Assignment: Timing Exercises

Contributed by Corrie Francis Parks at UMBC

Learning Outcomes

• Understanding timing and spacing
• Creating animation guides
• Learning Dragonframe interface and camera equipment

Preparation

Stopmotion is a great way to get immediate feedback on timing and spacing. With a frame capture program, students can quickly make multiple attempts and play them back to compare in a short time.

A lecture or reading covering the following topics would be helpful to prepare students for this assignment:

• Timing and spacing
• Easing (aka slow in/slow out)
• Anticipation
• Overlapping action
• Frame rates
• Animating on ones, twos, and threes

Demonstrate camera equipment you will be using in the course and how to export a video for turning in.

Assignment

These are short exercises that are quick and easy to shoot. If you really want to get good at timing, try them several times, adjusting your spacing between frames to vary the speed of the animation. Notice the different effect you get when you animate the object a different way.

You will need the following materials:

• Some objects to animate, like coins, beads, or small pieces of clay
• Paper and pencil to make animation guides

You should make your own guides for each exercise and you can animate directly on the guides. Alternatively, some frame capture programs allow you to draw a guide on screen that doesn’t show up in the final animation.

Set up: Create a new Dragonframe project. You will want to have a separate video for each exercise, so once you finish one exercise, export the movie and choose File>New Take before you start the next. (This creates a new take with the same project.)

Set the project frame rate to 24fps. Activate the 16:9 mask.

Turn on onion skinning and use the menu in the upper left corner to show multiple frames.

Exercise 1: Ones, Twos, and Threes

In this exercise, you will compare the difference between shooting the same motion on ones, twos, and threes.

Draw 3 lines across your paper as guides. Divide the top line into 24 even segments. Divide the second line into 12 even segments. Divide the third line into 8 even segments.

Choose 3 objects. You will animate the first object moving across the screen on ones, using the top guide with 24 marks and taking one frame per mark. The second object will be animated on twos, using the middle guide, taking 2 frames per mark. The third object will be animated on threes, using the lower guide, taking 3 frames per mark.

Animate your three objects separately moving across the screen. Then animate all three simultaneously at their respective rates (ones, twos, and threes). This is a bit mind-bending so watch the example carefully to make sure you get it right!

Watch the animation and note the difference in the fluidity of the movement. Which object moves more smoothly? What situations might you decide to animate on ones? When might you use threes?

For the remaining exercises, you can animate on twos. Either take two images for each movement (project frame rate 24fps) or change the project frame rate to 12fps, then export to 24fps (the computer will duplicate each frame so you have two of each).

Exercise 2: Ease Out/Ease In

In this exercise, you’ll demonstrate the fundamental principle of easing. You may choose to work on ones or on twos for the remaining exercises.

Create a line of action for your object moving back and forth across the screen.

Animate the object moving from one side of the screen to the other and back. Use the timing chart as a guide to animate the object easing out of one position and easing into the other position.

You should be able to make a smooth loop with the animation.

Exercise 3: Figure Eights

In this exercise, you will compare how even spacing produces consistent speed and how varying the spacing produces a change in speed.

Draw a figure eight as a line of action. There are two parts to this exercise so you will end up with two videos.

Animate the object going around the figure 8 at a constant speed. The distance you move the object between each frame should be equal each time.

Start a new take.

Now animate the object with variable speed. The object should gain speed as it drops down towards the bottom of the screen and lose sped as it moves up towards the top (like a bicycle rolling down and up hills). Use the animation guide posted in the tutorial folder as an example of how to space the movements.

Exercise 4: Anticipation

For this exercise you will start the object from a standstill, anticipate the movement and move the object off the screen with increasing speed.

Draw an arched line of action for the object from the starting position to moving off the screen.

Start with a 6 frame hold at the first position. (Take six frames without moving the object.)

Anticipate the forward movement by moving the object backwards for a few frames.* Apply easing to this action!

Ease out of the position as the object gathers speed moving forward.

* Experiment with the number of frames of anticipation. Five frames looks much different than two frames!

Exercise 5: Overlapping Action

For this exercise, you will need to create a tail for your object. You can use several objects that you can arrange in a line, or one long object that you can bend. We will make a tail-like movement with overlapping action.

On the guide sheet, draw the different stages of the line waving in the arc like a tail. The tip of the tail will follow the main part of the tail, but it will drag behind a bit.

Include two frames of anticipation before the main action.

When you get to the other side of the wave, bring the tail back to its starting position. Remember that the tip of the tail is always dragging behind a bit.

Exercise 6: Put it all together

Using what you learned, create 5 or more seconds of animation of your object with its tail. Have the object move on, around, and off the frame, applying easing, anticipation and follow through, and overlapping action as appropriate.

Examples: