Do? 9

Which Software Do I Use? 19
Computer Power! 21
Day of an Animator 25
fobs for Animators 29
Do 1 Have To Go To School? 32
Demo Reel 35
How to Get a fob in Animation 41
Let's Talk Money 47
fob Hopping 49

II. MAYA FUNDAMENTALS

Learning Autodesk Maya 52
Bouncing Ball Animation 69
Look at AH those Controls 77
How to use FK/IK 99
Selection Set 108
Installing scripts/Pose Library 116
Graph Editor 124
I ANIMATION
12 Principle* of Animation 135
Animation Methods 145
- Planning 151
- Animation Set Up 153
- Key Poses (First Animation Pass) 157
- Breakdown Poses
- In-betweens Poses
- Adjusting Timing
- Playblast
- Second Animation Pass
- Euler Filter
- Third Animation Pass
- Polish Pass
- We Are Done!

III. Facial Animation 210

-Lip Sync 211
-First pass 212
- Second Pass 220
- Third Pass 225 Facial Expressions
- Eyes 227
- Eye Blinks 230
- Eyebrows 232
- Cheeks and Emotion 233

QUICK LESSONS
Character Walk Cycle 235
Horse Walk Cycle 237

FINAL WORDS 238

**This book includes QR codes to watch video examples through your smartphone. You
may also find the videos, Maya files, audio files, and scripts at www.AnimationMethods.com.
To access the Maya files go to page 239 and find the username & password.
Introduction

BOOOOM! Let me introduce myself, my name is David Rodriguez. I've been a

freelance animator for a couple of years and have now taken some time to share with you
my secrets of how I got in the industry and how I do animation.
I remember my first days of trying computer animation and how horrible I was at ft I felt
like smashing my head through the monitor. Okay, maybe not that hard. But I hated not
knowing what I was doing wrong or not being able to find an animator who could actually
explain it to me in a way that didn't sound like a nerdy scientist.
I would sit by the computer and wiggle the character around, set keyframes, move
him some more, set more keyframes, and move him some more for about 5 hours. At the
end of my work I would click play and watch what was supposed to be an angry walking
character, end up looking with a twitchy face, floating tegs, hips spinning inside out, and
some weird stretchy control on the hands. I had no idea there was a structure and methods
to animation. I thought I could sit and hack at it and make a Pixar movie on my own! Boy,
did I have a long way to go!
Luckily those days are long gone and I don't struggle as I used to. But, I realized when
working in game studios that there are still many beginners and intermediate animators
who struggle with animation. Some students don't get instructors who can explain this art in
ways that can make sense. If your animation 'game' is not up to par, you won’t last long in
the industry. Those who produce quality animation will get to stay for longer projects, while
the others who struggled won't be there to continue the next one. I saw some of my friends
go because they didn't cut it This is blasphemy! I would've wanted to sit with some of my
friends and helped them improve, but I had my hands full with my own work. This sparked
the idea of writing a book. I want to reach as many beginner animators and intermediate
animators as I can to bring them up to a level where most directors can be impressed.
Not only will you have questions about how to become a great animator, but what the
industry is like. How much money can you make? How can i get' job in animation? Do I
have to go to school? Can I teach myself? Can | get a job without experience? What
software should I learn? I remember having
so many questions when I started learning 3D animation professionally.
From now on, I want to be your mentor and explain to you how to do great animation
step-by-step. I will share with you my secrets of how you can work in game studios, films,
commercials, you name it, and this book will help you get closer to that goal.
Most of my methods for animating have been developed through self- practice rather
than by school. It's different for everybody, but I'm that type of person that doesn't like the
short classes in college. I didn't feel I could possibly understand everything there is to know
about 3D character animation in the short class sessions we had. I wanted to be a character
animator from the first day of school and I had to take so many other classes that weren't
related to 30 animation, up until my second year of school. School was great and I don't
regret it, but I felt I had taken the long route towards my goal of becoming an animator.
It wasn't until after college that I had all the time in the world to finally sit down and
try new methods, fail, and try better methods, it was only through this trial and error that I
was finally able to understand how to get smooth-flowing awesome animation.
But let's cut to the chase, I ended animating so much good stuff during my own
practice that I was able to put together my DVD (demo reel), shipped them out to studios
like crazy, and landed my first job at Crazy Pixel Games animating on Star Wars Unleash
The Force II. Did I get lucky? No, hard work and dedication got me there. I don't think I
would be where I am today if I hadn't taken the time to really sit and understand what I
was doing. Because of hard work, I was able to work on Piranha (2010) movie, in-game
animations, previsualization for World War Z, Star Wars Kinect Xbox (2012), Ice Age 4
Continental Drift Artie Games (2012) with name on credits, and the list goes on. These are
some of my achievements that I'm proud of, and I want you to do the same.
I'm sure ( would've had a job much faster if I had someone in the industry that
could've mentored me or a good book that would've showed me the step-by- steps on
developing good methods for animation. If I could've understood animation within a year,
I'm sure I would have landed my dream job that much quicker I'm hoping that with this
book it's as if I'm standing there with you and guiding you into becoming an animator. I will
hold nothing back and will share with you what I've learned during these years of painfully
bad animation and how I was able to finally crossover and animate with the "big boys". I'm
not only a mentor in a book, "I'm a real boy* (Pinocchio voice).
Find me on YouTube or Facebook under AnimationMethods and message me. IM
HERE TO HELP YOU!
Is Animation What You Want To Do?

Well is it? Are you Hire you don't want to get into modeling, texturing, rigging, animation,
effects, lighting and rendering, or all of them? You've probably heard the word PIPELINE. Pipeline
refers to the stages studios go through to make 3D movies and games. Work gets passed through
the modeler, to the texture artist, to the rigger, animator, and finally to the lighting artist.
This is a production pipeline. The world of CG (Computer Graphics) is full of many areas you
can specialize. I know CG can be confusing at first, so let's take a quick look at each
department and see what the pipeline is all about.

MODELING

When I say modeling, do you think of putting on your sexy outfit and walking down the
runway like a model, while the paparazzi takes crazy pictures of you? That would be fun,
but that's not the modeling we're talking about. The job of a modeler is to take the ideas of
the concept artist or at times your drawings or ideas and create them on the computer.
Think of it this way, you are the guy with a blob of clay and will be responsible for molding
that clay into something spectacular. It can be anything from modeling a simple cup to a
complicated cathedral hail with thousands of detailed ornaments. Your job is to use what's
called polygons and manipulate their vertices and edges to form objects, such as these
pictures.

Modeling Is all about creating what's In your Imagination and making It visible to others
using computers. Something to point out to beginners when thinking of becoming modelers
Is that once you finish modeling that awesome character, It does not mean that It's ready
to be animated and brought to life yet. Your model does not have color, bones, and controls
to be moved around. Unfortunately, your model is nothing but a lifeless, but awesome,
looking model. The next step into being able to move your character Is to do what's called
Rigging. But first, let's talk about adding color to your awesome looking model.

TEXTURING
You have created a cool looking model and now
needs color.
Your new job, If you choose to be a texture artist, will
be to take every piece you modeled, unwrap the model,
and apply color to it. I won't go too into depth here
about how to texture, but I just want to give you a quick
overlook at what it is.
Basically, you would need to take a front snapshot of
the front wall of this model. This is what we call UVs
(next picture) coordinates In the world of texturing. The UV's are like outlines of the model
that will help determine how the color will be applied to a model. These are the UV's laid
out. UV's is not an acronym. They simply mean U (horizontal) and V (vertical), they are
letters to give relations to 2D axes.

The next step Is to take these UV's and bring them into a program like Photoshop, which
will allow you to cut, combine, and arrange a realistic photograph in place so that they fit
within your UV's. Texture is a word we use to describe a photo of realistic surfaces to apply
and use on our models.

Now that you applied the texture on the UV's, you are now ready to take a look at how
the texture of the bricks applied to your awesome model. It should look something like this.

Not bad right? Now, all you have to do is continue unwrapping the rest of the modeled
pieces and keep on adding photographs (textures) so that it looks the way you envisioned.
As the texture artist you will also be responsible for making models look shiny, glossy, matt,
bumpy, reflected, and any other type of material you can think of.

RIGGING
You have a beautiful character model that took you days to create and now you want to
be able to move it and bring it to life. To do this, you'll need to rig it But what exactly is
rigging?
Like in the example of modeling in 3D and day, the rigger is the person who adds the
wires or armature into the clay model so that the animators can pose the character using
the wires. It's sort of the same idea but for computer. Let's take a look at this arm model.

Here it is! Imagine this is your beautiful arm model that took you 4 hours to create. How
would you animate it, where would you dick to move the fingers, how would you bend the
elbow? You can't, you have to rig it! You literally need to add bones to your character to
define where the bending will take place. Like this.

It's Alivel It's Alllllllive! Well, sort of, but not quite yet. Rigging Is probably the most
technical side of the animation process. It takes careful planning and knowing how to
organize bones and controls so that the animators life Is as painless as possible and can
easily click on controls and move him. After the bones are added and connected, the next
step of the rigging process would be to add controls. We add controls because the bones are
inside of the character's body and this obviously doesn't allow the animator to select bones.

You can see we have a control on different parts of his body to move them. These
controls are nice and big so that we can easily pick them and make our body rotations and
movements.
Now I would be lying if I said rigging Is that easyl There's still one more step I haven't
mentioned...skinning or binding. In simple terms, binding is like gluing the bones to the
model/skin. Skinning a character determines how the bones will bend the model. Think
about It like this: controls, bones, and skin. The controls move the bones and the bones
move the model/skin. These are the 3 main responsibilities of a rigger.
Don't think riggers only rig characters. They practically rig anything that has moving
parts. They rig cars, animals, plants, machines, and anything that requires simple to
complex movements. Rigging is high in demand by many studios. I have noticed that not
many animators know how to rig. If you can rig and you can animate well, you will have a
job for a long-long time. With this book you are half way there. You'll just need to learn
rigging.
This Is the reason we call anything we can animate a "rig". Once it's been set up or
rigged, It's now considered a rig. I can say things like, "Do you have a rig I can use to
animate on my demo reel?", 'That's a pretty cool rigl", "The rig I was animating sucked,
because it didn't have good controls"...etc. Pretty much any character, bipeds, animals,
creatures, or humans that are ready to animate are considered rigs.

ANIMATION
Some people say animation to include the whole process of making games or movies.
Animation is somewhat general, but Character Animation is more specific for doing only
animation or movement.
I'm hoping you want to be an animator and that's why you picked up this book, right?
It's okay, you can have a change of heart, I won't cry (sniff sniff). But animation Is where
the fun is. It's were things finally come to lifel It's the personalities, fighting, talking,
running, shooting, leaping from buildings, creatures coming alive, and where all the other
million cool stuff happens.
Animators are literally actors. Many animators film themselves acting out their scenes
before they ever touch the computer. We do this to watch for subtle movements we don't
really envision when we use our imagination to animate. Even if you're animating an
imaginary creature, it would help to act in the manner that the creature would behave.
Animation in its technical aspect is about POSES and TIMING. But creatively Is about
performance. It's making the audience believe that the character has feelings and can think
like you and me. It doesn't matter if it's a human, a creature, or an object. IT MUST BE AND
FEEL ALIVEI.
 It's not just simply moving a character realistically from point A to point B, it's how
interesting can the animation look when moving from point A to point 8.
! won't lie to you. When l first got into animation I thought it was going to be fairly easy
to move characters with computers. But animation is about moving everything from blinks
down to fingers. It's not as easy as it looks, ft is an art and it's a Iso technical. You'll need
to wire up your brain to do both. But once you learn ft, boy is it fun.

EFFECTS
Aaah Yess! The other fun stuff! Explosions, fire, liquids, sparks, lightning,
blood, dust, smoke, particles, debris, hair, fur, and cloth...need I say more.
The effect artist it the guy responsible for making all the effects look cool
and believable in the movies and games that you see. These guys spent a
lot of time working with what we call in 3D, dynamics. Effects are actually
one of the very few departments of animation that doesn't get taught in
school as much as it should. Most effect artists that I've met in my career
are self-taught through books or anything they can get their brains on. It's pretty hard to
find a great school that can teach you effects. I won't say they're not out there, but this is
definitely one area you can teach yourself and still land a job as an effect artist.

LIGHTING
l know what you're thinking, "Lights are only in
real movie sets, not in CG!"
I don't want to surprise you but we also have
lights in our 30 sets too. Think about it, how could
achieve day light, night time, a flash light, a dark
dub with flashing fights and other lights simulations
if we didn't have lights in 3D. Lights in 3D are just
as important as fights on a real movie set. Knowing
bow to add light to your set can make or break your
animation and mood. If your audience can't see
what is going on because your lights are too dark,
they will eject your movie and place it right m the
trash can.
In this image I was trying to go for a scary looking hall way. But there is almost nothing scary
about this lighting The light looks very flat and doesn't make you feel anything. You can clearly see
the end of the hallway which doesn't provoke any fear.
Now by adjusting the lights and making the end of the hallway darker, I was able to
make the viewer's more cautious of what might t come from the dark end of the corner. Lighting
is just as important as the other roles m animation.
A fighting artist is responsible for the look and feel of a story He can change the mood and
help evolve the story based on how the characters feel in the story. He can add a little blue
to the lights to make the set feel sad and lonely or he can make it bright and yellow when
it's happy and sunny outside.
Lighting is not as simple as dropping in a couple of lights to your scene. It's about
making sure you always have a clear view of what's going on with the characters as well as
maintain an aesthetic appeal to the story.

RENDERING
First of all, what in the world is rendering? If you're new
to animation you've probably heard it come up a lot, but
weren't sure what it was. Rendering simply turns your
working fife into a finished image. It's the actual process
your computer goes through to convert your characters,
textures, lights, and effects into a final movie you can
watch. Rendering is not a position you would say you can
apply for. Mainly because the lighting is the last thing you
do in animation, the lighting artist's will also do the
rendering. Rendering is nothing more than adjusting
settings to output the best possible quality images. You'll then click a button that says Batch
Render, while letting the computer calculate all of your work.
At the end of the render you will get a movie, like an .AVI, .MOV, .WMV or image
sequence files. You'll click play and watch your creations finally come to life. In order to get
a final movie you will need to render it. That's the expression you'll hear a lot. Technically,
the computer is taking each frame of animation and "rendering it" with all the lights and
textures you've added to ultimately show it to you as a whole.
If you're still confused about what rendering is, rendering is like hitting PRINT on your
computer. Your printer does all the work and at the end you get a final printed image. You
have just "rendered" a page, same idea as rendering an image or a movie for animation.
Next time you hear the word pipeline, you will think of the process the studio went
through to make the project come to life.

Which Software Do I Use?

Right off the bat I will tell you if you want to do animation professionally, you will need to
know Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, or both. These are the two most popular 3D packages
you'll find studios using. Of course there's also MotionBuilder, Softimage, Cinema 4D, and
Lightwave. Blender and Poser are on the low end, but there are some rare studios that use
them.
The reason why I put Maya and 3D Max on the top of the list is because, well... studios
look for people with that software knowledge. These are some posts I found from studios
looking for animators.
Software
Ninja-skllls In a major 30 animation package (Max. Maya etc). MotionBuilder

Requirement
Technical knowledge of Maya
Excellent planning, communication and interpersonal skills
Strong knowledge and experience developing animations
Ability to give characters unique personalities and emotions through
animation
A strong work ethic, with the ability to meet tight deadlines

Don't misinterpret me and walk around saying I told you to only learn Maya or Max.
Learning either program is definitely a good start for you. After you have a fundamental
grasp of any 3D program you will be able to switch to any other program and learn it much
faster. Learning to use any professional animation software is like learning to drive a
manual transmission car. It might be difficult to learn to drive a manual car if you've never
driven one before. But once you get the hang of it and you begin to feel comfortable driving
around, you will easily be able to switch to driving an automatic car. After that, driving any
vehicle will be easy breezy. Learn the pro's software so that the low end stuff becomes
easy.

Besides, if you start teaming Maya or Max first, you'll have the upper hand from other
beginners. The most important part s not what software you use, but how well can you animate!
You need to develop good animation method so that when you're presented with any 30 program
you will be аЫе to apply your same methods and achieve great animation every time, no matter
what software.
If you can't get a hold of professional software, start with freeware, such as Blender.
Blender is free to download and it will give you some real-world experiences to Peg«' and
understand animation. Start with what you can.
There are some stud«» that have their own proprietary software. proprietary meaning
exclusively owned or created by that studio. You will need to learn their software when you
get hired. This is why it's more important to is have methods for animating than having
Knowledge for particular soft ware. The software e nothing more than just a tool.

Computer Power!

This chapter Is for all the cool geeks out there.

Does your computer crash often? Then this Screen of Death will look familiar to youl This
is usually caused by two reasons. 1) The software was at fault and there is nothing you can
do about It. IT JUST CRASHED! You can add this problem with the sci-fl mysteries of life. 2)
Your computer is too slllllooooowwww. Think of it this way, your computer is slow and
animation software is fast. Your software is very CPU, RAM, and graphic card intensive and
if your computer doesn’t supply enough of this to the software, you are essentially choking
it. This is a reason your software might keep crashing often. You can't expect to step on the
gas and go lOOmph on a 1990 Toyota Tercel and not have any engine problems afterwards.
Keep driving fast and you'll end up burning the engine or "crashing" the car.
You need an engine that can keep up when you put the pedal to the medal.
Your computer Is the same way.
Most of you are thinking of going to school or are in school and you are
forced to use the computer in your family room for projects. Chances are that
computer was bought by your mother or father who knows nothing about
computers and a lot about saving money. They probably bought the
computer that was advertised on sale at BestBuy for $199. Although I might
say they got a really good deal, it's probably not suitable for animation. How do I know? I
was once In your shoes. A computer like that will have something along the lines of a single
core with a clocking speed of 1.6GHz, 2 or 4GB RAM, and about 500GB of Hard Drive space.
I didn't want to geek all out with numbers, computer terminology, and confuse half of the
readers. But working with computers Is going to be your life from now on, so you will need
to familiarize yourself with some basic terms.

CPU = Computer Processing Unit or Core, is the brain of the computer that's responsible
for doing most of the calculations. The CPU requires a fixed number of clock ticks (or clock
cydes) to execute each instruction. The faster the dock speed, the more instructions the
CPU can calculate per second. In simple terms, if you have a 1.6GHz and you find another
that says 3.6GHz, you're better off with a faster brain. I would not recommend a computer
with 1 core, that's considered a toy for 3D graphics. If you can get a dual core make sure
you push your RAM and video card to something you won't regret later. If you get a quad
core, you get a passing grade from me. I'll put it to you easily, the more cores you get, the
more I take you serious about 3D.

RAM = Random Access Memory. The term RAM is synonymous

with main memory, the memory available to programs. For
example, a computer with 8MB RAM has approximately that much
of memory for the program to use. But 8MB of RAM is a joke for
animation. You want to at least have 4GB of RAM. AT LEAST 4GB!
I'm running my own computer with 16GB RAM. If your computer
can handle more than 4GB of RAM and your wallet can handle it, UPGRADE to what you can
afford! Keep in mind 32 bit version on Windows won't allow you to go this high up on RAM
unless you have a 64bit system. Again, the more, the better!

HDD = Hard Disk Drive or just hard drive. This is like having a nice big
drawer for your computer. This is where all of your programs, files, pictures,
movies, and everything else you store on your computer goes.
Most computers now days have anywhere from 500 GB to 2 TB. 1TB is a
whole lot of comfort room for almost anything. For animation you will
certainly need about 1TB and up. Because with animation you're going to be
dealing a lot with software, files, images, and movies, it's a good idea to
always have enough room to store all of that.

But don't worry too much if you don't have a lot of room in your computer's
hard drive. You can always buy an external hard drive which you can easily plug
into your USB port and save more stuff! External Hard Drives can range from
100 GB to about 4TB in capacity. External hard drives are great because they are
portable enough to take your files from home to school/work. These can range
from $80 to $300 depending on the amount of memory you buy.

But that's not all. I'm sure you've heard of thumb drives or flash drives. These
are actually little tiny hard drives that fit in your pocket or keychain. Plash drives are
a great way to transfer files if you don't want the bulky carry on of an external hard
drive. They don't carry an insane amount of storage, like the external drives do in
TB, but they do reach the GB. This should be enough storage for your important
files, movies, or great for backing up your work. I always carry a thumb drive with
me when working with animation. I don't want to lose my hours of work, so I always
back up my files on my thumb drive. These can range from $S to $100 depending on the
amount of memory you buy.

Graphics Card = Also known as video card. A video card is an expansion

card which output images to a display. Most video cards offer functions such as
accelerated rendering of 30 scenes and 2D graphics, decoding, TV output, or
the ability to connect multiple monitors. A dedicated graphics card on the
other hand has its own RAM and Processor specifically for processing video
images, and thus offloads this work from the CPU and system RAM. The low
end video cards have about 500 MB of RAM, where the mid-range can go from
1-2GB or RAM, and the high end from an insane of 3-6 GB of RAM.

The beauty of some graphics cards is that they give you the ability to connect two
monitors. This allows you to work efficient and not waste too much time switching from
window to window. Everything is laid out and ready for you to use, especially when you'll
have a lot of windows open for animating. Most studios you'll work at will have dual
monitors, but if not, they'll probably make up for it by having a huge 22" to 30" monitor.
Going back to your 15" or 18" monitor at home will seem like a joke after you leave your
studio.

The moral of this chapter is, BUY WHATEVER YOU CAN AFFORD. They are so many
options in speeds, brands, and prices that you have no excuses for having a decent
computer built for 3D graphics. An entry level computer can cost you anywhere from $600-
$l,000. An excellent computer can range from $1,000 to $1,500. And a crazy artist can
spend $2,000 and upward! Have a chat with your piggy bank and see what you can afford.
Even if it's not the latest and greatest, I'm sure you can upgrade parts when you can afford
it. Oh Yeah, One more thing! Make sure you buy a mouse with a middle mouse button.
You're going to need it.
 Day of an Animator

Being an Animator is
probably one of the most
fun, challenging, and
rewarding careers you
can ever have. Let's face
it, what other job do you
know where they allow
you to wear headphones
and listen to music while
you work? A typical
starting day of an
animator is around 9:30
am to 10 am., which is
great, if you want to sleep in just a little bit longer. The studio environment is always
relaxing. You walk in, turn on your computer, and start hacking away on your animation.
The Director or your Lead Animator won't be watching you like a hawk like other jobs you
might've had. You have to be responsible and organized to finish your animation by the due
date with minor supervision. Your lead animator is usually a person with 5+ years of
working experience and is there to quickly guide you with issues you may be having and to
make sure you're meeting the quality of animation the director is asking for. Typically, Lead
Animators are assigned teams if you're working in a big studio with lots of animators. This
helps keep track of all of the animation that goes around.
Now you won't always have the luxury of having a Lead Animator by your side. Smaller
studios don't have Lead's and you'll be dealing with the director yourself. This doesn't mean
you'll be stuck if you come upon a problem. Your coworkers will be there for you as well. Be
nice to your fellow animators, they will need your help at times too. For the most part,
animators (or any other artist) are cool people who like to joke around, talk about movies,
and share funny pictures around the studio through instant chat messages. It's rare, but
you'll eventually bump into an arrogant worker who will think no matter how great your
animation may be, he'll always disagree. My advice is just to listen to the directions of your
lead or director's. If they approve your animation, that's all you need to worry about.
Besides, the people who talk bad about others are usually the ones who don't create quality
work and don't last too long.

Yes, that's me playing arcades at work, so what? Can you do this at your job! Didn't think
so.

Try not to separate yourself from other departments. Becoming friends with other artists
such as lighters, riggers, modelers, texture or any other artists is beneficial to you. If you
find yourself out of a job, you can always call out to one of your working friends and ask if
their hiring at that studio. Or vice-versa, if the studio is in need of more artists, they might
ask you if you know of anyone in particular they can bring on to the project. They'll help
you and you'll help them. This industry is about networking. IT'S ALL ABOUT WHO YOU
KNOW. You can't be shy, so when you get a chance, walk over to other departments and
introduce yourself. Ask what they do there and be friendly. Towards the end of the
production you can exchange numbers, email, website, business cards, Linkln, or Facebook
information. I don't care how you guys communicate, but it's always a good idea if you plan
to survive in this industry. Well...networking and a great demo reel.
Not only is being friendly a good idea for networking but they are now your family. Let*s
face it, you're going to be working anywhere from 8-12 hours a day.
It can get stressful and crazy if you don't get along with your co-workers.
We've established the importance of friendship; now let's talk about work. A typical day
is 8 hours, with your two 15 minute breaks and your 30 minute lunch. Depending where
your work, you might get an hour lunch, if you're really lucky and your job is very laid back,
you can sometimes go out and get a snack as you please.

Most studios are free flowing and a kick-back environment because

they'll eventually get you back when deadlines are approaching.
Deadline means the animation project needs to be completed by a
certain date. Which means you'll probably be working overtime and
sometimes weekends to meet these crazy deadlines, is good for your
wallet, but can sometimes be stressful due to your brain overload of
sitting in front of the computer, trying to maintain your quality of work
for such a long time. This is why I emphasize that you love what you
do. No matter how long I sit to do animation, it will never say I hate
my job. Animation is hard and fun work jam packed together. Make
sure you enjoy it. Plus, they might even feed you while you work!
Pizzaaaa!

What exactly will you do as a CG Animator? As an animator you are responsible for
making the characters come to life and tell a story through their performance. If you're in a
big studio, you will probably be given the script and storyboards so that you can read the
story and familiarize yourself with the character's personality. The storyboard is like a comic
strip of the script. It will show you a visual representation of what you will have to animate.
After you familiarized yourself with the story and characters, you will move onward to
what’s called the Layout. In the layout you will roughly position your characters lr their
environment sets and add cameras to best show what they will act out.
After you get your Layout approved by your director/lead, you will begin to move into
Blocking. Blocking Is where you begin to pose your character and show some of the minimal
but main actions of your character. There Is no detail or any realistic movements yet. You
Just work out key poses to simply get an Idea of what will happen. This can mean that your
character will slide around your scene as opposed to making him physically walk. After your
Blocking gets approved by your director/lead again, you will finally move Into the first
phases of animation. It's typically a good practice to record yourself acting out the
performance of your character so that you can catch the small nuances movements In
character. Now you have some reference footage as to how to begin posing your character.
You'll add extreme poses showing greater detail of HOW the acting/action will take place.
After your extreme poses, you will move a lot faster filling In your animation with more and
more poses. This Is where your spend most of your time adding breakdowns, in-betweens,
adjusting poses, working timing, adding the principles of animation, to ultimately, complete
your smoothed-pollshed animation.
 Not every studio will give you the time or tools needed to follow this workflow. Some
studios might not show you the script or storyboard. They will leave it up to you to create
the animation based on the director's Idea. Other studios require you to complete your
animation within a couple of days, not giving you enough time to plan for much. If you find
yourself trapped with a tight deadline, I would at the least recommend that you record
yourself for reference footage. Reference allows for quickly Identifying extreme poses,
timing, finger poses, and facial expressions, Even If you're animating something Inhuman,
like a creature, try and act out how a creature would move. It will help you visualize timing
of Its movement.

Jobs for Animators

3D animation It created using two ways. Either you sit down and animat« by setting
keyframe poses by hand or you wear 9 suit to do Motion Capture (mocap).

The fun way to do computer animation Is to physically sit

and animate the characters yourself, it allows you to show case
your hard work and study for the art by creating compelling
animations at the end of the day. The drawbacks for this
method Is that It takes a long time to complete, (depending
on the action) and the quality Is also relevant to the skill of
the animator. Keyframe animation Is also best for animating
creatures, quadrupeds, vehicles or anything that's difficult for
motion capture to do.
Nonetheless, In Its traditional art form, keyframe animation Is more of an art and
technical skilled than doing motion capture. Not anyone can go from being a motion capture
actor to a computer animator, but most computer animators can go Into a motion capture
suit and act out.

Motion Capture still plays a big role In the film and game Industry. Motion capture is the
fastest way to produce a moving character in CG. It's just a matter of putting on the suit,
acting out the scene, and transferring the motion data to your CG character.

The good news about motion capture is that it's not always accurate. Don't worry about
animators losing their jobs over mocap. In most instances when we transfer the motion
data to our characters, something will not always work well. This will require an animator to
go into the animation data and fix or animate what is broken.

Motion capture will give you more of the realistic movements, such as the film Avatar by
James Cameron. When done nicely it can fool you into believing the realism of characters.

Not only is motion capture for recording the body movements of the actors, but with
improving technology, we've been able to capture the facial movements of the actors. This
continues to add to the realistic movements from the actor to the CG character, thus having
to do less work by an animator.

Motion capture is great, but when it comes to moving something that's non-human it's
always best to bring an animator and have him animate the movement.

Most animators worry that motion capture will one day take over and leave them out of a
job. I don't think this is the case, as we continue to see large studios such as Pixar,
Dreamworks and Blue Sky still use keyframe animation on most of their work. As for the
video game industry, we have been seeing the use of motion capture more often, but they
still hire animator to do the fixes and to do facial and lip sync animation, as most video
games don't capture facial movements.
Animation and motion capture both have their place in the industry. We still need the
man power to create movies, video games, and commercials. Every studio has their own
ways of creating their work on time and on budget. But I can guarantee you, 3D animation
still has years to live.
Now let's talk about the difference between video game and film studios. Most animation
companies will be between quality and quantity or work vs. speed. If they ask you to
animate something quickly, between a day and two, usually the quality will go down.
Meaning, the animation won't look as great. If they ask you to do the same animation, but
give you a week to do it, then speed goes down, but quality goes up.
This all depends on the budget and schedule of the game, but game studios tend to do
more of the quantity rather than quality. When you go into film, its the opposite, the
animation quality goes up and the speed goes down. Because film is viewed by a larger
audience it needs to look good. Expect to work longer when animating for a feature film
than when you're working on a video game. If you've ever asked yourself why animations in
some video games look crappy, this is the reason. At some point it was decided that
production needed to speed up in order to meet the deadlines, causing the quality to go
Speed down but the quantity to go up. Deadlines are an important and must be met at all
costs. You'll be lucky enough to get an extension on a deadline.

Do I Have To Go To School?

Yes, no, and maybe. Plainly, I'm going to tell it like It is, In this industry the only thing
that matters is YOUR DEMO REEL. No matter if you want to be a modeler, texture artist,
rigger, animator, lighter or an effects artist, you need a great demo reel. Your work is more
powerful than your words, your degree, and the school you attended or who you know.

I don't want to sound cruel, but studios want to know that you can perform to standards
they require, and the only way they'll know that, is by watching your demo reel. Let me
give you an example, if we were to have two types of people, Mr. Degree and Mr. Self-
taught and they both had a demo reel, and let's say they both applied at the same studio as
animators. Let's also assume that the work of Mr. Degree was decent but not amazing, and
let's say that Mr. Self-taught's work was mind-blowing awesome good. If they both applied
to the same studio, who do you think they'll hire? You're rightl They'll hire Mr. Self-taught
because he can get the job done.

This is only to stress the importance of having a good demo reel. How you get a good
demo reel is up to you. There are many great schools out there that can teach you what
you need to produce a golden demo reel. Schools are good because they can teach you
other areas of animation, such as, storytelling, anatomy, drawing, character design,
cinematography, 2D animation, acting, and areas that surround film in animation. This can
definitely give you the upper hand as opposed to learning it
yourself.

Going to school also gives you the benefit of asking

questions to your instructors who have been in the industry.
They can provide feedback and can become your mentors.
Students can also be your starting point in creating network for once you're in the industry.

If you're not the type of person that can sit in front of a computer and read books,
tutorials, videos, blogs, or articles to self-teach, then going to school is your best bet for
becoming an animator.

On the other hand, teaching yourself can be a faster AND CHEAPER route than going to
school. If you're a dedicated person and have the patience to study animation, then you can
probably hack at it for a full year and be able to produce some useful material for your
demo reel. The only problem with this is finding a good source to study from :( The good
thing about it is you're holding a book with answers :) The reason I wrote this book was
because when I left school I wasn't up to par with my animation skills and felt I was missing
a way to approach animation. I needed a method for animating! When I left school I felt I
had a general knowledge of animation, but not a specific skill for approaching any real
studio work.

Let's not forget that learning on your own is a lot cheaper than going to school. Would
you rather pay about $5,000 to buy yourself ALL of the programs, books and videos
necessary to become self-taught? Or would you rather pay about $12,000-$80,000 to go to
school for 1-4 years?

The best approach for learning animation on your

own is to start online. You can start reading articles
about what it's like being an animator. There are
many great interviews of people in the industry that
you can learn insights about how they became
animators. There are many free video tutorials on
YouTube that can help
you get started.

(Eeh-hem www.youtube.com/AnimatlonMethods) Let's not forget www.digitaltutors.com

where you can learn all professional programs for animation and visual effects. You will
have to pay a membership fee but they have endless videos to learn from.
The next best thing to learning is actually, doing. Follow the tutorials and experiment
with your techniques. This is the only way you can learn and become good at what you
want. Animation is not as easy as it looks. It takes time and practice. There's lots of trial
and error and starting over. The first couple of days are the toughest because you need to
familiarize yourself with the terminology, principles, and use of the software. Once you go
through this you will be able to begin the process of how animation is done and develop the
methods you will need to become an animator.
I hope this chapter opens your eyes to new options not many people consider. I know I
sound biased against school but someone needs to point out the reality of this industry and
what it takes to land your dream job. That is, PRODUCE WORK THAT MOVES PEOPLE. If you
can portray empathy with your animation, you are on your way to the stars my friend.
The same goes for modelers, texture artist, riggers, lighters and FX artist. Showcase your
best work on your demo reel and you can get your foot in the door.

Demo Reel

What is a Demo Reel? No, you don't have go out to an

antique shop and buy an old reel. I don't mean a literal reel.
A reel is what we call a video with your best work used to
showcase your abilities to employers. This is your life in a
DVD or website, this is what you worked for, and it's what's
going to get you that job. All the best animations you
worked on with your blood and sweat needs to go into it. When I say your best animation I
don't mean pack everything you've ever animated. You definitely don't want to cut corners
or cheat when it comes to putting together your demo reel. You should be doing this
because, hopefully, you love it. Take these tips into serious hands. Every studio hires with
different requisites, make sure you read the job description of what they ask from you.
These are general suggestions that professional artists have found to be the most beneficial
for creating an exceptional demo reel.

Add only your best work

Not only will you need to add your best work, you'll need to start You Can Do It!
with a BANG! If they hit play on your DVD and they're not impressed
- Add only vour best work.
within the first few seconds of your demo, they will eject that DVD
and it will fly straight into the trash can. By "best work" I mean you - Add only work you want to do.

show good timing, acting, weight, and it's overall entertaining. Every - K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid)

piece of your demo reel should be good and at no point should the - Show what you're good at.

viewer say, "What was that? That was horrible!" If you're in doubt of - Wow them!
adding a piece of work, it's best to keep it out. But when in doubt, - Add contact and info.
throw it out! When it's good, you'll know. - Get Feedback.
Keep your demo reel between 2-4 minutes long. If you only have
1 minute, its fine, but make sure it's your best 1 minute of work. It's better to see 30
seconds of amazing work than to sit and watch 4 minutes of "eh" work.

Add only work you want to do

If you want to animate more of characters talking and doing hand gestures, add that to
your reel. If you want to animate action based animation, add THAT to your reel. If you
want to do a little bit of both, add THOSE to your reel. If you DON'T want to animate
characters and you only want to animate creatures, then DON'T add characters to your reel,
ADD creature animations. If you've worked on motion capture clean up at other studios and
don't really want to continue doing motion capture then don't add mocap on your demo
reel. If you want to do a little bit of everything then add a little bit of everything, but make
sure it's good.

Kiss
"Keep It Simple Stupid" is a good way to remember to not add a iot of random junk into
your reel. If you want to be what's called a Generalist (you model, texture, light, rig, and
animate) then you can show case all of this into a single reel and explain what you were
responsible for on a breakdown sheet/credit sheet. Adding music to your demo reel can
sometimes hurt you. It would be really annoying if you added
metallic or hard rock songs while your demo reel is playing in the
background. Your demo reel is about selling your work not your
personal taste in music. Music should be subtle and in the
background so that we can hear your characters speak. If you're not
sure what song to add, just keep it out. "Keep It Simple Stupid".

Show What You're good at

If you're really good at animating horses or quadruped animals,
it's a good idea to show that.
Not many animators animate horses, cats, lions, or any other
quadruped on demo reels. It just might be because it's difficult to keep track of four legs
during animation. If you're good at this, SHOW IT! This is a very specialized knowledge and
can land you a job animating what you're good at. On the other hand, if you're not good at
animating fighting characters, you might want to stay away from showing this on your reel
until you get good at it. Don't hurt yourself by showing your weak side. Show what you're
good at!

Wow Them!
Employers go through hundreds of demo reels while looking for artists to hire. They have
seen all the good stuff and all the bad stuff. They know within the first 10 seconds of your
animation if it's worth watching or if they should eject the DVD and toss it straight into the
"never to be heard from again" pile. You need to wow them! Look at other demo reels on
YouTube and watch the ones that make you go, "Wow!" That's the same reaction you
should provoke with your demo reel. Even if you're new, you should have something that
even professionals can go, "Wow!"

Your Contact Information

Your contact information should be in the beginning and ending of your DVD. The first
thing people should see on your DVD should be your name, position, phone number, and
email or website.
Remember, K.I.S.S. Don't add animation on the beginning of your title card. They don't
want to see that you can animate every letter of your name and that it can swing or bounce
into frame to spell your name. Keep away from cheesy intros and showing your title card for
too long in the beginning.
Show it for 3 seconds and GET ON WITH IT! You will have plenty of time to show your
title card for a longer time at the end of your reel. In the intro, employers only want to see
your name and what position you're applying for. Once you get to the ending, you can show
your title card long enough for them to read and write down all of your information. If they
liked your reel, you don't want to flash your title card for 2 seconds, that doesn't give them
enough time to reach for a pen and paper. By the time they turn around to write the Info in
your title card, It's overl Show It for 10 seconds. This can give them enough time to reach
for the remote and pause the DVD to write your Info down.

Get Feedback
Getting feedback for your demo reel Is important. Ask your friends to give you their
honest opinion. Sometimes your friends will tell you they were confused, they didn't
understand, or the movement of a character was awkward. If your friends are lost, I
guarantee your employer will be just as lost.
It helps if you also have friends that are studying animation or are in the industry. This
way they know what to look for in terms of detail movements and acting.
You can upload your demo reel to YouTube and have people post comments. If many
people say your work Is great and inspirational, maybe you're ready to look for a job. On
the other hand, if they post critiques, take it and learn from them. Make the changes or
improve on your weakness and try again. If you really want this you will do what It takes,
even if It means reanimating some parts and rendering it again.
Get a professional animator to look at your video. Share your link and listen to what they
say. There's a reason why they're in the industry. Be open- minded and willing to learn.
What they say is not to hurt you, but to make you a better animator. Like I mentioned
before, animation is a trial and error process. Take every bit of information and apply it.
Never send your original reel to anyone. Make copies of your DVD or any art work you
wish to send, but always keep the originals stored with you in a safe place. You will never
get your reel back once it's sent. Kiss it good-bye and hope for the best.
Update your reel anytime you have newer better work. Just because it's new does NOT
mean it should go on your reel. Make sure it's GREAT! I know the feeling of working on an
animation for about a month, and just because it's your latest you feel like adding it to your
reel, not realizing it's not your best piecel Compare It to your other work and get some
quality feedback. Only then can you add It to your reel.

GET A WEBSITE
It should be mandatory for all artists to get a simple website showcasing your work.
Nearly all studios I've applied to want to see your animation before they call you for an
interview. You can set up a quick website for cheap. You won't need programming skills for
this. I don't recommend using a YouTube link as your only source for showing your reel.
This can be tacky and is not very creative. Invest in a small website. You'll be glad you did.

BIG NO-NO'S FOR YOUR DEMO REEL

Do not put tutorials or tests in your reel. This does not show your creativity.
Do not add work that you did not create. You will get caught. I've seen it and it can cost
you your dream job opportunity.
 Minimize sexual, violent, or satanic material. This will limit studios you can apply to.
Unless you plan to do this type of work and the studio is looking for it, keep away I This will
definitely keep you out of studios like Pixar, Dreamworks, Sony, etc...
Don't send work-in-progress material. Studios don't care that you're not done or care to
see your process. They want to see what you can do and that you can finish your animation.
If you send them work in progress, they probably think you can never finish anything. No
bueno!
Don't repeat/loop an animation video. If they need to see it twice, they will rewind it and
watch it again. Don't force them to watch it. It's painful! Unless it’s a walk cycle animation,
then you can cycle your walk for a couple steps.
Don't attach large files when applying by email. Nobody wants to wait 5 minutes to
download your resume. Make sure your files are small. And never- ever attach your demo
reel video by email, unless they ask you to upload your video to their website servers.
Don't call and bug a studio for a job. Most studios don't accept job phone calls. Read
their "how to apply" section. You can apply through their website or you can email them.
You don't need expensive or over the top packaging for your DVD. What counts is what's
on the inside. I mean, it won't hurt to make it presentable but just don't go all crazy-clown
creative on it. Come on, let's face it, I landed my first job as an animator writing my name
and info on the front of a DVD with a Sharpie. I don't recommend it, but it can still work.
The DVD (pictured left) was my first demo reel that landed me a job. Now my demo reel
looks like this (pictured right). A little more presentable and all printed at home with my
regular old bubble inkjet printer.

Don't send the same reel out six months later. Update the work in it. Show your latest
and greatest work. You should always be working on something new.
Don't put loud and crazy music on your reel. Big studios mute the audio and just watch
your animation movements. If it looks good without audio, they can only imagine how much
greater it will be with the audio. Keep AC/DC and Metallica style music away from your reel
and keep that in your iPod. If you're going to add music, make it pleasant for alt to listen to.
Now that you know what goes into your reel you can begin creating your DVD. Show
them your best work and you should have no problem getting into the industry. But if at
any time you find yourself out of a job, your full-time job is to look for a job.

How to Get a Job in Animation

I wish there was a quick answer to getting into the animation industry, but there are
many factors that determine your eligibility. Your demo reel, as we just read, plays a big
role in getting you closer to working.
I will put your demo reel at the top of the list for getting a job as an animator. If you
don't have a demo reel you'll never be called in for an interview. You might be used to
applying to jobs mainly by resume, but the way in is through your demo. If you're an entry-
level animator your resume won't help you as much and it will be up to your demo reel to
do your talking. Once you gain work experience your resume will begin to shine and help
you stand out

What do studios want to see on my demo reel?

Studios receive hundreds of demo reels per month of people wanting to get in. Usually
the person watching your demo reel is a veteran artist who knows what to look for. He's like
a hawk waiting to find the good demo reels in a pile of rubbish reels. There are also other
studios that will pass around your reel and the whole studio will see it and will vote on your
skills. Regardless of who sees your reel, you need to impress them.
Most entry-level animators will put the very first animations they created. For example, a
character lifting a box, a walk cycle, run cycle, lifting a box, pushing or pulling a box, or any
of their first school assignments. Even though you might think it's the greatest thing in the
world, I can guarantee you that every studio has seen this a gazillion times. This type of
work will NOT "wow" an audience. It will not make me want to watch it again and it's
certainly NOT creative. I know it's easy to fall in love with your work because you dedicated
a lot of time and effort, but you'll need to learn to detach your emotions from your work and
look at it from a professional point-of-view. Ask yourself, "Is this animation the type of
quality I see in video games and movies?" That's who you're going to be working for, so
cater to those studios. If you are clueless as to what exactly to add in your demo reel, take
a look at video game animations or CG movies and try to do something similar. Take about
5-10 seconds from it and create something similar. Of course, NEVER COPYI You don't need
to add the effects, lighting, texture, or go all out. Just do the animation part. Do some
character acting, if you're not sure. Acting is the hardest part of animation because you
need to convey emotions through your characters. Characters need to look like they're
thinking, communicating, and feeling. Some studios might require that you show walk
cycles, but they are not as popular as they used to be. If you have a good walk, add it at
the end of your reel. Focus more on animating characters with personalities. You can use
dialogue from movies and animate to them. Most animations on reels are done this way.
Pick out a good 5-10 second line from a movie and animate something creative to it. Make
sure the line is not from another CG movie and don't animate the exact movement from the
actor. Make it completely different! Remember, we are trying to make people say, "Wow!
That's awesome," when they see your demo reel. If you get them to laugh, that's even
better.

What about my resume ?

You're thinking right now, "I don't have experience to add on my resume, and they won't
hire me because I don't have experience...WTF!" Well, we've already established that the
main thing you need is a good demo reel. The resume will come second. This is even more
important when you're an entry level animator. Because you don't have production
experience they will mainly focus their decisions on how well you can perform with your
demo.
For a start, you can write down any small jobs you've had. If you were a team leader or
had a creative job it would help to mention this on your resume. If you're attending school
or received a degree, you want to add this. If you're taking online training or have received
any achievement awards you want to add that too. Pretty much write anything that shows
you're on your way to achieving your career goals, have completed successful training, or
are involved in something creative. Of course, never lie on your resume, but do make it look
good!
Even if you're self-taught, write that in! Being self-taught is nothing to be ashamed of. It
shows that you have the passion and motivation to find answers to your own problems. I
consider myself self-taught when it comes to 3D Character Animation. I busted my butt off
to find these methods I'm sharing with you and I was able to find my way into the industry,
not because of my school, not my degree, but because of my hard work and long hours I
spent trying to figure out how to create good animation. Being self-taught is empowering.
You can learn as quickly as you like, learn from different tutorials to get better explanations,
practice as long as you like without pressure, and really hone in on your skills.

Where can I find studios?

Luckily, if you live in the United States, California around the Los Angeles area, you are
in the gold mine for animation studios. The best way to research studios for jobs is to use
Google/Yahoo search engines and find a list of directories for game and visual effects
studios. In a directory you will get the name of the studio, address, and their website. You'll
need to visit their websites and read a little about what they do. If you like their work and
you think you got a shot working there, the next step is to read their job/career page. Read
what they require to apply for an animation position. For the most part, they will require
you to email them your resume and a link to your online demo reel. Yes, you heard me
right! You'll need a web link to your online demo reel.

Do I need a website?
YES!!! Notice I said yes in caps, bold, and three exclamation marks. The reason why I
say to get a website is because it's cheaper than physically mailing your demo reel and 95%
of studios only want to see online demo reels. It's 2012 and we are in that age of
technology where we can just click a link and watch someone's reel. Studios don't watch
VHS or tapes; I don't even know what they are anymore. But you can still mail packaged
DVD's with your resume to studios. That's how I landed my first animation job back in
2009, through good'ol snail mail. Regardless, online reels are cheaper and good for the
environment.
When I say you need a website, I don't mean you'll spend tons of money and you'll need
to geek out on code and go crazy with creative photos and logos. You can get a free blog or
a cheap do-it-yourself site. You want to add a little description about yourself, your contact
information, resume, and definitely will need to show your demo through a link from
YouTube or Vimeo. This makes it convenient to find everything about you in one site.
You can get cheap websites for about $5-$12/month. This is a lot cheaper than having to
buy DVDs, cases, resume paper, packaging envelops, labels...etc. Now imagine if you had
to ship out a couple of demo reels per week. That's about $30-$50 to stock on supplies plus
pay for shipping. You can see why it's cheaper to run a website instead.
Probably the first time you apply to a studio you can physically ship out a few of your
demo reels while you work on designing your website. But always remember to read what
the studio requires from you. Some studios don't accept mailed demo reels. But for the
other studios, go ahead and ship some reels with your resume.
Don't ship 1 or 2 demo reels and expect to land a job right away. You'll probably never
hear from those studios again. Applying for a job in animation is a lot different than what
you're used to. Starting off, you'll need to send out about 50 demo reels and you'll only end
up hearing back from 1 or 2 studios if you're lucky. You need to find a studio that will hire
entry-level animators. Keep at it and
don't give up. You only need that first foot in the door to help your resume look better. If
you don't have a job, then you job is to look for a job.
You got a call for an interview, what do you do next? Help!
Nowadays you can be emailed from a studio to schedule you for an interview. If a studio
is too busy or doesn't have a Human Resource department they will probably just email you
for an interview as opposed to calling you. Regardless of how they communicate, always be
professional and reply to confirm the interview. Reply quickly and get their studio's
information to keep in contact.
If you're interviewed, always take 2 copies of your resume in case you're interviewed by
more than one person, a copy of your DVD demo reel, a back-up demo reel in a flash drive
in case the DVD doesn't play properly, a pen, and dress to impress.

What happens in an interview?

Typically you'll be interviewed by more than one person, the owner of the studio, the
director or a lead artist. You will all watch your demo reel during the interview and will ask
you questions about your reel. Usually the lead artist is the guy you will work with, so he'll
be asking most of the questions. He might ask you things like:
How did you animate a certain character?
-How long did it take you to animate a certain piece?
-Did you animate this yourself or was it a team effort?
-How did you create a certain piece?
-What tools did you use?
-How did you plan out your animation?
-Are you organized?
-Can you meet deadlines?
-How well can you work under pressure?
-Can you work well on your own/with a team?
-What do you do when you don't have a solution to a problem?
 These are typical questions you'll hear at an interview. If you understand your work
methods and you know how you achieved what you animated, you will have no problem
answering any questions. Be prepared for a "curve-ball" question. This question is used to
catch you off guard and see how you respond to a question that's irrelevant to the topic.
They are testing you to see if you'll ask questions when you are confused. Always pay close
attention and think openly when they ask you questions. Be honest with your work and your
words and you'd flyby the interview with no problem.

What can I expect at the interview?

Be prepared with your animation skills. They might ask you to do an animation test at
their studio to see how well you can animate. The test is not to ask you questions about the
Maya software, they will give you a character and ask you to animate a certain action. It
could be a run cycle, a character climbing a tatter and jumping off a tall box, or any 3-5
second animation. They'll decide what you'fl animate. Talk with your interviewer, they tell
you when it's due, how much time they'll give you, and what quality of animation they
want. Trust me, ft s not that bad if you know your stuff and learn what I teach you. Not all
studios will test you either.
After the interview, if it all went well, you'll get a confirmation phone call with your
starting day. Congratulations on landing your first job and into the exciting world of the 3d
animation industry.

Let's Talk Money

Let me guess what you're thinking right now, "How much money will I earn as a 30
Animator?"
This career is very dependent on what you know, how much you know, and how well you
can do it.
This alone will not determine how much you will earn. We also need to take a look at the
size and type of the studio you want to work for.
Typically, larger studios in film pay the most They have larger budgets and have the
longest deadlines compared to smaller game studios. They're the studios that tend to only
hire artists who have 4 years of experience and up. There are always exceptions to the
years of experience you may have, but that means if you're an entry-level animator, your
demo reel better show professional quality work to animate with the "big boys'.
Game studios pay according to the years of experience you have, whereas, film will pay
you according to the quality of work you have. If you have 0-12 months in the industry you
need to work your butt off. 1-2 years, you are considered an entry-level animator, "Yay!
You made it in'. 3-5 years you are an intermediate animator, "Watch out! You're moving
up!" 6-8 years you are a professional and can become a Lead Animator, 'Mama will be
proud". 9 + years you are well respected in the industry, 'Hail to the great ail mighty".

Let's talk money!

My first job as an animator, back in Dec. 2009,1 had about 1 to 1:30 minutes of
animation on my demo reel. I went over to Office Max, bought a decent DVD case, glossy
printing paper, resume paper, and shipping packages. I then made about 20 copies of my
demo reel and resume, and I shipped them out to twenty different studios I felt my work
was in line with. Days later, to my surprise, I got a phone call from a studio in Irvine, CA. I
went to the interview, took a test, and got hired; I went from earning about $10/hr. part
time in some doctor's office to making $19/hr. as an animator for Xbox's Star Wars: The
Force Unleashed II.
For a guy working part-time and going to school full-time to ultimately earning $19/hr.
wasn't too bad. It may not sound much to some, but this was my entry-level rate. I don't
expect you guys to earn the same as I did. Many of you may earn more or less. But this can
certainly give you an idea as to what you will earn in the beginning.
The great thing about this industry is that you will earn more as you gain skills and
experience.
After I left that studio, i was able to land another opportunity as an animator doing
mocap clean-up for previsualization, which I had never done, but learned at the job. This
job was located in Santa Monica, CA. and I was, at that time, earning $21/hr.
 It is now 2012 and I've earned my way up a mid-level animator by improving my
animation, updating my reel, and learning new skills. I won't say my current rate, as it is
much higher and it's personal, but I'm sure you get the idea to the potential you have for
earning as an entry-level animator.
Entry-level animators make anywhere from $30,000-$39,000/year.
Mid-level animator can reach from $40k - $55k/year.
Professional animators and lead animators can easily hit $55-$70k/year.
If you land a major film studio as an animator or a lead animator you can see an eye-
popping $75k-$110k/year.
Keep in mind that the money you'll earn is relevant to your skills, the type of work you
perform, and the needs of the studio based on the project they're working on. For example,
I knew a friend who worked at Sony Imageworks doing motion capture clean-up for the
Green lantern and he wasn't earning enough money to, let's just say, make it rain. Just
because he's at a reputable company, such as Sony, doesn't mean he'll make the big bucks.
On the other hand, if he was in Sony as an animator for a film such as, The Smurfs or Cloudy
with a Chance of Meatballs, that would be a different Story. Get my point $.
Remember this phrase, "The more you learn, the more you earn.'’ If you know how to
rig characters AND you know how to animate them well, you are worth gold in this industry. Not a
lot of animators are technical animators. Technical meaning the specific skill process involved in
rigging. Because you now know more than the average animator, you can increase your hourly
rate according to your skill set.
Smaller studios will look for generalists or artists who can do it all, from, modeling,
texturing, rigging, and animation. You will earn more, but you will have a lot to manage at
the end of the day.
Bigger studios look for artists who specialize on certain areas. This means finding an
animator that can ONLY animate, but can animate freakn' well. They too can earn a lot. But
you must have an animation skill level high above the average.

Job Hopping
Being in the animation industry, whether you want to get into games or films, there's
going to be a lot of jumping from one studio to the next. Most studios hire per project.
Meaning, when the animation project begins, they hire artist, and when it ends, they let go
artists.
This is something you need to prepare yourself for. Not a lot of people going into the
industry know that you'll be job hopping for a while, especially if you're an entry-level artist.
Freelance
You will most likely be a freelance artist. As a freelancer you will earn your hourly rate,
can work 8 to 12 hours a day, at time you won't get any medical benefits and you'll only
last for the duration of the project. Projects can range from a typical 3 months to 8 months
(but can go longer). They will pay you based on the hours you work.
If you're an entry-level artist, this is what you'll look forward to. It might not sound that
great, but you are gaining experience, and as you move onto your next project you can
increase your pay rate according to the new skill you learned.
Leam to save money for your out-of-work time, or as we call it, "in- between jobs". Once
you're done with a project you will need to look for another project. Who knows how long it
can take you to find the next opportunity.
Always do your best and keep improving your reel in your down time. Animators can
make good money, but Be smart and save.

Contract
Working with a contract is fairly the same as working freelance. The only thing that
changes is how you get paid. A contract will have a set amount of salary they will pay you
monthly. For example, they might agree to pay you $3,000 per month. This is different than
getting paid an hourly rate as a freelancer. Whether you work 8,10, or 12 hours a day, it
won't change your pay. Your check will still say $3,000 by the end of the month. Make sure
you agree with the contract amount, if you're okay with it, then you should be happy with
you checks:)

Permanent Employment
 Being a permanent employee at a studio is fairly hard for an entry-level artist to get into
right away. Full-time employment is usually offered to veterans such as leads, directors or
artists who provide high quality work. This is usually the case within film or a high profile
game.
Films usually take 2 years of production to complete and if you're hired early on, you will
probably last for the whole 2 years. If that studio picks up a second film right after it
releases and is pleased with your work, they might ask you to stay and work for their new
project.
Video game companies that release big games such as, God of War, Call of Duty, Grand
Theft Auto, etc... do the same as big film studios. They can hire artists and keep them for
the length of the project, ranging from 1 to 3 years.
It's at these bigger studios that offer you competitive salaries, benefits, paid vacation,
gym membership discounts, free lunches, fun activities for employees, and all the rest of
the stuff you would call the dream job.
I'm telling you this, so that you don't find surprises in this field. It's very competitive and
everyone is looking to get into the big studios, but the reality is that you need to set
yourself apart with your work and prove that you have what it takes to work there. Start at
smaller studios and take what they give you, add it to your reel, keep improving and learn
new skills. Before you know it you will be where you always wanted to be.
As I said before, every studio is different and will hire based on their needs. There are
exceptions to every rule. You could be fresh out of school and end up working 6 years at one
studio, who knows? Don't TRY to be the best, BE the best!
I have a friend who went to the same school as I did and he landed working at Trey arch,
the makers of Call of Duty Black Ops, and he's still there today!

Learning Autodesk Maya®

Before I signed up for school, I wanted to get ahead start of class by opening the most
popular program known for film and games, Autodesk Maya®. This bottom Image was what
I saw the first day I opened Maya.

"Aaaaaah", I screamed as I ran into the streets! I didn't know what button did what,
which button made me coffee or what button made my animation awesome. I closed Maya
faster than ALT+CTL+DLT could and hyperventilated as if I had just seen the scariest thing
in my life. Maya is very un-user friendly when you first open it without any kind of
knowledge of it.
This chapter will show you the fundamentals of Maya 2013 interface and how to
maneuver around this scary and exciting new software. If you're familiar with Maya's basic
interface, you may skip this chapter. Don't worry if you don't have Maya 2013. The methods
for animating are the same for ANY software. I'll show you how to use Maya in a PC, but if
you have a MAC, you'll just substitute the ALT key for the 'Option' key. Even if you don't
 have the latest version of Maya, it won't kill you. Maya only makes improvements when it
upgrades, but it doesn't undergo drastic changes. Believe me, it's not the end of the world!
Let's get started! The first thing that will catch your eye as soon as you open Maya will
be the four large rectangles windows in the center of the program. These are called
viewports.

These viewports are used to look at the different angles of your work. You'll need to
make sure your animation movement works well from different angles.

You'll spend most of your animation time in the

perspective viewport because it's the only view port
that allows you to rotate your character in 3D
space. The other top, front, and side viewports only
allow you to see your character from one side.

If you want to maximize any of your viewports to full size, all you need to do Is place your
mouse (cursor) over a viewport and 'smack' spacebar. This will allow you to comfortably see
your work in a larger view.

