Thumbnails, Exploration and Planning!

For one of the shots I animated during Far-Fetched I made the classic mistake of not properly planning the performance i wanted. Even at the time I felt pretty comfortable with the action i wanted to animate but after i diving into maya it soon became obvious I was out of my depth. Inevitably as i wrestled more and more with the keys the shot started to look really bad. Ultimately I decided to restart the whole shot from the start and do some PLANNING!!!


We all know how easy it is to skip over the planning stage of a shot, it's so tempting to think that you can save time this way but inevitably it will nearly always come round to cause problems down the line. The aim of this post is not just to talk about planning however but to talk about how the combination of video reference and thumbnails in the planning stage contributes to the quality of a shot.


In case anyone is wondering it might be helpful to explain what thumbnails are. Essentially thumbnails are very quick, rough sketches that help the animator figure out key poses in a shot. They allow the animator to explore as many posing possibilities as quickly as possible as well as figuring out any staging and acting issues.

Example of thumbnails by legendary animator Glen Keane

What is becoming more and more useful to me is the feedback loop between thumbnailing and video reference. Throughout Far-Fetched I would rough out my poses on paper and then try and feel out those poses in my video reference. I'd then look back at my video reference which would then spark more ideas which i would thumbnail again. It allows me to really explore and then refine the acting for the actual animation stage.

Once I got into Maya i would refer back to both the video reference and thumbnails again. In many cases the camera angle in my video reference would not quite match the angle in the film, when this happened i would refer back to my thumbnails for a posing and staging guide. 

Some examples from Far-Fetched:

Maybe you'll be able to spot which shots these came from in the final film!!

All this planning process sounds like it takes a long time (which is why it's so tempting to skip it!) but by going through this process the animation becomes so much more considered and the quality sky-rockets. And really this whole process can only take a couple of hours when it's all added up. I can't recommend it enough even for the most basic shots.

Here are some great PDF links too on thumbnailing and a fantastic one on Glen Keane's animation process. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.animationmeat.com/pdf/nineoldmen/rescuers_thumbs.pdf

http://www.animationmeat.com/pdf/featureanimation/Glen_Keane_Animation.pdf