 Wow, wow the technology it's really on the next level so welcome my name is Kjarty Halmusson easily pronounce it pronounceable I'm an animator I come from Iceland I'm at the Blinder Institute at the moment and here's my really outdated showreels the adventures you will have all the lives you ever wanted all you've been missing this is the best product we have in store variable spin speed excellent tumble performance in one handy device squeaky clean wait wait wait how does this thing work I mean how do I make it work no you don't I just turned it on for you yeah okay it's it's been an interesting journey so that old guy there at the bottom right it's not like he knows everything but he knows a little bit more than you know that mr. mustache over there and he knows more than mr. I'm finishing a sandwich over there so the thing I wanted to do was kind of talk a little bit about that guy just his perspective so this guy he doesn't know anything about animation really like he grew up watching cartoons he studied computer science and he has some background in programming but he really doesn't know that much about that kind of the craft of animation and he's gonna he's gonna you know Google it like if he's interested about it he's like animation yeah like let's let's see what's all about and he's gonna find you know articles blogs about animation clickbaity titles six steps to becoming an animator whatever like a lot of crap but the thing is a lot of it is gonna say something similar it's always gonna be that thing like the 12 principles of animation you know you got you gotta learn them and you wonder like okay what's that and you know what is the most logical step you Google it and it's like okay whoa whoa there's like a Wikipedia article all about it so pretend that link was blue okay wow let's click it yeah all right so it's the all the citations are pointing at one book the illusion of life it's a brilliant book I highly recommend it it's by two legendary animators Disney animators and you know you go down the list then you see explanations you see some examples and it's great and if we just pull up that list so those are the 12 principles now wow okay interesting so this computer makes it actually a little bit different so now it's going really far down so I wonder if it'll cut any information that's vital but let's continue so we want to look at this through kind of the eyes of oh Jesus it's okay things are going on top of each other interesting from the new perspective and this guy he doesn't really know that you know anticipation state I mean these are words that are in the English vocabulary but all of these have kind of different terminologies within the craft of animation so you know he looks at it and he understands you know I know what time it is you know time it's a clock it's you know it's like whatever but he maybe won't understand the fundamentals of that terminology within this context so he'll look at it and it's not wow nothing adds up okay great and making presentations yes animation yeah maybe but right at the end of that list there's this one thing that I want to get to and it's appeal and it's basically it's almost like stating just just make it look good so you're trying to learn a craft woodmanship like crafting whatever it is painting and you know you're like oh man I got to learn the principles the kind of cornerstones off this craft and one of them is just make it look good and say thanks buddy it's a lot of help you know you know here doesn't really get to anywhere really if you think about it on those terms so you know maybe maybe it's the fact that the English is in my first language so maybe it has to do with it means something slightly different than I think it is so you know you go to Google and it's like nope that's that's kind of the thing I had so you know I guess what's appealing to me what's appealing to you it's it's all kind of subjective so I guess it's all subjective so you have a cornerstone within a craft that's objective and it's like well I don't know like no that's that's not really what it is you know I started graphic design so on an individual level it's kind of seemingly subjective you know and this applies to just about anything any kind of a topic you know what people like and don't like and remember this is already like shrinking it down to only talking about humans I mean you know that's already thinking down like your favorite color is not on the infrared spectrum right you know it's probably within the range of the things you can see right so you already kind of honing it down so on an individual level you might think you know like you know sipping over here he likes something I don't like something it's all relative you know it's all subjective but think about it no why why if you go up and like you know pretend that that's a scale and it goes all the way up to you know all of humanity you're gonna you're gonna find these trends you're gonna find these different things like these patterns where you realize okay some things you know you can find things that are a little bit fuzzy but some things they're really obviously more appealing to the general public than others so if you take a really basic example so you propose this question does chocolate taste good and you ask John over here and he's like no I like well you know I kind of like chocolate so my conclusion is 50% of humanity doesn't like chocolate and you know that's not really great conclusion so of course if you scale it up and if you could like take that sample size of two which is not