These are 5 of the easy tools you'll need to become familiar when using Maya.
Select tool (q): used for
picking objects
Lasso tool: used for
circling around and picking
objects
Move Tool (w): used for
moving objects.
Rotate Tool (e): used for
rotating objects.
Scale Tool (r): allows
you to scale the size of
objects.
create an object. This is
in my viewport.
There's obviously many more tools pictured on the left, but I
don't want to turn this chapter into a "Bible" for learning Maya.
Many of the tools found in Maya you won't use, because they are
catered to modelers, riggers, lighters...etc. For this reason, we will
cut corners and only show you the tools that you, as an animator,
must know.
Let's create some simple shapes, so that you get familiar with
moving objects around and rotating in your viewports.
First, let's uncheck interactive creation, by going to our top
menu and selecting CREATE> POLYGON PRIMITIVES >
INTERACTIVE CREATION and at the bottom, uncheck interactive
creation.
This allows you to select any object found under your polygon
primitives window and not have to manually click and drag to
optional, but I find it easy to just click an object and have it appear

Now click HEUX under the same window CREATE> POLYGON

PRIMITIVES >HEUX.
This should've added a helix shape in your viewports. Maximize the
perspective viewport (spacebar). You should see something like this.
Now we need a way to move around and take a closer look. Select
your Helix object and press the "f" key to frame or center-in on your
object.
 You'll see your camera view get closer to the helix object Now
that you're close, press 5 to view your object in "shaded mode".
Shaded mode allows you to view the surface as a solid. By
pressing 4, you can switch back to "wireframe mode", which allows
you to see your model in outlines.

We'll need to get familiar with three of the basic tools I showed
you previously. The move tool (w), rotate (e), and rescale tool (r)
are the tools you'll be using for the rest of your life as an animator.
Well, maybe not so much the rescale tool, but the move and rotate
tool, you will. Switch your viewports (press spacebar) back to the 4 views and watch what
happens as you move and rotate the helix. This will help you see how things move in your
viewports as you rotate them. Use the move, rotate, and scale tool on the object. Go ahead,
use them. I'll wait...

Great! That was easy. Now let me give you some fun stuff. Maximize your perspective
viewport again, select your helix, and press (f) to center it. Now, in your perspective
viewport try these three ways of moving your camera view around the helix. Holding down
the ALT key try these three combinations in your perspective viewport, (pictured).

At any point if you drift away from your object you can frame back by pressing (f). Pretty
cool camera moves, right? The perspective viewport is the only view that allows you to spin
around you object. All the other side, front, and top viewports ONLY allow for zooming and
moving/panning. You can also zoom in and out if you scroll your mouse wheel. Yes! You will
need a 3 button mouse to use Maya. Don't have one? Go buy one. I'll wait again...

ALT+Click left mouse button; This allow you to rotate freely sound your object
ALT + Middle Click; The will aSow you to pan or move across your object
ALT + Right mouse Click; The allows you to zoom in and out of your object

MOVE TOOL
When you select the move tool (w) you will see 3 arrows that allow you to move the
object. This is called your axis gizmo. Each arrow has an axis name. They are X, Y, and Z.
The X axis allows you to move your object left and right in Maya's world. The Y axis will
move your object up and down in 3D world, and the Z axis will move you in depth or
forwards and backwards. They are also color coded so that you can quickly identify them,
red is the X axis, green is the Y, and blue is the Z axis. Just think of the axes as North,
South, East, and West in your computer world.

These axes are important to help you become oriented

when you' re rotating your view in the perspective viewport
or when you need to move your object in a specific direction.
You'll need to get familiar with the lingo (terminology) of 30.
Once you get into the industry some artists will say things
like, ‘move your object in the x axis". You would need to
know what direction he's talking about. You'll also need to
understand axes because there's this thing called the Graph Editor
which, later, will allow you to refine your animation movement
based on axes.

Open your Channel Box and let's take a look at how we can move objects
more precisely. To open your Channel Box window click on the upper-right
corner icon (as shown) or click on the tab that reads CHANNEL BOX/LAYER
EDITOR on the far right of your screen. This will open a window with different
controls or parameters we can play with. You will see it says Translate XYZ,
Rotate XYZ, and Scale XYZ. In Maya “translate" is the technical word for
'move", so don't panic when you see this word.
 Grab your move tool (w) and translate the Helix object up in the Y axis.
Watch what happens in your channel box when you moved the object up.
There should be a change in value in the Translate Y box as you move it up
and down. The beauty about the Channel Box is that you can dick or the input
box and type any specific value/number you want This will make your object
move those many units in your 30 world. Play with the Translate, Rotate, and
Scale values and watch it work before your eyes.
Let me show you a neat trick. Highlight the word TRANSLATE by dieting on
it (as pictured above). It should turn blue. Now, middle mouse dick and drag
on your viewport. You will see your object move without having to grab the
axes or input a value. Neat, huh! This trick will also work for the other rotate and scale
channels.

ROTATE TOOL
I won't touch too much on the subject of the rotate tool because it
doesn't take a genius to figure out once you know the move tool. The
rotate tool has the XYZ axes, but you'll also notice it has an outer yellow
axis. This outer axis allows you to rotate the object based on the camera
angle you're viewing. If you were to rotate your camera view in the
perspective, the yellow axis will always rotate the object sideways or
perpendicular to your camera. I've never used the yellow axis. Kind of
weird to rotate relative to the camera view, but it's there if you ever
need it.
You can rotate the object in a single direction by clicking directly on top of an axis line. If
you click in-between two axes you will be able to rotate the object freely.
The move and rotate tool are like the gas and brake pedals of a car. You will always use
them and should become second nature to you. They will be your daily tools as an
animator.
Here's another neat trick, pressing the + or-on your keyboard to increase or decrease
the size of your tool.
When animating, we typically never use the rescale tool. The only time we use it is to
rescale our character to match the size of our environment.

There are also other ways of moving our objects based on the
direction the object is rotated.
For example, if I rotate my object at a -45 degree on the X axis and
moved it up in the Y, it would move straight up. But what if you wanted
to move the Helix up but in a 45 degree angle? We can see that the
translate Y axis did not rotate with the Helix. There is a way to keep
the translate axes rotating with the object as we rotate an object.

Now, if we take a look at this Helix we can see that the 3 axes are
pointing in the directions relative to the object (bottom pic). No matter how we rotate the
object, the axis will continue to rotate along with the object.

These axes modes are called "World" and "Object". The World mode
will always keep your axes pointing in the direction relative to the grid
or Maya's world and will not change. The Object mode will always
rotate the axes along the orientation of your object or relative to your
object. These modes will become useful to you as we begin animating
and need to move character controls in specific directions.
We can change the mode of the axes by double clicking on the
Move icon.
Once you double click the icon, you will get the tool settings
window on the left hand side. Under the Move Settings tab, you
can change it to world, object, and local mode. Mess around with
these tool settings and watch how they work in your viewports.
You can always reset the tool by clicking RESET TOOL on the top
of that menu.
 FILE
Most of the typical file options you find in any other program you'll find in Maya's FILE
drop-down menu. We will skip some of the ones we don't use often.

NEW SCENE: This will allow you to start a fresh new Maya scene.

OPEN SCENE: You can open a previous version of a saved file.

SAVE SCENE: Saves your work. Very important, but not many people
save their work often. I recommend that you save your work every time
you make a major change to your project or if you click on the option box
next the save scene, you'll be able to save your file automatically. Activate
the "incremental save" box in the window.

SAVE SCENE AS: Allows you to save a Maya file with a new name or a
different location.

IMPORT: Allows you to merge other files into your current scene. For
example, you can have two separate animated characters that you want to combine, you
could do FILE>IMPORT, to combine both animations into one.

EXPORT SELECTION: When you have a scene full of objects or characters and you want
to save out only specific items, you can select them and click on Export Selection. This will
allow you to save only the items you selected into one separate file.

CREATE REFERENCE: Reference is like import, but does not actually merge the file into
one. Reference is as if you're "borrowing" a separate file into your current file. In production
studios we don't import characters; we reference them into our scenes. This is important to
understand, so let me explain why. Let say there are two saved files in our computer. One
is called Dragon Rig file and the other one is called Animation file. If I open the Animation
file and reference the Dragon Rig file, I will be able to start animating the dragon rig in my
Animation File. If I find a problem with the dragon rig and I need better controls to animate
it, I can simply walk over to the rigging artist and tell him to fix the dragon rig. When the
rigging artist makes the improvements he can then save over his original Dragon Rig file, I
can then, reload the Dragon Rig File and the dragon that I had animated in my Animation
File wilt update with the new controls. If instead, I had imported the Dragon Rig file, the
rigger would have not been able to easily make changes to the rig. He would've needed to
use my Animation File and make the changes to the rig white I waited for him to finish.
Remember, reference is like "borrowing" a file. I "borrow" or reference the Dragon File into
my scene, but I'll never save over the dragon file. I can save my own animation file
separately.

REFERENCE EDITOR: The reference editor is a window that allows you to view and
manage what files you are actually referencing. You can also add, remove, and turn on and
off referenced files.

PROJECT WINDOW: This allows you to create a main folder for organizing all your Maya
files.

SET PROJECT: In case you have many project folders created, project set will allow you
to set what folder you want your files to be stored in. It sets your directory which you'll be
working from. Set project is where you rendered files get saved after they're rendered.

MAIN MENU BAR

The main menu bar is found directly under the file menu. This allows you to change a
section of you main menus depending on what you're working on. If you're an Animator,
selecting Animation will give you more tools necessary for animating. If you're a Modeler,
selecting Polygons will give you access to the tools a modeler would use and so on... We will
keep it on Animation, since our tools will be available here.

ANIMATION PREFERENCES
Animation Preferences is where we set the important
settings before we ever begin our animation work. This
button is located at the bottom right corner, next to the key
icon.
Once you click the icon you will get the Preferences
window. In the left side of the window you will see different
Categories, and on the right, you will see the General
Preference settings. You may take a look at all
preferences, but again, we will only focus on the once
related to animation. Go to CATEGORIES>SETTINGS and
we'll change the TIME from "Film (24 fps)" to something
more industry standard for games and movies, "NTSC
(30 fps)". 30 Frames per Second (fps) is the industry
standard for animating video games and doing some film
work. Always check with your produces before you ever
begin animating. Once this is set and you begin
animating, if you change it half way through your
animation, it will completely screw up the timing of your
animation. Make sure you have the correct fps. But 30
fps is good for now.

Let's move on to CATEGORIES>TIME SLIDER.

 Here, we have control over how many frames we would like to see in our timeline, the
height of our timeline, key tick size or the size of our keyframe, snapping, which should
always be on because we don't want to work with decimals; we should always work in whole
numbers. In the Playback setting you will see update view, this allows you to see you
animation playback on your selected viewport or all viewports at the same time.

The most important setting will be Playback Speed. Make sure this is set to Real-time [30
fps]. This means that the computer will use your RAM to try and play back your animation
in real time (without lag). It won't always play smoothly because this depends on how much
stuff you have in your scene. The more models and objects you add the more your
computer will slow and chug through. We will look at other methods for previewing your
animation in later chapters.
You can continue to look at the other Categories, but for now, these settings are enough
to get you started. Click SAVE at the bottom.

TIMELINE
The Timeline is the animators BFF. This is where you'll record your animation poses, play
your animation to view your characters movement in time, add or crop frames to the length
of your movie, and scrub through your poses to see how well it all works.

TIMELINE: The timeline shows you all of the frames you are currently working with. We
always work in frames because traditionally 2D animators worked in drawing frames. We
still continue to use the same concept in 3D except we don't need to draw our characters.

CURRENT FRAME: It shows you the current frame you're on.

PLAYBACK CONTROLS: The buttons starting from left to right. The first button will jump
you to the beginning frame, next button will move you one frame backward. Next button
will snap you to the previous keyframe then we have Play backwards, and Play forward. The
rest are the same but now moving forward.

GLOBAL TIME RANGE: The outer numbers in the input box will allow you to set a total
number of frames for your entire animation. For example, you can input in the first box to
start at frame 1 and the end time to be at frame 40. This means that your entire animation
goes from frame 1 to 40.

PLAYBACK TIME RANGE: The playback time range will allow you to view specific frames
within your global time range. For example, if you don't want to view all of your 40 frames,
you may view only a specific section. You can input something like frame 1 to frame 24.
This is like zooming into your timeline. You still have 40 frames but you are only viewing the
first 24 frames.

CUSTOM FRAME RANGE: This grey bar allows you to slide and view different sections of
your timeline. You can view less or more frames by clicking on the small boxes found on the
corners of the bar and dragging them in or out. You can also dick on the center of the bar
and drag it across.

AUTO KEYFRAME: This button will automatically record your poses when animating. It's
usually a good habit to set auto key to ON when you begin animating. If you don't, you will
have to manually record your poses after you are done moving your character. When you
pose and record your character you will see a red line in your timeline. That red line is
called a tick but we just call it a keyframe. That keyframe lets you know that you have
recorded a pose on a frame. If you would like to set a keyframe manually, then you will
need to press (s) on your keyboard. Keyframes are recorded on the controls of characters.
If you want to see your keyframes, select the controls you added the keyframe to.
Go ahead and play with the timeline range and slider. The more you move it and adjust
it, the sooner you will understand how to quickly work with it. It's not rocket science, even
though the program looks like it was designed by one!
 VIEWPORT SETTINGS
As if they weren't enough windows and buttons to keep you busy, here are a few more.
If you take a look at all 4 viewports you'll see that they all have small icon buttons above
each viewport. Most of these buttons are used to control how you view objects in your
viewports. Let's dive in and take a look at what each of these buttons do and when we can
use them.

SELECT CAMERA: If you click this button, you will be selecting the camera for that
viewport. Every viewport is an actual camera allowing you to view that specific angle. If
you're animating a camera you would click that button to select it, then you can move it
around and set keyframes.

CAMERA ATTRIBUTE: You will get the camera's setting window to open up. You can
change angle of view, depth of field, display options, and much more. Attribute is the same
as saying settings.

GRID: You can toggle the grid on an off if it's too annoying for you.

RESOLUTION GATE: This will frame your viewport to the actual video size you will render
the film to. For example, it will show you the 640x480,1080x720, or any resolution frame
you set. Good for seeing what will be in frame and what will be out of frame.

GATE MASK: This will frame only what you will see in your animation and will grey out
everything that will not be visible when you render your animation.

SAFE ACTION: You will get a frame showing you where most of your action/animation
should occur within. Anything outside the safe action will be too close to the edge of the
television and your viewers might have a hard time seeing what's going on. It's typically a
good idea to keep your characters within this frame.

SAFE TITLE: Same as action safe, but this is used for text. If you’re going to write
anything on the screen, you want to make sure you stay within the safe title frame. Any
text outside the frame will look too squished to the edge of a television and can give your
viewers a hard time to read the text. Going outside the safe title also looks unprofessional.

WIREFRAME: Wireframe allows you to see the segments or wires your model was created
from. Displaying your wireframe can help speed up the viewport and help your computer
from running too slow. You can also hit (4) on your keyboard to switch to wireframe mode.
This will make everything invisible and will only show you the frame of the models.

SMOOTH SHADED: You'll be able to view your model as a solid. You can also hit (5) on
your keyboard to switch to smooth shaded mode.
 SHADED WIREFRAME: Views your model as a solid with the wireframe on top.
You typically turn this on to help you visualize when you're modeling.

TEXTURE. This turns on and off textures. If your character doesn't show textures press
(6) on your keyboard to turn them on.

ISOLATE SELECTED: If you have multiple objects in your viewport you can quickly hide
all other objects. Select any object you want to keep, press Isolate Selected, this will hide
everything else.

X-RAY: This mode allows you to see through your model. It will make your model slightly
transparent while still being in smooth shaded. In other words, it allows you see how Super
Man sees.

SHOW MENU
Another useful drop-down menu will be the SHOW menu located
just above the viewport icons. Here you will find ways of showing
or hiding objects in your viewports depending on their categories.
For example, if you have many lights in your scene that make it
hard to view your model, you can simply click on the SHOW
window and uncheck LIGHTS. This will hide all lights on that
specific viewport Another great example of when to hide objects is
when you're going to create a preview of your animation. You can uncheck NURBS CURVES,
this will make all of your character's controls disappear and will show you only the model.
This way, when you make your preview, you only focus on the character's animation and
not on the 100 annoying controls.
Once you jump into the industry and you have liquids and
dynamic simulations in you scene, you'll notice that this stuff makes
your computer run very slow. The best thing to do is to go to your
SHOW menu and turn them off temporarily while you're working in
your animation.
This is very useful, but when you're a beginner it can sometimes
be forgetful. You'll check off POLYGONS and wonder where your
model has gone or where anything is! Always make sure you unhide
all before you blame yourself. May not be much, but for a beginner,
even the obvious may seem difficult
Here's a list of some common categories you'll end up showing
and hiding often.
NURBS CURVES: When checked off, it hides all characters controls
or any type curves you have in your viewport
POLYGONS: Hides all polygons. Typically every model/object in
your scene should be created out of polygons. Sometimes NURBS
Surfaces are found on the eyes instead of polygons.
LIGHTS: Hides all lights you have in your viewport CAMERA: Hides
all cameras you have set up in your viewport. JOINTS: Hides all
bones/joints within your character for that viewport.
As I mentioned before, every viewport has its individual controls
and icons. This gives you a lot of ways of customizing how you want
to view things in viewports.
This chapter looked at many of the basic tools for Maya without
having taken extensive courses. You can see it as cutting corners to
a 4 year course or even an eight month program. Of course, we're
only going to be looking at animation and basic tools, but this can
easily get you started in animation. In the later chapters we will
begin to arm ourselves with intermediate to advanced set of tools so
that we'll not only animate well, but surpass entry-level animation. If
you produce good animation from the start, you can already add
work towards your demo reel. Believe it or not, look for animation
jobs once you have a decent reel!
 Insight: Being in the industry I see that not many entry-level animators know or use
additional tools for animation. When I first started working in studios, I thought everyone
would know tricks or would work faster than I did. The reality is, not many schools teach
about using scripts or tricks for getting things done faster. I will show you some scripts that
will make your life easier in later chapters. Ultimately, making you a faster animator.

Bouncing Ball Animation

Okay, let's start animating the infamous bouncing ball. I know you guys want to jump
into animating monsters and ninjas, but if you can't manage animating one simple object,
you won't be able to manage the 20 or more controls an actual professional rig will have.
Before we dive into cold water, I will advise you to have read the Learning Autodesk Maya
chapter so that you understand the tools and can follow along easier and quickly. In this
lesson I will "jam-pack" a lot of the professional tools you'll use as a game/film animator,
but will also keep it short so that it won't fry your brain.

Let's launch Maya and get started. We'll begin by creating a ball on top of a ground. Go
to CREATE> POLYGON PRIMITIVES> SPHERE. Return to the same menu again, and create a
PLANE (No, not an airplane, a ground plane). Now scale the plane so that it creates a large
ground under the ball. Move the sphere on top of the ground, and turn off your perspective
grid. Your scene should look like this -Ta da!

Make sure that all of your Animation Preferences are as we described on page 61. MAKE
SURE YOUR AUTO KEYFRAME IS SET ONI Your animation Frames per Seconds (FPS) should
be set at 30 and play at Real Time. Now, let's get this ball bouncing. The first thing we need
to do is select the ball. Go to frame 1 on your timeline and press "s" on your keyboard. This
should create a keyframe on frame You'll know you've created a keyframe when you see a
red line in your timeline. A keyframe is basically a starting or ending point of movement. In
this illustration, we now have a keyframe on frame one. This means we set the ball's
movement to start at the ground.

Before we can move the ball up, we need to move a couple of frames ahead.
Let's go up to about frame 15. On frame 15 we can move the ball up in the air.
Pop quiz!
Which axis are we going to move the ball so that it moves straight up? Will it
be the X,Y, or Z axis?...tick-tock, tick-tock.

Did you guess the X axis? Well, you're wrong! It's the Y axis! Peek at page 56 and see
why. Select the ball and move it up in the Y axis, or if you want to be cool, type a value of 6
in the Translate Y in your Channel Box. The Channel Box is located on the right side of
Maya. It should look something like this.

Here's a picture of the Channel Box with a value of 6 in the

Translate Y. This means you've moved the ball 6 units up in
the Y axis.
 If you look at frame 15, notice that Maya automatically set a keyframe for you. This is
the benefit of having auto keyframe turned on. You can concentrate on moving your ball
without worrying about setting keyframes. If you don't have auto keyframe on then you
didn't get a keyframe on frame 15. You'll need to manually press the "s" key or turn on auto
key.
If you click and drag in your timeline you will see that the ball moves from frame 1
through frame 15.

To finish this animation we'll need to bring the ball back down. I will show you how to
copy your keyframe from frame 1 and paste it on frame 30. if you don't have 30 frames on
your timeline, make sure you extend your time range.

Let's go back to frame 1. Right click on keyframe 1 and click COPY from
the pop up window. Unfortunately this is the way to copy a keyframe in
Maya. I wish it was as easy as pressing Ctl+C for copy, but this command
won't work in Maya. I will later show you a faster method for copying, but for
now, you need to know the basic method of copying a keyframe.
Let's move to frame 30 in our timeline and paste the same ball position we
got from frame 1. On frame 30, right click and got to PASTE>PASTE.
You should have an exact copy of the ball's position from frame 1 on frame
30. Now we can click the PLAY button and see the ball bounce in a continuous
loop.

What do you think? Not very realistic, right!

"BounclngBall_ Weightless"
The ball looks like its floating on the moon with no real weight. It order to add weight to
the ball we need to make the ball hit the ground with impact and float a bit longer at the
top as it loses speed?
Let's take a look at how we can manipulate the
movement and give the ball realistic weight without adding more keyframes. Select the
ball and open a window called the Graph Editor. This will be a basic introduction to the
graph.

Go to WINDOW>ANIMATION EDITORS>GRAPH EDITOR.

This window will open.

You might be asking yourself, "What in the noddle world is this?" THIS MY FRIENDS is
how you finesse animation. The graph editor will have its own chapter, but I will show you
an overview of how it's used. Basically, the graph editor shows you change in motion
through time. It shows you when something speeds up, is moving steady, slows down, or is
not moving. These movements are shown to you in the form of lines and curves. We'll need
to learn to read these lines to understand what's happening to our animation and which
curve to adjust.
 Here are some examples of how to interpret the scary concept of curves in the graph
editor with a simple visual approach.

THIS INFORMATION IS GOLD!

Study it, practice it, try it, and learn it.

When we see a straight line between two keyframes in the graph

editor, this means there is no movement on the object. Just imagine it
like a heart monitor, when you see the flat line, it means its dead. It's
standing still.

When you see a line slowly curving, it means the object is picking up
speed gradually. You can imagine this to be like an airplane. It slowly
picks up speed until it goes fast enough to fly. We call this Ease Out. In
other words, ease out of a stop.

This line means that the object is moving at a constant speed. It's
not speeding up or slowing down; it's just cruising at one steady
speed.

This curve shows the object slowing down. You can see how it
comes straight from the top down to a curve and into a flat line. Just
like the airplane example, but now the airplane is coming for a landing.
This curve is known as Ease In. The object will be easing in to a stop.

This curve shows a combination of movement. Reading it from left

to right, we see that it has some movement and begins to slow down
towards the top, nearly coming to a flat line at the top, but then picks
up speed again and curves back down at a constant speed. We call this
Easy in to Easy Out.

In this example we were looking at the translate Y curve, which

means the object is moving up and down. If you select rotation instead of translation, you'll
read the graph the same way, except the object is now rotating.

Let's get back to our bouncing ball and the graph editor. On the left side of the graph
editor you'll see the Outllner column showing you the name of the selected object and all of
translations, rotation, and scale axes. On the right side you will see the Graph View with
curves representing the movements of our animated objects.

You can click on the left side of the graph editor window to the different translation,
rotation, and scale axes and you'll notice that the only curve we see is on the TRANSLATE Y.
The other axes will show a flat line on the right side of the window, meaning there is no
movement. Makes sense because we've only moved the ball up and down on the Y axis.
Note: In the Graph Editor you can zoom and pan around by using the same mouse
shortcuts as if we were moving in the perspective window. You can also highlight keyframes
and press "F" to frame on them.

The bottom numbers in the graph show us the frames

and the left side numbers shows us the values in our
channel box. We can verify that because the top
keyframe on the Y curve lines up with the value 6 we
input in the channel box.

«Can you read this curve?

The curve is only showing us the up and down
movement of the ball (Translate Y), how can we piece
together what we learned about the curves with what is
happening to the ball. Let's read it, the curve is telling
us that the ball is slowly picking up speed in the up
direction, slowing down at the top nearly to a flat line,
but then picks up speed again in the down direction,
and finally slows down to a near stop as it hits the
ground.

What we need to do is change the curve in a way that will give our ball some weight.
Something like this...
 Highlight keyframe 1 in the graph and you'll get handles you can
use to turn the curve. Turn the handle so the curve goes up at a
near 45 degrees. Now do the same for the keyframe on frame 30
and turn the handle so it curves up. You should end with this nice
arc. (Picture above)

Now if we "read" this curve, the ball should shoot straight up

from frame 1, begins to slow down by frame 15, and accelerates downward to frame 30
without losing speed as it hits the ground. Notice that by removing the flat lines from the
curve makes the ball hit the ground harder. We removed the slow bounce.

Click the play button and watch your first amazing ball bounce with some realistic weight
come to life.
“BouncingBair
Now you need to make this into a movie so that you can add
this to — your album of "My First Animations".

Let's make a movie preview.

Go to WINDOW>PLAYBLAST>click the option box on the

side.
This will open up a window that will allow you to create a
movie preview and see your animation without lag or what we
call "real time."

When you open your Playblast Options window you can do

an EDIT>RESET SETTINGS to make sure you have some
default settings. Go to FORMAT and change it to .avi or .qt.
Go ahead and click Playblast. Maya will run through your
animation and show you a Windows Media Player or Quicktime
movie when it's done.
Bring out the Champaign bottle; you've done your first animation!
More details on Playblast on a later chapter.

Look At All those Controls

I remembered the first day I got a character rig and opened it on Maya. I was confused
as to how to animate it, what control did what, or how to manage all controls to make him
move. It just seemed like too much, but I knew I wanted to learn this stuff. In this chapter I
will give you a method for approaching animation on any rig you come across in your entire
animation life. Once you see one or two professional rigs, you'll notice that all rigs are
basically the same no matter what type of human, creature, animal or object you have.
 These controls are what the animators use to move, pose, and record the characters
movement. You'll never select the actual model to move it, use the controls.

Let's take a look at a typical biped character rig to

get familiar with how the controls function and how to
set up texture files to get some color on the model.

First step in to get a hold of this rig, if you haven't

done so already, you can visit
www.AnimationMethods.com for download
information.

Now that we have it, go to FILE>OPEN

SCENE...Find the Caveman Maya file.

As soon as you open Caveman, you'll see a grey colored caveman with no texture. Why
does it look like this?

We need to assign the texture files to the caveman. How do we do this?

We need to open a window called the Hypershade, which we'll use to reassign all of the
missing texture/color files that came with our downloaded Caveman folder.

Go to WINDOW>RENDERING EDITORS>HYPERSHADE

In this Hypershade window you can see

all of the textures that are being used in
the whole scene. Now we need to click on
the TEXTURES tab located right above the
spheres.

Clicking on this tab will allow you to see all of the missing textures.
The only textures we're concerned about are the files at the very bottom
which are named “file2? through “file8”. Double click on file2. You will
see the Attribute Editor window pop open on the right side of Maya.

We need to take a look at where it says IMAGE NAME. At the end of

that directory name you will see that Maya is trying to look for a file
called "...lrisTexture.jpg." Now click on the yellow folder icon on the
right side and find the “lrisTexture.jpg” that came within the
downloaded folder of your CavemanPACK.
Maya will now ask you to locate the 'lrisTexture.jpg' file yourself.
Once you find it in your CavemanPACK folder, select it and click OPEN.
Now you will see an image of the Iris appear in your Hypershade
indicating that it was found.

Typically if you update one missing texture file in

 You can check by going to any viewport and pressing 6 on your
keyboard.

Ta-daa! We got color on our Caveman.

In case you still don't see color, you may need to repeat the
process of double clicking on the texture "file3" through 'fite3' and
finding the files yourself as we've done. Be sure to check for the
proper image name.

Sometimes the texture files are found by Maya but are simply
not updated or refreshed on your Hypershade. To do this, simply
dick on RELOAD or a quick trick is to double dick on the icon that
says SAMPLE.

Most of the rigs you download online or if you already animate

professional, you know that you will always have to do these
steps. These are necessary to get the textures bade on to your rig.
ft seems tedious but it is necessary.

It has become a habit to create all of the rig controls with

what's called NURBS Curves. We use these curves because when it comes to making our final movie,
these curves won't show, or in other words, they don't render.

Typically rig controls are organized by colors.

Blue controllers move his left side, red controls the right side,
and the ye How controls the center of his body as well as some
facial controls.

Let's start with the bottom of the character's controls and work
our way up.

Main Control
The C shape controller on the bottom of the character is called the Main controller or Global
Control. This can be any shape in your rig.

This control allows you to move the whole character to a specific location.
Most main controllers will also allow you to rescale the character, but in this
rig, we can't. This main control is typically not animated, as most of the
animation is done by the other controllers. It is mostly used to define the
ground for the character. For example, if the caveman was going to jump off
a box, I would move the character on top of the box with the other controls
and leave the main control on the ground.

This will ensure that the legs come in contact with the ground.
 Some rigs will have "hidden controls". For example, if you select the main control and look at the
Channel box. You will see extra attributes that allow you to change things on the character. This
particular rig has 3 additional controls.

