 Welcome back today is Friday and that means f&a Friday and today is going to be part 3 and I will be talking about planning I'm also planning on eating this today. Oh Yes, because I mean it's been a while and then why not this chocolate and it's good Kind of hard to talk like this Okay, so before you go into your planning stage should have had that chocolate I'm going to assume that you know the story the characters the environments your shot length and the camera So that's my assumption You know all of this so as you have your structure ready and the environments and the characters and everything now You want to plan your animation and I want to talk about two things a little bit of reference We talked about that before in the Q&A and I have a specific clip just about reference I'm not gonna linger too much on that and the second part is from nailing and drawing now I can't draw at all but for reference as always find a buddy if you can act it out if you can act it out That's even better obviously it's faster and it's easier But it's also okay to find someone that's really good and direct that person no problem So I'm gonna show you an example that I shot a long time ago That's not even in our house. That's in our old apartment, but I show you what my process is when I shoot reference So first I shoot a ton of reference. So that's a lot I'm actually over and over and over and over and this is not even everything There's a character in the background that is falling here There you go So I keep falling and falling and falling and trying and trying and trying different things Because I don't want to shoot just something once it has to be a couple times So kind of less conscious of it It's more free-flowing a bit more natural and I have a lot to choose from and a lot of times I pick things that are actually not what I act that that's kind of what's in between It's in between a loop or something when I just try and move I sometimes like that because it's a bit more natural So obviously you got a ton of material which you can't use there's a lot of stuff That's gonna be thrown out. So I do my little select to have a little selection of Clips that I like these are the elements that I might copy paste into one master take. So as you look at this Silly apartment yelling. I'm looking at elements of unlike adjustments. I like things where there's something that hits the ground I'm gonna have something in my face how I hold the gun certain looks. Is it a bigger reaction? Is it a smaller reaction? Again, I'm not gonna settle right now yet on that one specific thing But I want to look at what is the best take is a good variation I put my hand on the ground. Is that more interesting? Do I hold the gun all the time? Do I go higher with my yelling so all kinds of takes and I look at this from my foreground action about background action So whatever the the element is or the elements are of the scene in this case It's multiple characters then what I do is I take the best takes and I copy paste and cut things out and put effects on it Nothing too fancy. You want this to be fast, but I want to have a good idea of what am I doing when what element comes in What's the timing so I don't have to guess with reference in any type of planning that you do You want to take the guesswork out of it Otherwise you're gonna be stuck in Maya you try something you play blast You can a noodle around and you're gonna waste a ton of time the better You're planning and the more thorough your planning is the faster and I want to say easier than I mean You still have to do the animation but just the less hiccup be your process is going to be So let's take a look at this like I says here the general idea of what's going to happen So a little bit of elements in there I know when I shoot I know when I look I know when something hits the ground I get potentially to my face and I wipe it off So that gives me a pretty good idea now I can start the process and the process will be whatever your workflow is how you move on from that reference Do you do thumbnails or do you draw directly in your animation package to kind of have a drawing on top of your sets? So you kind of know better what's going on Maybe if you have a camera move you got to make sure that everything works with that camera move Well, let's pretend you can't shoot reference right and I'm not talking about let's say dragons or some creatures where you Just have to look at animal reference and maybe combine things But maybe you're in an environment where you can't do what you need to do So let's just pretend tennis because I like tennis and let's pretend that it's raining And you got to do your thing right now and you don't have time to go outside in the rain It wouldn't be good reference anyway, but you just can't go outside to play tennis So then you just have to rely on images you can still get a lot out of reference Even if it's just a photo you can look at posing Maybe someone has done a certain breakdown of a move just through images Obviously with tennis you can go online and you can get a ton of video reference I'm just saying that sometimes if you can't get a video reference There's still a lot to gain from photos that you can find of people that perform the action that you want to do So even though you have video reference Sometimes it's also okay to just look at a photo just to study a specific pose Then in the case of tennis a pose done by a professional if I pretend to play baseball It's going to be horrible But if my animation needs to portray someone that plays really well I'm gonna look at footage and I'm gonna look at photos where they capture specific poses and really well done Moments and grips and throws because I can't do that if you want to be accurate you got to look at professionals Now let's pretend that you don't use any of this and you just connected it out You kind of know how it feels and you prefer to draw thumbnails. So again, I can't draw So I'm not gonna show you my thumbnails because they are useless But I need to practice but I really want to get better at this but It's a really neat book and this is going to be very awkward to kind of go The images so I recorded what's inside because I also have an ebook version of this So as you can see it goes through interesting posing techniques and it has cute thumbnails and it shows you how detailed you can or should be or should not be and it's a Really good resource for how you should approach the thumb nailing aspects because you don't have to have master drawings You have some crazy shading. You can just stick with stick figures as long as everything is clear I'm a big fan of that book There are many other books about animation in terms of timing and you know the classic animation books I'll do an FNA about books later on but I thought this one's really good just in terms of a simpler approach to planning So let's pretend you have all of it is ready You got your reference you got your research, you know your poses But you don't want to