the big frame
August 12th, 2007“I think a lot of animators are afraid of The Big Frame,” Jeff told me.
“What is The Big Frame?” I asked.
The Big Frame, Jeff explained, is a frame with huge spacing. Say, for example, you’re gesturing with your arm. Put your hand directly in front of you as far as your arm can stretch; then, place your hand out to your side, as far as your arm can stretch. If you can picture this move happening over one frame of film, that is a Big Frame.
The trouble is that many animators, especially beginning animators will see this Big Frame and think “Oh no. There’s no way that spacing will ever make sense–if that ends up in my animation, it will look like a pop. It will look like it’s not tied to physical believability. It will have no weight. It will be too startling of a move. I’d better make the spacing much smaller.”
That is the fear.
But, check out this Big Frame that Jeff animated:
What’s that? You didn’t catch it? Here, I’ll slow it down for ya:
See it now? It’s between frames 43 and 44.
Now, if I were to show you those frames side by side like so…
… you might think that this spacing was too big to happen in just one frame. But since you’ve watched it at speed, you already know that it works and it very appealing. So, what gives? It doesn’t feel like it should work, and yet it works.
The answer is that the frames surrounding The Big Frame have everything to do with its success. The anticipation into the down position sells that Sarge’s energy is being built up and stored for a big release, and the followthrough sells that Sarge’s body has weight and is recovering its balance after such a dramatic jump. Without the frames on either side of The Big Frame, the move would be unbelievable and it would look strange.
Like me, you may find yourself dwelling in fear of The Big Frame. You may think that if we don’t show every inbetween frame to the audience, connecting every nuance of a move, then the animation will look poppy and unrefined. It’s because we don’t put enough faith in this whole Persistence of Vision thing. Part of the idea of Persistence of Vision is that when your eye sees an object in one place and then in another, it will tell your brain to fill in the gaps. Your eye doesn’t need nearly as much information as you might think it needs. It just needs enough to be able to get from one place to the next–which is to say, anticipation and followthrough.
So this is my encouraging note to you, as well as to myself, to have fun with your animation. Go for The Big Frame. See how far you can go–you might be surprised how big you can get and still have weighty and believable animation.
Good luck!
note: this animation is taken from the Kelloggs Fruit Twistables ™ commercial “Sarge’s Office,” animated at Bent Image Lab in Portland, Oregon; animator, Jeff Riley
