SBW - The art of Inbetweening: Timing Charts 

Blond Gabriel There are few YT animators that's kinda famous right now, but their slow upload speed fucks them up because of the YT algorithm.

Animation is damnation lol

Agreed we have a hard time even doing 5 seconds at times lol

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.

Lol just no context at all

😂 is that how you ended up here?

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.

LITERALLY

LoL 😆

well I suppose you need to watch the video a couple more times

I still don't understand it. 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.

yess that would be super helpful

Yes please!!!

Ugh a must

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.

+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!

BubbleGumBabeFace good luck!

Me too

Best wishes, I'm trying right now.

Same, just getting started. Best of luck to you all! We could make a Discord or something (๑•̀ •́)و✧

@@impactframes6514 I reckon Im fairly decent now, not a master by any means but I'm competent and good enough to make my own animations.

pretty much lol

Same

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

+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!

Would be nice to see an example of the exact first paragraph you wrote. Please.

You definitely aren't alone in feeling this way!

You make an animatic first to find the timing of poses and events

Same hahah. I never plan stuff out, and really I oughta.

@@goos8841 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

+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

+mangimewhite94 I've seen them on one of your videos tho

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.

I too

Same here

Yup

watch carefully :v

lol, I was not expecting that in an educational video, but then again it's the internet and I had my guard up. Plus, it could've been worse...

holy shiit, randomly seeing a sam green comment

He does! I can picture him being the cool kid in a cartoon 😉

he sounds like don hertzfeldt. i kept waiting for him to start talking about bill by accident

+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.

It’s been 8 years, how’d it go

Nice

Its two things. Either you have a breakdown that describes the arm favoring the next pose / moving faster, or you make a separate chart for the arm

+Afrololi I have a lot of topics to explore for sure! Its just that I have too many things I am carrying at the moment to tackle them at a high rate.

He prefers helping people do that?