It's the reason why so many animators fail to make a smooth and believable animation only these very little people view this video who are taking animation serious and turn out to become a professional animator later in their life
they used to not be underrated. Then youtube fucked the animation community over by introducing an algorithm that picks favourites based on daily uploads and videos longer than 10 minutes.
My professor would just use those terms like "You need a slow out here or slow in here" when we'd review our projects but this is the first time I'm seeing a timing charts and they look a HELL of a lot simpler. They would have been so helpful if he'd taught us what one was... But he's a 3D animator teaching 2D sometimes.
Something I do is just keeping shapes simple while in the rough stage and going through frames one by one and seeing where the shapes grow or shrink. Then I fix the size; it takes a keen eye to do though, and practice. Just keep in mind the movement you're trying to make while you do this.
Eno Spi has some excellent advice. Keeping your volumes consistent is a fundamental of animation. Here’s another thing I do and it works for me: I draw a rough, simplified, structural drawing of my character in the size he needs to be for the scene. This drawing is my proportional standard. This is the first drawing on my pegs… As I animate, I will occasionally flip back to this standard to check my proportions.
It's so hard to find animation schools in my country, so this kind of content being available online is really really helpful, and so well explained too. Thank you so much!
+Waalk R Right back at you, I grew up in Indo and I had to study abroad just to learn animation - so hopefully I can contribute into spreading it around!
Hm, I'm trying to understand this. One thing I'm confused on is how the animator making the timing chart is supposed to know how many frames go between this keyframe and the next keyframe. Is it just giving your best guess?
Im reading 'The Animators Survival Kit' and one if his tips was to physically act and time out the motion you are trying to animate. Then depending what timing your using you can sort of figure out how many frames will go in between. I could be misunderstanding but that's what I got from reading that! Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong ^^
@@ChemicalLama yeah thats a good idea, but depending on the motion there are lots of things that cant be acted out, so referencing or guesswork can be done
@@akiani oh yeah definitely, but it seems to be a good place to start to make thing easier to organize/time! Animation feels like a weird combo of structure and chaos
I've never been too Animation school or ever had any professional training in any of this shit but im getting there on my own. Slowly but surely im leveling up.
Man, timing charts have always been my worst nightmare. From deciding exactly which ones to use, to knowing just how many frames i'm actually going to need.. my question is, is it possible not to know exactly how many frames youre going to need for a specific action and need to change it up later? like, say, if you make two keys, can you temporarily label them as A and B until you are certain of just how many frames you need for the action? Or, should you just guess and stick within the confines of your guess? I guess knowing how many frames an action might take comes with experience, but for those just starting out, would a letter system be better? i think my biggest struggle is favoring, and knowing exactly what situations to use it in. I'd love to see more examples of types of actions that require their respective timing. This video is really great and literally explains timing charts better than any of my instructors in animation school did. lmao. amazing. I'm gonna stay closely tuned and definitely look for those other videos you mentioned.
+Lester Knight Chaykin Hi there. It is alright not to know how long or how many frames your animation will need for a shot - so it is fine to label them as letters or numbers if you want. If you feel uncomfortable about setting your timing first hand, you could shoot your keys and breakdowns first, arrange them digitally until you get a timing you are satisfied. Once you are happy with the timing, you could use those frame numbers are re label your original drawings. I wouldn't trial and error it all the way because it doesn't encourage you to be more decisive with your timing - but the more you do it, the more you get familiar with how long frames can last for. For favoring, I'd say its used for mostly two things: You are trying to make a drawing read that plays by very fast, or its a specific action like some bloke getting hit in the face for example. There's really no way to know when is the best time to use it, you kind of have to feel for yourself when you are animating a scene. At some point in your animation, you'll probably find yourself at a place where you aren't happy with an inbetween because it makes the animation look floaty, or the impact of one of your key drawings is lost. That's a good time to consider about favoring!
You mean to tell me there's math in art *internal screaming* When I draw fun mini animations or gifs, I always eyeballed it and re-edited when I felt it's needed, like lmao I neeeever knew there was a method! Thank you for this video, it certainly helps a lot.
@@goos6005 Ikr! As much as I enjoy math, I feel some type of way knowing it's everywhere 🤣😭 It's great learning new techniques so I guess the trade-off's fine
There’s absolutely no math involved in timing charts. You only need to know which points on the chart are closer to each other. At most, you need to know where the halves would go, which is as simple as looking at the chart and plotting the point directly in between two other points lol
@@mimochin6023 You can't until you reach that certain point of urgency to get that answer. Maybe rewatching many times can solve the problem, but that's also a time waste without concentration and concentration will happen automatically with that urge to know the answer.
