How To Animate Faster - Breaking Down My Animation Workflow 

Every animator has that story of “I tried that workflow, struggled and discovered my own way of animating” AND ITS INCREDIBLE

In animation school one of my teachers was a veteran Disney animator who taught pose to pose. I remember reading a book by a more obscure Disney animator (can't remember his name) where he explained that he liked to do the whole scene straight ahead to figure out the movement first, then looked for the drawings that could be turned into key poses, perfect them, and drew the inbetweens again with a more controlled timing. When I talked about it to my teacher he just smiled and say "yeah, you should probably stick to pose to pose". I went on and tried it anyway on my next scene, without telling him. When I showed him the scene he said "this is your best work so far" and that's been my process for traditional animation ever since. I think pose to pose has become a standard because it is the 9 old men way, but it's nice to see people try other workflows. I also don't used pose to pose in 3D.

"The Pose is not important. Animation and the flow is important." You have a point. That was something eye opening. Thank you..

I personally think animating like this is way better indeed. It is much easier to figure out timing (which is probably the most important thing in animation) with a cube rather than trying to do it with ready to use complex poses. Spending only 6.5 hours for an animation like this just proves the effectiveness of this method. Lastly, Mark your channel is a gold mine with damn precious insights all over the place. It's always a great experience to watch a professional sharing the knowledge, helping others along the way

duuude, idk about anybody else, but this made soo much sense to me, one of my big problems is that i dont like the whole planning phase, I also have a really hard time thinking of it as a bunch of poses and not motion, so your workflow makes so much sense to me, cause first you get the timing of the motion down then you get the pose down. imma start trying this out!, thanks so much!

It's awesome watching pros work. The "rough pass" is what many would consider really good - all the motion, timing and flow looks super good. And then to refine the details further from here is just *chefs kiss*

Very cool to see, love seeing representation for other "non-standard" workflows!

Not only a good technique but also a very well constructed and thought out presentation of how to create and apply the methods.

Thanks Mark, this is so relatable. I was looking for a workflow that goes straight into motion. When animating I feel like those "main poses" I make are most likely going to change when I work on the motion of the character and so I was asking myself why should I spend so much time on posing other than having a good base when interpolating. But this workflow just sounds so well to my ears and I definitely need to give it a go. I really appreciate you sharing this, thanks again!! :D

thank you for sharing mark, hopefully I can use this method in my workflow

WOW! I've never seen a work flow like this. Genius. Character looks so grounded after simple blocking and a leg pass. Great vid!

Nice vid! Really informative. Would love to see a bit more of this and also the "throw it in engine" testing. Thanks!

This is an amazing video my dude! thanks for the insight 👌🏾 and happy holidays 🎅🏾

Really nice explanation, I'll try this workflow out soon. Master Tutorials playlist: 4 down, 38 to go.

When you got to the leg pass and explained it, I was very happy to find a faster way to animate the feet. But I was also very frustrated because the whole time there was an easier way to animate footwork, and this whole time I didn't know how to use the core control. I majored in 3D animation, but I only learned the basics cuz we basically had one class that focused on each topic (animation, modeling, rigging, etc.) Thank you so much for teaching us about your workflow!

my next favourite animation channel. good stuff here. I learn a lot. thank you

Finally someone who gets it! I've been struggling integrating pose to pose in my workflow and seeing everyone just breeze through it made me unsure of my animation skills in general. I kind of like seeing the animation more rather than the pose as I cant visualize the inbetweens in a pose to pose workflow. Thanks for the tips!

Love the hustle man!

Cool use of the animated cube, and explanation.

crazy how we all have our own way to do this stuff. very interesting

Love what you are doing. Would really like to see a vide on how you go from cradle to grave in regards to animation. I watched a ton of tutorials on Pluralsight but they were all outdated. It seems like there should be some content out there showing off new methods but it is very limited for Maya. Would love to see the following: 1) Creating a control rig 2) Best practices for control rigs with the gaming industry 3) Set driven keys 4) Weighting, best practices so this doesnt take 5 years :P 5) Layers for pose setups (2 handed weapon vs 1 with a run animation) I really love your style and approach, which is why I am hoping you cover these topics down the road.

