 Welcome back to an FNA and today I want to talk about how every movement that you have in your animation should have an intention and a reason behind it. Okay, so why movement with intent? All the semesters are over. It's kind of like my end of the year and semester recap type of thing of what do I observe with students. And the main thing as a student is that you go from a technical focus where it's about arcs and space and all that stuff, because suddenly I'm okay with this. Oh, now I need to think about movement and timing in terms of what is the personality of the character. And that's not easy. It's tough. And I see a lot of students struggling with this. And this is why I want to do an FNA today about this, because after all the assignments, I'm grading up my grades right now. I'm looking at everything and I see that there are two main problems. One is the technical aspect, just the spacing, the pop, especially easing them out, not hitting those harsh lines. Again, I have a link description with like the most common animation mistakes. Those haven't changed. I might add some more to that, but that's still a major factor in your animation journey to go through those technical problems. And then I see people who are past that, and then it becomes almost a bit lifeless in the animation, just because, oh, I can do moves now and it's smooth. It's like, okay, it moves great. It looks great. But what's the feeling behind it? Who is the character? Why are they doing this? Why are they moving like that? What's their intent? What's the character objective? What is the goal? There's a lot to think about. And this is why I want to do this clip today. Now, before I do, hi, my name is JD and I do lectures like these. I do animation lectures. I also do animation analysis clips. I do acting analysis clips. I do product reviews, rig reviews. I do a bunch of stuff, the pitch at the beginning and maybe you're convinced later on to subscribe. I don't know, but that's the pitch. That's what I do on this channel. Hopefully, it's helpful. Hopefully, it helps you. Well, that's it. The pitch. Let's continue. So movement with intent. When you start animating, you are, as always, safe watch my channel. You know, you categorize animation into two aspects basically. I mean, it's more complicated than that. But you start with the technical aspect where it's arcs and spacing and weight and balance and all that good stuff. And then you get to know this a lot better. And you start going into performance and acting where when you move something, where every move technically should have a reason behind it. So if I grab something like my lens cap here, it wouldn't just be in your thought process. I have to take this 25 frames to a constraint and then 17 frames back, which would be already good because it wouldn't be repetitive because the frames are different. But anyway, it would be am I in a rush? Am I tired doing this? Am I drunk? Whatever you have, there's going to be a certain circumstance combined with the personality and an attitude of the character that's going to make your timing and your performance different and hopefully specific. So once you're past that technical aspect, but even then, I would still always kind of think about that. You need to focus on why is the character moving this? I know it's going to be influenced by many things. Again, who is the character? What is the goal of the character within the shot? Maybe within the sequence. There's a lot that will influence the movement and the complexity is going to rise dramatically. Once you start thinking with all those things in mind, but you can also simplify it. But if you feel like you've kind of grasped the technical aspect and you are at that new stage, I will concentrate on attitude, personality and character. You might see that character kind of is the combination of attitude and personality. But basically, there's a certain personality that your character is going to have. Are they mischievous? Are they always kind of nervous or doubting things? Or are they always kind of happy and going along with the flow? There's a certain general personality character. But you also think about this certain attitude that you can have in every shot. So even though that's his personality as a whole, in that shot, at that moment, there's a certain attitude that the character is going to have that already is going to change your performance dramatically. And what I would add to that, what I said in previous clips is the context of the scene in terms of is the character in that environment and within that scene with those characters for the first time or not, there's a certain familiarity that's going to change your performance as well. Even if it's just movement to, as I always say, like switching lights on. If you're in a hotel room, you don't know that room, you got to look for things. If you're in your own room, at home, apartment, wherever, you notice things, you can grab things blindly. So that already is going to change certain things. But are you there with the person where the character knows the other person? So there's a certain familiarity that you can have when you get hand over props or whatever it is versus someone you've never met. And then how is that relationship? Are the two characters kind of confrontational? Are they familiar? Are they family members? Are they hated family members? There's a bunch of stuff again that you can add layer on top of layer to change your performance. That doesn't mean that you need like a 10 page breakdown of who the character is. You don't have to go that far. You can. Why not? But at least think about generally who the character is, what happened before, and even when the shot is done, maybe what might happen after that. So it's kind of like a general history and a through line and the objective that you want to kind of map out for your character. And again, that's just generally. If you do have lip sync, then you're going to write down certain beats of the lip sync. And what is the character saying something? What's the subtext? What is the real intention behind the words? Again, the layers will pile up. It's going to get very complicated quickly. And if all like it's overwhelming, again, keep it simple. It could just be my character is tired in the scene. My character is happy in this scene. And then on top of that, what does my character want in this scene? And then draw on your own experiences or maybe family members or friends. They can say, hey, fair in mind, it always kind of sits weird in the chair like that. Maybe incorporate that as an interesting quirk in terms of the posture. So that's going