go straight in there and block things out because it might take too long What would be a faster approach for planning out your animation to see how it works with your sets and potential camera move and so on So one thing would be to actually draw inside your package or find a way to get an animated 2d version of your blocking That was a plane Early in the morning say this again So if you have the means of drawing if you are skilled at drawing not as Horrible as I am it might be a good idea to actually draw inside your viewport and for that in Maya You can use grease pencil, which is one of many ways how to draw inside whatever package you have They're all different tools, but grease pencil is one of them and there's also blue pencil too There's a previous version, but now there's a blue pencil to naturally from that company I do have keyframe pro which is a fantastic movie player that lets you draw on top of your frames I highly recommend any of these so if that's a process that you like where you can get inside your animation package and draw right there And again if you have the skills to draw and you can draw fast That's a really really good fast and cheap and effective way to plan out your animation Especially in your scene where you can have the character interact with the set Maybe it's like going upstairs and that's very tricky to block out with your rig So if you can do a 2d version of that so much better and if you're on the go There are a ton of apps on the iPhone and the iPad I'm assuming there will be other apps if you have other operating systems other phones I don't know. I'm an Apple user so I got that Well, there's a ton out there in terms of 2d apps So if you want to do a quick sketch that is again also a way to just plan out something instead of spending time Blocking things out to see how it's gonna work in your scene So you just sit back and relax and draw something out in terms of a planning method very fast Very effective and if you look at these examples here And I'm gonna use Adam Green again as an example here because he's posted so much stuff And the work is fantastic so you can see the final animation and how he has planned it out in a 2d fashion And that's not within the viewport That's just the 2d version to see what the action could be so he has this for Horton Here's a who you can see a version here for feast Where you can see there is another very effective method of planning things out is by using spheres So you don't have to use your rig You just have spheres or cubes to kind of see the rhythm and how things move and where it's going to be in terms of Placement and staging and if the composition is gonna work. This is so cute I love how the legs go up here, but you can see how time saving this can be then another example will be from Wreck it Ralph And you can see how there are some basic poses in CG But he can still plan specific acting choices out into the their multiple shots here as an example And this is so fast is much faster and you can leave an object in your scene So you can stay on model so the proportions are accurate But you can see the fantastic work on top of the awesome planning He's just such a fantastic animator and especially with an acting shot that has so much movement So many action choices and gestures It can be really helpful to get a method in there that allows you to plan things out very very quickly So now you can pitch those ideas to your lead or supervisor or even a client potentially So whatever you can do that saves time that gets your planning done so that people understand your choices and the ideas If this is your way if you can do that in 2d, that's great and the last example will be from Bolt He just posted that recently and you can see how there's a little bit of animation in there and the fence So you get the timing of when it's supposed to hit but the rest is in 2d and very effective And these are by all means not the only ways to do it through reference or thumbnails or drawing in 2d Every animator has a completely different approach. I'm just gonna point out these two that one I use reference a lot I also act things out myself so kind of know how it feels and I also just plan in my mind Which is something I can't really show but I think about the shot and I try to visualize it in the most Clearest fashion possible so that when I start a shot I know the beats and if you can't do thumbnails sometimes I also write down the beats I know this needs to happen here. It needs to happen here But in general I'm a fan of just acting things out so I understand the motion and feel how it is And if it's helpful shooting reference and sometimes really sticking to reference closely or just having that as a very rough guy But sometimes that's enough of an inspiration to almost kind of improvise on the shot again I don't recommend this because it can be a waste of time where you just get kind of lost But you might get a shot or attack an idea where you're not quite sure what you want to do And I had a shot like this where I did a rig test for her pigeon And I just had to rig and I was trying to find a set so to me I looked at the set as an inspiration And I knew that I wanted to do a takeoff and the landing and the landing also involved afterwards an audio piece We'll have a lip sync example So this shot was actually the only shot I've ever done where I had zero planning I just had a rough idea and I kind of knew that the pigeons gonna interact with the car But the whole beginning going through was all straight ahead Improvised what if he does this what the pigeon does that maybe stop some flies off I've never done this since because I would definitely not do this on them in a production environment Because it's very risky You really got to have a plan and attack things in a clear fashion But it was an interesting experience just kind of go in there and straight ahead and see where it goes It was a lot of fun to do and actually I still like the shot a lot of my older things I don't like anymore this one Let's look kind of like now workflow is very individual and everybody has their own ideas and their own methods So if you have anything where you go, yeah, I use this but I do a tweak on that or I do this But on top of that I try something else or I don't use this at all because of a BNC Please let me know comment It's always awesome to share your workflow share your ideas and your pros and cons and concerns and that's it Those are my two cents on planning as always you gotta have a plan You gotta have your research done before you attack a shot and if this was helpful in any way, I would love a like I would love a subscribe I would love a bell button click so that you get all the notifications And again if you have any other methods or links to other people that have very interesting ways of getting their planning done Please let me know in the comments. I'll be awesome to share other than that That's it for this part next week part 4. We're gonna talk about testing your rig