Do you ever find yourself not using the chart because of how familiar you are with the timing? I never use these charts mainly because I never really understood it (until now haha). When I animate I kinda do the timing mentally and eyeballing it on screen as I inbetween my keys.
+mangimewhite94 Hey man! Indeed, in fact sometimes when I'm animating digitally, I don't really use add specific timing charts - but the concept of how they work is usually in my mind. This is because on digital medium, there's digital playback so I can instantly play the animation, and feel the motion while I work. Unlike in traditional animation, you'd have to arrange your frames and shoot it frame by frame. Timing charts are really just guides, used for implementing the timing and the drawings needed for in-betweening. It's also great when you need that extra hand to help you in between your keys! It's great for organization reasons. I'd say if you really want to really grasp the idea of in-betweening (and the benefits of learning hand drawn on animation on paper) is limit the use of the play button and using charts to plan your movements!
I see. It's probably best (for me at least) to do traditional paper animation because obviously I can't playback. The play button is too damn irresistible. Cheers man! Keep up the awesome videos. Also "stringbing is now following you". hehe
tobanga feufeu Haha you only see it once or twice cause I really don't use it and the times that I used it was back in first year where the timing charts were part of the assignments but even then I didn't understand them despite using it.
Good lord, how am i finding you just now? I'm a frame by frame animator and my animation often looks wobbly or plays at weird speeds. You're a godsend.
i began watching because i wanna animate knowing it was hard and complicatedbut i didnt expect it to be this confusing, animators are severely underrated
I have been working in animation for years and this is a great piece on timing charts. A few things I would do differently but as you say every animator has some variations to how they approach them. Great Work
Fantastic, thanks for this! I needed a review! Sadly, they never taught us this at my animation school. But at least I am eventually learning more about it :)
+Marji Bordner That's something I hear often from students from other animation schools. Although when I was still a student, not many folks really got the idea, or used timing charts either. It's one of those things you kind of have to apply to yourself in order to learn it. I learned more about timing charts when I had to freelance with various studios and film makers. The most recent freelance I had to do required me to make timing charts for my animation since it was going to be cleaned up in South Korea. That's where I learned how to make more organized timing charts. If you are animating traditionally, having an exposure sheet on the side helps.
This is exactly what I've been learning in class and I'm so happy to see how universal these charts are. Just subscribed and am so excited to see more!
Never used those charts myself but it's nice to see them explained for once, I might try those out just to see if it can have a positiv impact on my workflow.
This is extremely helpful! I've been struggling in my animation class with slow-ins and outs, so it's nice to see how they can be used in different ways!
Thank you for your amazing videos ! It's been hard for me to grasp the concept of inbetweening (especially in a book, I mean, it doesn't move, so it's much harder to understand ahah) but your explanation really helped me figure it out. As a beginning animator, I'm certainly going to need this knowledge ! (And gonna share it, it's really great )
This is super helpful! You were speaking clear and gave a clear example I could understand. I'm very appreciative that you could break things down like so. I often get confused by all the numbers and curves, when you showed it in letters of A, B, C, etc, it really helped me understand. I really like this tutorial, thank you for this!
Never have opportunity to go to art school and don't have a single knowledge about animation, your videos teach a lot about what I dream to know since childhood, thank you so much.
We need to phase out the terms "slow in" and "slow out". They're just straight up misnomers. Speaking of misnomers, the chart shows how the inbetweens are spatially separated. So it's more of a spacing chart than a timing chart.
What surprises me is Kevin Perry, the stop motion guy, has no clue what a timing chart is. He animates just by feel. That surprised the heck out of me. I thought all animators read 'The Animator's Survival Kit'.
Thank you so much! This was the most useful information I have watched about charts, even more precise for acting animation than those in the animator's survival kit. I accidentally watched one of your videos looking for acting animation to put on practice. Keep doing this videos! I really appreciate it!
this was so interesting! I always wondered what where those lines in the animation cells! the way you explain things is so clear and easy to understand! wonderful job!
What I've gained: You're seriously underrated as a content provider! Thank you so much for teaching me these new skills! I hope to apply these new found skills into my future works! Thank you very much! What you've gained: A subscriber and a shout out across my social medias because OH BOY people need to know you exist! You're a fantastic teacher! 😄
I kid you not when i say i've had 4 animation teachers and i couldn't understand timing charts until now... Had an idea from what they taught me but it was a true mess. Thought i understood it when they explained them but when it came to making charts on my own animation i had no freaking idea what i was doing half the time lol. Very useful video! Very well explained and the visual examples helped a ton.