to already change your character pose in a way. And then you have your attitude, personality and the goals within the shot of the character. That's going to drive the movement and the timing of your animation. So all that combined is going to make it already so much different than just a general mechanics animation test. Now take all of that and make sure that all the animation everything that I mentioned is also in character. So it's pretend that you're animating a character on a sequel of a movie. That's going to make it even more complicated. So again, you can extrapolate and make this really, really complex. And of course, you will draw on the animators, the supervisors, the director, the storyboards. There's a lot that will help you. So you're not completely alone in this. But it doesn't have to be on that complex side in terms of characters with humans and for a movie or TV show, whatever. You can start with bouncing balls. Even when you're at the very beginning, you can start thinking about, okay, well, I know the mechanics, the physics of a bouncing ball. I'm going to add some squash and stretch and some personality to it. Well, it's again the basics. Is my character as a bouncing ball happy or sad? Go with the cliche ones. Could be curious. Could be tired. Could be exhausted and tired. Moving on to curious because they see something. And you can find examples online. And there's even that example that I always show. My favorite example, which is two characters, they're so different. There's great contrast. There's a story behind it. There's a lot that you can do with bouncing balls. You don't feel overwhelmed where you have to immediately go from a bouncing ball to a character with two legs and two arms and a head and a face and everything. Keep it simple. Go step by step and think about, okay, now when the character jumps, why is the character jumping? What's the goal of the character? Kind of think about those elements once you get past the technical aspect. Now, I say all this and it's not easy. So don't feel like, oh, okay, so you know how to do the spacing. I got my arch down and this great ease in and out. I know all this. Okay, next step. What is he saying? Okay, character personality attitude. Okay, are they here for the first time? Yes or no? What's the objective? What's their goal? Okay, had some specific elements, right? Specificity, all those things you hear from everywhere. Ah, what can I do? It's okay to be overwhelmed. It's a lot to think about. And that's what I'm saying. Scale it down. Think about in terms of maybe a bouncing ball and then you can do a ball with two legs and then you move on and add extra layers of complexity so you don't go crazy going from a ball to a human. But it is something you just can't avoid. Because once you're past that technical aspect and you're doing a pantomime shot, you're doing a lip sync shot and your character just has like a general pose. Again, what I say, like to take your t-pose, bring your arms down and then just has movement. Like it just doesn't quite work with that. It's going to lack a certain obviously character and life to it. It's not going to work if you're working for someone on a certain project where it has to have, again, a certain character that's based on an existing character potentially or your task to create a new character. So from the very beginning, you should think about intense behind the movement. You might not be able to apply it because you're still, I won't say stuck, but you're still really focused on the technical aspect of it. But fairly soon, you're going to go, okay, well my ball is alive when I add a tail and his obstacle course and I want to add some personality to it. Then you're already going to start thinking about the timing in a different way because the character will be, like I said, sad, happy or whatever it is. And you can even start small with just the posing. It doesn't have to have some crazy timing and acting choices. It could just be your line deliver like this. But what if you deliver the line like this? What if you deliver the line like that? Like, I don't know, like just do like a general head tilt or your whole pose to an animation layer and change everything into something like this, raise your eyebrow, all that on layers and then see how it changes your animation. And then you can start experimenting with this. Again, it doesn't have to be overwhelmingly complex, start small, see what it does. What if I do half the shot with my eyes closed? Is that changing the attitude? If I say something, but all things like this? Well, I don't know if you can do this, but it all depends, right? So what if you hold this and have a very slow opening of the eyes? That's going to change your character already. So thinking those smaller layers first, again, not to overwhelm you, and then get used to that and add more and more and more until you're fairly used to this. And then you can start layering that into your reference as you film reference or film your own reference. And this goes on and on and on. Like I said, this is not easy. This is not something you can just go, hey, technical, all right, performance. It's tricky. And then a lot of people also use someone else for their performance inspirations for their reference. There are many, many workflows, many different ways to go about this, but it's also a lot of fun to think about. So this is not just a technical thing where you go, okay, this is my next step. I gotta do this. It's a ton of fun to think about that to explore certain characters when you teach to kind of give people ideas and then they take that and do something else with it. It's just a lot of fun to be on that next level where it's beyond the technical aspect. Now, if you feel like this is still a bit too complicated and you need help, you know where I'm going with this. I have workshops so you can sign up at any time. I can take your shots. It can help you. I can give you ideas. Let's talk. Let's brainstorm. That's what the workshop is there for. You can sign up at any time. You can start whenever you want. Link in the description with all information. That's the page at the end. Also, speaking of end, that means time. That means if you're still watching, thank you so much for your patience. I really appreciate it. And if you don't want to miss any of those lectures, feel free to subscribe. Why not? And hit that bell button and then you won't miss any of those uploads. Maybe it will be helpful to you. Who knows? But that is the Merry Christmas. It's the 24th today. Early May Christmas, right? So European Christmas. And hopefully I'll see you in my next clip.