Editor Animator

Okay, I wanted to Photoshop this cool thing with overlapping drawings to illustrate a point about animation.  But I came out with this piece of crap.  Oh well, too much time spent on it.  But let's pretend it's a real cool looking thing showing how animation works... and doing it brilliantly.  And while we're pretending, let's say we're at the top of a windswept stone tower overlooking a Scottish moor, knocking back flagons of fine ale.

Wait.  Did anyone pretend a bathroom?  Damn.

Okay, presenting a creative person you might not have heard of-- the Editor Animator.  Here is what animation boils down to: drawings closer together move slower than drawings placed farther apart.  When a character throws a punch, the drawings of the fist are closer together at the start where the guy winds up, way far apart and sometimes even blurred in the middle as the fist speeds toward the victim, then close together where it's stopped by the jaw of the target.

Sometimes the drawings are evenly spaced through the action making the punch lethargic.  The first thing the editor might try is to put the middle of the punch on "ones."  Usually, even top quality 2D animation is filmed one drawing per two frames, "on twos."  By condensing the middle of the punch to single frames, the fist travels faster thereby making the action, well, punchier.  But most likely on a fast action like a punch, the editor will actually cut out drawings completely.  Sometimes it's a matter of holding the anticipation drawing on the screen for more frames so the punch seems faster in contrast.

In many ways, animation is much more forgiving than live action when it comes to editing tricks.  In live action, if you film a scene in the forest, the BG leaves are rustling or light patterns are subtly changing.  I suppose if you have a big enough CG budget you can fix anything, you hire effects experts like Rick Cortes to freeze all the leaves or erase the errant bug that flew through shot.  But in animation a forest in the background doesn't move which lets you snip or rearrange frames with abandon.

There are times you can go beyond just timing and actually adjust acting by holding or rearranging frames.  You can hold a character as if he's thinking, keeping him alive by recycling a blink from earlier in the shot.  It occurs to me this is a discussion best had in front of an editing screen so I'll stop.

Why try to adjust animation through editing, which is a much clumsier tool than a pencil?  To cut down on the number of retakes.  Remember retakes?  Right now animators are furiously trying to keep up with the new scenes while going back and making the changes we've asked for in previous sequences.

We've got about half the movie back, more actually, and it's looking good.  We're feeding it into the hands of Chris Drake as it comes in.  Can't wait to hear the music.  There are other things going on in the world of Hellboy Animated.  Check over at Dark Horse for news of a new comic!  Right now,it's off to a meeting about DVD extras.  --TAd

Comments

[daniel]

thanks for trying though:)

[kirk]

Thanks for this one, Tad. I had always wondered about the timing of animation and I guess I never considered the editing part. I always assumed the flow was handled in the actual production (which it mostly is but editing helps improve the flow). Very interesting stuff.

Now, about that piece of crap...

[Steven E Gordon]

A good Avid editor is a wonderful thing. We ended up cutting and pasting mouths, varispeeding motion and splitting screens and all other types of wonderous effects that even if we had called retakes we're not sure we would've gotten back the way we wanted them.

[Tad]

I've been in animation long enough to have edited my first shows on FILM. It's amazing what can be done digitally on a tabletop. Every once in awhile I flash back and realize that most of what I do in the editing bay wouldn't have been an option back then.

[Rick Cortes.]

Name check! :)

[Steven E Gordon]

Hey I remember what a big innovation the KEM was!! We all thought things couldn't get more hi-tech!

I actually really enjoyed manipulating the film in AVID - I felt like I was animating again...sort of.

[jay]

In those dvd extras include some of the original folk lore that inspired the Hellboy stories.

[mojomann]

I know it's off subject but thought I would drop an FYI. Animation Magazines latest issues just came out and has a two page spread on comics and animation with almost half of the article being quoted from Mr. Tad Stones. Not to mention a shot of Hellboy. ALso the latest issue of TV Guide has an article on animation and features Hellboy too.