really helpful and you scale it up you might find that you know there's some background noise happening of course in any statistics but it's gonna be overwhelming oh that's supposed to be 92% by the way overwhelmingly positive so if you like okay I'm certain that you know if I bring chocolate to the bar mitzvah or whatever it's gonna I know I know so let's take it a little bit closer to animation so you have subject A and subject B these are character designs these were crafted by human beings so a is by the way he's some kind of a mascot on a Dutch coupon on in my local supermarket creep creep me out every time I go to supermarket he's there staring at me I don't know his name I don't know anything but yeah so let's say for example we propose to John here a or B which which is more appealing to you and he goes well a I mean I grew up in a Dutch local supermarket with this guy I'm really fond of him he's brilliant I mean I don't know I don't know maybe maybe if we kind of you know go a little bit wider and of course there's a little better background noise you find that B is the more prominent kind of appealing character now remember this is not like this is not random you know this is not something for nature this is something designed by a person like there's a designer that's making all these different choices and some of those choices are influencing each other in such a way that it's appealing so that means somebody crafted one of these things in a way that was more appealing what was it what is it you know what what decision was that we could apply this to so many different things now now the example I just did was taste and another example I did was more like character design ish I mean there's a bit of overlap going on but you know you could go into a lot of different topics and you might talk about sound or smell or whatever and you might want to consider like okay what is more appealing in this particular topic and the problem is that we're using the same word appeal and then if you're trying to make a sound that's appealing and then you talk to somebody that's an expert at making colors appealing you know and he's thinking about a color palette being appealing and then you're thinking about sound being appealing you might have a really long argument because you think you're talking about the same thing but you're not quite you just you just happen to be using the same word so let's hone it down more to just motion and now I could actually do a really fancy example with characters and I think that's what most of you guys are expecting that I have like a really cool video of like wacky animals having fun and whatnot problem is that if I want to make my point here it's too distracting because then you won't be thinking about motion in and of itself as appealing you'll be seeing all these other variables you'll be seeing character design lighting texture shading you know all these different things and they're gonna kind of obscure the point so to kind of hone it a bit down on only motion because really the the principles animation are talking about motion they're not necessarily talking about you know the way somebody was designed that's more character design I'll pay a little caveat you know a lot of times you're animating a character which means he becomes your canvas so it kind of goes hand in hand meaning that if he's really unappealing then no amount of animation can save it you know so with motion I just did a little test that's a gift that should be playing right now imagine that this is playing at a normal speed now if this were playing at a normal speed you would be impressed but it's not for some reason okay then my entire example is not really there okay so this incorporates a lot of different things from the principle so it has spacing it has timing arcs and squashes right but what if you remove okay this really doesn't work with this example because if you're take one of them away and you play it it still looks like nothing to you guys right now that's interesting it's a gift I know I don't know I made it specifically so it wouldn't be a video so it would load really quickly yeah yeah you know not just a hat rack all right so most of my points are gone yeah oh yes I do sir yes I do yeah that would be great wow you and you're on the timer hold you okay all right this can I leak is that is it legal to take a break oh yes don't look at me writing my passport passwords how did you know now it's sexy by sexy babe 69 xxx at hotmail what so oh no there's an ointment for that okay so stand in light yes I didn't even realize I was standing in the shadows sorry yes sir yes sir the clicker yes I think that would be helpful oh no I hope it's oh hope it's not playing some awkward like playlist that I have playing in my computer that would be great improvise computers will never take over this whole business sixty first per second will never happen nothing it's a bad now okay well 66 oh it might happen I know it's just I don't know it's like no they computers cannot interpolate everything no it's it's a tour I mean okay like would you would you take a proof wow hit man just showed up yes no wait where are you right sorry spin the floor no no no no I saw a video that was so good I can't copy it I actually took it out of my like dancing routine at this moment still good still good I'm not allowed to ask people if they have questions but I might as well hey do you guys have questions oh hey wow I'm on a soapbox I can't do anything else motion pass are really important for blender it will improve