Hi animator,
Lately i have been messing around with animation, making character do this and do that, reading here and there. Now i come to a point that i would like to know from you animator friend how do you choose your mains key poses? let say the character is saying with anger " you should stop that, because you will hurt yourself".
I do understand that all this depends of the acting part but how do you guys go with something like this?
Thanks in advance
Well, you act it out. In front of a video camera, if possible, and in private, if necessary. Try to get yourself into the mood of your character, try to think what would be going through the character’s mind, say the lines out loud, and notice how you move, how your body reacts.
If it feels awkward, there might be something off with the script. Change the lines a bit, change the emotion a bit, see what works.
When you get something that feels and sounds right, run through it a few times, pay attention to your gestures, and where the extremes are. How you hold your face. What are your hands doing? Where do you place your feet. Is your back straight or curved? Which side did your place your weight, and did it change as you were speaking?
Then try to sketch that information into a series of stick figure gesture drawings, then sit down and pose your character.
Thanks for showing interest Orinoco but What i was wondering the most is this. When you plan your animation most of the people do pose by pose so you choose one pose for frame 1 and then the other pose for frame 26 for example, and then the computer will fill the gasp. Now comes what i was wondering about how to you choose those poses what makes you choose those poses.
An other example is the walk cycles how come people have decided that in frame 1 the arms and feet should be opposed to each other.
Writing this makes feel like it is just experience after spending time animating one ends up knowing those main pose and the breakdown and so one.
I was more thinking about something that gets your attention and you should decided that this pose is better to emphasize in on.
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood. In walk cycles there are a number of ‘standard’ key poses
How many frames apart you place these depends on how fast you want your character to walk. More frames=slower pace.
Here is a tutorial on walk cycles.
In other actions, key frames are usually selected based on major changes in body position. In this blog post, (scroll down to Animation week 5) you’ll see that the girl picking up the large heavy sphere is posed looking down at the sphere, crouched down grasping the sphere, legs straight with back curved forward, legs straight with back curved backwards, falling backward as she looses her grip on the sphere, and finally laying on her back on the floor.
Note also that the animator spaced these 12 frames apart. That’s NOT the final timing, it will be adjusted later, but it gives enough room for inbetween keyframes if needed, and it sets the overall length of the action at about 2 1/2 seconds.
Anyway, hope this helps and gives you enough to chew on for a bit.
Best of luck. 
