Animating Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose

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[edit] Straight Ahead: The Creative Method

Straight ahead is generally considered the "newbie" way of animating, because of it's forward and improvisational nature, however, the professionals use straight-ahead runs in their animations, and at times such runs could produce a "magical" vitality that wasn't seen there before. When animating straight ahead, one merely draws from start to finish without any "guideposts" or key frames (storytelling drawings) or extremes. Just draw as you go.

Pros
- It's passionate and fiery, it's usually done recklessly, but it has the vitality of improvisation, as opposed to Pose to Pose (no pun intended, folks).
- It's Creative, we take the actions as it comes along. We basically go with the flow.
- Feeling the Character. Sometimes, the unconscious mind kicks in and animators can "hear" or "feel" the character they are animating "telling" them how to draw them or what should happen next.
- It can produce surprises or magic. Creating and animating on the spur of the moment may cause one to animate something that no one really saw before, opening up a new route.
- It's Fun

Cons
- Things Wander, or characters and their features begin to grow or shrink. Things may not arrive at the right place.
- Time Stretches, or the shot goes on longer than it may have been intended, things don't arrive at the right time.
- Hard to Control. Directors have a hard time seeing what you'll be going for and hate you for it. However, if you're like most people, you're your own Director, so this Con is moot to some of us.
- Expensive. Producers don't pay you to make Magic. Which is why they will hate you if you waste time and paper doing multiple straight ahead runs and still don't get it right. Again, if you're an independent animator, this Con isn't that big of a deal, but it shows that you could waste a lot of time if you rely only on straight ahead runs.
- Hard to Clean up After. If you're working with other animators or assistants, they will often not know what it is you're trying to accomplish, making it harder for them to make sense of it all and tween and hook up the shots right.
- Hard on the Nerves. Doing straight ahead runs can prove to be excessively challenging, and doing them too much can lead to Mad Artist syndrome. This also puts more stress on deadlines.

[edit] Pose to Pose: The Controlled Method

The Pose to Pose method of animation is possibly an alternative solution to the drawbacks of Straight Ahead Action. The Pose to Pose method is commonly a more ideal path for animators to work with, however, like every method in any profession or skill, there are pros, and there are cons.

Pros
- Easier to Control, since there are "guideposts" within the movie, it is a lot easier to have all the angles set in stone before the production is in its final stage.
- Organized, once again, the guideposts are much help to animators. It keeps the movie looking right, so the animator knows how to make the movements.
- Consistent, this style keeps animations looking clean. Even though the Straight Ahead Action style has consistency as one of its cons, the Pose to Pose style is very consistent, and if done right, can lead to very clean animation with lots of flow.
- Producers/Clients Love It There's no improvisation, so there's little chance of straying away from what the producer or client wants. Realistically, Animators are paid to deliver on time with the best results, not to make "magic."

Cons
- Time Consuming, due to the nature of the style, animations take longer to finish. The guideposts add an extra step that may take a lot of time. It's questionable whether this can be considered a con; in the end, it's quality vs quantity. (or in this case, quantity done over a certain period of time.
- No Surprises There's no magic, no improvising. So it's a lot less fun than straight ahead. Only the really good animators can make a pose-to-pose animation and make it look visually interesting.
- Jerky Animation Since we're forced to work between guideposts, time begins to tighten, unlike Straight ahead, where it begins to loosen. With that, animators have to draw all the frames they need, sometimes tweening mechanically and evenly spacing the drawings (straight in-betweening). When doing Pose-to-Pose, one's animation may look like something out of an amatuerly-made CGI animation. The computer generates the inbetweens with dubious neutrality, favoring nothing, easing only if told to, no imagination, resulting in some pretty jerky animation. It contains none of, or a severely smaller amount of, the fluidness of straight-ahead animation type.
- Cold and Calculated The polar opposite to Straight Ahead's passion and recklessness, Pose-to-Pose is considered too literal, too cold and planned out. The passion seems to have been lost, and may result in some pretty bland animation.

[edit] The Middle Road: Combination of Straight-Ahead and Pose-to-Pose

Thought to be the BEST method. It's a method that combines the creativity and freedom of Straight Ahead and the controlled planning of the Pose-to-Pose method. There are virtually NO cons in this method at all, and is strongly recommended for all animators of any skill level.

How exactly is this method done? To quote Mr. Richard Williams, here's how it's done:

First, we do the Pose-to-Pose half of the method.

We start by planning out our course of action with sketches, or thumbnail drawings... basically post-it sized drawings that you can look at as a reference, so you know what you're drawing... or so your assistants have an idea on what to do. (Kind of like storyboards)

Next, we must draw in the "big" drawings, the important stuff such as storytelling drawings, or keys (keyframes). These are important, these are what your storyboards and thumbnails are trying for, the drawings that show what is going on. For example, if I were to animate a man eating a candy bar and tossing away the wrapper, I'd need only 3 drawings;

1 Drawing of Man opening bar wrapper.
2 Drawing of man eating Chocolate with wrapper in hand.
3 Drawing of man tossing away wrapper and walking away.

Like a comic book. We can tell what's happening in the story with these drawings.

Along with the keys, we must also add in the "extremes." These are the important drawings that HAVE to be in there, these include anticipations and contacts (where animated characters just barely touch an object or other character to interact with).

Next we do the Straight-ahead half of the job.

The keys and extremes we've just added in act as guideposts, and now we are free to work between these guides, working straight-ahead from one important drawing to the next, using the guides to hit the right place at the right time. However, we are not forced to draw TO those important drawings, but NEAR them instead. To put it simply, this is the reason why we're doing straight-ahead runs now,improvising and making things up as we go, to keep the creative flow going. Usually, if we go along like this, we're going to run into a few problems with the set important drawings and the straight-ahead drawings, they may not match up in the end. But since the point of straight ahead is to have it all flow, we merely just changed the keys and extremes to fit together with the straight-aheads. It's still controlled like pose-to-pose, but the magic is still found like in straight-ahead. Planning and freedom combined.

Also, when doing this method, it's best to do it all on separate runs. For example. For a man walking we have loads of runs to do. First, we do a run on the most important part, in this case the legs, then go back to start a run on the body. Then back and do the arms. Once again for the head. And if our man is wearing a fairly baggy or loose style of clothing, we do a run on that too (to avoid stiffness). It sounds tedious, but really, you're still drawing the same amount of drawings for roughly the same amount of time, but that little extra time makes a huge difference, it can mean the difference between stilted animation and animation filled with vitality and life. It's the little things that count. As mentioned, the separate run stacks with the important thing on top, or first, and with flapping bits on the bottom, or last. The important thing is the MAIN action, or the action that leads every other action, sparking separate runs. The last run is reserved for softs things, or flapping things like hair, tails and drapery.

Pros
- Combines structured planning of Pose-to-Pose with the natural free-flow of the Straight-Ahead approach
- It's a Balance of Planning and Spontaneity
- It's a mixture of wreckless, fiery passion, and cold-blooded calculating and planning.
- You can be creative and free and STILL keep your job (or sanity)