animation severely we have motion pass but they're super super super slow having to calculate quite insane if we had them to certain this well the only real person the developer that could really handle motion pass and bring them to the next level is somebody that has a lot of skill a lot of talent somebody that understands the new dependency graph somebody that has maybe a Russian accent I mean there's not a lot of people really in the world that could handle such responsibility but you know if they would just stand up yes all right that is a binding contract according to the Dutch law so we're gonna get motion pass in blender it'll be great yeah motion pass that's too much too much too much just good just good motion pass and then yeah baby steps baby steps baby steps yeah what I really want Mercedes no wait what no motion pass really that's at the top of the list yeah yeah yeah more more than the whole notion of like having the rigs be amazing so much so that like you can just click the eyebrow and you don't have to have like witches or whatever take well you know all right but motion pass it's more important yeah to be honest there are instances when you have hair on a character and it's so ingrained in the character design because it makes that character bigger you really you really need that information is true well yeah well I've today I've learned that gifts are a medium that's kind of old and fragile apparently doesn't work in any kind of a computer I thought I did yes it's give it's give I'm not how would I screw this up I had one job it's not pronounced Jeff because I have the speaker so also there's more than one creator of it and that one guy was kind of weird oh okay okay hmm it's oh I'm using open source software right now just so everybody knows hey did you stand up no hitman stood up you didn't stand up at this point I'm willing to give up and just continue it's all good it's just that's fine no that's good what but you see the difference right a little bit what is it oh I gotta go back this is not appealing enough okay okay so we have a situation where my boss needs to be the guy that presses the next button interesting I mean I'm glad he had a you know he had many career choices okay so previous yes please thank you thank you so this is the example that I made you know it has a little bit of it has pretty clear spacing timing arc squashes ratio whatnot and then if you go to the next one mr. boss it's kind of lacking in the spacing area meaning that it's a little bit wonkier so that means it's it's not not as clear and it kind of lacks a little bit something and that's something we we call it appeal but like you know we're just using a word that kind of kind of means appeal so if you go to the next one it's just oh my mr. boss you guys see the difference at least yes please okay so let's say for example that the timing was a bit off so you see the bounces they're kind of don't don't don't don't don't and if you if you took away the next please sir mr. boss you took the next yes yes yes the press yes now the bounces for example they're even but that makes it a bit less kind of interesting it's not as it's not as clear and continue please mr. boss and that's I kind of the idea was that I could click back and forth and then going yes so we remove the arcs and we break the software yes oh man this is going great looks horrible next and next like twice please next one this is subtle though because in the next one I took away the squash and stretch it's really subtle but you you kind of feel it like it doesn't it's more rigid and it doesn't have the same thing so if you go to the next one this is returning back to it you feel that little squash and it just makes it just a little bit more appealing okay so I want to return to the list yeah you can go to the next one and then yeah and then from there we could probably go just full screen I mean yeah yeah I have none of these gifts anymore I'm so glad right now okay yay no not yet I'm way overtime okay so we got the 12 principles and what I wanted to do is it just look at a little bit from my perspective today which is not the all-knowing wise guy but it's more like okay I'm still learning I know a bit more than I used to and I want to kind of just talk a little bit about these principles because I think we might have to I mean you know humans love making lists that's you know six things to improve your health doctors hating blah blah blah like kick baby take and you know it almost feels like some of these things were kind of just put into a list and maybe some things were kind of combined that shouldn't have been combined or not and and you know all animators out there just ready your pitchforks with squash and stretch I don't think it's maybe it shouldn't be called squash and stress because squash and stress is the thing that happens when you apply the actual concept which which kind of is mass console it should have been on the right side yeah crazy stuff going on which you're trying to keep the consistency of the mass and it just happens to result in a squash and stress so like if a thing goes up against something else it kind of distorts and that that mass needs to go somewhere so it goes in the directions up and down or whatever so and also you know if you're a noob and you're looking at it you might be like wow okay so I'll just make everything feel like it's made out of rubber everything kind of starts squashing and stretching well not quite because this also applies to poses so if I go down for a jump or whatever I'm gonna I'm