Morning Exercise Animations

[MatthewTardiff]

A little morning exercise using my new favorite book, Action Analysis for Animators by Chris Webster.
On Page 111 he has a simplified version of a quad gallop. I recreated it in TvPaint this morning because one can never get enough exercise. The main focus of the simplified piece is to understand the torso mass and how it squashes and stretches in the gallop.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Clever.
BTW, are you left handed?

[MatthewTardiff]

no. Why do you ask?

[Paul Fierlinger]

Maybe Chris Webster is. It just seems strange to me that you make the beast gallop from right to left.

[MatthewTardiff]

Maybe Chris Webster is. It just seems strange to me that you make the beast gallop from right to left.

I hadn't really though about it. I'm going to leap out on a limp and ask a stupid question, "Why is it strange that I would have it gallop right to left."

[Klaus Hoefs]

Interesting and helpful to watch. I really like those clips which are showing the whole process of ones's workflow.

(But, btw what happened to the jumping icon (middle right ) after 1:58 ???? )

[MatthewTardiff]

That was my entourage email notification

[Paul Fierlinger]

Maybe Chris Webster is. It just seems strange to me that you make the beast gallop from right to left.

I hadn't really though about it. I'm going to leap out on a limp and ask a stupid question, "Why is it strange that I would have it gallop right to left."

It was a silly question on second thought, sorry. I had just read that most people draw figures facing from left to right because of the writing convention, and that consequently in right to left writing cultures people draw characters facing left, as do left handed writers in our culture, so I thought here's an opportunity to check that theory out.

[MatthewTardiff]

ha. Gotcha. I wondered if it was something like that or dealing with the flow of action.

[Klaus Hoefs]

To tell from design-theory "running from right to left" will never be so fast as "from left to right" (for our culture). I've read also that "right to left" has contra-productive effects and is anarchistic, is against all odds - all meant in a design meaning (?!).

[MatthewTardiff]

Cool that works

[Klaus Hoefs]

Yes, all rules for the good students on the good schools...

[Paul Fierlinger]

It has always been taught in script writing classes that a train moving left to right is going to its destinations, and right to left is returning. I once did some animation for Sesame Street in Arabic and this theory was confirmed to me by Arabic consultants in Jordan; that in the example of the train, the cultural convention would be the opposite of what it is for us, basically also derived from the direction of writing.

[MatthewTardiff]

Cool thanks for the info

[Klaus Hoefs]

Yes, that's what I meant with "our culture".
Trains are interesting, as they (usually) can't leave their rails, in other words they have no "free will". I think that's why some books became successful as Ottfried Preußler's "Jim Knopf" (engl.: "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver" ) in which locomotive "Emma" can run free and also has own thoughts and will.