Principles: 11:45 Squash + Stretch 13:51 Anticipation 19:08 Timing 21:41 Ease in, Ease out 25:10 Arcs 26:25 Follow-Through, Overlapping Action 29:34 Exaggeration Common Mistakes: 32:07 Too Many Frames 35:27 Misuse of Smears 38:15 Overanimating 39:55 Thinking You Know Things 42:10 Being Too Precious With Your Work 43:36 Inconsistent size/mass Some Other Stuff: 47:01 Skeletal Animation 52:35 Leverage Your Tools 53:54 A Plea to the Engineers
I see a lot of talks where an animator is helping game devs. But as someone who comes from an animation background Id love to see a talk from a coder to animators. Someone who can help me (as an artist) understand the best way to make animations work in engine and how to meld the two mediums beautifully.
I agree. There are some gems in the GDC vault that tend to be buried in procedural art/ animation talks, but a dedicated one would be nice. Even simple stuff like "Ask the artist to put your model origin in a sensible place when exporting" would be nice.
I went that route , first by using engines my self and then finding teams on discord. Basically the most usefull thing you can do is to package your anims as a game asset instead of a sprite sheet or a bunch of images
There are some great, free engines on Steam with tons of community support and new development. 2D side scroll, isometric, 3D and whatever else you need 👍
my guy, nobody should yell at you. this was extremely well delivered, thought out and informative. thank you for your efforts, sharing and the talk in general.
Tyriq is awesome! I've really enjoyed the art of games he's been a part of and didn't realize they all came (at least in part) from the same guy. Great talk.
Great talk! "If animators are communicators, our communication is poetry". Refreshing way to meet the idea of putting the exercise of perfect readability on a pedestal, I think.
This was really useful! I started overanimating just to realize I don't need that much frames and then delete those frames, and there is also other mistakes that I learned from but this just made me realize how importan and how much time I can save with this principles
Good presentation! And great presenter, the flow of the speak is a pleasure 👍 Also, great to see someone using proper microphone technique and decent equipment, a welcome change of pace compared to a lot of remote GDC presenters! Good job!
One thing that makes me dislike skeletal 2d animations a lot of the time is how they can end up with a very paper-doll-puppet feel to them. And that's a fine style if it's deliberate, but if it's not a part of the style it can look amateurish.
That's because, as Ty said, the makers rely too much on automatic tweening. Unlike frame animation i think you can go nuts with the keys on skeletal animation, and it's actually recommended. It's also much easier to adjust if you don't like the result.
It comes down to the fundamentals of animation again. And knowing your software, and how to use it. There are many ways to tweek limbs to move or change shape to get the look and feel life like in a 3D world.
The blending of the two techniques always will look obscure if the animator is not applying the 2d animation fundamentals when using computer automation. But if done right, the puppeteer animation technique has the ability to display great frame by frame animation aesthetics. This obviously requires the animator to use the automation tools sparingly and have a clear understanding of the computer's as well as traditional animator's limitations. But yes I agree that unintentionally blending the two distinctive styles will make the overall animation look pretty amateur.
