Timing Techniques for Animation

[popmation]

Over this summer I was thinking about what I learned in Petkov's class.. he times his animation by making sounds for each movement and recording it by stopwatch.. he does it in repetitions of 10 or 5.. and divides by 10 or 5 to get the average timing..

I was thinking if you just record yourself sounding out your animation.. and actually get the sound file and put it in premiere.. you can get the exact timing instead of averaging out with a timewatch..

this sound really stupet while I'm typing this.. but wut if you can sound out your whole entire film this way.. or sequence.. or acting.. or camera movements!! It's better then timing your stuff to a dialogue because it's your own timing instead of some voice actors...

wut do you guys think? Most ppl at school just keep experimenting and checking with the lunchboxes.. but I find that once you start cleaning up your animation and adding inbetweens.. you start changing the timing you given yourself in the rough key pose stage.. also ppl start making formulas for themselves unconsciously.. instead of thinking of the exact performance they want..

or is there other better ways for timing?

[animatornickb]

That's an interesting idea for gettin timing. I usually just use a stop watch and act it out three times and take three average. Disa actually told tauht us a way similar to that for timing too. It's a little tough thoug because you really have to be good at visualizing. He said supposedly the old disney guys would close their eyes and visualize their scene in silence. They would play it over and over in their head. While playing it in their head they would make noices to the action or the dialouge like petkov does too. Whooshes, and bangs, any sound. Then they would draw out the drawings when they were happy with the visualization. Once they shot it on the tester, they would watch it to see if it matched their timing they created with the sounds in their head and adjust the animation till it felt it matched. I guess it's kinda the similar, if not the same, but I tried it a couple times, and it did help a lot. And it keeps you from falling into habits and formulas.
But I like the idea of recording your voice sounding out the animation and to sync it with the animation. Seems like it could work, but might take alot of time though. This is something we should talk more about in class. Really try to understand timing, because it accounts for so much in an animate scene, I think it would really be worth it to try to understand it and find a solid process for good timing.

[dreesh]

These methods seem a bit confusing to me. Would you actually be talking out the actions of the characters, or talking out sound effects that approximate the timing of your actions?

What I usually do is just quick thumbnail/storyboard out the action, scan it into premiere, then build the timing of the scene with these sketches. Then I check the total number of frames (that's the frame limit for my scene). I mark on the x-sheet where my thumbnails were (for a general guide for where to put my key poses). So it's kind of like timing your scene visually. Plus this way it's easy to change your timing in premiere, and you know exactly what it looks like and knowing (almost) exactly how many frames you need instead of getting an average or timing out your thoughts.

I guess my method is pretty much a matter of building the storyreel not only for continuity, but also for shot and (gross) animation timing. It's not a matter of good drawing, but a matter of using visuals to get a feel for the action. I guess if you just use sounds or if you are acting it out, you can't really feel the timing, because you have to absorb yourself in the acting. When you use premiere to time out your thumbnails, you separate the "performance" aspect and you can focus solely on the "timing" aspect. That's just how I do it, it helps to keep me from animating endless scenes or wasting frames.

I guess I just feel like animators contribute the visual performance, so it seems like you're getting further toward a good performance if you plan out the timing visually instead of with sounds, or using the mind's eye and a stop watch. In premiere you can count and plan with the time unit of exact frames, you don't have to deal with clunky milliseconds, and with thumbnails you don't have to imagine what the timing feels like, you can SEE what it FEELS like, and you can adjust it to make an action feel harder, or softer, or you can build something unexpected or something you can see coming from a mile away (all in terms of the timing of actions).

So that's my method. I guess it starts with visualizing the action in the mind, then immediately drawing the necessary poses to convey it. Then I figure out timing with premiere or AfterEffects or whatever, not with a stopwatch.

[popmation]

your talking out sound effects for timing out actions..

I think just personally for me I feel out timing from how it hears in my head rather then just visually.. like I can hear a 12 frame walk better then if I just saw it..

I think my own problem with just timing out stuff with thumbnails is you really can't get a good feeling on how your going to be spacing the stuff in relation to each other if you ruff it out too much.. also there's models limitations.. perspective.. etc that you find out later on when your tying your stuff down.. which changes your poses.. thus changing spacing.. changing soft hits to harder ones.. and vice versa.. just because of your spacing.. unless you have a pretty tied down thumbnails..

the biggest problem for me just testing the stuff out visually either on pencil test or lunchbox was that since things are popping from one pose to the other.. my mind would "plug in" the perfect inbetweens between my rough poses.. but when I started cleaning it up and putting things on 2s.. I would get a totally different feel from my first pass..

thus it leads me to my biggest question.. How do you get that performance you had in your rough pass in to your final pass? Is it a problem with your timing? or your spacing? or both? I hate it when I like the timing from my rough pass.. and the timing starts feeling wonky when I finish it.. is that because I spaced it wrong? or that I needed to change the timing in my first pass? Do you think about how your goin to space the stuff in your first pass?...

I really have a long shitty process right now so I'd like to hear how others are being taught or doing it..