gonna squash down and then kind of stretch out as I jump and yeah so I'm not sure I mean this is not a sexy name at all mask is it sounds sciencey or whatever you know maybe somebody else can come up with something better anticipation it's great it's brilliant it's exactly what it is it's you know something just before something else I want to throw a punch you know I can't just go you know I have to go back and then release it so it's exactly what it says staging is it's solid it covers what it is but it's a bit vague and it's on kind of like a vent diagram kind of overlap some other area so it's overlapping a bit on layout and scene design and props and stuff because they all matter in which from the camera where everything's placed so maybe focus it a little bit more on the animation side I'm not sure about this one but like maybe add like readable poses because that's kind of more in the area but of course that's a subgenre of staging but I don't know what's you're thinking about this is me thinking out loud by the way so this is not me coming from a mountain saying how it is so straight ahead and pose to pose it's actually missing one thing it's missing a layered action which is another method so all these three things are methods but they're all workflows they're all ways of animating they're not really principles like they're insanely important to learn in order to animate but you wouldn't you know somebody comes to me and they're like wow like gonna take a look at my shot I you know I need some feedback I'm like yeah great great great so those five frames I think they would need a little bit more straight-ahead animation like that says nothing than nothing at all it's more like okay you know any any other thing could be more useful so I think we shouldn't actually have this there because we're trying to make it consistent we're trying to make a list of principles not a list of principles and then it happens to have this workflow thing kind of add it to it that arrow should be pointing at follow through and overlap being action I think it was probably it's probably a different font or something something happened follow through in overlapping action is is brilliant to learn you got to learn it but those are two really separate things in the beginning where you're learning animation you might confuse them and sometimes they because you're just kind of bouncing a ball like it doesn't have limbs it doesn't have fingers you don't you might not perceive it as a separate thing because it kind of overlaps a little bit so you know follow through is like you know I fall down but then like I have a ponytail and that ponytail kind of comes down afterwards that's follow through but overlapping action you know maybe maybe I have some I have some gesture that I'm doing and I want to kind of lead with my hips so I or lead with my head and that's so it's a little bit more of an acting choices but you know it's like a bend diagram like something overlaps or whatever but I think that should be separate separated that should be a line that goes over overlapping action and then over there going great so basically just split them up and make overlapping action its own thing they also see a lot of people that are new and they kind of confuse the terminology which is not helpful later on if you if you confuse it in the beginning then you're gonna be kind of screwed later on that's pointing at slow in and slow out which is which I think is a little bit misleading because we we already have and we use another terminology for it which is spacing that should be scratching out the thing and I'm putting spacing there and spacing is brilliant because the thing is you know you're moving something from a to be and it's maybe a one second and then it's 24 per second that means that you have like 24 places in which that thing travels from a to be but of course those places have a little bit of space in between them and you have to make a conscious design decision how far is that space each time so that might mean that you like move slowly and then kind of stop slowly or if you want you can just slow in the middle that's the thing like if you have the principle called slow in and slow out like it's already kind of leading you in a way and it's not giving you the freedom arcs brilliant it says what it is I okay I usually say arcs in plural because it's usually more than one but arc yeah second so glad I rehearsed this ten minutes ago secondary action it's it's one of my favorite things so let's say you have a character and he's giving a heartfelt speech about his divorce but he's making a sandwich at the same time making a sandwich is a secondary action to what's happening in the scene you might actually use it as like a subtext of what's going on see that and it might actually strengthen it maybe you have somebody that's fidgeting with a pen and then at some point you know he's being questioned and then one question hits him right right on the head and his pen stops so it's a thing that like which is the background noise but now it's become part of the scene I see a lot of people confusing second reaction though with follow-through for example and a little tangent we go back to that Wikipedia page and this is just something that I discovered while doing this if you scroll down to second reaction it has the definition and it's perfect it's brilliant it's exactly what it is but then it has an example and it's wrong it's exactly wrong it has a little gift like a weirdly animated gift of a horse and it says secondary action but it's