Bitterest Pill

Happy New Year 2012

Image A
Image B
WEIGHT IN ANIMATION

"Weight weight weight......! there is no weight in your animation", if you'r character animator you would have often heared this voice of thunder .Me too, its very hard for me to create the illusion of weight.So i was wondering what the hack is weight .i read some books written by legends and hunt down some blogs of some currently living legends.Some mention about how timing and spacing are important, while other mention about poses.Absolutely right, without proper timing and spacing, strong poses ..we cannot create believable weight.But it took more than 2/3yrs to understand what they really mean and apply it in my animation.so, my intention here is to simplified their idea in my own way and share it to you.

Lets for a moment forget about character and just look at the simple lines in image A.
Did you see anything ? or you'r probably asking yourself,"what this idiot is talking about?".Allow me to explain..:)
Lets look again one by one ,in imageA-1 we can't see any weight in the line,its like some kind of stick standing still.But as line goes more&more curve(2,3,4) the line seems more like a rope which has some weight in it and definitely the last 4th line seems much heavier than the other.


Line ! curve!! so what! no sense at all.Cool down Buddy! here is my explanation.
Now,come to image B.We can consider our body as single line.Like those line in imageA as our body structure goes bending from image B 1,2,3.., illusion of weight kept increasing and finally the last pose 4 has far more weight than the first one(imageB1 )

I guess i'm making sense, NO/YES?

this is my latest demoreel, have a look and i would happy to get your comment.