Loincloth Dynamic: This allows the cloth of the caveman to move realistically when
turned on without having to animate it ourselves.

Smooth: This defines how smooth you want the characters mesh/polygons to look. You
want this set to a low smoothing while animating so that your computer doesn't slow down
or crash while you're trying to work. Setting the rig to high smooth is okay to do only when
you are completely done with the animation and are ready to make a preview or render it.

Beard Visibility: This will show or hide the caveman's beard. Again, just like the loincloth,
you want to keep this on hide, so that your computer doesn't slow down as it tries to
calculate the realistic movements while you're trying to animate.

When dealing with the loincloth or the beard on this character, you always want to keep
them on off or hidden until you're done with all of the animation. This keeps things running
faster on your computer.

Foot Control

This control allows for moving and rotating the foot, but not scale. Again, you have many
more hidden controls on the right side in the Channel Box. This controller gives you detail
movement over how the foot bends and rolls. You can simply input any number In the
channel box and see how the foot moves or If you want to move the foot manually, you
can highlight one attributes name and middle-mouse click and drag on the viewport. You
should see movement in the foot as you drag your mouse across. This is a very handy way
of moving things when you need subtle movements.

A great feature about this caveman rig is that it gives you

Short leg: Is non-active.
the ability to stretch it, allowing for more cartoony animation.
Stretchy: Allows you to turn on or off the stretchy leg
feature. 0 means off and 1 means it's on.
Bendy: Allows you to get a curve bend on the knee instead
of an angle bend.
Works well with stretchy turned on. Gives it a rubber hose
cartoon look for the most part of these tutorials we will keep
the Stretchy and Bendy off.

Knee Control
 The knee controls seem very simple to use, you can only move them in any direction, but
you can't rotate or rescale these, Even though the knees seem simple enough, most good
rigs will give you the option to link these controls to different parts of the body for easy
management.

If you click on the knee control spheres and look at the Channel
Box you will notice that there's an attribute called Space Switch.

Foot: This will link the knee control to the foot control This way, as
you move the foot control the knee will move with it.
Root: This will link the knee control to the Hip control. As you move
the character forward from the hips the knee control will follow them.
World: This will link the knee controls to the world. In other words, as you animate your
character the knees controls will stay put. This means you will have to move the knee
controllers manually.
Depending on the type of control you want or the action of the character, you can link
these to your liking.

Swav Control
 This sway control is found underneath the star shape controller. It is used to rotate and
sway the hips of the character. In this particular rig set up you have the advantage of even
moving it and stretching it, but will not allow you to rescale. Some rigs will have the sway
controller floating on the side of the hips. If you're not sure of a controller, just select it and
try it out.
This controller has Extra Hip attributes located in the Channel Box.

When you switch ON the Extra Hip Control you

will get an up arrow shape control appear on the
side of the hips allowing you to have more control
over the hip. For the most part, we'll try to keep a
limited number of controls visible. It makes it
easier while learning and less to manage while
animating. Switch this to OFF for now.

Hip Control

The hip control is also known as the Center of Mass

(COM) or Center of Gravity (COG). Might have more
common names but it simply means its where most of the
character's weight would be. This is the star shape
controller and it's the controller you'll be using a lot while
moving the character.

For example, if we wanted to place the caveman on top

of a box, you would need to select the hip control as well as both feet controllers. This will
leave the main controller on the ground so if the caveman were to jump of the box, the feet
would know where the ground is based on the location of the
main controller.

This hip control also has a Back Control attribute on the

Channel Box. If you switch this from IK to FK you will notice
that the controller for the chest will disappear and you will
get 2 controllers to replace the chest area.

I find that FK back controllers make it easier to

pose the character with finer control, but this is
completely optional. Grab the two new controllers on
the chest and rotate them.

Look at how it bends and twists the character.

For now, let's leave it as the default IK. I will

explain the details of what FK and IK are and the benefits of when we can use one over the
other in a later chapter.
 Stomach control
The next controller up from
the hips Is the stomach
control which allows you to
move, rotate, and scale It out
a bit to give It some breathing
movements. Breathing Is
useful when the character Is
not moving but you want to
keep your character looking
alive.

It has the same linking functions as of the knee controllers. You can link the stomach
controller to the root or the hip controller, the chest controller or the world.

Best setting for the stomach control would be linked to the root/hip. Linking the
stomach to the world probably won't do you any good, unless you plan to use this as part of
a gag that you're trying to animate.

Chest control

The chest control allows you to bend the caveman from the torso giving you some good
range of motion without having to switch the spine controls to FK.
You also get linking options on the Channel Box for linking the chest control to the world
or to the root/hip control. Normally having it set to the root is ideal, as It will follow the
position of the hip movement, but If you link it to the world, the chest controller will no
longer follow the caveman. Again, I don't recommend linking to the world unless you have
plans for doing so.

Let's skip some controllers and move Quickly as some of these controllers are not difficult
to figure out.
 Arm controller

Starting from the Clavicle

Control down to the Fingers
you can rotate each of the
separate joints. This is fairly
simple when it comes to
moving the arm and fingers.

The only control I would pay

special attention to would be
the elbow control. The elbow
control allows you to rotate it in a 3 axes, X, Y, and Z. The only problem with this is that a
realistic elbow joint cannot rotate in the X and Z axes. It should only be able to rotate on
the Y axis.
Even though it would seem easy to grab the rotate tool and rotate the elbow joint as
you'd like, it's not a good ideas as it is not realistic and can lead to rotational problems
when we begin animating. I would recommend locking and hiding these rotational channels
so that we can't rotate these axes by mistake.

Hide and Freeze Channels

Select the "_ElbowFKCtrl" control and highlight the
rotate X and rotate Z. To select both channel attributes
hold down CTRL on your keyboard and select the X and
Z axes in the Channel Box.

Now right click and hold on the selected channels and

you will see a large drop down window appear.

Release mouse on LOCK AND HIDE SELECTED.

This will ensure that you don’t rotate in those
specified channels. They channels will become
frozen and will be hidden from view in your channel
box.
Now would be a good time to freeze and hide the
other elbow control too.

This will leave you with only Rotate Y. Now if you

select the elbow control on the caveman and try to
rotate it by the 3 axes, you will soon find that you
can't, it will only bend the way a normal elbow joint
should bend. This is the proper way an elbow joint
should bend. I know you probably don't agree with
this type of rotation, but most of the rotation is
done through the wrist and the shoulder rotating,
giving you the illusion that your elbow is the one rotating in such a way. If you need to
rotate the elbow so that it points up, you will need to rotate the shoulder control.

Unfreeze and Show Channels

If for any reason you want the rotational channels back the way they were, I will show
you how to get them back.

On top of the Channel Box you will see EDIT.

Click on edit to reveal the drop down menu. From this
menu select CHANNEL CONTROL.
Click on the rig's elbow control to change the hidden
attributes.

On the left column of this window you will see what

is currently available to use in your Channel Box.

In the center column we have all of the hidden

attributes from the Channel Box.
The right column will display attributes that you
can see in your Channel Box but that won't allow you
to animate or set a keyframe.

From the middle column find the Rotate X and

Rotate Y, which we had previously hidden. All we need
to do is move both of these attributes to the left
column.

Click on the MOVE button and Ta-daa! We have our

three rotate axes back. If they are still
frozen in the channel box, right dick on
them again and go to UNLOCK
SELECTED.

Hand control
 The hand control is usually found floating right above the rigs hand. This control is similar
to the foot control. It has a lot of controls that can be found on the Channel Box. This
control is not movable.

This control is meant to make animating the fingers a

lot easier. For example, instead of selecting each finger
control and taking time to shape each finger around the
club, we have the “Grab" attribute which will allow us to
do this by increasing the value to 10.
We can also bend a finger easily by selecting all of the
Thumbl, Thumb2, and Thumb3 and middle mouse click
and drag on your viewport.
You can use this technique of highlight selections to
quickly and easily manipulate the shape of any fingers.
We also have Bendy Arms like we had on the knee
controls. Once we switch Bendy Arms to ON we will get
additional controls on the arm which allow you to bend
the arms in cartoony ways.
FK and IK switch will give you a different method of
animating an arm in a character. To switch from IK to FK
you need to either set a value of 0 or 10. Some rigs will
switch from 0 to 1 instead of 0 to 10. FK and IK are either
ON or OFF. Make sure you don't leave it set to a value in-
between.
The FK and IK can be a bit tricky to deal with if you're
new to animation so I will dedicate the next chapter on
how to use FK/IK.
Switching the arm to IK at 0, you'll notice that the arm controls changed how they work.
You have fewer controls on the elbow and shoulder, but have a new type of control for the
elbow. The elbow control has some channels we can play.
 Space Switch Hand: This will link the elbow control to the movements of the hand so that
if follows along. This is usually not the best setting for the elbow as you don't get much
control over the position.
Space Switch Root: This links the elbow control to the hip control. This means only when
you move the hip controls the elbow control will follow. This is usually a good setting to
have. If your character is walking the elbow controls will follow.
Space Switch World: No matter where you move your character, the elbow controls will
always stay put. This setting is okay to use if your character is doing some acting and hand
gestures but is not walking.

Head control

The head controls are very easy to use as now you can begin to see a pattern with most
of the controls. The head can rotate and move but cannot scale. It also gives you linking
parameters to mess with.
You have ear controls that allow you to rotate the ears giving you more than extra
controls you can ask for.
Right under his jaw you get his jaw control. This control is what we use for animating the
mouth expressions and lip sync when he talks. This jaw controls does not give you the wide
range of motions necessary for creating the mouth shapes when talking, but it's what you
can use to get started. The advanced mouth controls are located on the small face control
located on top of the rig.

Eye Control
 The main rectangle eye controller will give you the option to link the controller with the
head or to the world.
The eye control is a simple control to use. If we select
the large rectangle control we will be able to move both
eyes around. If you select either the blue or red circle
controls, this will move individual eyes. Perfect for making
funny crossed eye looks.

EyeAimFloat Head: If you set the eye control to head, it

will follow the direction of where you rotate the head,
keeping the eyes locked in the
direction of the head. This setting is good if you
character is running around a scene and you want the eye
controller to follow as the character moves.
EyeAimFloat World: This setting will keep the eyes fixed in one position and won't move
until you move the eye controller yourself. This setting is good when you need full control
over the eyes, allowing for detailed and subtle eye acting.

Use this when a character is acting in front of a camera with no much body movement
and mostly hand and head gestures. This way we get more control over where the eyes
look.

Face Controls

All rigs will have a different face set up and no rig will ever be the same, but they will be
similar in the way they are controlled. This caveman rig has most facial controls in the
channel box. If you select the eyebrow controller you will see that all of the attributes for
the eyebrow are in the Channel Box. Go to the channel box and play with all of the eyebrow
controllers. Now do the same for the eye and mouth controls.

Eyebrows Eyes Mouth/Cheeks

 Keep In mind to highlight a channel attribute and then middle mouse click and drag on your
viewport.

Let's select the large round facial controller. You'll

see In your Channel Box an attribute that reads More
Control. Turn this ON and prepare to be blown away.

Now we have activated the full facial features on

this rig. This gives you specific controls over eyebrows,
cheeks, nose and lip. It seems like a lot to animate but
I will show you tricks for speeding up the animation
process. For now, play with the controls and get to
know how they move the face.

The Club

To place the club in either hand, first

select the club control and remove the
values found In the Channel Box. Bring the
Translations and Rotation values to 0.
This will not connect the club to the
hand it will only place it into position. Now
pick which side you want the hand to be. If
you want the club to be linked to the right
hand, change the
RHandParent value
from 0 to 10.
Now If you move
the arm, the club will
follow the hand. If you want to switch It to the other hand you will
need to 0 it on the right hand and add a value of 10 to the left hand.
Finish It off by going to the hand controller and increasing the GRAB
finger control to 10.

Overview

In a nut shell, it's Important to take a look at any rig you're given and spend a couple of
minutes becoming familiar with all its controls. The last thing you want to do Is to waste
time looking for controls during professional production.
All characters, monsters or objects that are professionally
rigged will share common controls, but may be arranged in
different locations. For example, most facial controls tend to look
more like this and are located on the side of the character's
head. (See picture)
You simply pick the small slider controls and move them
around. I personally find this set up to be much easier and give
the most basic user controls. For detail control, you can always
use the controls found on the character's face.
There are ways of managing all these controls to be easier
and convenient for animators. We will look at using Quick
Selection Sets in a later chapter.
You should now have some confidence when given any rig.
You know what control does what and where to look for extra
control.
When you break things down into small sections you can fully
understand how something is structured. A rig is what the animator will use during his
career so understanding how rigs move makes it easier during the animation process. I'll
show you how to manage controls so that crazy fun rigs such as these are fun to animate.

How to use FK/IK

Forward Kinematics (FK) and Inverse Kinematics (IK) are just fancy names we give them
in the 3D world so that we know what set up we're using to animate the arms. We say
things like, "How are you animating the arms, FK or IK?" I remember not knowing how to
use FK/IK, how to switch it, or when to use one over the other. Let me give you a better
understanding of how it works.
FK allows you to move the joints from the shoulder out to the wrist. Going from the
shoulder out to the hand is considered going forward.

Forward Kinematics

What this means is that if you were to select and move the shoulder everything in front
of it will move with it. Which is true, the elbow, wrist and fingers will move along just by
moving the shoulder control.
Now if we were to select the elbow control, only parts in front of the elbow will move
along with it. Notice that things behind it don't move now, such as the shoulder.

Again, if we select the writst control, all of the samll finger controls will move with the
wrist and anything behind the wrist control won't move, such as the elbow and the
shoulder, This effect goes all the way through the finger* is known as Forward Kinematics
or FK. Things move forward.

If we switch the arm to IK by inputting a 0 in the FK/IK channel, now the arm movement
will work reversed or inversed. We can select the wrist control and everything behind it will
move with It, such as the elbow and the shoulder. Move the wrist and watch as everything
moves with it. Because of this we don't need the shoulder control or other controls around
the arm. The box controller on the hand can now move the whole arm. This is known as
Inverse Kinematics because the normal direction has now been flipped (Inversed).
Inverse Kinematics
You’ll notice that you get a different type of elbow control, which resembles the knee controls.
It is actually used the same way. As you move the hand around you will need to move the
small spherical elbow control as well.

When to uk Forward Kinematics

Forward Kinematics is best used when a character acting with dialogue and is mowing his
hands freely to gesture end make his pomt They're many scenanos when It's beneficial to
use FK on the arms, but marty used for free hand movements:
Walking/Running
Free hand movements
Acting/Talking/Hand gestures
Moving a tot in a scene

FK will also definitely give you a better arc in the arms and can alow for fewer
keyframing because of it. For example, if a character was svr^iy watom and swinging his
arm, you could essentially create an arc with only two poses an the arm, reducing the
amount of keyframes and tene spent anmitiy.

I will demonstrate this by using the arm

controls. We start wtth pose 1 at frame 1 and end
at pose 2 at frame 40 Because we are wortang in
Forward Kinematics on the arras, when we pfey
the animation, we will instantly get an arc. We see
that in- between these poses we get a middle
pose that maker aw are work.
We can focus our attention on mating this look
smooth and fluid as opposed to spending a lot o#
time getting the arc to look correct by adding
more keyframes. I would need to do is add a
middle pose on frame 20 to add some drag to the
hand Now we’re adding some style instead of
worrying about the arc. "FK_Arc".
 If we were to do the same animation using Inverse Kinematics we would not get an arc
as easily with two poses.

We would end up with a linear motion as

illustrated. We would need to spend more time
adding a pose in- between that will help us create an
arc. The position of the middle pose will need to be
critical to make the arc work. We also need to be
careful to not stretch the hand control too far out
_IK_2keyframes"

By adding a 3rd pose in- between pose 1 and 2 we

can achieve a good arc.
It can definitely take more time to animate because
we need to make sure that our arc works and we also
need to add some drag/style to the animation. If we
were making this character walk, we would managing
the middle pose of the hand. "IK_Arc”

Another advantage over animating in FK is that when

we move our character by the hip controller, the arms
will move forward with the body.

It's because of this

reason that it's a good idea to animate in FK when the character
is going to be moving a lot in a scene. This way the arms move
along with the body and you don't need to worry about trailing
the arms with the body.

You can imagine how much easier it would be to animate the

arms in FK if the caveman was running. Of course, we still need
to move the hips and the feet together to get him to walk, but
we no longer need to worry about the hand controllers being left
behind.

The disadvantage of using Inverse Kinematics for a moving

character is that the hands don't follow
the body. As you move the hips forward the harms will stay behind.
This is the nature of using IK. If we wanted the caveman to walk, we
would need to move the hips, feet, AND THE HAND. Sounds to me
like more controllers to move and manage. Not that great.

But Inverse Kinematics also has great advantage that Forward

Kinematics doesn't have.

When to use Inverse Kinematics

Inverse Kinematics is best used when a character's hand wifi not
move from an object or location, such as:
Keeping a hand on a door knob.
Leaning a hand on a table.
 CSmbing a tatter.
Pushing or pu№ng objects.
Hanging from a iedge.
Doing push-up exercises.
Because inverse Kinematics does not move the hands with the body we can use this to
keep the hands locked/planted on certain objects. Think of the IK for the hands the same
way as the feet controls. The feet stay planted on the ground because they also work with
the IK control set up. We are basically changing the hand set up controls to wort the same
as the feet.

If we wanted the caveman to push on the wall with his right hand, l would make his right
hand IK and keep is left hand FK to animate is freely. this way I can plant his right hand on
the wall as he pushes on tit. If I wanted to use both hands to push the wall, I would switch
his left hand to IK as well.

Depending on the action, you can habe one or both hands switched to IK.

Another great advantage of using IK arms is that you have a separate e*4ww control to
animate it easier than on FK. If you wanted to move the arm j£l K anticipates pushing on
the wall, you would lead the hand the elbow n other words, the elbow goes up first before
you move anything eise.
Leading your arm movement with the elbow makes your zrm&j&r.. fcok very fluid. In
other words the elbow comes up first then tre hand fo*3ws TSse more you exaggerate this
motion the more fluid ft will look, if you «ant to go for realism then you can tone it down a
bit

FK/IK Blending
We will you be stuck using FK or IK once you start animating?

NO. Luckily, we can always swftch/Wend during our an animation from to the other. The
tricky part is bending from one to the other witout having it be noticeable. Sometimes you
will get a pop in the am while you're switch rz Iris is sometimes due to poor keyframe
management daring the swftd; or the Cm ng is too fast between the blending.

Let's take a look at how we can switch from FK to IK using Mr. Caveman.
We'S start by selecting the BC/tX controller which is found in the Finger
Hand control.

In order to see the Wenc, we need to blend between from one arm
position to another. I will star by changing the left arm from FK and
Wending to IK.

This is my set up. FK Is set by adding a value of

10 in the channel box. Now I will add a keyframe on
the L_Hand controller to set the FK on frame 1.
I rotated his shoulder down to his side and also
added a keyframe on his shoulder control on frame 1
to establish the arm starting position.
 Now let's move to frame 20. On frame 20 we are
going to switch his arm to IK. Let's finish this by
selecting his L_Hand controller and setting a value
of 0 on the IK/FK to switch to IK. If you have auto
keyframe on you will automatically get a keyframe
on frame 20. If not, press "s" to set a keyframe
manually.

If you scrub in the timeline from frame 1 to 20,

you'll notice that the arm animated upward going
from FK to IK. The FK controls will also disappear and the IK controllers will appear. You can
also move the IK wrist controller where you'd like it to be and keyframe it in that position.

Overview
Starting position- Keyframe the character's arm pose and also keyframe where the FK
controller attribute is found.
Switch/Blend - Move forward in the timeline and switch to IK.
Ending Position- Keyframe the character's ending arm pose and keyframe the IK.

You can switch from FK and IK as many times as you need to, but always make sure the
switch looks smooth and unnoticeabte.

I would highly suggest you make the attempt to try and animate with FK then reattempt
to animate the same animation in IK. When I first started learning animation I always
animated my characters in IK and I hated everything about FK.
I didn't like that FK had more controls to manage and rotate. IK seemed easier for me at
that time. As I got closer to getting a job in the industry I felt I needed to have a
fundamental knowledge of FK in case I was asked to animate only in FK. So I tried
animating in FK with an open mind and hacked at it for a couple of hours. When I finally
finished my animation I realized my arm animation was better, smoother, and fluid. The
arcs looked better in FKfor me. Now I'm in love with both FK and IK and will switch between
them when necessary.
I would recommend you try both methods and use what works for you. If you like IK, use
IKI If you like FK use that! There is no right or wrong way of animating, there are only
methods. Use the method that gives you the fastest and best animation you can possibly
produce. When you work as an animator you will have deadlines. Don't struggle figuring out
FK/IK. There is no much time for experimenting during production.

Selection Set

Selection Set is a time saving way of collecting multiple rig controllers and selecting them
all with a click of one easy button. Say good-bye to spending most of your day clicking and
clicking controllers.
opposite, once you have a group of controls

Holding down CTRL + Shift while clicking

controllers will allow selecting MULTIPLE controllers
at once.

The opposite, once you have a group of controls

selected, holding down CTRL and clicking
controllers will allow you to deselect them one by
one.

This is important for an animator to know, since

we're going to be selecting and keyframing many
controllers at once.

T
he
 Most beginner animators think that by setting a keyframe on one control, that all body
controllers have been keyframed. This is NOT true. A keyframe is set only on the controller
you selected and keyframed. For example, you'll keyframe the head control and later you'll
select the hip control and wonder why your keyframe disappeared. Well, the keyframe did
not disappear, you just selected a controller that has no keyframes on it. Select the head
controller and you'll see the keyframe is still there.

For that reason, a selection set allows you to manage where your keyframes are and
quickly select grouped controllers with the press of a button.

New Shelf
Let's look at how to create a selection set button and add it to your custom shelf. This is
what a shelf looks like.

This shelf is used to add tools and buttons you use frequently to access them instantly.
We will create an empty shelf to start fresh.

1. Click on the small down arrow located on the far left of the
shelf.
Click on Shelf Editor in the drop-down menu...
This will open a window allowing you to customize and name
buttons.

This is what the Shelf Editor looks like. On the left column you'll
see icons allowing you to arrange, create, and delete shelves. On
the right column it shows you what tools you have in your current
shelf.

2. Click the small icon with a star on it, "New Shelf" on the left column.
You'll see your new shelf appear on the left
column list. Right under the Icon list you'll See RENAME. I'll name my shelf
"Selections." Click "Save All Shelve»" at the bottom.

Make sure you're on your new SelectlonSet shelf. Now you have a brandspankin' new
shelf ready to be loaded with tools and buttons you'd like.

Selection Set
Let's make a group control selection button. To make selecting the controls easier and
not accidentally select polygons on the character or environment, let's deactivate the ability
to select polygons by clicking "Select Surface Object" button off.
This will ensure you only select curves (controls) and not polygons by accident.
 Now you can select all of the controls by clicking and dragging over your caveman or you
can manually add controls by holding down CTRL + SHIFT and clicking controls. Don't add
the facial or global controls to the selection.
A good selection set would be to only Include body
controls.
Include:
All Feet/Knee controls
Hip/Sway control
Torso control
Neck/Head control
Arm/Wrist controls
Finger Controls

Exclude:
Facial Controls
Global Control

Individual finger Joint controls can be optional as we already have control over the
fingers using the floating hand control.
Now that we have all of the body controls selected we can easily make a button by going
to CREATE>SETS>QUICK SELECTION SET...

All we need to do Is give the selection set button a name. I'll call mine "body". Once
you're done, click "Add to Shelf'.

Important. Don't use capital letters and

numbers to name your set, or the
selection set won't work.

This will automatically create a button and add it to your current shelf.

Let's try the button

Click off the character and make sure nothing is selected.
Click the "body' button we just created and BOOM!
We have quickly selected the same controllers in one click.
 You can make as many selection sets as you'd like. You can create one for specific parts
of the body, such as the whole left arm, only upper body, only lower body, only finger
controls or any combination you want.
Selection set is also great for facial controls when they are set up with a Graphical User
Interface (GUI). You can organize your selections sets by
Eyebrow controls
Eyelid controls
Mouth controls
Cheek controls
Expression controls
Selection set is a quick and easy way to keep track of your keyframes and controllers. I
want to stress to you that selection sets ore important when animating!

Selection Set using the Script Editor

Here is another way of doing the same thing as a Quick Selection Set If you don't know
scripting don't panic, there's no coding involved.
Open your script editor window by clicking on this icon located at the bottom
right corner of Maya's command line.

This is your Script Editor window... What is this?! Code? EVERYBODY RUN!!!

ITS OKAY PEOPLE. DONTRUN. I'M HERE TO HELP!

Let's look at an example for making a selection set for just the caveman s left arm.
 Let's erase all this code by going to EDIT>CLEAR ALL or clicking on the clear all eraser
button on the script editor window.

Code is gone.

2) Now that our code is erased we can start fresh. Let's select the left wrist, elbow, and
shoulder control of the caveman. You'll notice that the code for selecting these controls
appears on the Script Editor.

3) Now simply highlight all 3 lines of code from the script editor and middle- mouse click
and drag the code to your shelf.

As soon as you drop it to your shelf you'll get this window asking what type of code you
want to use, click MEL.
 You'll now get a new unlabeled button added to your shelf. This button will allow you to
select the three arm controls giving you the same function as the Quick Selection Set, but
using a different method.

All we need to do is open our Shelf Editor and rename the button. On the right side of the
Shelf Editor column select the code we just added. Rename the button towards the bottom,
where it reads ICON LABEL to something like "L_arm." Click SAVE ALL SHELVES.

Note: Using the Script Editor for creating selection sets allows you to utilize capital letters
in your icon's name.

Now you have two buttons in you shelf which you can use
to quickly select controllers and animate your shelf wich you
can use to quickly select controllers and animate your
character.

Find whatever selection set method works for you and use it
in your workflow. It's almost impossible to animate without
them.

Installing Scripts

What are scripts? Scripts are tools that artist or coders create to plug into Maya and help
speed up or ease your work load. Let me give you an example as to how a script helped me
meet my deadline. I was in a studio animating the mouth to characters for a video game. I
was given a 4 week deadline to animate about 20 minutes worth of dialogue to many
characters. The first character I animated without the help of a script. It took me about two
whole days to finish the entire 30 seconds of dialogue for one character.
I had to sit there and shape the lips to match the dialogue every time he said something.
Grabbing the lip controls one by one and reshaping the lips when a new word came out of
him. You can see this would take a long time if the character was giving a speech.
Fortunately, I had a good lead animator that introduced me to a script that would change
the way I animate the lips and fingers on a character for life. I ended
completing the 20 minutes of lip animation within 14 days. It looked good
too!
This particular script was called PoseMan.

Many animators aren't aware or don't know how to install scripts that
will make their work go a lot faster. I'm hoping using scripts is not seen
as things only advanced animators use, but as a way to increase your
productivity and impress your director with killer skills and quick
animation deliveries. If you're a student and have a final coming up, using
the pose library can help you finish in time without drinking too much
Redbull or 5 Hour Energy drinks. Trust me, I've been there.

Exactly what does PoseMan do?

 PoseMan allows you to store poses you create and use them repeatedly by a push of a
button. For example, you can pose your fingers into a fist and save that pose. You can then
change the same hand pose to an open hand and save that pose too. Now you can instantly
change from a fist hand to an opened hand by the push of a button without having to grab
controllers and reposition fingers.
It's useful for facial poses, lips, hands, fingers and whole body. Good for any poses you
feel you'll be using repeatedly.

Installing
Close Maya before we get started.
When you download the PoseMan.mel file, your script file will look like this. You will need
to COPY this file and paste it in the script folder directory in Maya.
You can locate Maya's main script installation directory:
"/UserName/MyDocuments/Maya/MayasVersion/Scripts".
Could be a little different on your computer, this is where mine is located. Once you find
the scripts folder, PASTE the PoseMan file in there.
Reopen Maya.
Now let's active the script by typing in poseMan in the command line.
Note: Writing the name on the command line Is case sensitive. Make sure you type It
exactly as I do.

Once you type poseMan press ENTER.

We have now successfully Installed poseMan script Into Maya. You should've seen a new
window appear once you pressed enter.

This Is PoseMan's window. It will allow you to record and

organize your poses.
When you add your poses you will see them here In your
window with an icon.

Using PoseMan
PoseMan will need to create a folder where It will store all of your created poses.
In the PoseMan window click on CHARACTER>NEW.

This will bring up the "ADD NEW CHARACTER" window.

Give It a name like "poses". Click on "CREATE NEW
CHARACTER".

Let's create another pose.

 This will ask you where you want to save your folder where
your poses will be kept. I recommend you keep this folder inside
the rig folder you're using. For example, I'm using the Caveman
rig, so I will place this "POSES" folder in the original caveman rig
folder. Click OPEN once you're done.

Now we need to open that folder so we can begin saving our

poses in there.

Go to CHARACTER>LOAD.

You will be asked to open the

POSES folder. Once you find it,
highlight it and click OPEN.

Go to SECTIONS>CREATE NEW SECTION...

This will allow you to organize a category of body parts you'll want to keep separate.

Give your category a name such as: L_Hand, R_Hand, Face, Lips...etc

Now you have an area to store all of your left finger poses.
Got to POSES>CREATE NEW POSE...

This will open a mini perspective window that will allow you to
take a snapshot of your final pose. First, select all of your 12 finger controllers. Now In
the mini window move the camera so that you get a closer view of the hand. Finally,
name the hand position NEUTRAL
under Type Pose Name and click
CREATE.

You'll get your first hand pose stored in your library.

 Let's create another pose.

Pose your caveman's left hand into a fist.

Select all 12 controls in his hand (This allows PoseMan to
know what controls to move).

Go to POSES>CREATE NEW POSE...

Move the mini perspective window to create a snapshot

of the fist. Give your hand pose a name, such as, FIST and
click CREATE.

That's it! Click on the poses in your library and watch your character's hand change
instantly.

We can continue this process and add unlimited finger poses such as pointing, claw
hand, peace fingers, open hand...etc.

If you want to make a separate category then you'll simply go to SECTIONS» CREATE
NEW SECTION... and give your category a name.

You can add a category for the face controls and pose out
some funny faces, angry faces, scared, surprised, worried,
neutral, yelling...etc.
As I mentioned in my experience, creating a pose library for
the different lip shapes while doing lip sync to dialogue saved
me huge amounts of time. You can see that I wouldn't have to
reshape the mouth into the same U shape every time the
character said a U. All I hod to do was click on the U shape
pose I had in my PoseMan library and BOOM, I was done! I
could quickly move on with the rest of the dialogue. I setup a
Bbrary full of mouth shapes such as M, P, 0, F, A, and E. With
these phoneme shapes I could pretty much have the character
say any word.

There are other great things about this PoseMan script. If

you go to SETTINGS» CREATE KEY ON POSE, this will allow you to set a keyframe
automatically to your timeline by clicking one of your poses when checked ON.

You can also select all of the controllers for that specific pose,
add more controllers to your pose or update your controllers.
Hope you see the benefit of using a pose management script.

Other Methods for Loading Scripts

 Depending on the script you have you will need to load/install it the way the coder create
it. Usually you will get a note pad that comes with the script giving you instructions on how
to install that particular script.

In this lesson I will show you a quick way to install

other types of scripts. Using the Script Editor go to
FILE>LOAD SCRIPT then find your script file.

Once you load your script you see the code appear in
the bottom MEL tab window. Make sure you dick the
bottom MEL window to activate the code. You can now
simply press ENTER in the numerical pad.

Note: Pressing Enter on your main keyboard w# not

work.

Once I press enter the script will appear and I can

begin to use it.

I won't demonstrate how to use this script I just want to

show you other ways of installing scripts. Again, the
installation of the script depends on how it was created and
what is recommended by the creator. Download this script
at www.AnimationMethods.com. Happy scripting!

Graph Editor

Oh yeah, let's move on to the graph editor I Probably one of the most overlooked tools
by beginners. I know I sure skipped the graph editor when I was learning animation. When
you open the graph and you see a lot of spaghetti noodles scattered everywhere, It will
have you saying, "WTF".

The graph editor is a tool

that will help you create good
arcs, smooth out
your animation, fix animation
pops, adjust timing, improve
your ease-in and ease-out, fix
motion capture data, and much
more. Once you begin to see
the benefits and how to use it,
it won't be so bad. You won't be
able to animate without it.
in the early Bouncing Ball
Animation chapter we learned how to read the graph, now we will learn the tools.
First, we need to learn how to maneuver around the graph viewer by using the zoom,
pan, and frame on certain sections of the curves.
ALT + Right Click = Allows you to zoom in and out smoothly.
ALT + Middle Mouse = Pan around the graph.
Scroll Wheel = Allows you to quickly zoom in and out.
F = Allows you to frame in on highlighted/selected keyframes.
 TOOLS
This is your toolbar in Maya's Graph Editor.

I only show you the

tools you'll be using
often. Keep in mind we're working with Maya 2013. Earlier versions of Maya may not have
some tools I'll show you, but don't sweat it. You'll still be able to animate like a pro.
I will skip the first tool in the toolbar and start with the Add Key.

Add Key: will allow you to add a keyframe where you want within a curve. To
use, click the middle mouse button on a curve.

Region Tool: will allow you to move and adjust the timing of your animation
by moving keyframes around. Select the keyframes you want to adjust in the
graph and use this tool. This will give you a box around your selected keys and
allow you to move them around or adjust the timing by moving the box handles.
Region tool is new to Maya 2013.

Stats Bar: this bar shows you information about any single selected
keyframe. The left window shows you the current frame the keyframe
is on and the right window shows you the position value of that keyframe. For example, if I
set a keyframe on frame 16 and rotate the shoulder control downward, the status bar will
show me that I'm on frame 16 and that I rotated the shoulder -29.41 degrees down.

Frame All: this will allow you to see all of your working curves by quickly
framing on everything in the graph view.

Frame Playback Range: this will allow you to frame on the specific number of
frames you are currently displaying in your timeline range slider.

Center on Current Time Indicator: this will center your graph view [ depending on where
your current time Indicator Is located. In other words, It will center on your current frame
selected In your timeline.

Auto Tangents: will try to keep your curves looking smooth without overshooting a curve
and will keep keyframes with same values flat.

Spline Tangents: will make your curves smooth causing curves to overshoot.
(Small secret) This Is what I like to use towards the end of my animation process
to ensure I get smooth flowing movements out of my characters. You will adjust
some curves manually, but this one makes wonders.

Clamped Tangents: Will give you the same effects as spline tangents but If two adjacent
keyframes have close values, it will make the curve flat.

If the similar keys begin to change, the curve will change to a spline Sometimes giving
you some overshoot In the curves.

Linear Tangents: this will create a straight light from keyframe to keyframe. Definitely
will not give you smooth animation but is good when you're starting to move from stepped
stages to motion. This gives you some movement to see your character come to life as you
add more and more poses. Once your timing is starting to look well you can move on to
spline tangents.

Flat Tangents: sets all of the keyframe curve handles horizontal or flat.

Stepped Tangents: Shows no movement between to keyframes. This will make your
poses jump from one keyframe to the next without showing movement. Believe It or
not, this Is the best way to animate when doing acting. It allows us to focus our
attention to how the poses are working from one to the next. Once we get a lot of
poses and get a feel for how this might work, we can begin changing our
animation into linear tangents, and ultimately to spline tangents.

Plateau Tangents: Behaves similar to clamped tangents and will ensure there is no
overshoot between two similar keyframes. This tangent is good to use on the curves of
characters feet. As the character's foot lifts off the ground to walk you want that movement
be smooth, but as the foot is on the ground you want the foot to stay planted. Because the
keyframes values of foot on the ground are the same, clamped tangents will ensure that the
curve Is a flat line when there is no movement. If you were to use spline tangents on the
foot you will see the feet sliding around when they should be firm on the ground.

Break Tangents: this will allow you to break the handles on a keyframe.
Select a keyframe and click break tangents and you'll be able to manipulate each
side of the handle separately.

Unify Tangents: if you break tangent handles you can unify them again by
selecting a keyframe and clicking unify tangents. Now if you grab the keyframe
handle you'll be able to move both handles together.

Free Tangent Weight, this will allow you to grab the keyframe handles I and
freely move the curves length. Free tangent weight tool can only be used when
you have weighted tangents.

To do this, go to CURVES>WEIGHTED TANGENTS in the graph editor menu.

Now that your curves are weighted you can use the free tangent weight tool.
Notice that the keyframe handles can now be adjusted freely.

To undo weighted tangents go to CURVES>NON-WEIGHTED TANGENTS. This

will give you normal curves to work with again.

Auto Load Graph Editor on/off; I would make sure this auto load is always ON. If
is set to OFF you will never see your graph curves update with new controls or
changes to your curves.

Time Snap on/off: Keep this time snap ON. If you turn it off you will start moving
keyframes to decimal frame numbers and it's a lot harder to keep track of decimal frames.
NEVER ANIMATE IN DECIMAL FRAME NUMBERS! Keep all of your keyframes on whole
number.

Curve Display: this is a great way to organize your curves or display them stacked in
layers. I would recommend switching between the normal and stacked display. Stack
display helps you visualize your work cleaner.
 Pre-Infinity and Post-Infinity Cycles: These are only good if you're going to
be making animation that loops or cycles. Pre-infinity cycles will grab all of
your animations and cycle them in the negative (left side) direction of your
timeline. Post-infinity will take all of your animation and loop it in the positive (right side)
direction of the timeline. These are great if you're making a walk cycle and want the
animation to continue to loop without the need of adding more keyframes to continue the
walk.

If you want to turn the cycles off. Go to CURVES>PRE INFINITY» CONSTANT or

CURVES>POST INFINITY» CONSTANT.

Then you can turn off the dotted lines by going to VIEW>INFINITY>OFF.

Free or Constraint Directions: this allows you to move a keyframe freely. If you dick this
icon again you will only be allowed to move keyframes horizontally. Click it again, and you'll
be constrained to move keyframes vertically.

Hint: If you are in free constraint mode you can also constraint to a direction by holding
down SHIFT+Middle Mouse and moving either vertically or horizontally.

Dope Sheet, this is a shortcut button that will change the graph editor into the dope
sheet window. We'll learn to use the dope sheet as it will help us adjust our animations
timing.

Using the Graph Editor

Let's learn to use the graph editor by
making changes to this bad Nissan 370z
car animation. *CarSway"
If we watch the animation of this
vehicle, we'll notice three things.
The car starts at the beginning of the
runway and accelerates.
The car quickly slams on the breaks
and turns 90 degrees left to avoid
falling off the cliff.
Because of the momentum of the car
the body continues to sway as it settles
to a stop.
Notice that the sway at the end is too much and looks overly exaggerated making this
animation look ridiculously horrible. We need to tone down this sway so that it looks
believable, something more subtle and realistic.

How can we tone this down using the graph editor?

We need to be familiar with our rig so that we know what controls move what parts.
Since this has been pre-animated we know some controllers have keyframes on them. Ask
yourself what control might be causing this rocking motion. Can you find the control that
makes this car sway back and forth?

In this case, the car's sway motion is caused by the Shock

Control. Notice if we select this control and move it in the
Translate X, we'll get the same rocking motion as in the
animation. Another way to verify is by looking at our
keyframes. Notice that the swaying of the car happens
simultaneously with the spacing of the keyframes. Keyframe
82,90,95,and 100 have motion in them and should settle at
keyframe 105.

Another thing to look for after we selected the shock

control is the channel box. This will show you ways this controller can work.

We can see the shock control only allows us to move in Translate X

and Translate Z. Expect to see both of these curves in the graph editor.
Now we are ready to dig in the graph editor and solve this problem.
Select the "shockControls" located on top of the car and open the graph
editor.

We will immediately see the Translate X and Translate Z in the graph view. But how do
we know which curve controls what?
An obvious quick way to find which axis we'll need to work with is to go back to your
channel box and highlight the Translate X and middle-mouse click and drag.

When we do this, we get the motion we're trying to fix, this is how we know we've found
the correct axes to work with. If I did the same movement with the Translate Z, we'll notice
this moves the car forward and backward. That's not the movement that needs fixing.
Now we can go to our graph editor and work with just the Translate X graph.

On the outliner (left window)

select only Translate X. This will
remove all other graphs and
show us only the selected
channel we need to work with.

Looking at this graph and

knowing that it only shows
us the swaying motion of the
car, we can begin to read it.
The red line is flat from
frame 1 to frame 55 meaning
there is zero sway in the car,
then begins to curve all the
way down till it hits frame
82, meaning the car is
swaying as far right, then at frame 90 sways far left, frame 95 sways right, frame 100
sways left, and stops at frame 105.
 We can see the swaying of the car through this graph. Now that we can read the graph,
how can we tone it down?

Let's learn exactly how this works. The numbers on the

left of the graph shows you the change in value an animation
is going through. The numbers on the bottom will show you
the frames, which essentially, the space between keyframes
determines the timing of your animation. You will also see
the zero origin marked in the graph by a light colored grey
line in the graph. Anything on the zero origin will have no
movement if it's constant.

In terms of the car swaying, we're not trying to change the timing. We're not looking to
make the sway animate faster or slower. We are trying to decrease the value of the sway to
tone it down.

Going back to our swaying curves, we now know that we'll

need to move the keyframes vertically (up and down) to
lower the values. We need to bring our curves a bit closer to
a value of zero.
Keeping the shape of this curve, we need to decrease the
size of the sway. Using the Move Tool, grab each keyframe
dot, hold down SHIFT + MIDDLE MOUSE to constrain the
move vertically and push them closer to the zero line. It
helps to adjust the curves while watching your animation to
see the changes you're making. If you're not satisfied, then
you can continue to decrease the curves until you're happy with how the animation moves.

This is what the graph looked like BEFORE.

This is what the graph looks like once we make the
adjustments.
Notice how we're still keeping the up and down curves but
now this motion is very subtle. We have not moved the
keyframes side to side. We have only compressed the curve
vertically to give us a more subtle realistic sway.
If we look closely, the sway is still going right, left, right,
left, but we shrank the curves very tiny to give us the subtle
motion.
Now if we were to play the animation, depending on how
you adjust your curves, you ttnS see a subtle rodcing motion
giving it a more believable car suspension sway.
“CarjSvofffrted*

Working on this simple fix, allows you to see the benefit of

using the graph editor to make small detail adjustments that give
big impact results to your work.
We wifi learn other methods for the grapfc editor as we get
into animating our characters.

12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of animation are guidlines that animators to believable and appealing
movement. These principles were developed, as we know them today, by the '9 old men' of
Wait Disney Studios back in the early 1930's. Even though these principles were created as
a way to improve the realism of traditional hand drawn animation, they can st be appfed to
30 animation today.

These principles were simply created to improve the quality in animation as provide a
way to discuss and critique an matfon - 3 animators have come to understand.

These are the 12 principles of animation:

Squash and Stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Strasght Ahead and Pose to Pose Afsmatsen
fotiow Through and Overlapping Action
Slow-out and Stow-in
Arcs
Secondary Action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid Drawing
Appeal

These principies are not meant to be in any particular order, but are to be understood
and used in yoesr animations, These principiesshould become second nature you become
experienced. the more you animate the more you will understand where and how to apply
them in your work.

The following Principles hove been paraphrased from the book "Illusion Of Life" by Prank
Thomas and Oftie Johnston. They come from 20 animation work but I'll show you how to
use them in 30. But first, you need to understand them.

Squash and Stretch

This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as ft moves. Also
squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions. How
extreme the use of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required m animating the
scene. Usually it's broader in a short style of picture and subtler in a feature, it is used in all
forms of character animation from a bouncing bail to the body weight of a person walking.
This is the most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.

We can take this ball for example, if we start the bounce from
the left we'll see a normal sphere on top, as ft comes down we
begin to stretch rt, once it hits the ground it will become
squashed. As It goes up again it wifi begin to stretch, it reaches
the top and loses momentum going back to its original size, goes
back down and stretches with acceleration, until it hits the ground
and squashes. "SquafhAndStretch"

You can also expand the limits of squash and stretch and use
them in exaggerating the poses of your character. A character can
squash down as he prepares to jump, then stretches his body out as
he leaps. A leopard can also compress (squash) and expand
(stretch) from his body and hips as he runs.
 Anticipation
This movement prepares the audience for 3 major action
the character about to perform, such as, starting to run,
jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off
the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward
action is executed, The backward motion Is the anticipation A
comic effect car be done by not using anticip^jor after a
series of gags that used anticipation, Almost ail real action
has major or m»oor anticipation such as a pitcher's «md-up
or a goffers' bade swing. Feature animation is often iess
broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to
develop a characters personalty.
You can think of the anticipation as a small action before the main action This small
anticipation gives the viewer time to predict what's about to talce piace As in this example
we see the caveman moving the club backwards sn anticipation, giving the viewer time to
understand what he's 3bout to do.

Here’s a cortoony horse anticipating

his run. The anticipation occurs as his
body moves back to prepare for his take
off. The hind legs support the anticipation
and add to the fun cartoony style. Think
backwards motion before the forward
motion ’HourseAnticipation'.

Staging
A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction
or idea of the character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The
effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in
telling the story. There is a limited amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and
frame of film must relate to the overall story.
Do not confuse the audience with too many actions at once. Use one action dearly stated
to get the idea across, unless you are animating a scene that is to depict clutter and
confusion. Staging directs the audience's attention to the story or idea being told. Care
must be taken in background design so it isn't obscuring the animation or competing with it
due to excess detail behind the animation. Background and animation should work together
as a pictorial unit in a scene.

Notice how m the good staging example we use the back building to draw an imaginary
square around our character. This gives the viewers a solid place to look when the character
lands on the ground. Your eyes expect action to happen in this area. On the bad staging, it's
almost hard to figure out where exactly we're supposed to look. This is not only a bad
camera angle, but it also cuts part of the characters body. Not good for story telling or
clearly showing an action.

Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose Animation

Straight ahead animation starts at the first pose and works frame by frames forward to
the end of a scene. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned
out and charted with key poses done at intervals throughout the scene. Many scenes use a
bit of both methods of animation.

I know when you read this principle it won't change your animation workflow forever, so
let me tell you that this principle WILL CHANGE YOUR UFE FOREVER! Here's why. Most new
animators don't know how to approach animation. They will grab a character and set
keyframes on various parts of the character, then guess where the next keyframes should
be, move forward in the timeline and continue to pose the character at random spots
without a plan hoping to get it right. At the end of all this chaos, they will dick play and
wonder why their character is flying and sliding everywhere.

Straight Ahead or Pose to Pose are valuables methods for approaching animation. We will
look into depth for both methods as we start animating our characters.

Follow-Through and Overlapping Action

Follow Through: when the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to
catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a
dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once.
If a character had a long tail and turned the other way quickly, you will see that the tail will
follow the motion of the body with a curve to the tail. The tail will follow through the path of
the body.

Here we can see the follow-through on Morpheus arms os he takes a step. Because the
arms have weight we need to show it by continuing to sway the arms forward even though
his body has stopped moving. “Morph_FolbwThnHigh“

Overlapping Action: is when a character changes direction but his clothes or hair
continues forward at a different timing than his body. This is different than follow-through
as overlapping action is mostly dragging parts behind. It's essentially two or more sections
happening at different timing. We can demonstrate overlapping action through "drag" or by
"breaking joints." Drag is when something gets left behind, such as a Snow White's dress.
As she begins to walk her dress will slightly lag behind in timing. When she stops, the dress
will lag then follow-through and settle at her feet.

Breaking joints does not refer to literally breaking an arm or a leg. It means that some
joints in the body will lead ahead of other joints. For example, if we were to raise an arm
you would lead with the elbow, then the shoulder, the hand, and finally the fingers. Certain
joints, such as the shoulder and elbow, would reach the top of the arm lift as the hand and
fingers would arrive later. We are breaking the joints in timing so that things don't arrive at
one flat time.
 In this example we see Alice turning her head to the right as her hair overtops.
"Alke_OveriapplngActionM

Slow-ln and Slow-Out

As action starts, we have more frames near the starting pose, one or two in the middle,
and more frames near the next ending pose. Fewer frames make the action faster and more
frames make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more
life-like. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the
surprise element. This will give more snap to the scene. In computer animation, this is
called ease-in and ease-out
Ease Out - add more poses closer together and less towards the end. This will make the
ball ease out from a stop.
Ease In - you have poses further apart and you add more poses closer together to ease
into a stop. This will give you cushion at the stop.

aEaseln_EaseOut_Ex"

Arcs
All actions, with few exceptions (such as the
animation of a mechanical device), follow arcs
or slightly circular path. This is especially true
of the human figure and the action of animals.
Arcs give animation a more natural action and
better flow. Think of natural movements in the
terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm
movement, head turns and even eye
movements are executed on arcs.

Having an arc during a head turn makes it appealing and interesting to see. Even the
slightest arc can improve the look of your animation. Here Alice looks from right to left. If
you compare the heigth of her chin and mouth as she turns, you will see that there is a
small drop in her head to form an arc. If we simply rotated the head without an arc, it
would look robotic and lifeless. 'Alice HeadArcs'

Secondary action

This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more
dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-
enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking
toward another character. The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward
leaning. The leg action is just short of a stomping walk. The secondary
action is a few strong gestures of the arms working with the walk.
Also, the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the same time with
tilts and turns of the head to accentuate the walk and dialogue, but not
so much as to distract from the walk action. All of these actions should work together in
support of one another. Think of the walk as the primary action and arm swings, head
bounce and all other actions of the body as secondary or supporting action. You can also
have tertiary moving parts...etc.

Timing
Timing is the speed of an action. Expertise in timing comes best with experience and
personal experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics
are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the
action faster and crisper. A variety
of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Also,
there is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to
another character or to a situation.

In this ball bounce, the

timing is shown when the
ball hits the ground. Timing
is how long It takes to
bounce and at what tempo.
Bases on the timing of the
bait we would aiso able to
determine its weight.

Exaggeration
Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a
drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the
time. It's like a caricature of facial features,
expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. The horse
on the right looks cartoony because of the
exaggerated features. The proportions on the face,
legs, and body are different from both horses.
Exaggeration can also add appeal to a character
design.

Exaggeration is also used in movement. Action traced from live action film can be
accurate, but stiff and mechanical in animation. In animation, a character must move more
broadly to look natural. The same is true of facial expressions, but the action should not be
as broad as in a short cartoon style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a
head turn will give your film more appeal.

Use good taste and Jm common sense to keep

from becoming too theatrical and excessively
animated. When animating realistic movement, you
will want to town down exaggerated actions.

A hand can swoop and grab a ball with no real

emotion or appeal. If we exaggerats the fingers as
the hand comes down, it instantly looks more
interesting and gives it contrastin shape from on open bond to the closed fingers making It
more Interesting to see. “HondExaggeration''

Solid Drawing
 The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three
dimensions apply to animation as it does to drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw
in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life. You
transform these into color and movement giving the characters the Illusion of three-and
four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space. The fourth dimension is
movement in time. This still applies to computer animation. For example, when animating
using the squash and stretch principle, you want to make sure that you still keep the
volume and shape of your objects. You want to make sure that the character stays solid and
doesn't distort away from what it is. In computer animation you'll still need to watch out for
squashing or stretching an object too much and loosing volume.

Appeal
A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal.
Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly.
All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or
cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing,
and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest.
Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a main theme.
Over the years, the artists have learned that to produce a feature there was a
need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of artwork
throughout the entire production. Like all forms of storytelling, the feature has to
appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

12 Principles of Animation

Understand and apply them in your work with some common sense. At times you will use
some principles more than others, and when working with realistic animation, some
principles should be less noticeable but still applicable.

Animation Methods

You ready for the juicy staff? The Secrets of how to organize and use your keyframes,
your planning, timing, poses, action animation, acting animation, facial animation, the
graph editor, dope sheet, and still manage to make it look AWESOME I If you're ready, let's
get to it!
This is a method of how I plan and approach all of my animation protects. If you are a
seasoned animator you might have your own methods, but for those who don't have one.
I'm sure this is plenty to get you started.

1st Pass [BLOCKING]:

Timing of Action
Main Poses
Suggest Emotion (include rough eye animation)

2nd Pass:
Breakdown Poses
Offset
Successive breaking of joints
Suggest Overlap & Follow through

3rd Pass:
In-between Poses
Finish offsetting body parts
Fingers/Toes
Check + Adjust arcs
Finish Overlap & Follow through
 Finish Eye animation
Foot shuffles
Knees

Final Pass:
Facial animation (eyes, blinks)
Lip sync (mouth, cheeks)
Muscle animation (muscle or fat Jiggle)

Let's look at the details of the methods.

My secrets Methods or now to approach animation

I. Approach animation from the inside out, not from the outside In.
1. The hip - Start moving the character by the hips and define how they coordinate with
the feet
2. Torso - Adjust the torso in coordination with the hips. Find the weight and balance.
3. Arms, neck, fingers, toes, will come last.

Don't overwhelm yourself with the many controls you see in a character. Create selection
sets to manage your keyframes.

4. Create a selection set for the full body only.

5. Create a selection set for fingers only
6. Create a selection set for the mouth shape controls.
7. Create a selection set for the face controls.
8. Create finger and mouth poses if using PoseMan Library script Manager.

THIS WILL MAKE KEYFRAMING POSES AND ADJUSTING TIMING VERY EASY

II. Begin the animation process. Determine if you'll use the straight ahead or pose to
pose method. Animate the body only. (No facial or fingers)
1. Change your tangents to stepped or linear.
2. Add your first body pose and key the entire body (DO NOT OFF SET KEYFRAMES YET)
3. Continue to move your character by adding Key Poses (storytelling poses) and adding
keyframes on the entire body controls.
4. Add Breakdown poses in the middle of the key poses.
5. Add In-between poses tn the middle of the breakdown poses.
6. Continue filling m more poses and make sure the 12 principles are being applied.
7. Add moving holds where needed.
8. Adjust timing by selecting EVERYTHING that has a keyframe and move keys with Dope
Sheet

III. Make a Playblast preview.

1. Scrub through your timeline and watch the movement Does it flow? Does it have
enough poses?
2. Turn your tangents to Sptine or Smooth, Oose your eyes and hope your animation
doesn't look horrible when you click play... How does it look?
3. IF ITS FLOATING YOU NEED MORE POSES!
4. Add more poses or add more holds where ft floats. Put it bock in the oven and keep
working on Hi
5. Refine, polish, and repeat as necessary
6. Offset timing where necessary, such as, making sure both arms don't move identical
with tame timing Note: Offset should always be done last, once animation is near completed
and timing is set

IV. Facial and Finger Animation

 1. Pose the fingers to work wtth the action
2. Convey emotion through fingers when possible
3. Make sure hands don't penetrate objects.
4. Offset the timing from other fingers to give flwdfty.
5. Up sync animation.
6. Animate eye darts, looks and Winks.
7. Animate eyebrows in sync with the emotion of the voice.
8. Animate cheeks and expressions.
9. Offset the timing from eye blinks and eyebrows to give the face some fluidity.

V. Make a final Playblast preview and watch for:

1. Timing
2. Principles of Animation
3. Acting gestures
4. Pops in knees or other areas
5. Penetrating objects
6. Sliding feet
7. Eye contact
8. Clear action
9. Over all, does is look EPIC?

Additional passes you can do:

Clavicles or Shoulders
If the hand is being used to rest on or leaned on think about how the shoulder will move.
The arm will try to take up as much weight as possible- then the scapula be forced to take
up the rest. Offset some motion from the shoulder and the arm.

Breathing
Think about when your character is going to take a breath.
A breath can happen during anticipation. When swimming it literally happens before you
dive in and swim underwater. If your character is not moving much, you can have it breathe
to give it movements and life. NEVER LEAVE YOUR CHARACTER STANDING STILL This will
instantly make your animation look dead and lifeless. Try shifting his weight from one foot
to the other. Have him look around and blink occasionally. Have him scratch his stomach or
anything that will keep him looking alive.

Facial:
-The ocular muscles usually move before anything else. Brows lead the action and the
mouth typically comes last.
-Avoid changing facial expressions in the middle of big movements. Do it before or after.
-There shouldn't be any expression changes at all in the first or last 6 frames of an
animation.

Eyes:
-Plan when and why your characters eyes dart.
-Too many eye darts = spastic characters.
-Allow the eyes time to focus on the objects they're pointing at.
-Unanimated eyes = doll eyes.
-The eyes always convey the emotion and truth of a character's performance.

Blinks:
-Blinks are never random.
-Plan when and why your character is blinking.
-Blinks:
Convey a shift in thought.
Sell the emotional state of a character.
We blink to change a shift in thought or emotion.
When we blink we are "cutting the film of life". Our eyes are the cameras.
 Blinks always occur on quick head turns.

Jaw:
-The jaw doesn't always open on every syllable or word.
-Get a mirror and keep it by your desk. Place your hand in a stationary position under
your jaw and feel how many times it opens and closes per line of dialogue.

LIP SYNC:
Up sync is a small portion in delivering a good acting performance.
Before the animator even begins the lip sync they should have completed the animation
of the character. Body language alone should sell the performance of the character.
You'll notice a lot more can be done to expressions by making facial poses asymmetrical.
This also goes for the sneer and other shapes.
Remember lip sync has as much to do with good timing and hitting dialogue accents as it
does with good mouth shapes. Just think of Kermit the frog. All he is able to do is open and
close his mouth yet the puppeteers give him the illusion of speech by simply hitting accents.
These are only methods to approach animation. There are many other ways you can
animate. At times you can omit or jump steps. The purpose of having a method is to get
you guys to plan how you will approach your animation. This way you don't lose time or feel
lost. Feel free to come up with your own method. Take what you feel is useful and make it
your own.
Yes! You must animate with all this in mind! Complaints? Boo-hoo! Tear a page and wipe
your tears. This is as real as it gets!

Planning

You need to plan your animation no matter how much little time you have. If you're
given a script or storyboard then take some time to understand your character and the
action he/she will do. Planning will save you tons of time when it comes to animating. You
want to avoid spending time guessing and hoping things will work out at the end. If you
plan your action you will always finish your animation on time or ahead of time.
If you don't have a clue as to what needs to happen, take the time to sketch out your
scene. Don't create a very beautiful hand drawing of what your character will do. Make
quick and dirty sketches! Try to show a main line of action through the characters pose.
Know what's going to happen ahead so that you don't hit a creative road block in your work.

Sketches, such as these, are

enough to give you an idea of how
and what you need to animate.

Of course the time you're

allowed to plan depends on your
deadline, but I would try to spend
10-15 minutes if any. If you have the luxury to spend more time, spend a whole day just
figuring every detail of how your character will act. When it comes to crunch time, you'll be
glad you planned ahead.

If you're not a good at drawing or are on a tight deadline, then you can always record
some reference video. Video In the best method to quickly look at your acting choices,
timing, poses, and get feedback.