I think this is the most promising tutorial I ever watch pls keep going, can you talk about top plugins you use, and if you can talk more about the layers I like to see why you're using so much layer and how much can improve the process. Thank you!!

This is literally how I eventually began animating with confidence lol love the video

It would be interesting to see your workflow with layers and how you explore ideas with layers like you mentioned in this great video:)

It make sense (principle 4: straight ahead & pose-to-pose) , I'd already met similar workflow in Blender tutorials. Additionally, you don't need the cube layer, you can boldly start with torso + motion trail, except the necessity to block 2+ anim objects in scene. (2 day from start Maya self+tutors learning and diving deep in animation...)

This seems like a godsend for someone more used to 2D animation, this is wonderful, Ill definitely be trying a similar method

Not even using Maya nor do I have more than few months with Blender, but this has been beyond helpful. Thank you ~

So informative ❤

Amazing Stuff Mark ! really love your Chanel!

I'm a programmer and working in research, I had to do some animation myself occasionally since we almost never have available animators on staff. Weirdly enough I reached the same workflow conceptually when I was given mocap animations for a craftsman without any animation for the tools he used. I now had to fully animate tools based on video references of each step of the craft process and the tool used and the grips in the animation. This was about preserving the mocap detail in the end result, so we wouldn't do any keyframe reduction on them and also, it was a cinematic, so it made sense to try and replicate the tool animation as if we had mocaped the tools as well. To do that, in Unity, I did some animation rigging for the tools and aligned the IK targets to sampled hand animation at points in time that I thought were considered a "change" (kinda like local highs and lows in curves) to get a rough baseline of the animation the tool itself would have in this action and then hand animated the details over that baseline, using the IK rig and based on the movement of the hand, the grip etc. On another note, old tutorials for modelling made you import reference images in Maya/Blender etc in planes.....I see you can do the same for the video, so you can have a very quick rough baseline, by rotoscoping, instead of doing it yourself completely all the while watching the video on the side. That should be a bit faster, right?

You've brought up something important here. A similar layered approach is how most cg animators worked in the earlier days. The stepped pose thing was a workflow developed by and for traditional hand drawn animators who migrated into cg (shared by Keith Lango in his lectures). What's important is that students should be made aware of different workflows and shouldn't get boxed into working one way.

this is awesome!

Wow, you really have explained everything, at the end of the vdo I realized that for the first time I didn’t have any doubts regarding anything. So helpful….thanks a lot and plz make some more videos…more power to you! 🙌🏻♥️

Very cool man!!!

i liked ur way . wwill defintely try that

Great!

Thank you for sharing your workflow! I might want to experiment a bit with this method. I've been having a hard time with the Pose to Pose method lately... It's stressing me out.

Great video! This method seems similar to 'layered' method of animating Michal Makarewicz from Pixar is using.

Thank you so much! I don't even use Maya, but this is extremely helpful!

thank you thank you thank youuuu

Awesome to see the full breakdown… also just hit the animbot share keys button after selecting cog & 2 feet and it’ll set keys for you on the feet ‘shared’ from the cog.

Man you should make more video's it's cool.. 😃 to find something new.

Hey man, your tutorials are great, I am still researching what you share with us. Just little suggestion and minor detail that I noticed. On 8:30 when you delete cube, you say constrain is also deleted. As I know constrain isn't deleted but deactivated because there is no more "driver" object. If you go in outliner you could see constrain is still there. To delete this kind of temporary constrains I am using arrow down/arrow right on my keyboard. In that way maya selects that certain constrain and you could delete it. Your videos are amazing, please keep going with it. I learnt already alot but this is quick minor detail just to help you to make your content even better. Best Regards, Boba

Hey Mark, good to know about the progress of your shot. I would prefer to go with a pose-to-pose approach rather than the process you showed.

KEEP GOING PLEASE!

Great tutorial, I love it!!! Where can I get the rig/model you used in this video?

Can you someday teach how you work with layers in maya? I really want to learn this workflow!

