Post by Theropod on Oct 6, 2013 21:16:44 GMT
Flow Tutorial - How to Make a Realistic Animation
What is Flow?
Flow is basically making sure your animation doesn't look unfinished, or just crappy. Basically, Flow is about moving every single joint at once while applying all the other rules to each movement. When applying this rule to your animation, you must see each single join as a movement and you must keep all the joints under control. Rules such as Easing and Physics must be applied to all the joints to keep them all under control. People usually develop their own techniques for this. Flow is also about having non-shaky movements. If you've read the Onion Skin Trailing tutorial, you probably must be saying, I think I saw this somewhere else. Basically, Onion Skin Trailing applies to flow rules if I'm not mistaken, but both of those are worth of different threads.
Getting Started
Let's get to the real thing. This animation is smooth and doesn't seem to have any issues.
The animation above was used in another tutorial, and that is why the arm is the only thing moving there. This is not a flowy animation, because most joints don't move at all. That is because it's impossible to move your arm without having your whole body moving. Have you ever moved your arm, with your body staying still? That's impossible. So basically, Flow will make your animation seem more realistic and interesting, not to mention how it will surely help you with your skill rank level. This animation shown above is quite flowy because of the onion skin trailing rule, but the joints don't move. I am not gonna show an example for a flowy animation because if you've got to read this point, the thing is already pretty obvious.
Depending on what you are animating, you can use a really simple technique. If your animation is not too complex, you can work more on a joint group (Ex.: An arm) and after animating that, you can edit your animation and work on other joints, such as body and neck joints. Depending on what you are animating you should start by the legs and arms. This should apply to most stick figures actually. Tail and body segments should somehow work together, if you know what I mean. The animation shown below was made by me, watch the Majungasaurus and the way it moves:
As you can see, his whole body moves properly. The arms are pretty small so they don't need to move a lot, that varies on what you are going to animate. Extensevely segmented parts such as the tail should move more for the simple fact they have more joints. The body and neck don't seem to move a lot, but they don't stay still as you can tell. How much you should move each joint is not something anyone can help with, and it's all up to you. Remember tutorials (including this one!) only help you, they provide you tips on what to work on; After reading a tutorial, practice what the tutorial tells you to do.
That's it, good luck and happy animating!