actually follow-through so you know if that noob came there and like whoa okay I gotta learn this thing okay let's check out the example it's not correct gets a bit confusing I think that's pointing at timing timing is so general this list was supposed to look epic at the end by the way but it's going not that well timing is a bit general it's a little bit vague it covers what it is but I think it could be a little bit improved with adding rhythm not to arc but to timing over there appeal is here at this moment so and it's because even though rhythm is a sub it's like it's like part of timing it's like a sub sect of timing it's just so important to animation that I kind of feel like if I'm reading a list of principles that rhythm should be there somewhere you know mixing up rhythm it can really like take your animation from one level to the next exaggeration it's funny sorry exaggeration is what it is I mean it's perfect exaggerating poses exaggerating lip-sync blinking lip-sync all that stuff it's it's just it is what it is it's brilliant this is solid drawing which I think is the most outdated terminology within this list it has it's closer to of course 2d animation which is kind of this old school thing of drawing and it has to do with learning how things should stay proportional in three-dimensional space and you keep it consistent so if Donald Duck moves his head around like that that shape kind of keeps going and then that bleeds a little bit into character consistency so you have it maybe a character sheet a model sheet this is the way you know Mickey Mouse looks like from all different angles and then when you're doing these wacky poses you should kind of return to it because animators are back in the day that didn't have the model sheets before that was a thing you could see the the you see the characters kind of drift off so their proportions were getting kind of wonky at the end and then it might not sync up with the next shot so you know it's it's solid but it's a little bit too specific to 2d animation so I do wonder if like if we could phrase it in such a way that it encapsulates this animation in general so maybe it's like character consistency or like stay on model or something like that that's not a sexy term also I'm I you know character consistency that's I don't know like maybe somebody can come up with something better and then this is all to lead up to the big guy that's halfway here like he's kind of under the surface it's like a shark fin and he's coming in which is a peel and the controversial thing that I wanted to say about appeal that should have been more dramatic when that line hit it and like took it out of the list is I don't think appeal should be one of the principles of animation and that is because appeal is the outcome of using the principles of animation so you use all these different principles and you need to try to make them complement each other but if you put that as a principle then you're just kind of confusing the list it kind of becomes something else than it is you know like if somebody asked me for feedback and I go you know can you give it 10% more appeal it doesn't say anything but if I go you know what like that you know that hand gesture I think the spacing at the end it should favor a little bit more of that end pose and it would make it more appealing so like you you use the principles to get appeal you don't just yes appeal you know it's not a button you press so I think I think just for you know so here you have the new it's supposed to take out the number the 11 ish principles of animation the number of course it arbitrary who cares what the number is it's all about the actual content and if you know if that guy finished his sandwich finally and then he would take a look at this thing in proper you know okay proper setup and everything he would have a easier time to understand well thank god I rehearsed it to understand the the principles of animation it's just a jumble of nests at this point so it's not very helpful I don't deserve it okay okay so final thoughts so to reiterate the things that were kind of wonkily set uh and oh that also tastes as fun animation is you know just like you're learning uh kind of wood crafting or whatever and they have their own words the the way they use them you can't come into a thinking that oh yeah I know that is because I know that word in a dictionary in an English dictionary like it's kind of it might mean something slightly different even the word appeal in an everyday use it's not it's not exactly the same so uh it seems a lot of times as like subjective but a lot of times it isn't and that's why these design choices kind of come into play because they manage to nudge it a little bit closer to the general appeal that you're looking for sometimes it's a niche niche thing sometimes not but it's a decision when you do it um you know there are exceptions there's some things that are a little bit kind of more fuzzy but I stand by it uh animation it's not a principle it's the outcome of using the principles and I think cramming it in that list is just it makes it just a little bit confusing um so for all of you animators out there that I actually see in the crowd uh that are sharpening their pitchforks I don't claim to be like an authority this is me kind of being slightly drunk talking about it and I kind of I actually I am curious to think about uh what other animators are thinking uh there's a joke somewhere down there and it won't be there over a pint of beer yes thank you do the hall talk tomorrow again