You have no excuses. Most cell phones these days record video. Grab your tripod or a
buddy and tell him to record you. Once you have your footage you can head over to your
computer and clearly see what you'll need to do.

Keep in mind that you're not going to copy the video frame by frame.
 It's used to look for Interesting poses
and exaggerate the ones that help your
animation.

I Look at the video's timing and

exaggerate the timing which improves the
characters performance.

Don't be afraid to change poses to

something completely different than your
reference.

Reference video will show you the

details your eye doesn't pay attention.

Finger movement, drag, overlapping

action, feet placement, chest rotation,
feet shuffle, expressions...
Reference video is not for beginners. It
is a tool that every animator will need to do to achieve that touch of life. What you imagine
and what happens in reality are usually different. Keep a video recorder at hand.

Animation Set Up

The moment you've otl been waiting for. We're going to totce the rest of the chapters to
learn how to animate In a way that you can leam and apply to your methods when you
wont to achieve smooth flowing animation. We wit use the Pose-to-Pose method.
I want to teach you animation in a way that's not os simple as creating a walk cycle or a
character pushing or lifting a box. There ore plenty of those tutorials m a classroom i am
going to show you how to animate using a simitor test that I was given when I applied to
work at a game studio. This Is what got me o job in the industry and fm sure this will show
you what it takes to become an animator.
We are going to animate the Morpheus rig jumping from a box and landing on the
ground. As he lands on the ground he wfM pause and look left, then he'll look forward and
run off screen.

Let's get started:

Our animation plan has been established and we know what to animate.
We will animate at 30 frames per second, so let's make sure our settings are set to NTSC
30 fps in our Animation Preference window.

Under Time Slider we can add

about 200 frames to our Playback
start/end time, I like to increase
the size of the keyframe shown
on the timeline by making the tick
size to 3 (optional), I'll keep my
update view on active (optional),
I'll keep my update view on active
(optional), and I'll make sure my
Playback speed is set to Realtime
(30 fps).

(Optional) You can turn OFF

polygon selection so that we don't
keep selection polygon objects accidentally. This way we focus on selecting only the
character's controls. (Remember to turn this back ON when you want to select polygons
again.)

This step is important. Add a new shelf and create a Quick

Selection Set to add this button to our shelf. Select all of the
character's controls, all except the face controls and the main
global controller. CREATE>SETS>QUICK SELECTION SET...
Name this button "allBody" and add to shelf. This will make it
easy to select all of the body controls and set keyframes as
we begin posing our character for animation. Click on the
button and make sure it's working. It should reselect all
controls.

The blue global control on the bottom of his feet is just used to move the character closer
to where the animation will occur. The character will always animate away from this
controller.

We need to move the character on top of the box

without touching the global control. The way to move
him is by selecting both feet controls and his hip
control. Once we have this selected, using the move
tool (w), place him on top of the box.

Truth be told, there is no button to make sure the

feet are exactly on top of any surface. You will need to
use your side viewport and zoom in your perspective
to make sure the feet look to be on top. Feet don't
need to be perfectly flat on a surface, but just enough
so that there's no gap between the feet and the
ground.

Here's a side
vide of the foot on
the ground line. See
how much the foot
penetrates the
floor.
 If you plan to use PoseMan this would hr a good time to begin creating poses for the
fingers and adding them In your library. You can create a neutral open hand, a fist, spread
open fingers, clenching fingers...etc.

I recommend working with Autv keyframe ON. Pits is optional, but if you choose to work
with It off. you will need to press "v" an your keyboard to set a keyframe manually.

This is basic preparation that should become a habit In your workflow. No matter what
character or action you will animate, you need to have your tools prepared to make the job
easier and quicker. Animation has 8 structure and a method for approaching and we want to
eliminate confusion and guess work as soon as possible. Creating a Quick Selection Set for
all controls in the whole body is key for maintaining an easy to work method. Keep In mind
we are going to be adding about 20-30 poses to make this animation work. We want to
make sure we record a pose on all of the controls on the same frame.

Key poses

Key poses, extreme poses or just keys are terms used to describe the positions of «in
animated character or an object which show the extreme points in Its movement, or
accents In Its expression or mood. We sometimes refer to the first pass as "blocking" our
animation.
Do not confuse this with keyframe. Key poses are like comic strips poses, they are a
minimum amount of poses that we create to show the main point of a story without
worrying about adding all other poses. Key poses are storytelling poses.
A keyframe Is a recorded set position of the character. All poses we create for movement
are keyframes.

These red lines on the timeline represent keyframes not key poses Where there are
keyframes, there will be a recorded position on a control.

Now that we cleared this out of the way, let's focus on creating our key poses. To get a
quick and clear understanding of what our animation will look like, we'll need to create our
key poses. We know our character will jump off the box, land on the ground, and run off
screen. Showing minimal poses to describe this action we can create 3 key poses.

1st key pose Morpheus standing on top of the box,

This Is our first story telling pose that tells us where he Is.
2"d key pose = Morpheus on the ground as he lands from the jump. This pose tells us
that he went from the box to the ground, but does not show us how he jumped.

3rd key pose = Morpheus running out of camera frame. This pose shows us what
direction he runs to.

Now we have three simple poses we can quickly create. Let's make sure we are on frame
1 of our timeline and that our character is on top of the box and ready to be posed.

If you're working with Auto Keyframe ON you will need to set your first pose manually so
that Maya has a starting pose to begin setting keyframes automatically.
Glck on the Quick Selection Set (allBody) button we created to select all of Morpheus
controls. Once we have all of Morpheus controls selected, press "s" on your keyboard.

This should've created your first keyframe on frame 1. Not

only did it create a keyframe, it created a keyframe on ALL
controls selected by our "allBody" Quick Selection Set button.
You can verify this by selecting individual controls on Morpheus.
 Note: Keyframes will only show in your timeline when you have selected a control with a
keyframe. If you click away from the character controls, the keyframe will not be visible.

We need to ensure ourselves that we set a keyframe on all body controls to lock down
that pose. If we don't include a specific control in our selection set, for example an arm, the
arm will look stiff and not animate. This will make the animation look dead or the arm can
sometimes float around awkwardly.

Now that we set a keyframe on all, we can begin to pose Morpheus and give him a
natural stand. Make sure we are still on frame 1 and using our move (w) and rotate (r) tool,
begin to pick and move controllers to give him a natural standing pose.

Here is our first key pose. Once you're satisfied with the pose, click on
the allBody button we created and press "s" on your keyboard to set a
keyframe.

Why do we press the "s '" key when we have auto keyframe on ? Auto
keyframe only sets and updates keyframes on controls that we move and
adjust. We want to make sure that other controls that we didn't touch also
get keyframed.

For our second key pose he needs to be on the ground posing as if he

had just landed from the jump. It's also very important that we move
forward in our timeline. We don't want to stay on frame 1 or we'll override
our first pose. Let's move forward to about frame 90. This is a complete
guess! We don't know exactly where our second pose will go, but we are NOT worried about
timing at this point. Timing will be adjusted as we work more poses in. On frame 90, grab
your characters hips and feet again and move him where you think our character will land
from his jump. To make sure your character's feet are on the ground add a value of 0 on
the Translate Y for both feet controllers. Now begin posing your character!

Make sure you rotate the f oot Roll by checking In

the channel box on his feel. Create a pose that's clear to
read and has a good line of action.
If you scrub from frame 1 to frame 90 the character
will float from each keyframe. This Is normal but not
what we want. This Is because Maya sets the graph
editor curves to Spline (smooth) by default. We are not
concerned about movement at this time.
We only want to focus on poses, It would be best to
select all of the character's controls, opening the graph
editor, and making all of the curves Stepped.
 Press the "allBody" button and open the graph editor: WINDOW>ANIMATION
EDITORS>GRAPH EDITOR. In the graph editor window, press "f" on your keyboard to frame
on all of the characters curves.

This ishow your graph view should look with all body controls selected.

Now Just click and drag over all of the curve* to highlight them. Press the Stepped
tangent button to change the animation from smooth to popping poses.

Now your curves for all body controls should look flat and will not animate when you
scrub In the timeline, The character will pop from one pose to the next. If you're still getting
some movement on body parts, It means you didn't select all of the controls. You need to
find the control that has movement and make It Into a stepped tangent. Now we can focus
only on poses and no motion I
To avoid doing this manually every time we create a pose we’ll need to open our
Animation Preference window and change the Default out tangents to Stepped. This will
create all of our curves In the graph editor Into stepped tangents automatically.

Now we can create our last key pose. I move to frame 180 and I will pose Morpheus in a
running pose. Once I'm happy with his pose I will key all by clicking the "allBody" button
and pressing the "s" key.
 Now we have our key poses laid out. These 3 poses tell the main action in the story.
Morpheus on top of the box, lands on the ground, and runs off. We have rough timing and
rough poses. Notice our character is now in stepped mode. This allows us to focus on poses,
not movement.

This is the beginning of the Pose-to-Pose method. It's very planned out and systematic.
We know where we're going to end up and how things will occur. The rest of it is adding and
filling poses until we achieve good motion. Once the motion is there, we can adjust the
timing. We'll be adding hold poses so our character stays put for the time we need him to
stay. Towards the end we'll focus on the overlapping action and detailed work.
"JumpFromBox_Keyposes"

Breakdown poses

The breakdown is a pose that is not always placed at the perfect middle point between
the two key frames. It is the next most important transition point between those key
actions, and will often require shifting and fine tuning The breakdown pose describes HOW
an action is executed. It gives us a little more info on how the character walked, how he
jumped or how exactly he got from point A to point B.

In our animation we're going to add 4 Breakdown poses to teS us what happens in-
between our key poses.

At frame 30 we can create an arrbdpatjon pose. This pose prepares the character for the
jump. Just think how you would grab speed if you wanted to launch yourself into a high
jump. You would push back and swing your arms backwards to bcs c momentum. For this
pose. I eft his left foot planted in the same spot and moved nis right foot backwards. After
 you're satisfies with your oose, press the “a Body’ button and press 's'
on your keyboard. Remember we Reed to set a teynafne oa all of the
controls to Sock down our pose.

Now well go somewhere in-between frame I 30 and our Sanding

pose at 90. if create our second I breakdown pose on frame 60. This
pose w8 be I when he is at his highest point of the jump.
I also remember to use our principles of animation
and exaggerate our pose just a bit so that it has some appeal.

After our landing key pose we can keep the same landing pose but just
rotate his head and his torso just a bit to make him look left. We can also
adjust the arms a bit to keep them moving. I will set this breakdown pose at
about frame 115. KEY ALL, again.

At frame 1601 will stand him up and move only his right foot up. His
left foot will keep contact with the floor and will only rotate it using the
Ball Foot control. Once I'm done with his running pose I will select all
controls and set a keyframe.

Now that we have a bit of poses, we can click piay and watch how our poses are working
from one another. We can also watch for the timing of the action (speed).
 Is he up m the air for too long7 Have we left a big gap between keyframes that feel like
they sbftx№ happen quicker? Remember that the further the keyframes are the siower the
movement be. Vhe doser the keyframes are the quicker the movement.

'Morpheus_Mmprrombot_lstPass_BnaUownPoses’

I know it might be hard to see timing when the character is popping from one pose to the
next; this is only done to achieve good poses and rough timing.

In-between poses

In-between animation, or the straight run, fills in the rest of the information, creating a
smooth course of movement for your scene or character. The direction already set by the
breakdown and key poses is vital to create the smoothest flow and timing for any
animation.
i'm sure by now you're asking, "How do we know how many poses we need and how do
you know where to add the poses7" We obviously don't want to add a pose on every frame.
That would be like drawing every frame in 2D animation. 3D animation gives us that luxury
of automatically filling in some in-between poses. We need to think of our poses as major
position areas.

Where is the highest point in our character's hips?

Where is the lowest hip point?
When does the foot come in contact with the floor?
What's the last pose the foot is in contact with the ground?
Where is the middle passing position from one leg to the other?
What does the last pose look like before there's a change in a character's direction ?
If we had two poses, what would make the middle pose flow between those?
Are we getting arcs where we need them?
Does the animation look floaty?

Just look at the poses we have created. Our second pose shows anticipation and it's the
pose where the character moves the furthest back before changing direction. Our next pose
shows the highest point in our character's jump. From there, we have a contact position
where both feet are on the ground. Next pose shows us the furthest direction of our
character looking left Then we go into our last 2 poses where the foot is last in contact with
the floor.
As I mentioned, these are major positions we'll be working with. As we begin to add the
in-between poses we'll continue to think this way but in small subtle ways. We also need to
keep the 12 principles in mind. Animating our character is Not just moving him from point A
to point B, but to move him with personality and appeal.

On frame 151 created a pose that would give me a downward arc hip
movement. I also placed this pose between keyframe 1 and 30. The
colored character is the new poses I created. This is also the lowest point
of the character’s hip, just before he goes Into his full anticipation pose
on frame 30.
Notice I'm mostly keeping my keyframes on even numbers just for the
sake of making my work organized. Remember, we will adjust keyframes
(timing) after we've established sufficient poses to make our rough
animation work.

I went ahead and added two poses, one on frame 40 and

another pose on frame 50.
The pose on frame 40 is anticipation for the jump and notice
that his hip is at the lowest point of the arc. His left foot has
not been moved from the previous pose.
Pose on frame 50 is the last foot contact he'll have with the
box. You can also see pose 40 and 50 as a squash and stretch
principle in action.

At frame 751 created the contact pose. This is where the character first
comes in contact with the ground. His left foot control is in the exact spot
as it is in the next key pose. Just the heel comes in contact and his body is
extended. His right foot is still in the air to create some drag. We want to
avoid having both feet touch the ground at the exact time. This can look
very mechanical. We want to keep our motion asymmetrical to give it some
reality. The arms are also posed differently to avoid symmetry.

Let's take a look at what we've created so far, shall we?

Click the "allBody" selection set and open the graph editor: WINDOW>ANIMATION
EDITORS» GRAPH EDITOR. Click and drag over ALL of the curves to select them. Now just
click the Plateau Tangent button and this will show you your animation progress. Minimize
the graph editor and click Play to watch your animation.
 "MorpheusJumpFromBoxlstPass"

I can't watch I How did it look? Did it look like o Pixar movie? /'m thinking NOT! The
animation looks weightless, floaty, choppy, unrealistic, horrible timing, and just plain bad.
Reminds me of Gumby at the end when he slides off—LOL We still have a lot of work to do!
If your animation looks like this, it means you're missing three major factors.

NOT ENOUGH POSES

TIMING IS OFF
NEED TO ADD MOVING HOLDS

In our case, since it's our first animation pass, we still need to include all of these three
major factors into our work. Open the graph editor and change our tangents back to step.
We will continue adding poses before we move on to adjusting our timing.

Let's concentrate on the running section of our animation. This Is the part that needs the
most work. We will use the Straight Ahead method for animating the run. This means that
we won't skip ahead or jump backwards to fill In poses. In Straight Ahead we'll start with
the first pose, add the next pose, and continue forward until we finish the run.
We have our first running pose at frame 160. We will start from this pose and move
forward. To keep our poses organized we can add our poses on every 5 frame interval. Then
we'll add two poses, feet passing position and the extended feet position.
Important: Try to keep the spacing from one pose to the next pose evenly spaced apart.
You'll have to use your best intuition to determine how fast he's running and how far apart
the poses should be from each other. If the spacing is close to one pose then far from
another, and close to another, then your run animation won't look evenly smooth. Your
character will slightly jerk forward and backward. I'll show you how to avoid this once we
get some basic poses going!
 Frame 160 = keep the left foot in the same spot as frame 115. Adjust the hip so that the
right foot is nearly extended. Since he's running we want to rotate his hips slightly forward.
Pose his right foot to be in the passing position. For the arms it's going to take some
figuring out. When he's in the passing position the harms are both half way through the arm
swing.

Frame 165 = his hips should be at the highest part of the run. His feet should also be at
the extending point. The foot in front should be kept as straight as possible while avoiding
pulling the foot out too much, causing the knee to pop or lock.

The back leg should have a slight bend to It and the toes should be pointing at an angle.
The arms are posed opposite from the legs. Right foot forward, left arm forward, left leg
back, and right arm back.

If you find this pose to be too high up, you can easily grab the feet controls and the hip
control and move the entire pose lower, forwards or backwards as needed.

Frame 170 = this pose is the same pose as frame 160; the only difference is that is the
opposite foot. The arms could be the opposite pose as frame 160 but it's always a good idea
to make it slightly different so that you never see the exact poses every time.

Frame 175 = this pose again is the opposite pose as frame 165. Front foot extended
forward while back leg is dragging behind with toes rotated downward at an angle.

Frame 180 = you might need to shift this pose forward if you run out of room while
you're working on the previous poses. You might also I find that you need to switch the
entire pose to be the opposite. Don't be afraid to destroy this pose and start a new one if
you need to. Remember this was part of our beginning key poses and was created only to
guide us in our first pass.
"MorpheusJump_ Blocklng_ NoTiming"

REMEMBER TO TAKE A BREAK

Animation is very time consuming and sometimes frustrating. The best way to approach
animation is with a clear mind. If you're at home take a good hour break and get your mind
off this. If you're at work, go for a walk with your buddy. You'll thank me later.
Here is a big secret with the graph editor that I learned from a great Lead Animator of
mine while working on a run. My runs used to look choppy and would speed up at points
and slow down at others. This was due to the spacing (how far apart your pose is from the
next) of the character. Using the graph editor we can see uneven spacing. Look at page 73.
Remember how the graph editor shows us change in speed/value?

"This line means that the object Is moving at a constant speed. It's
not speeding up or slowing down; It's Just cruising at one steady
speed."

This is the type of line we want to achieve in our graph editor. Since
the main forward movement comes from the hips, we want to make sure that the hips
move forward at a constant speed.

But which axes on the hip do we need to look into? Will it be the Translate X,Y or Z. I
have so much confusion.

We can quickly determine what axes we need to focus if we select the hip
controller and look at our axes arrows from the move tool (w).
 The axis that makes the character move forward is the...? YOU'RE RIGHT, the Z axisl

The only section of the run we need to worry about is from the start of the run to the end
(frame 160 to 180).
Select the hip control. Open the graph editor, WINDOW>ANIMATION EDITORS» GRAPH
EDITOR. On the left window of the graph editor select the TRANSLATE Z channel. Zoom in
the graph and only focus from frame 160-180. Click and drag over the five keyframe curves
and change the tangents from Stepped to Smooth.

You'll notice that the hips are not moving constantly. We can determine this because we
have uneven curves. In order to get constant movement, we need to see a straight diagonal
line going from frame 160 to frame 180. What we need to do Is grab the keyframe, in the
graph editor, on frame 165,170,175 and move them vertically until we get a straight line.
Be careful not to shift the keyframes sideways. Hold down SHIFT and middle mouse click
and drag on a keyframe to ensure you only move them up and down.

Get your curve to look straight and diagonal, like this. Once you get your line to look
straight you will have the hips moving at a constant speed without lagging or speeding up
as your character runs across. Now that we're done, change the tangents back to Stepped.

We'll, almost donel Because we adjusted the hip speed it won't be

working with our leg movement any more. I Depending how far we pushed
the hip we'll need to adjust both feet and bring them back underneath the
hips. In this picture we see that the hips were moved back and the feet
were left in front. All we need to do is select both feet
controllers and shift them until we get our original pose as we had it.
You'll need to go through each pose and adjust the feet to get it to work
with the hip again. After this adjustment we are done with the first
animation pass. Knowing when to say you're done with the first pass is sometimes tricky
because you'll end up working straight through the whole animation and not know when to
Mop Rut definitely we arr done with nil of nur Key pom, Breakdown pose%, and we have a
bit of good In between poxes.
"Morpheus JumpFromBox 1stPassComplete "

Adjusting Timing

Now would be a good time to do a first pass on timing. Timing can bp a bit tricky to
someone with an untrained eye. This Is something that through lots of practice you will get
a better feel of what looks correct. If you don't have a feel for timing, don't worry. Grab a
video recorder and film yourself acting this out. Get a feel for how long something takes.
Timing Is about the speed of an action.

Approach everything In sections.

When the character Is on top of the box, how long does It take him to anticipate hit
jump?
How long does It take when he leaves the box till when he lands on the ground?
At what speed does he turn his head to the left?
How quick does he run off?

Remember this:
When we hit Play In our animation, our animation will play at 30 frames per second. This
means that we will see 30 moving frames before our eyes In 1 second. This Is the rate that
we set up In our Animation Preferences window at the beginning and should not be adjusted
at this point. Changing the frame rate after our timing hat been done will strew up our
timing. Don't change the frame rate once It’s been set.

Timing - keyframes closer together, the animation will move faster. When we have
keyframes further apart, the animation will move slower.

For example, here we have 8 keyframes within 30 frames (1 second), if we play this
animation, wo will see these 3 posss of our character moving within l second.

IHIS IS I ASTI Imagine yourself poslnq H different times In I second. That nearly
Impossible for our body to do I Of course this depends on the action. Maybe we want our
character to move thl$ quickly, Perhaps he's a squirrel. Squirrels tend to look very twltchy.
LOOK, A SQUIRREL!

Let's look at slower timing.

If we have the same 8 keyframe; and we Stretched them out to occur In % frame«. (3
seconds), this animation would happen a lot slower. Think about It, In the first 10 frames
we would only see the first 3 poses, It would take longer to see the other 5 poses. If this
was a squirrel, It would be one slow squirrel .

Keep In mind that timing depends heavily on the action. Through timing we can show If
something Is heavy or lightweight. We would need to space our keyframes accordingly to
the movement we want for our object. Timing also helps us convey the mood of a
character. If we had a walking character and Wfi spaced our keyframes further apart. It
would make our character look as If he's feeling down or tired. If we bring our keyframes
closer together, he will move quickly and will look happier.

Timing Is adjusted by the keyframes, not by the distance of our characters poses.

There are a couple of ways to move keyframes and adjust timing. I will show you two
easy methods for moving keyframes.

The first method Is to adjust them directly on the timeline.

In the timeline press and hold down

SHIFT and middle mouse click and drag
over keyframes.

This will aflow you to highlight over a group of keyframes that you wish to adjust or
move.

This is what yourll get once you highlight some keyframes. The outside arrows, scale left
and scale right, will stretch your keyframes apart or bring them doser. The middle arrows
will grab all of your selected keyframes and allow you to shift them over.
WARNING I highly don't recommend you use the scale arrows to scale keyframes. Using
the scale arrows will make your keyframes move to decimal frames, such as frame 153 or
frame 30.9. This is definitely something you want to keep away from. You 'II work best
when you keep your keyframes in whole number frames. Moving keyframes to decimal
frames will make it hard to select a keyframe. Not only is it harder to select and move, but
keyframes begin to get messy. Forexample, if you have a keyframe on frame 10 and
another keyframe on frame 10.1 These keyframes are too dose to each other that you won't
be abktotet them apart KEEP AWAY FROM HAVING DECIMAL KEYFRAMES!

There is a way to snap decimal keyframes back to whole numbers. You can highlight the
keyframes and right-click on the timeline. In the pop up menu you will see SNAP. Select
snap to move your keyframe to whole number frames.
 I don't like to work this way as I ahmys avoid having decimal keyframes m my work.
This a conpetely optional, but don’t say I didn't want you. I just hope you don't leant the
hard way.

The best way is to shift your keyframes with the center move arrows. This ensures that
your keyframes are snapping and moving to whole number frames. Just grab the arrows
and move your keyframes around! it's very simple and its os hassle free as a Capital One
credit card!

The second method is the easiest way to adjust keyframes and is what i use in my
professional workflow. We will use a window caHed the Dope Sheet You'll find it under
WIND0W>ANIMAT10N EDITORS» DOPE SHEET.

Click on the "allBody* button we created to select all of the keyframes in our character
and appear them on the Dope Sheet.

You might be telling yourself, “Wow, what is this? ‘Do I have to

learn more graphs, windows and junk!?"
No, not really! The Dope Sheet is actually one of the easiest
windows to work with. On the left octiner window, we have the
name of the character's control The little black rectangles in the
view area are the actual keyframes that we've set.
Let me explain it to you in an even easier way. In this picture I
replaced the controller"s name to something you can probably
understand better. Ail this means is that the Left Foot Control has
a keyframe set on frame 1, the Right Foot Control has a keyframe
set of frame 1, the Neck Control...etc. We are reading this
vertically. The bottom numbers on the Dope Sheet are the frame
numbers.

We obviously know that we have keyframes on all of the character controls because we
created the “allBody' button for that purpose.

We can also see that all of our body keyframes are perfectly lined up
Nothing is offset from one another.
Make sure your keyframes don't look like in this image. If you have
keyframes that are offset from one another, you probably accidentally
moved a keyframe on the graph editor. You can correct this issue with the
dope sheet The way to shift a keyframe is by having your move tool (w),
select the keyframe, and middle mouse did; and drag it.
 Okay so how do we shift ALL of these keyframes easily to adjust the timing!

If we look at the top of our view area, you'll notice that there is a blue row of
keyframes titled Dopes beet Summary. This is the MASTER keyframe. These are the
only keyframes that we are interested in adjusting. All of the master keyframes on
the blue line will select all other keyframes underneath it. Moving the master
keyframe will ensure that we don't get any offsets while adjusting timing.

-You can dick and drag over multiple master keyframes and adjust them all as
needed.

-Add keyframes by holding down CTRL+SH1FT while dicking new keyframes.

-Remove selected keyframes by holding down CTRL and dicking keyframes.

Let's get ready to adjust our timing of our anknatkm-Do you need mother treat?
ffo? Okay, let's move on.

Here's how I Rke to setup when adjusting timing. The dope sheet window will be right
above my perspective viewport to give me enough room to me enough room to view my
animation. You can definitely change the layout of your viewport to your liking by going to
PANEL>SAVED LAYOUTS in your viewport menu, if уса have we luxury of having dual
monitors, then you can have the dope sheet window on &e other monitor.

I like to shrink my dope sheet window to only show me the master keyframes. Once I'm
happy and comfortable with my setup, I will hack away.

Click play on the timeline and watch your an nation run for a кхо-е of bops. Take note of
where you need to speed things up or stow it daws. You can also scrub back and forth on
the timeline. Try to get a teei for the action, ftsk yourself if we need more time on the
anticipation of our character's jump. As he teans backward, can we hold the pose for a Stile
longer?

The truth Is timing is not something that can easily be taughtl Timing is the creative part
of animation. I cannot tell you exactly how to place your keyframes. Timing will come with
practice and by a natural sense of reality. Some people understand timing better than
others, but this Is not to say you won't get it.

Timing is a skill, not a talent. Everyone can learn a skill, but not everyone has a talent.
Through practice and dedication you will have the skills.

Shift some keyframes as you feel the movement should flow. Shrink your time range
slider to focus on small sections of your animation. First, try to get good timing on the
anticipation action. Second, move your attention to the jumping and landing action. Thirdly,
you'll concentrate on the turning of the head and running. This way it's easier on yourself
and you don't struggle to keep track of the whole animation at once.
Optional: You can change your curve tangents to Plateau to see some motion as we
adjust our timing. I typically don't change it from stepped just yet, because we still don't
have enough poses to give us decent movement in our character.

Here is how I like to approach timing.

I selected ALL of the master keyframes except for the one on frame 1. Frame 1 is my
starting pose which is okay as is. I will look at the timing from frame 1 to my next closes
keyframe on frame 15 and I will bring those closer to what I feel will give me a descent
speed/timing in movement.

Timing is becoming critical at this point and you should freely adjust your keyframes to
any frame number. Don't try to keep your keyframes only on even numbers or even interval
spacing. At this point, move your keyframes freely, as close or as far as they need to be to
get a good performance out of your character.
Once I'm satisfied with the timing I will deselect the first keyframe by holding down
CTRL. This will leave the keyframe in its new position and I will concentrate on the next two
keyframes.

Keyframe 311 will shift over to frame 47. I want to add more time for the ease in as the
character really pushes back in preparation for his jump.

The timing from frame 47 and my next keyframe needs to happen quickly. This is where
Morpheus bends down and pushes off the box. This action needs to happen with force, so I
will shift the next keyframe to frame 51.

The character is now in the air. From keyframe 51 to the next keyframe should happen
quickly as well. I want to keep the fast momentum of him pushing off the box and
maintaining that speed in the air. Frame 55 looks and feels good.

This pose is at the bottom of his fall when his heel comes into contact with the ground.
We want to make sure we show the weight of the character as he comes down. From frame
55, I'll leave the next keyframe at 66.
 Next pose Is of Morpheus landing on the ground. This timing should show the momentum
of his body coming down quickly. From frame 66 we can bring the next frame closer to
frame 74.

From when he lands on the ground to when he turns his head to the left, I want to give
him enough time to catch his body from the fall and turn. I'll probably add a little more
time. From frame 74 to frame 116 will give us enough time for him to look.

From the point where our character turns his head to when he runs off I'll have that
happen a bit quicker. From frame 166 I'll bring the rest of the running keyframes to begin
at frame 146.

I will leave the rest of the running keyframes as they are. They don't look too bad.
Adjusting our timing with the dope sheet is very fast and easy. I highly recommend you
take a break after you adjust some timing. I find that when you return from your break
you'll have "fresh eyes" and will be able to see things you didn't see before. This is only our
first pass and we shouldn't focus on making it took perfect yet. As we add more poses in
our second pass we will also do a second pass on timing. Our third pass will be the same.
We'll add final poses and give it one last pass on timing.

PLAYBLAST
A playblast is a preview movie we can quickly create to watch our animation in real time
(without lag). We can create an .AVI or .MOV video. I preferably like to make a playblast
movie using the perspective viewport. You can click on your viewport or maximize the
viewport you want to view your animation on.