I've always went back and forth between understanding timing and spacing,simply using an example of the drawn head rather than a "ball" helps so much more,we aren't all trying the constantly animates balls people 😋
I animate a bunch but never quite got the grasp of this until this video! Especially when I'm so spoiled with digital playback. This'll help me plan a lot better. Thank you!!
I always wondered what those ruler lines are but didn't know what it's called. I searched up like 'ruler thingy in animation' or 'lines in rough animation' but couldn't find one. I'm so glad I stumbled upon this video. Thanks
I’ve been following your twitter, but this is my first video. IT WAS AMAZING. I learned all these new things that I’ve never seen in self teaching myself animation from RU-vid! I loved your tutorial. You gave unique information with really great quality examples and made it interesting to look at at all times. I’m excited to follow you for a long time. :D
I've been animating for a good 16 or 17 years now (but only taking it especially seriously the past few years) and have been way too terrified of these things to even try to approach them. I always figured they were basically the same idea as what you see on the Flash/Animate timeline, and it looks like I'm right... just never quite understood it beyond that. I've always been an eyeballer (didn't even learn that term until today). So this might be really helpful!
this is awesome! i see these everywhere on professional rough animation and knew it must be important or helpful and now i can add these charts to my own stuff! thank you so much!
I think I finally get it. It's just so weird because a "Spacing Chart" would be a way more fitting name for this, since it informs you about the principle of spacing while the actual time between frames is not being displayed in any way. Other than the numbering maybe. That's what has confused me for so long because i tend to think the chart shows if I should use 1s, 2s, 3s etc. Even though in this case here, it's all on 2s. The timing itself is constant and not variable, only the spacing is. The name is the most confusing part of this chart, otherwise it makes a lot of sense.
I agree. Nowadays I call them spacing charts or just charts. Timing charts is the terminology a lot of my mentors and feature animators back in the 2d days have used.
thank you soo much.. i was getting in to animation as my profession in college as it's my passion.. and i was looking for videos for inbetweens. m. thank you so much.. i have a lot to learn but i will because i love it
Ahh thank you! Finally I understand the mysterious chart I keep seeing, it's been haunting me for too long. I had a very rough understand of it before now, but today I pretty much get it? Still going to take a little thinking about. Might even mess around at utilize it. Knowing what frames of a motion to draw has been a trouble during animating, it makes sense to map out the frames like this.
This guy is explaining the TIMING CHART in a complicated way: I am UNHAPPY about his weird method. I am a pro animator AND a college teacher (total: 30 years). I can show you a MUCH simpler way to do this, WITH DRAWINGS. Email me: claartoons@comcast.net. Tony
@Toniko Pantoja , Breakdowns for movement analysis is different from a breakdown in a chart. The two are too often confused because they have the same name. A breakdown for movement analysis is there to find the path curvature of each body parts, and is solely reserved to the animator. Those breakdowns become KEYS once you plan your charts to go to an inbetweener, because they are complete drawings. The breakdowns that are passed down to an inbetweener like the C-underlined in the chart is supposed to be a partial drawing, for which the completion requires following the chart. For example, drawing C-Underlined is just an arm and hand that is moving OFF the chart, but everything else is following the chart, and added by the inbetweener by making the rest of the drawing with the help of keys A and B. And for clarity, every drawings at the extremities of charts should be keys, circled. If you use another method than the one I described above, it will become confusing for the pipeline. Believe me, I've seen all the ways, and this one was taught to me by a veteran and is unbreakable, while the others always end up leading to confusion.
You deserve way more subscribers my friend! I've been an aspiring artist for a while now, and thanks to a friend I'm slowly building up skills. I might try some animation when I feel confident enough. Either way, this is awesome reference material, very clear and concise instructions.
I'm always looking forward to your videos. It's super helpful and you explain everything so well, it's really easy to understand. Thank you for doing this!
Hey i just want to thank you for putting up these videos for free on yt :)) I’ve always wanted to learn to animate and these are by for the most in-depth I’ve found!!
Thank you so much for your kind video!! I always wanted to try out animation but since Im studying Graphic Design, I can't so Im doing my own research! Happened to see this on tumblr and for a first timer, I found your video to be very clear and easy to understand! Please continue making these guide videos and I really appreciate it!!^~^ Thank you and cheers!
Thank you so much for using letters instead of numbers, every other youtube video was explaining timing and animating on ones and twos then it suddenly jumps to showing halves and thirds as if arranging those numbers close together or far apart made any sense because its about the closeness when think of halves and thirds
