Post 48 –Anticipation
I am definitely running out of superlatives for this course. It really is absolutely amazing! This week is Week TWO of Adam’s Animation Academy, Moho Magic Animation Course, with Dani Abrams, Moho Ambassador. At this point, I am so thrilled that I took both courses together. I can’t imagine having taken only one or the other. They are a perfect sandwich.
Week two covers bones, switch layers, and loads of actual animation in Moho. Dani is very good at demonstrating her workflow, which is very precise, and I can imagine that, for a proper animator, it would keep your workflow very organized and efficient.
She talks a lot about animation principles, but because the course is geared more toward animators who are learning Moho, she doesn’t necessarily teach you animation. It’s more of a “show you how to do it” on the Moho timeline.
As a non-animator, I would LOVE a class that blends animation concepts with the Moho program and explains the why behind the animation principles as thoroughly as Dani explains the why behind her keyframing decisions and organization. Are you listening, Mohoverse??
Anyway, all that to say, Dani effortlessly blends in anticipation, overlapping action, squash and stretch, etc. She just knows where to put it. Which is why, this week, I began watching this video with a little more focus on the animation principles.
Things to Know:
✔ Principle of Anticipation
Anticipation
I did some reading on anticipation, and these are my takeaways. It…
- Prepares the Eye – for a new idea, so the audience isn’t surprised or caught off guard. Instead says “look here“.
- Creates a Real Feeling – by giving the action a sense of weight, force, and purpose. Basically physics.
- Creates Rhythm – a before → the action → and the after making the animation feel more alive.
Things to note.
The anticipation doesn’t always have to be big it can be a tiny shift in the movement, an eye change, or something else as equally small.
Annnd, if you want to check for anticipation, many sites recommended playing the shot backward. In reverse, anticipation becomes follow-through. Which makes sense, it’s the movement before the movement, or, if played backward, it’s the movement after the movement.
Check out the links for more learning on anticipation. https://schoolofmotion.com/blog/understanding-the-principles-of-anticipation
Using key poses and in-betweens, we worked in step keys again to animate an arm waving.
Dani seamlessly wove anticipation into the wave action.
It feels almost formulaic, which gives me hope that I can develop an eye for it.
“The audience’s eye must be led. If you’re going to move a hand, first move a shoulder —prepare them.”
Panda
I worked with designing Panda on days 34 & 35 of my 38 Days of Learning Moho, including reusing actions and working with reference layers. However, now that I understand Styles, it was literally so easy to update him to a darker charcoal and adjust some of those layers that previously were floating all over the place.
Oh my goodness, I am (almost) sold on vector art!!! You can do ANYTHING with them!
6 month, 1 week Anniversary
It has been 191 days since I posted my first video (March 11th) on YouTube mucking around in Moho. My excitement over Moho was so genuine. The video I posted was actually a video recording that I had sent as a text to my sisters. I don’t know what possessed me to post it publicly, maybe my pure excitement over Moho?
I am just as excited today as I was then, and still feel that way when I make Panda move about. Just magic.✨
I am in wonder over movement. I don’t really know what it is. Maybe it is the ability to take something that exists in your head and give it even a little bit of energy. It may not be the caliber of nine men energy, but even moving eyeballs moving feels like such a victory. I just love it.
And guess what? YouTube is amazing too.
They don’t charge me to upload a video. I can just make something and put it out there, for FREE. . The entire process is a wonder.
And then I get to write about it on a blog. But this unfortunately, this is a privilege that I have to pay for. 😂
Ah well. You can’t have it all. 😉
Post 48 — Afterthoughts
What a freakin’ amazing week of learning. It felt like several things came together for me, while several other things became very clear that I need to work on, like basically ALL the fundamental animation principles. LOL.
I didn’t even make it through all of this weeks videos… buttttt I have them for life, so I can go back through and reference them whenever I need to. So glad I took the course.
Hey, when you’re on a mountain, just enjoy the view… because you know there’s a valley of learning coming, and you’ll be trudging again. 😂
But today, having so much fun. Not with the lip sync, but everything else lol. 😉
suns out. ☀️⛰️ Nik