Go to WINDOW>PLAYBLAST (click on the option box next to the word Playblast)

The only thing I recommend

changing in this window is the
FORMAT to make your movie
into a Windows Media Player
(.AVI) or Quicktime (.MOV)
preview. Quicktime is best
because it allows you to play
frame by frame if you press on
your left or right arrow keys on
your keyboard.

You can adjust the QUALITY

of your preview and the SCALE
or size of your preview. Once
you're done with your settings click on PLAYBLAST and Maya will make a preview movie.
Note: This won't render lighting. It's only to preview animation.

Second Animation Pass

The second pass ts the time when you can finally switch your graph editor tangents to
smooth We need to see our movement so we know where things are not working too welt
on timing and motion- t? is in those areas that we'B add more poses or add holds.

Go to your Animation Preferences and changes your Default in and out tangents to AUTO.
You are welcome to experiment with differen tangents to your liking.

The best 2nd pass approach is to concentrate on the hip and feet as weS as die arms.
Make sure they are all working together.

Keep an eye out for when the character ffces by a pose too fast
When we have the character moving through a pose too fast, it
typicaBy means you don't have an extra pose to keep the character in
place. For example, when Morpheus moves back to anticipate the
jump, he goes back and quickly moves forward. We don't want this to
happen.

We want him to move back and pause for a bit He should buM speed
and think about his jump.

In order to fix this we need to copy our anticipation pose and paste
it a couple of frames ahead. I'm going to show you the fastest and
easiest way to copy and paste any pose.

COPY & PASTE A POSE:

Go to any frame where you like a pose to copy. From that keyframe, middle mouse click
and drag across the timeline. You'll notice that the character won't animate in the viewport.
Your character will maintain his pose as you drag across. All you need to do is select all of
his controls with the "allBody" button, and press "s" on your keyboard to set a keyframe on
a new frame.
In this example, I have a pose on frame 21 that I want to copy and paste on frame 38. I
will go to frame 21 then middle mouse click and drag over to frame 38. Once I'm on 38, I'll
set a keyframe on all controls.

+ middle mouse button

Now I have an exact copy of our pose on frame 21. What this means in that our
character won't move from frame 21 to 38. This is called a "Hold" in animation. We are
holding our character's pose for a given amount of time. This is something you want to plan
into your animation. Moving your character nonstop will move linear, mechanical and quick.
You want to make your animation move quick in some areas, while in others, move slower.
It gives subtle pauses and allows the viewer's eyes to catch up from the quicker actions.
 "Morpheus_JumpFromBox_2ndPass_Hold"
You can follow a simple rule to make your movement appealing. When you have fast
movement, follow it up with slower moving action. The opposite will also work. We animate
our movement quickly and we follow it up by our principle of Easy-in. We move slowly and
we'll Ease-out to something quicker. Slowly but surely you'll start getting dynamic
movements in your work.

Now that we have two similar poses on frame 21 and 381 want to make them slightly
different. I want him to ease in to his stop before he lunges forward. On frame 381 will
select his left foot control and in the channel box I will move his Foot Roll to a negative
value of -1.7. When I do this his left knee will become slightly bent. I want to maintain his
left leg extended.
I will grab his hip controller and move him back until his left leg extends again. We don't
want to rotate the left foot control from where it is. I want to keep that
control planted where it is. We will simply angle his toes up using the
Foot Roll in the channel box.

MOVING HOLD:
We learned what a hold was. It's simply having two keyframes with
the same pose so that our character pauses. But what is a Moving Hold?
A moving hold is keeping the character moving slightly or subtly when
he's standing still for 2 or more poses. In 3D animation, when a
character freezes in a hold they will look lifeless. The viewer will see that
the character is frozen in time and will instantly loose the believability
and interest of the character. In order to keep our character alive, even when he's not
moving, is to actually continue to move him in the direction of his body momentum. Let me
show you!

The grey color pose is at frame 21 and the colored one is at frame 38.
Even thought our character is holding this pose for 17 frames, we are still
moving him. His hips are moving back, his right arm continues to move
back, his hand can slightly open, and his head can move down a bit. This is
a moving hold. We are holding a pose while moving him slightly backward.
This way, he's no longer frozen.

A moving hold is very important in 3D animation. Find areas where your

character will hold a pose and add a moving hold to keep him alive.
"Morpheus_JumpFromBox_2ndPass_MovingHold‘

Additions to make in our second pass:

Add in-between poses to remove awkward or linear motion. Focus on achieving arcs in
the feet, hips, arms, and head.
Look for areas where you can add moving holds. Make sure the character never freezes.
We can lag his arms or feet if necessary.
Add follow through and overlapping action with his torso, head, and
arms.
Rotate his torso, hip, shoulders, and head. Most beginners forget to rotate these parts.
Think about the X, Y, and Z axes of rotation.
Adjust timing to work with the new poses we're adding.

Let's take a moment to watch our animation

and look for areas it needs improvement... I'm
looking...looking...still looking... AH-HA! RIGHT
THERE!
"Morpheus_JumpFromBox_2ndPass_FallsShort"
I noticed that our character falls short of our
jump. Morpheus leaps from the box with
energy, but only lands a couple of feet in front
of the box. We can space the landing pose to be further out.

I feel Morpheus should land where I marked a white X. This will give us a
better arc to the falling motion.

The next question is, how do we move the whole character forward? If we move his
landing pose forward, won't that screw up all of the other poses we already carefully
planned?"

The answer is yes, it will screw everything up. UNLESSI!! Unless there's a way to move
ALL of our poses forward altogether. There is I The graph editor allows us to do so.
Remember how we adjusted our running hips to move constant using the graph editor?
That's sort of the same idea for spacing multiple poses forward. In order to move the whole
character forward and not leave any limbs or controls behind, you'll have to select both feet
controls and the hips.

Note: If you're animating your character's arms in IK, then you'll need to add the hand
controls with the feet and hip control selection.

Once we have our selection made, we'll need to open the graph editor window.

Since we are going to be shifting our character in the Translate Z axis, we'll need to
select the Translate Z channel for ALL 3 controls (left foot, right foot, and hip control). Hold
CTRL on your keyboard select all 3 Translate Z channels. Make sure you scroll down on your
outliner menu to select the other channel. Once you pick all three Translate Z channels you
will see the curves in your graph view.

Select all 3 curve keyframes starting from the frame number you want to shift your
animation. I selected the keyframes from frame 66 to the end of frame 166. Slide your
keyframes in the graph view vertically and you should see your character moving left and
right. Now I can adjust the spacing without destroying the poses we set ahead. Very easy
and nondestructive!
 Another correction I noticed in the poses is the way the
character is landing. It almost doesn't make sense that on the
first picture he's landing with his left foot first. Then on the
second picture he moves his right foot back. Our character's
falling motion would want to keep everything moving forward.
If he moved his right foot backward he would be off balance
when he lands.

I want to keep the pose where he has both feet on

the ground the same. To do this, I'll need to flip his
first pose to the opposite foot. This way he'll land with
his right foot on the ground first and his left foot will
move forward. This new motion of his foot moving
forward Is more believable than
when I had his foot moving backwards. It shows that
he's moving his foot forward to catch his body weight
and slow the fall. This new pose also blends well with
the following poses so there is no need to adjust the
character's running poses.
"Morpheus_JumpFromBoK_2ndPass_FeetAdJustment"

This animation is looking better alreadyl Let's move on and focus on our next section.
*Morpheus_JumpFromBon_2ndPass_HeadTurnNoHold

We can see the character landing and turning his head very mechanically and lifeless.
This definitely needs some work.
Remember if your animation looks this way it's because of you're missing the three
major factors: Not enough poses, add a moving hold or your timing needs to be adjusted.

We can take a guess that we need to add a moving hold because he doesn't pause. He
just lands from the jump and starts turning his head. We want to give our character some
time to settle from his fall before he turns his head.

We already learned how to copy and paste a pose by middle mouse clicking and dragging
on our timeline. We will use this technique to hold our landing pose and create a copy of it
further down our timeline. I will be guessing on how far to paste that pose. Remember we
can always adjust our timing when we get to it. But give it some frames so we can see the
hold.

Here's what the animation feels it needs. We actually need two holds. When the
character lands on the ground we need to copy the pose from frame 74 and paste it at
about frame 90. This will give us a hold from when he lands and later we can turn this Into
a "moving hold".

Then from frame 90 to frame 166 our character was starting to turn his head while at the
same time, he was beginning to move forward. To keep our character from floating, I
copied his pose from frame 116 and paste it on frame 102. This way from frame 90 to
frame 102 we'll see he turns his head. From frame 102 to frame 116 he'll hold his look to
the left.
Lastly, from frame 116 to frame 134 he'll begin to run.

EULER FILTER
We are done I Walt...WHATI? As I'm scrubbing in the timeline to watch my progress, I
noticed a main issue I must address to you. Technically Maya should calculate our animation
movements from one keyframe to the next keyframe in a straight line.

I have a keyframe on frame 116 where the foot is I in contact

with the ground and another keyframe on frame 134 where to foot is
leaving the ground. Shouldn't the animation move smoothly from my
first pose to the next? It should, but it's not.

My animation looks like this when I pass between frame 116 and
134. It should not look like thlsl This should not be the middle
passing pose. We are getting an awkward broken rotation in our
foot. Maya, somehow, managed to screw up our curves in the graph
editor and that's the reason we're getting this type of motion. But
don't worry; this is an easy two step fix. We'll select the foot control
and add and an Euler Filter.

Select the foot control (or any control with this

problem).

Open the graph editor and go to

CURVES>EULER FILTER. (it's pronounced Oi-ler)

This Euler filter will rearrange our curves

automatically so that we get the correct
"interpolation" or movement between our two
keyframes.
 Instantly we see our motion is working. We get an in-between
motion as shown in pose 2.
Keep this in mind when you're working with your animation. Any
time you have controls you can rotate you'll be prone to get broken
in- between motion. Euler filter will save you tons of headaches. Don't
try to counter this type of broken rotation by setting keyframes. It
will only make things messy and won't fix your problem.

’JumpFromBox_2ndPass_LandingPassPoses'

So far I m happy in the direction we are headed. We have decent amount of poses to
show us a clear action and I'm also focusing on showing follow through motion with our
arms and head. As our character lands on the ground his head and arms will continue to
move forward. Our timing is still not there yet and has areas that look slow motion while
others move too fast.

You can add poses and adjust your timing for each section of animation you work on or
you can go through the whole animation and add all of your poses leaving the timing for the
very end. You can even do both! Add poses to sections and adjust timing as you go, once
you're all done, go back and give it another timing pass. Use or create methods that work
for you!

Remember, it's about poses and timing, poses timing.

I'm going to focus on adding more poses to our running man so that his feet don't float
around as we play our animation.

Poses on frame 148,153,158, and 163 are new. You might also be wondering, "How
many poses do we need and how do we know which pose is next?"
A run is nothing more than poses that repeat themselves over and over. It's what we call
a cycle. In order to get a believeable run, we at least need these 7 poses.

1. Contact position of the foot to the ground

2. The Down position where our charcter's hips are at the lowest point.
 3. in-between pose from the down to the up position.
4. Passing position where his foot passes his other foot.
5. Up position where our character's hips are at the highest point.
6. In-between pose from the Up pose to the Contact pose.
7. Contact position again, but now with his other foot. (Cycle repeats)

This is exactly the type of motion that we're trying to go for. We want to think about
extreme poses. Areas where the feet are the furthest apart, closest, hips are the lowest and
highest, and passing poses. We are not creating poses at random places and we certainly
are not going to add poses on every single frame. We want to add enough poses so the
computer doesn't move our character like it wants to. We always want to be in control of
our character.

Now that we're done

adding all of our poses in
our Second Animation Pass
we can begin adjusting our
timing for a second pass.
This is where it gets fun
because we get to see our
character REALLY start to
come alive.

Open the Dope Sheet, click on the "allBody" button to select all of our keyframes and
let's hack at it! Remember we are only moving the Master Keyframes in our Dope Sheet. We
are going to be adjusting our keyframes exactly as we did in our First Animation Pass. Start
with the anticipation, work your way through the jump, the landing, the turning of the head
and finish with the run.

This is what our completed timing looks like! Right now would be a good time to create
another Playblast and view your work. Take a small break and come back with 'fresh eyes'.
See if you catch anything that needs fixing in your second pass. You can also start planning
for small changes or additions when you get to your third animation pass.
All in all, its looking good! Notice how we have not offset any body control keyframes.
Everything is nicely lined up and we still manage to get it to look awesome. Keeping all your
keyframes clean and organized is a good working habit and makes your job a lot easier.
*Morpheus_JumpFromBox_2ndPassComplete"

Third Animation Pass

YAY, we're almost done with the whole chi-bangl Our goal for the third animation pass is
to have it looking 90-95% done with our body animation (no facial animation). In the third
pass we will:
Add all final necessary poses to get it to animate smoothly.
Add all final 'moving holds' where it needs them.
Get good heel and toe rotations (peel) off the ground.
Make sure the feet don't slide when they're planted on the ground.
Avoid knee and elbow locks or overstretches.
Adjust timing to give us the best performance.
THE VERY LAST STEP: Offset keyframes.

Adding final poses

Look at your animation by scrubbing in the timeline. Watch for areas that need more
poses. If Maya is animating your character between two keyframes and you don't like how it
moves between them, add another pose in-between those keyframes. If you need more
space to add a keyframe between keyframes, slide your keyframes further out to make
room for new keyframes. Don't be shy to push keyframes over and add more poses. For
example, if I need a pose between keyframe 43 and 45. I can grab all of my keyframes and
using the Dope Sheet we can slide them all over to give us more space to add the new
pose.
As simple as this looks, many beginner animators don't know how to squeeze in a new
pose where there isn't enough room for another pose.

Adding Moving Holds

Adding a moving hold is not just 2 keyframes with the same pose and moving the end
pose further. Sometimes, adding a moving hold requires a couple of keyframes to get a
decent waiting time and make the motion convincing.
For example, when Morpheus is moving back to
anticipate his jump,
I added TWO keyframes within a moving hold. He
moves back from frame 6 to 17. The moving hold starts
from 17 to frame 34 to ease him to a near stop. From
frame 34 to 401 kept his hips moving further back and up
just a bit to continue slowing him down.

You want to add as many keyframes as necessary to

really show that he's slowing down at the end of his
anticipation.

Run through your animation and adjust your moving

hold. Ask yourself if you need the moving hold to last
longer. Can you add another pose in-between the moving
hold to help with the arc?

Foot Peels
The foot should peel off the ground by having heel contact on the ground, foot planted,
heel up, and toe push. These are good positions for feet rolling off ground.

Make sure you watch your animation slowly. There might be times when you think the
feet are working well at normal play speed, but when you slow it down; the feet are missing
some vital poses or are rolling ahead or behind timing. Pay attention to the feet and add
more poses to make them work properly. It's always better to have more poses than not
enough poses.
 Avoid Sliding Feet
There might be times when you copy the foot pose
planted on the ground and paste It to keep the foot
planted. Even though you have two identical keyframes,
you'll get the foot sliding on the ground.

On this example I have a keyframe on frame 10 of

the foot on the ground and I copied the same keyframe
to frame 20. Technically the foot should stay planted on
the ground while I scrub from frame 10 to 20. But this
doesn't happen.

Instead, the foot mysteriously moves and slides

between these keyframes. I don't have a keyframe on
frame 15 but we see the foot going below the ground
line. Two keyframes the same and I get motion between
them...WHYI?!?

"How and why does this happen!?"

This is caused by your graph editor curves. Because we set Maya's default tangents to
automatically smooth, having curves set to smooth is not always what we want. I selected
the foot control and opened the graph editor. Here we can clearly see the issue. We know
that in order to not get movement we need to have a flat horizontal line. The keyframe on
frame 10 and 20 are at the same 0 value line, but the lines between them are curved. We
need to make these lines flat.

This is why it's a good idea to

set both feet controls to Plateau
tangents. This will ensure a flat
tangent between two keyframes
with the same value. You can also
manually highlight both
keyframes and select Flat
Tangents to flatten those specific
lines. Plateau tangents will set this
to ALL of our feet animation and
will ensure a flat tangents where
we need to stay flat. Now we have
a flat line where our feet should
stay planted on the ground.

No more sliding feet!

 Avoid Joint Locks
Joint locks are pops in the animation, typically due to IK control overstretched, such as
the knees. Knee pops can quickly ruin an animation.
They occur when you have a leg bent then you
straighten it far too much. It looks as if the knee locked
down into place. This can easily be avoided or fixed if you
move the foot controller closer to the hips so you get the
smallest bend in the knee while still making the leg look
straight. You can also try moving the hips slightly forward
until the knee unlocks.

In this image I fixed the knee lock by giving the foot

a slight bend. The leg still looks straight

Adjust Timing

After you're done adding your powi and worrying about all the other 100 fun things about
animation, you will need to go through your keyframes and adjust timing on the last time.
By the ending of this pass you should have all of your pose locked down, you'll need to
focus on creating convincing motion and bellevability. Create a couple of Playblast preview
as you go along and stare at your animation like a Hawk. Look for the smallest detail In
timing that could make a big difference In motion.
 Even at the third animation pass I managed to not offset any keyframes from each other.
Everything is clean and easy to understand.
If I was in a
professional studio and handed my work
to another animator, I'm sure they could
easily work with it. It's always good
practice to keep everything organized up
until the last polishing stages. Our entire
animation Is about 5 seconds long and took
about 30 poses to make this animation
work.

Offset Keyframes
We should have great timing and a smooth moving character. If we get this to work
great, by the time we go to offsetting keyframes it should look even better.
The reason we want to offset keyframes is so that we can give our character some
fluidity. If we leave our character as it is, you will notice that most body parts turn and stop
at the same timing. For example, when our character turns left, we can I see his head and
arm stop at the same timing. If you want to I take your animation to the next level,
offsetting keyframes should be something to look into.
“Morpheus_JumpFromBox_3rdPass_NoOffsetLanding"

Even though our character is moving near realistic, we can continue to push things by
breaking the timing of limbs from others. We can either speed things up or lag them behind.
You want to avoid having these small movements look robotic. By offsetting the timing from
other parts we can instantly make the animation look 110% better or is it 200% better!
Who cares, it will look AMAZING!

In order to offset keyframes easily and organized, we want to

select the whole arm.
For example, I want to offset the timing of his right arm so that
he brings it up to his chest before he turns left. The way to offset
keyframes is by selecting all 3 arm controls; shoulder, elbow and
wrist. If we selected just the wrist control this would not work. You
would see the wrist move by itself when we offset it. If we only
offset the elbow controls, then the timing of our shoulder and wrist
would not work together. The best way is to select these three controls that are already
moving together and offset from the rest of the body animation. In this animation we can
see the final timing of the right arm as it moves sooner than the rest of his body.

The reason why offsetting keyframes is left to the very end is because this will make
adjusting timing or adding new poses a little more difficult. You'll start spreading keyframes all
over the timeline. At times you will get keyframes on nearly every frame. You can see when I
offset the arm from the rest of the body, I get a keyframe on frame 98, 99 and 103 and 104. If
I continue to offset other parts of the body, things can really get messy.

This is not a bad thing. Offsetting keyframes is important and necessary to get realistic
animation. But, this is the reason why you want to leave it to the very end.

Once you complete the third animation pass you'll be on your way to finishing your
animation movie. Preview your animation and decide what it needs to give it that special touch.
Pay attention to the fingers as well. They are as important to the motion as any other part of
the body. Never leave the fingers with a fist or an open palm. Find areas where you can
animate the finger to help with the action.

Now that we're done with the third pass, take a look!

"MorpheusJump_ThirdPass"

Polish Pass

The polish pass is not too much of an animation or poses pass. The polish pass is spending
time in the graph editor making sure that the tangents are smooth where they need to be
smooth and flat where they need to be flat. The best recommendation is to start from the hips
and work your way out to the limbs.

Select the hips and open the graph editor.

We actually want to look at all the Translate and Rotate channels for each control of the
character and look for tangents that we can give better arcs to.
In this example, I'm showing you the Translate Y channel with 4 keyframes of the
character's hips landing on the ground. You can see the first keyframe is good, second
keyframe is a little bit off from a smooth curve, third keyframe goes too far up, and the fourth
keyframe settles on the ground. I want to slide the keyframes vertically so that we get a
smoother arc of the hips landing on the ground.

I adjusted the keyframes so that we get that smooth nice arc on the hips. I know going
through each channel on every control can seem tedious and repetitive, but I guarantee you
this is the ultimate step that gives you the professionalism flow in animation.
Let's select another channel inour hip control and take a look.

This is the Translate Z channel in our graph editor. We can see that the line is not
straight. We need to ask ourselves what areas need to be straight and what needs to be a
curve. The best way to figure this out is to go to that keyframes that needs adjusting and
look at your animation. As you change the keyframes value in the graph, look at your
character's movements. See how far you can push the hips before the feet begin to stretch.

Here is that same curve, but now I adjusted the keyframes in the graph editor to really
give me that smooth flow in motion.
 You can continue to go through all of your body controls and look for these fixes. Keep an
eye on your character as you push and adjust the keyframes curves.

Now let's look at the feet controls and find some areas we can fix.

You can see how these tangents have an up and down hill shape, but there are two
tangents that are flat and ruin our smooth flow. We should keep the flow of the curves by
grabbing the tangent handles and rotating them to match our curve. If you leave this
unfixed you will see pops in your animation. You will more than likely have this issue if you
use Plateau tangents on the feet. Even though this is a good use to keep the feet on the
ground, it might flatten other tangents that don't need flattening. This is why it's important
to go in polish your work.

We want to end with smooth hill shaped curves like these. This ensures the flow
animation. If you want smooth animation this is how it is done.
 We definitely want to make sure that our foot stays planted on the ground for the length
in needs to stay.

We can ensure our foot will stay on the ground by having our tangents flat where they
need to be flat. Flat tangents means there is no change in direction. The foot is in the
ground and is not going anywhere. If there is any unwanted curves or if you see the feet
sliding on the ground, make sure the tangents are flat in the area the foot should remain on
the ground.

Once you go through all of you character's tangents and polish them smooth, your
animation will shine like never before.

All that's left is to smooth the character's geometry. If you character has a polygon
smooth attribute you can set it level 1 or 2. Morpheus has the smooth attributes on the
global control. If you select it you will see in the Channel Box the Smooth Settings towards
the bottom. The higher the number the smoother your character will become. Don’t increase
the smooth too high or you end up adding to many smooth divisions on your character
causing your computer to crash if it can't handle it The smoother you make the mesh the
more your computer will lag if you continue to work. Make sure you only smooth out his skin
for preview or render purposes. If you plan to continue working on the animation, set the
smooth settings down to 0.
 You can see his hair and all other body parts become smooth. You can also cfenge his
facia expression to something other than sleepy! But since you can't reac bis face as he's
moving around, you don't really have to animate it. Once your character is smooth it's
ready for demo reel material. Create that final

Note: if you're applying to work as a 3D Character Animator, you don't necessarily need
to add lights, cameras, textures, effects or render anything too fancy for your demo. You
will strictly get reviewed for your animation quality of work, A good Playblast preview will be
good enough to add to a demo reel. Just ’rcke sure you playblast a good angle of view so
that you can read at of the animation without obstructing anything.
“MorpheusJumpPolishPass"

We Are Done!

WE HAVE COMPLETED OUR ANIMATION! Time for some fun! No, really! I recommend you
take a couple of days off and relax. As I said before, animation is hard and fun work
combined into one. Go to Disneyland or take a vacation at Hawaii. Okay, maybe not that
far! But you certainly need to reward yourself for the hard work. This way you don't feel like
it was all for nothing. Show it to your friends and family and tell them its actual work from
Pixar:) Okay, maybe not that either, lol.
We have learned a lot. Even if you were animating something completely different, you
can take the same methods and apply them to ANY animation. Many people ask me how I
approach acting animation. Acting animation is where a character does more talking to the
camera and has hand gestures. I tell them I use the same methods. Listen to the dialogue
and note where there's change in the mood. Definitely use reference video and look at your
own hand gestures. When you do your Key poses, add them where the hands are at the
extreme points of the action, the highest and lowest points of the hand gestures. Go to the
breakdown and add the poses that show HOW he goes from one key pose to the next. Keep
filling in the in-between poses until your character comes alive. Most swaying movements
come from your hips. Make sure you move the hips to keep his body alive even though
most of the acting comes from hand gestures. You should not worry about facial and lip
animation till the very end. Always get your point across by your characters actions. If you
can sell the characters performance with only body animation, then you will definitely get it
right on once you add the facial animation.

What about animating two characters?

Animating two character is not that much different. When you have two characters
interacting with each other you will always have one character leading the action. Meaning,
character A will be talking while character B listens. When character A is talking you will
animate him and ignore character B. Then when character B talks, you will switch your
focus to character B. You will have this bouncing back and forth action. Once you have
enough poses to show the characters interacting, you will need to focus on the parts where
the other character is only listening. You want to keep him almost still, but not frozen, and
you don't want to over animate him. If character A is talking and you over animate
character B while he's listening, you will distract the viewer from paying attention to the
main character. You can have character B shift his weight, blink occasionally, and turn his
head slightly with interest of what the other character is saying. But for the most part, you
should have one character leading the dialogue while the others listen. Then they trade off.

Probably my best advice for beginners is to not be afraid to add more poses. I remember
the end of my first year of animation classes in college; I wasn't able to get good animation.
It was until my second year that I just told myself, "What would happen if I added more
poses than I'm used to?" I always thought the computer would fill in the middle poses for
me, so I was always holding myself back from adding more poses. Especially when trying
out FK/IK animations. It's important you develop a sense of when to use one over the
other. Only until you break away from your habits and try something new the next time,
you will see a positive difference in your work. Take it from me and try it yourself. Add more
poses and moving holds while keeping your character alive, I guarantee you will be off to a
better start.

You can add final touches to your animation by modeling a simple environment or having
your friend model if you don't know. It will turn your animation into a story. Animation is
about storytelling. Everything your character does should be with purpose to get the story
moving forward.

I took about an extra hour

to model the upper deck of a
ship. Now when we play our
animation with this new
environment, it looks
interesting and makes the
audience want to watch
more of it. They want to
know what’s going to happen
next. I hope this is why you
want to be an animator. You
want to tell stories and capture the audience's attention.
This concludes the body animation chapters. What a long and fun time we had. It was a
pleasure to serve by your side in this journey. I hope you take something of value which
you can use in personal, school or professional animation projects.

"MorpheusJump_PolishPass_Environment"

Take it a step further and make it dramatic with SOUND!

"MorpheusJump_PolishPass_Environment_Creature”

Facial Animation

Facial animation should be the best part about animating. It makes your character come
alive and look like they're talking, thinking, and feeling. It's not just about matching the lips
to the voice over (VO). It's about catching the smallest detail of movements in expressions.
It's in the eyes, the eyebrows, the blinks, cheeks, lips, and twitches. Every big and subtle
movement counts when it comes to communication.

At the previous studio I found that some animators struggled when it came to lip sync
and facial animation. I mentored a good friend of mine who was struggling with his lip sync
work. The director had told him to keep working on his lip sync animation because it wasn't
looking good. But I knew he was giving it his best and just wasn't cutting it. I didn't like to
see a friend struggle if I knew I could help him. I knew exactly what he was doing wrong. I
quickly explained to him my methods. The next time the director came by to see his work,
he says, "It came a long way, looks great!" My friend says, 'Thanks." He looks back at me
and smiles with a thumb's up.

Later, I was moved to another project to do character facial set up for the Ice Age
Continental Drift Arctic game. I was responsible for creating the GUI (graphical user
interface) controls for the face and created all the mouth shapes so that animators could get
the expressions they needed. The project was a short project so I needed to add all basic
controls that would be good enough to finish on time but still manage to get good animation
out of the character.

Let's talk a little bit about the basics of how lip sync works and show you how this simple
method that can save you time and headaches of figuring it out on your own.

Lip Sync

If you're new to animation and it's your first time attempting to animate lips to the voice
over, your first reaction will be to get the character to enunciate every syllable, letter or
word. Even though we look like we do this in real life, in animation is not something you
always want to do.

If you do this in animation, the lips will pop and mosh together. You want to avoid having
chipmunk lip movement. The audience will have a hard time reading the lips and will ruin
the believability of your character's speech.

I will demonstrate this method using the Alice rig. I'll be using only the bottom 9 controls
as pictured here. These are the only controls that work the lips. The others controllers move
the facial stuff, which we are not worried about for now.

When it comes to lip sync, I approach it with two simple passes. Here is the secret I
shared with my friend, which saved his butt.

The first pass is setting keyframes on the up and down 'jaw drop' movement and the
second pass is adding the mouth shapes on the same frame as the jaw drop keyframes.

First Pass

For the first pass In lip sync you must think of the Jim Henson
Muppets. Think about Kermlt the frog and how he manages to get so
much with so little control.
Kermit can only open and close his mouth, yet he's still convincing
and entertaining to watch.
Before getting started, we need to listen to our voice over
repetitively and you need to listen to it until you get sick of it.
Understand what is being said and the emotion and attitude behind
the delivery of the line. You need to plan the jaw drops and basic timing.
To do this, you can feel for the jaw drops by placing your fingers together and pressing
under your chin while reciting the dialogue.

You will feel your hand drop as your mouth wants to open to say certain words.

