Sunday, March 19, 2006

Arcs

People talk a lot about arcs. At first, I was like, why? What the hell do they have to do with animation? Isn't animation just an imitation of real life? Where do arcs fit in? To some extent, I still wonder that, at least, for realistic animation. If the intent is to simulate real life and the real life motion doesn't arc, then why animate using arcs? If I can make it look real enough without caring about arcs, why the hell should I start?
I think the whole arcs thing trails back to traditional 2D animation. I haven't studied this stuff, so I'm hypothesizing, but I'm beginning to see the value of it in animation. It's just more visually pleasing. Seeing someone move in arcing motions is just more appealing than seeing linear interpolations. The question then becomes, well, what do I arc? Keith Lango has a good tutorial on this, and he says the most important part is the hips. I think I agree. If you arc the hips, you indirectly arc everything that is attached. From there, I think overlapping through time adds more, as well as paying attention to your appendages - the arms, legs, and head. I tend to pay particular attention to the wrists, since I think a lot of the time people keep their eyes on the characters' hands... what are they doing? So I focus a lot on that. Plus there's a lot of negative space around the arms so if they're moving fast, the eye is naturally drawn toward them.
It's funny... the more I pay attention to arcs, the more anal I get about them. This is a good thing, I think. I wonder if you can overkill on them...

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