Great video, trying this workflow now and I can already feel the advantages of it. Just a small question, how do you do that "snap to previous keyframe" command in animbot? Closest I can figure out is just copy+paste poses, but that requires me to step back and forward all the time. Doing it with just one click would speed things up immensely. Cheers!

Great tips. Extremely useful. Do you have a special setup for the sword by any chance that helps tracking the tip better?

Should've give a try to this one! Pose to pose steps not working me aswel! 😥

I absolutely love it, is there any tool or something to do this on blender??

informative

There is one question I do have with one part of this which is the timing adjustment, because everything is on different keys do you have a way to basically make it snappier IE: deleting keys/bringing keys backwards Or do you just mess around and wait till something feels good to you? I always have issues with retiming in layered (only in specific areas that may have a fair bit of detail!) Ever since watching these videos I've enjoyed layering so much more as it allows me to "feel the motion" a lot more!

How do you get such a smooth body movements? Every time i animate, its always robotic and jiggles a lot of times, i never get this feeling of a "smooth body mechanic"

you are jenious

thank you! this is very helpful. but, is there any way to do this workflow in blender?

Amazing idea for finding reference on specific actions! what app do you use to record and have set frames like that?

Very cool Mark wow wish ianiamte 2 game ws I took 6yrs ago would've talked more about this it would've helped a ton dang. I totally get why you didn't name your layers just curious and I have 3 questions regarding your workflow for this combo. Did you shoot new vid ref of yourself doing a 2 handed stab when you decided to to have a much stronger attack? Do you remember in those 15 layers what changes your were tweaking off the top of your mind since it's kinda fresh? How difficult was it to readjsut the 2 big changes on the 2 handed stab and then taking out that extra step to idle to stay within under 8hrs? I hope these make sense and I just sub today Darrel

Bro decided to become vergil

Thank you Mark, might try this on my free time, and also congrats on being part of Ianimate Instructor :)

Great tutorial ! Really inspiring. Bdw is it a People can fly shirt 🤔 :))

3:00 I am beginner and I wasn't using video reference one month pass and didn't end single scene, BCZ I have to imagine every pose, timing, and everything..

Great stuff Mark! Do you know of a similar bake tool for Blender?

Hey man, first time here, first time with Grease Pencil Can you make a video, or maybe recommend one for me about... ok, I'll explain. You have your character generated by MJ AI, it's 2D, you need to give it animation so that you can run and jump in your game. The correct thing would be to trace it, map the color, give it rigging and then the animation? I'm completely lost anyway, a video on the process would be awesome

Was every pass a new anim layer? This workflow looks like it would work best for me as I also like to play around in maya and try out different poses

Would you use this same workflow for dialog anim or just body mechanics ?😊

How do you connect the character to the box??

10:56 - sorry I lack context- with the anim.bot tool? Snap to precious frame? What's the anim bot tool?

Wow this animation is smooth ...where can i get this rigged model ?

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

What program do you use at 2:05 (Video Reference)?

How would i do this inside blender?

What would you do if the rig doesnt have the option for the IK legs to follow the COG? Im using a rig that can only be put on IK or FK so im having a hard time transfering the keyframes following the COG.

I animate in 2D, but this type of workflow is still very applicable

How can I replicate this method in blender. Please any idea

how do you animate without looking directly at the reference for every frame?

Bro can U please do the same tutorial in blender. It will be great help. I am facing some issues. Please bring up the same tutorial for blender 🥰

I love it! But I didn't succeed to install the World bake script... (((

Im sorry im new to animation, but what is the point of that method? Speed? Dont u think that lot of lazy people wont continue mastering the blocking poses after watching easy semi automatic ways like this?

Clay.

Actually it looks a bit like how you'd animate in stop motion or if you're playing with action figures.

Guy I just use lego characters as reference. Everyone has their own way!

Shouldn't we be using mocap videos and then begin refining them these days?

too much blah blah blah wtf

Does anyone know what's the program's name for viewing a video frame by frame? And also, does anyone could download the file "ml_worldBake.py" ?? Whenever I press it it took me to a new page. HELP