Here is the dialogue we will be working with:

“Um, butfirst...l have to go and pick up some gum, because...! ran out."
Visit www.animationmethods.com to download the audio file, ("l_ran_out.wav")

Let's go ahead and set up our scene for lip sync.

To bring the audio into our

scene we need to go to
FILE>IMPORT. Find the I ran
out.wav file and click IMPORT.

You should see a sound wave on your timeline. If you don't see it, right click on the
timeline and go to SOUND and select l_RAN_OUT.

If you want to mute the audio you can choose OFF. Selecting USE TRAX SOUNDS will
play the audio only when you click play, but you won't be able to scrub on the timeline to
hear it.

If you want to move or offset the audio you'll need to go to the same menu and next to
l_RAN_OUT you will see the option box. Release your mouse over It to get the Audio
Attribute menu. At the top of the menu you will see the OFFSET option. This will move the
audio by whatever frame number you input in the value box. But I won't offset the audio for
this tutorial. I'll keep it at 0.

Note: To remove or delete imported audio, go to EDIT>DELETE BY TYPE> SOUNDS>

"l_RAN_OUT."

I typically like to work with this setup. My facial control window on the side, my
character's face with a zoomed view of the mouth, and the audio displayed as a wave on
the timeline.

You can open a viewport on a separate window by going to your viewport menu and
selecting PANELS>TEAR OFF...

We will be using only 1 controller to do this animation pass. Whatever control gives you
the open mouth jaw rotation, that's the control you want to be using. Sometimes you will
have two jaw controls. One might open the mouth straight down while the other one will
rotate it open. If your rig has two controls, you should use the one that rotates it open. You
jaw naturally rotates to open as it has hinges under your ears.
 For the Alice rig, you'll need to use only the "Synk" control (I didn't name
It, but should be labeled Sync). This is the only control that allows us to open
her mouth.

Something important thel many beginners make the mistake of it using the contrail to
their maximum positions. For eexmple, if you wont to make a character talk you don't want
to open the mouth all the way just because the control allows you to You want to took at
real life examples, Mott profetstonel animator! use a mirror to took at their mouth shapes at
they're animating We almost never drop our jew all the way down.

You want to keep away from f ettlng these typei of mouth poses at you go
through your first animation pass,
When i tay think of Kermlt, I don’t literally moan animate the mouth the
way a puppet moves their mouth. Just think about the TIMING they open and
dote the mouth. Say the word and look In a mirror while you tay it. How for
did your low drop?

You'll have to find a good balance between exaggerating the mouth potet
and reality. There's timet when in real life we hardly move our mouth, but in animation,
wider motions are necessary to bring the mouth to life. You alto want to keep the
character't personality and age in mind. If you were animating and old man or Yoda, you
wouldn't open the mouth as far But a crying baby would probably have this type of jaw
drop.

You want to keep the mouth movements convincing, realistic, with a bit
of exaggeration. This type of mouth opening can be a good starting
position for those who don't have an Idea of where to begin. From this
pose you can tone it down or open it depending on the word and attitude of
the character.

You can see how this mouth pose is not ridiculously opened as in the
previous Image.

When doing lip sync, you can focus on sections of the voice over and
slowly move forward till you complete the entire dialogue. For this VO, I will start with the
first 50 frames when she says, *Um. but first... * This will make things easier while getting
started. We will use the straight ahead approach.

We are going to be setting keyframes manual on the 'Synk' control. Meaning, we will
mone the jaw control to where we'd like it to be and pressing *s* on our keyboard. To close
the mouth, we will reset the controler back to zero.

Imagine we only have the one jaw control available to animate the mouth. We need to
set keyframes for the closed mouth positions, semi-open positions, open positions, and wide
open positions. Very important, don’t forget the holds.
If the character it not speaking for a moment, we want to add a hold on the mouth, if
there's room for thowwg a mowng hold, you can diftmWy keep the mouth moving to a
subtle settle position.

For this section of animation, using the Kermit the Frog theory, we're going to have 3
open mouth positions. *um, but first *
 I will select the “Synfc* control and sat a keyframe on frame 0 with her
mouth dosed. At about frame 5 she's in the middte of saying *Uumm.* I will
set a keyframe with the mouth opened to what looks appropriate for that word.

The mouth witi need to dose when she finishes the last part of “Uummm ".
By frame 11 i wil dose the mouth. She quickly goes into the word. *but*. The
way she says the word, sounds fifce there's a quick and small drop to her
mouth at. "Buw * On frame 14 we’ll give her a smaler opened mouth.

We will dose her mouth at the end of the *but* on frame 19.
Then she says the word first with attitude end exaggeration.
The mouth needs to toe opened for longer time to realty stretch
the sound, *fiiiirst*. For this type of timing you'll need to add a
anal open mouth by the letter *f*. At frame 24 is where the
mouth begins to open {first image). Then when she's stretching
the "iiiiiiiir", we want to continue the open mouth movement to frame 34. Open (t slightly
wider than frame 24 to keep the Bps moving. This is actually a moving hold. You can also
copy frame 24 and paste it on frame 34, but open the mouth further (second image). By
frame 48 we can dose the mouth to end the long drag of "fiiiirst ”.
You'll notice through this animation that most of the mouth action comes before the
voice. At times your ftps are opened before any sound comes out of your mouth. Lip sync is
not about setting keyframes on the exact sound wave on the timeline.
You can have keyframes perfectly aligned to the sound wave, but I guarantee you this
won't work when it's animated. Up sync is visual timing. Ultimately is has to work on the
screen not on the timeline.

"Alice_LipSync_1stPass_x0_x50"

Move forward in the timeline to the next audio section, say frame 50 to 115. Usten to the
next part of the audio and note where we can have the jaw drops.

’I have to go and pick up some gum..."

This sentence can quickly ruin our animation if we drop the jaw on every word. If you
open and close the mouth on every word you will get the chipmunk popping mouth. Stay
away from having the lips look too chatty. Here's a preview of what not to do.

‘Alice_UpSync_1stPass_Chipmunk_x5O_x115’

Instead of opening the mouth on the first word, T then dose it and
open it again to say, "have". We can get a better flow in the jaw if we
blend the words with one jaw motion, "I ha-ve."

Frame 48 was a dosed mouth. Frame 51 I'll drop the jaw slightly
ahead of the word, “I", then on frame 55 I'll continue to drop the jaw
tome more to say "ha-ve," Frame 61 I'll dose the mouth.

Frame 67 she's sayfng, "go ". Open her mouth a little brt before
she says the word. This is one of those words where your mouth
opens before you begin to hear the word, because the sound comes from the frame 721
won't dose the mouth all the way. I will use this shape as a moving hold for
the end of, “qoww" sound.

Frame 77 open the mouth to begin saying the word, grid.' Close the mouth
at fame 80.
 On the words, “pick up,” I'm NOT going to open and close the mouth twice.
I will avoid doing, “pick up." This is an area where using one open jaw will
make this flow smoother than having chipmunk chatty lips. I will combine the
open mouth to something like, "pick-up." I'll open the mouth of frame 83 and
dose it on 87.

The open mouth will come at frame 90 when she says, "some". By frame
96 we'll dose on the "mm sound.

The word "gum" is stretched out to sound like, ''guuuuum". On frame 103
we'll open the mouth slightly wider than we previously have. We'll drag it out
to about frame 115, and she'll dose on the "gum" sound.

We'll end this section and continue with the rest after a short break. Your jaw drop
animation should look something like this:

*Alice_UpSync_1stPass_x50_x115*

Let's wrap up our firs lip sync pass by finishing frames 115-182.

The word, "because" will have two jaw drops

on, "be-cause." Frame 115 was a closed jaw so
we'll find our next opening position at about
frame 119 when she says the, "bge" sound. Then,
at frame 122 we won't dose the mouth all the
way because the "ckk” sound is not a closed mouth sound. Now at the "a" of the
“because" word, we'll open her mouth at frame 127 and give it some frames after it to
really show the "aaaause" sound. We'll end that word with a closed mouth at frame 140.

If you pay close attention, you'll hear breathing in the audio at about frame
150. This is certainly something you don't want to skip. You want to add life to
your character as much as possible. Even if you open the mouth subtly during
her gasp of air, this adds realism. Frame 150 I added a small opening to her
mouth.

These last words we're going to have 3 jaw

drops on the vowels, "ran out".
Frame 154 we'll drop the jaw to say "I". Frame
157 I'll close the jaw with a slight opening. At
frame 160 we'll drop the jaw to say "ran" and close
the jaw at the "nnn" sound at frame 163. We'll
end with a wide jaw drop to say, “out," followed
by a dosed mouth at frame 178.

When we have a lot of words that are said crammed together, you want to keep away
from having large mouth openings followed by closed mouth. Instead of a closed jaw, use a
slight opening so the mouth doesn't travel so much to open again. This will help reduce the
chatty chipmunk effect.

Let's take a look at our last jaw animation section.

 *Allce_UpSync_1stPass_x115_x182*

Here's a rule that you should keep in mind while working with lip sync. You'll always need
at least 1 frame spaced between keyframes to be able to read the character's lips. You
should never set keyframes that are consecutively spaced. This will cause pops in the lips
and will give you fast chipmunk lips that won't read correctly. For example, a keyframe on
frame 1 and another on frame will read well. But a keyframe on frame 1 and another on
frame 2 won't read.

Let's go ahead and watch the completed first pass. I'll emphasize that you get the timing
as best as possible on the first run, because our second pass will be based on the timing of
our jaw drops. If you find areas that need improvement in timing, right now is the time to
make those adjustments. Create a Playblast and check it out.

"Altce_UpSync_1stPass_x0_x182"

A great way to check for timing is to look at her bottom jaw line and see how it moves up
and down with the dialogue.

To summarize this chapter, use only the jaw rotation controller, no quick poppy
chipmunk lips, and think Kermit the Frog.

Second Pass

Let's learn about the actual mouth shapes we'll be using to have our character enunciate
words. You're probably thinking lips sync will take a long time because they're 26 letters In
the English alphabet and we'll need to shape our character's lips 26 different poses to get
started. The bad news Is, yes, there are 26 letters In the English alphabet. The good news
Is, no, we don't need have 26 different mouth shaped to get our character to talk.

There is something called phonemes [foh-neem]. Let me explain this in a way that's not
too scientific for you. Phonemes are a small group of mouth shapes that we repeatedly do
to say ANY word. You'll hear this word a lot in studios when working with lip sync. Here's a
group of 9 mouth shapes or phonemes that we can use In our workflow.
 With these 9 shapes we can have Alice say nearly any word. Of courese we are not
limited to these shapes. We can modify these shapes to create new ones to achieve an
exact shape we're looking for. But generally, these are good enough to work our way
through any dialogue.

If we were using the Morpheus rig to do lip sync, we would still approach this the same
way as the Alice rig. The bottom jaw control would be used to do our first lip sync pass and
all controls around the lip would be used to create the phonemes/mouth shapes. I typically
don't include the cheek controls for the phoneme shapes. I leave this when i get to
animating the facial expressions.
 Before we begin our second lip sync pass, we'll need to create all of our phoneme shapes
and add them to our poseMan library. Seepage 116 for installing and using the poseMan
script.
It will probably take you about 15 minutes to create all of Alice's phonemes, so get
poseMan installed and get started, OR you can download my pre-made Alice phonemes from
www.AnlmationMethods.com.

Here's how the second lip sync animation pass works. Select the control you used to do
the jaw drops. We will go back to each keyframes we made and on the same frame you
have a keyframe, we will add the appropriate phoneme.

Let me repeat that again, everywhere we have a keyframe on the jaw; we will add a
keyframe with our phoneme shape.

For this second pass we will set a keyframe on ALL of the

controls that shape our lips weather we used all the controls or
not to shape the lip.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have CREATE KEY ON POSE

checked ON in your PoseMAN script window. This will
automatically set a keyframe when you select a mouth shape
from the library. If you don't check this on, your mouth won't
animate and you won't get keyframes.
Let's fly through our first 50 frames of dialogue. Since we
already have our timing laid out from our "synk" controller. We
can easily add the mouth shapes from our pose library and run
through this fast. I will also set a "Neutral" mouth shape
keyframe when we need a closed mouth shape.
 "X" Is the symbol for frame. Here are all of the poses I'm using from the library for the
first section of my 2nd Pass.
After we have our phonemes in place our animation should read better, but won't be
perfect just yet.

"Allce_LipSync_2ndPass_x0_x50”

Here are the phonemes I used for the second section of dialogue. I also added a new
shape on frame 93 which we didn't have in our jaw drop pass. We'll be coming back to fix
our mouth shapes so they're not all the same. They are also too wide and extreme. Once
we re done with our second pass we'll come back and tone down our mouth shapes. We are
focusing on speed right now. Very easily, you can look at my frame numbers and quickly
pop in the phonemes I'm using. You can also use a different phoneme if you feel it works
better than what I have. Let's take a look at what we have.

“Allce_LipSync_2ndPass_x50_x115'

No we're done with our second pass In lip sync and we'll begin focusing on toning down the
lips so that they don't look as exaggerated as we have them now. She looks like she's trying
very hard to enunciate every word.

Create a Playblast, like my father says, "Let's check a look"

 *Alice_LipSync_2ndPass_x0_x182*

Our phonemes are definitely working with our timing, but we need to make some major
adjustments to our shapes.

Third Pass

On the third pass we will focus on making the phonemes a little more subtle. Our phoneme
shapes are created to help us spend less time reshaping our mouth when we
come across a same mouth shape. But they are not meant to be left at the
extreme poses as we have them.
We want flexibility In the face and we want to hit the accents. The accents
are Important In dialogue because they accentuate a point. We want to make
sure that the lips really hit those accents as they are the moments that give
life to the character. If the lips are off time or are shaped Incorrectly during a voice accent, It
won't look convincing. Just rework It.
Not only are accents important for the lip sync, but they play an important role when doing
body animation. The body, head, or hand gestures should always hit right before the voice
accents. Especially the head accents, which help the dialogue and attitude, read better. This is
why when we're animating a character to dialogue; we always animate the body acting to the
voice over. We always leave animating the mouth and facial last. We need to match our acting
to the voice and the accents. Always hit the body, hand gestures, and head animation about 4
frames before the voice accents.

Going back to our third

pass, we will be using only
the facial controls to fix the
mouth shapes to what the
actual mouth should do.
Here's something to keep in
mind. Remember I said to
use a mirror to animate the
lips, this way you have
reference.
There's a good and bad
idea when doing this. If we
use a mirror, most animators
will end up animating their
own lips. This can be a bad
thing, because you lose the
personality of the character
and the lips will start looking more like...well, you.
 Animation Is all about characterl Different people move their lips In different ways. People with
accents also move their lips In different ways. If you're going to use a mirror, use It as the basis of your
lip shapes, but take Into consideration the character's personality you're animating.
We can certainly use the graph editor to adjust our values of certain shapes. The graph editor allows
for those small subtle changes we might be looking for. A great place to start is with the Jaw "Synk"
control.

Here Is the Translate Y on the "Synk“ control. Check out the tangents and make sure there are no
kinks on the curves. Everything should flow nicely.

The way to make your mouth shapes subtle is by decreasing the spike curves in the graph view. I
could easily grab a keyframe from the tips of the curves and lower the height of It. This minimizes the
mouth shapes to my liking. Go through any controls you feel need to be toned down and lower the
curves in the graph.
Make note of any last minute timing issues you see. To adjust timing make sure you select ALL
controls that have keyframes. If you're using the Morpheus rig, select the bottom jaw control and ail the
lip controls and adjust your timing.
For the most part, when adjusting timing for the lips, it can easily be done on the timeline without the
need of the dope sheet. But if you find It easier to use the dope sheet, go ahead I
Once you get good lip shapes all throughout your dialogue, create a Playblast and watch the whole
thing.

“Alice_LipSync_3rdPass_x0_x182"

Looks nice I Let's move on to the facial animation.

Facial Expressions

Eyes
The next parts we want to animate are the eyes and eyelids. Now that we have her talking, we want
to have her look at the person she's talking to.

Beginners tend to leave the eye controller attached to the head, so wherever the head turns the eyes
turn with it. This is NOT what we want to do. This is very mechanical and robotic. The eyes are an
important role in animation because it's the part that the viewers will look at. Every time you talk to a
person you look at their eyes.

The eyes also play an important role in telling us the personality and mood of the character. If a
person is shy, the will tend to avoid eye contact. If they're angry, their eyes will widen with a gaze. If
they're tired, they will barely open. A lot can be said by looking at someone's eyes. Don't overlook
animating the eyes.

I find that most people get lazy by the time they get to animate the face that they want to fly by it or
cheat it. If you want to do this professionally, you cannot cheat this. You must spend the time!
It's kind of like building a house for 2 years and you finish it with bad cheap materials. This will make
the house look bad. If you’re going to put the time and the effort to make your animation look good,
finish it with a bang! Don't skip on quality at the end.

There are only 2 good reasons you can cheat the eyes. One is, your character is far from the camera
that you can't read the eyes clearly, and two, your character has his back to the camera. That's it.
 Your eyes in reality don’t ever turn smoothly, THEY DART AROUND! Try this experiment right now. Go
outside and slowly pan your head from left to right.

You will notice that your eyes dart and pause from section to section.

Here is what your ryes da. They will move and pause (dart) as you turn your head around
slowly.

They will not move smoothly with your head. Big no no.

In 3D animation we definitely want use eye darts to get realistic eye movement.

Most eye darts happen when your character is thinking. It shows your character is going through a
thought process. Don't think of eye darting as random acts. They don't roam around freely without
intention.

Eye darts serve to help with the body acting or an emotion. Eye darts move reaHy quiddy. Look at
people's eyes as you talk to them and you'll notice a lot of micro-movements. These movements happen
quickly. Sometimes they happen too quickly that they seem linear. It's probably the only linear motion
acceptable in animation.

It's a good idea to plan your eye darts and use them only where needed. If you add to many eye darts
you animation can look crazy or freaked out No eye darts will make it feel dead.

Even if your character is tracking a moving object with his eyes, it's a good idea to break up the eye
motion with a slight pause then dart ahead.

For the most part, eye darts are not that difficult to animate. 2 or 3
frames apart will give you good eye darts. Always use the eye controller
located in front of the character's eyes. Some eye controllers will have a
setting that will allow you to follow the head or to leave the controller in
place.
If you're character is far from the camera, mostly running in the scene,
and you don't see the eyes, you can have the eye controller follow the
head. This way you avoid needing to adjust the eye control every time the character moves.

On the other hand, if your character is standing close to the camera and is mostly acting, you want to
set the eye control to stay in place (not follow the head). This gives you the most manual control over
the eyes.

Here's how to do eye darts.

On Alice, the eye darts are 2 or 3 frames apart. This is where she moves her eyes to new directions.
You'll need to add a hold for the time she’s not moving her eyes. You can also change your graph editor
curves to be linear, but smooth tangents can work well for eye darts too.

Dart Dart Dart Dart Dart Dart

Here's what I've done. I copied frame 0 to frame 7, from frame 7 to frame 101 moved her eyes. Copy
frame 10 and paste at 37, this will give us our hold.

From frame 371 moved her eyes to frame 39. Do another hold from frame 39 to frame 70. Another
eye dart from frame 70 to 72...etc.

I'm only working with holds and eye darts. You can continue to work this way until you finish your
entire eye animation. Let's take a look at the final results.

"Allce_ Eyes_Anlmatlon"

Eye Blinks
People don't blink on even Intervals or every two seconds. We're not mechanical. We blink for a
reason. Our blinks are like a thought reset. They convey our mood.

We can blink because we're nervous, shy, worried, excited, sleepy...etc. We even blink based on the
condition of the weather. If it's too windy, we tend to blink more often to keep our eyes moist. If we look
towards the sun, we blink to avoid the harsh light on our eyes. You also want to keep in mind to never
overdo blinks. Too much blinking can be distracting and confusing.

If you have idle characters in the background, adding blinks can be a good way to keep them looking
alive. Of course we'll still need to animate the body.

Great places to add blinks are In quick head turns.

You can add blinks in major changes of eye direction.

The timing for a blink animation will always depend on the mood of the character. But for a generic
blink you can do 3 frames to bring the lids down and 4 frames to open the eyes again. This is not a rule
for blinks, as there are times you can close the lids in 2 frames and open them at 3 frames. You can also
have them evenly spaced, close on 3 frames and open on 3.

Just make sure they're not animated too fast that they can't read well. For example, it's almost rare to
have the eyes opened on frame 1, closed at frame 2, and opened at frame 3. These consecutive frames
won't give enough time to read them.
 Another method that can help your blinks look natural is to offset the timing of your left eye blinks
from your right eye blinks by 1 frame. You don't need to offset all of the blinks, just one or two of them.
We tend to do this in real life, not consistently, but if you look at a real life blink in slow-motion, you will
see there are times our lids don't come down at the exact timing.

Unlike the body animation keyframes, the facial animation controls are not keyed on the same frame.
We do not set the keyframes for our mouth, eyes, eyelids, cheeks, and eyebrows on the same frame
number. Our face is more organic than our body. Things move at different timing while working together
to form expressions.

You also need to animate the lower lids. They are as important as the upper lids. They help you widen
the eyes to express and emphasize an emotion or accent in the voice.

I added 3 blinks in our animation, The first blink is to focus on her thought and at the camera, The
second blink will keep her endued with the viewer. I also added micro movements in the eyes, which the
second blink helps break that a bit. The last blink comes from a major change In eye direction. She was
looking up and as she looks back at the camera, the blink allows her to refocus again. The blinks where
kept at a 3 lo 3 keyframe spacing.

There are many ways you can approach the same animation. No two animators will ever animate It
the same way, but try to make It as Interesting and believable as possible. Here Is my take on It, I'm
sure yours will look different.

"Alice_Blinks_Animation"

Eyebrows
The eyebrows should not have a life of their own. They are not to be animated at random times and
with extreme force. The eyebrows are used to supplement the eyes movements and show expressions.

When the eyes go down to blink, the eyebrows will lag about 2 or three frames behind, and will also
compress downward with the eye blinks. As the eyes open up, the brows will also come up while
dragging behind by a couple of frames This gives the face animation в squishy flow look.

The eyebrows will need a moving hold as well. They can come up rather quick but you should always
keep the eyebrow moving to have them ease In. Eyebrows don't stop ail of a
sudden. You need to keep the momentum flowing by 10-15 frames after the
eyebrows reached their position. Work the eyebrows to show change is expressions.

Eyebrows are a great way to keep the face looking asymmetrical. Don't be afraid
to push one side of the brows further up. When a character turns to look to his right,
you can also push the right eyebrows higher up, same vice-versa. Of course this
always depends on the action. Use common sense and find areas where you can
push a pose and add those subtle movements.

"Alice_Byebrows_Animation"

Cheeks and emotions

Alice does not have cheek controls, but If she did have them, I would not skip on adding subtle squash
and stretch to her cheeks as her jaw opens and closes. I would copy the same keyframes on the jaw as
on the cheek control.

Here's n trick to get the same timing of keyframes from one controller to a new controller. Select both
controls, the one with the keyframes and the new one without keyframes. Use the < and > to |ump from
one keyframe to the next while pressing the "s" key on every keyframe, This will add keyframes on the
new controller while keeping only the same timing of the other controller.
Now you'll be able to focus on the new controller because your timing has been set. In this case, you
could animate cheeks or anything that must have similar timing.

Once you have your character nearly complete, It's now time to add the (•motion behind the dialogue.
You never want to leave a face talking without an emotion behind It. You might think you're done
because the lips, eyes, and eyebrows are moving well, but Is your character portraying any emotion
behind the dialogue? The emotion is the most Important part of dialogue. It tells the audience the mood or
personality of the character. Without a change In emotion to our character, there wouldn't be a
character, The audience wants to feel something for our character, they don't just want so sympathize,
they want to empathize with our character. It Is through these emotional changes that the audience will
learn to love your character.

If someone pressed mute on the TV, you should be able to tell what the character is feeling through
body language and facial expressions while moving their lips.

There is a lot of power behind the character's emotional state. Not only in the face, but the whole
body acting has to be congruent with the face. This is why it's important to get good body acting before
you do anything with the face. If you can convey your characters emotions with body language, when
you add the face, it should only read stronger.

If you character has props, you should definitely use them to your advantage. Props can be used to
accentuate a point. On the Alice rig, we have glasses, so I animated them slightly to make them look like
they're on her face.

As her mouth moves, the flesh around her cheek would move with it, adding this detail animation with
her glasses can make animation go a long way.

Put everything that we've learned and make it work.

"Alke_Final_Animation"

Quick Lessons

Character Walk Cycles

Walk cycles are probably the first things you'll learn in animation schools, but since I went ahead and
showed you all of the advanced fun stuff first, animating a walk cycle should be easier for you now.

Learning what we applied from our character jumping from a box, we'll continue to pose our character
in the straight ahead method. Meaning, we'll start with our first pose, work our second, third, and so on,
without needing to go back and add in-betweens.

Because I don't want to give you all of the answers at this level of your animation learning, I am only
going to show you the 9 poses you'll need to create a walking character cycle. You can have Morpheus
actually walk forward or you can have him walk in place. In order to achieve a walk you'll need these
poses.

WALK

You can use the exact setup as we did with him jumping off the box. You can create an "allBody"
button and use it as you pose the character and set a keyframe on all body controls. It's probably easier
to do a first pass on the feet without worrying about the upper body at all. Concentrate on the hips and
feet moving and working together. Once you get the feet, do a second pass and move up to the torso
and head. Make sure the hips and chest counter rotate as he contacts the ground. Lastly, you can
animate the arms swing. If you feel you can animate the whole character at once, then go ahead and
pose the whole body.

Animation is ALL in the poses and timing. Now that you have the poses, you can practice timing on
your own. Remember to view your character from all angles, not just the side view. Work the rotations
and translations from all 3 axes to give it full range in movements. Don't over-exaggerate movement if it
doesn't need to be exaggerated.

This walk cycle chart is only to help you visualize the motion, but you can definitely push or change
poses to give it the mood or personality your character has. You can slouch him to have him walk sad or
you can rise is arms and feet to give him a happy walk. As I said, it's all in the timing and poses. I'm
sure you are trained well by now. Give it a try! You can always download the Maya file and look at my
work if you feel lost. www.AnimationMethods.com

“Morpheus_ Walking“

Horse Walk Cycle

Doing a horse walk cycle or any quadruped (4 legged animal) animation is pretty much come down to
this same method. Even thought when we look at this chart it might look a bit confusing, it's the same
idea behind making anything move. Think of a horse as two people walking, one in front and one in the
rear. We still have contact positions, passing, ups, and downs. The only difference is that the legs in the
front do not move at the same time as the ones in the back.

Quadrupeds are unique because they tend to have 3 legs on the ground at a time. Looking at this
chart you can see the different timing the front legs have from the hind legs. In the first pose you see the
front legs in the passing position as the hind legs are in the contact position. On pose two, the hips are
down as the front of the horse is up, while the head goes down. We can continue to work all 9 poses until
we get a decent walking horse.
It takes a little more work because it's as if you're animating two characters into one. But once you
recognize the walking patterns you'll notice that it's simple and repetitive.
Since we have more legs to worry about make sure you don't lock the legs or overstretch them.

WalkingHorseCycle
 Final Words

We'll wrap it up with our animation methods. I've shared with you guys all of my basic to
intermediate methods which you can start using in your work. We've looked at how to get into the
industry, how to use Maya, to animating the body and full facial animation. These techniques can help
you get into your first studio, whether you choose to take the 4 year route or learn it on your own.
This book has many of the answers you'll need. Use it a quick guide or refer to certain chapters when
you need help.

Animation should be a fun process in the making. You should wake up excited to go to work and
finish your creature/character animation. You'll meet and be surrounded by great artists. I've had the
privilege to work next to an 8 year Dreamworks veteran animator who animates impressive work. I'll
say, learn from experienced artists and teach entry-level artists what you know.

The animation career is not a boring career. Everyday you'll be challenged with new problems,
animation styles, and deadlines. You'll learn to depend and work with your team to find solutions.
There hasn't been one day that I've had to animate the same thing twice. You are animating life
situations, and there are no two moments in life exactly the same. You'll know when you go to a new
studio you'll be animating something fresh.

My final words to anyone trying to get into animation for films, games or commercials is that, It's
mostly in the poses and your timing that tells the story, that's all there is to it. I know most people
want all answers handed to them. Everything in this book took me about 1 to 2 years to figure out.
But you now possess the knowledge to move and act your character in a scene in less than what it
took me. Practice what you learned and keep at it. No matter what you want to animate, the methods
are the same. Write your story and begin adding the poses that tell that story. Add the Keys,
breakdowns, in-between poses, make your character feel and interact. Don't be afraid to add too
many poses. Its better you be in control of your character than have Maya float your character
around. Break out of your comfort zone and try new methods if the old ones don't work. It's the only
way you'll improve.

Book Life Lessons

Understand and apply the 12 Principles of Animation
Add Key poses, Breakdowns, and In-between poses
Make Quick Selection Sets/Key ALL rig controls
Know and use the Graph Editor!
Dope Sheet for timing
Add Holds and Moving Holds
Avoid freezing parts of your character
Think arc movements not linear
Animate using the perspective viewport not just side views
Animate in passes and layers, not just one long final pass
Animate interesting acting motions not just good practical movements

Show me your work. Hit me up at:

Watch and learn from my other free videos on my YouTube channel at
http://www.youtube.com/AnimationMethods
Share your animation work, experiences, or chat with me at
http://www.facebook.com/animationmethods
Username: AnimationMethods Password: ANIM_AM2012
Access Maya files at http://www.animationmethods.com/videosandfiles.html