Movement spacing in Pivot
(first off, a lot of you might find this obvious. However, some others don’t. So yea. credit to Richard Williams in ‘Animator’s Survival Kit’ and his explanation on spacing)
Alright, this has been ticking me off for a while. Even some vets don’t get this once in a while.
In classical animations, there is something we know as spacing.
This is what animators call ‘spacing.’
Usually, in movements, people have regular easing, like so (suppose the bars are frames)-
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As you can see, these frames are spread out evenly, and perfectly. However, in realistic motions, this is not what happens.
|-|-|--|---|---|----|----|-----|------|-----|----|---|---|---|--|-|-|
This is much more realistically spaced out. Easing in and out (as computer animators call it) is a fundamental in animating properly. If you don’t perfect this, the movements will look unrealistic and robotronic.
There, hopefully you’ll understand spacing. You can do this for all kinds of animations. I notice some people take it rather far and put in ‘Matrix style’ animations. Spacings are like this –
|---|---|---|---|--|-|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||-|--|---|---|---|---|
In my opinion, this is a really cool effect, which shows a slow motion of a move you are doing.
Alright, this is it for the tut. Not that much, but hopefully you learned something. Remember anticipation and spacing.