Animation &Commentary 02 Feb 2010 09:10 am
Moving Feet
- One of my pet peeves in animation – 2D animation (it’s something you rarely see in cgi) – is, what I call, the moving feet syndrome.
In this, layout artists create dynamic poses/drawings for animators to animate. Their drawings don’t always offer the best path to good animation, yet doggedly faithful animators obligingly follow the images at hand without questioning the logical sense of the drawings handed them. The feet positions end up moving without reason, yet the animator chugs ahead giving without noticing the needs of the character being drawn.
I plan to start showcasing a bunch of examples of this in both current and historic animation scenes. I’ve noticed this bad animation in two recent slick spots on television. Both look like decent animation, but both fail the moving feet test.
Here’s a recent GEICO spot which cleverly uses Elmer Fudd in what almost looks like a classic scene. It’s not animation that Ken Harris or Bobe Cannon would have done, because they’re not layouts that would have come from Chuck Jones or Fritz Freleng, and Bobe and Ken would have questioned the layouts.
Here’s the spot, as seen on YouTube.
A 30 sec spot including live action intro.
Let’s look at some frame grabs:
fr 410Every time Elmer comes to a stop his feet move.
As he goes into action, they either pop or
quickly inbtween to the next pos.
fr 418
You’ll notice in the spot during the first 1/2 of the
animated segment he keeps repositioning in every hold position.
Here’s a closeup of the feet blown up.
They move imperceptibly, but they move.
fr 600
In the last half of the spot he gets into a good postion.
fr 655
Two seconds later he moves to another postion.
fr 668
1/2 second later they’re in a new postion.
fr 707
One second later back to the previous position
before Elmer walks out of the scene.
Here’s a CU of those feet moving like crazy:
From this –
- to this –
- to this before he turns and walks out.
Let’s turn to look at a Flash animated spot, the “Switch and Save” spot for Esurance.
Look at the guy painting the wall on the right, 8 secs into the spot.
Unlike Elmer, in the GEICO spot, this painter is more active so there is a bit more justification for some of the moves. But there are too many for too short a bit of screen time.
fr 261He starts here and . . .
fr 267
. . . throws paint on the wall.
The foot movement is certainly justified.
fr 287
But then he goes to this hold position
only 1/2 second later.
fr 292
. . . then to this hold postion 5 frames later.
The animator’s trying to make two very different
foot positions work within such a short time.
fr 374
Two seconds later we’re into a new position.
More action might justify it, but why did you
go into pos fr 292 in the first place?
fr 381
And might as well end his bit with another move.
Here’s a closer look in case you missed it (sorry for the bad copy of the blowups.)
fr 261Go from here . . .
fr 267
. . . to here . . .
fr 292
. . . to here . . .
fr 374
fr 381
And it’s not even a dance move.
Remember animators, if you’re moving those feet have a reason.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:35 am 1.richard o'connor said …
I’ve watched that Elmer Fudd dozens of times (it runs during NFL games) trying to figure out what bugged me about.
There are a half dozen things I find loathsome about the esurance commercial, but think most of them are petty.
Moving feet never occurred to me -although it’s something I consider in our work all the time. Something as simple as that has an unregistered affect on the viewer. A subconscious turn off.
Moreover, when I see the Elmer Fudd spot, I imagine a backstory of endless client nitpicks. Ultimately the ad agency can become the director of piece like that, and these truisms that have been learned by years of dedication get overridden on a whim.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 10:36 am 2.Thad said …
You’re my hero of the day, Mike.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:12 am 3.Stephen Macquignon said …
What always bothered me about Geico was Elmer looks like he slips position with in the fist 0:15sec he starts to stand straight but it’s his legs that looks like they get longer, I missed the whole feet movement
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:21 am 4.Mark Mayerson said …
I’m constantly yelling at my students about tracing back the feet and not moving both feet at the same time. It totally kills the illusion of weight if a character’s feet are sliding around under him.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 11:57 am 5.Michael said …
The sliding is one thing – bad assisting. But the constant change of postion where and animator just calls for inbetweens from one to another (open to closed to open) is a problem with the animation. This is too often a problem – even from some of the classical animators of the golden age. Try watching a Terrytoon or Paramount cartoon, and you’ll see plenty of it.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 12:25 pm 6.Larry Ruppel said …
The first time I saw Elmer in the Geico ad I noticed his feet position changing all the time. It annoyed me slightly, but I just figured I was being super critical and that no one else really noticed or cared about such details. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
I have animated Elmer in the past, and I’d like to add that I quite like the animation in this ad.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 1:11 pm 7.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Nice post on an important subject! In a situation like this (Elmer) you want to keep the character alive, but not call too much attention his feet.
My own belief is that you should allow the character to drift into putting his weight on one leg, then on a dialogue accent have him shift his weight to the other leg, moving the foot slightly.
on 02 Feb 2010 at 2:25 pm 8.Jenny said …
Great post Michael!
on 02 Feb 2010 at 3:36 pm 9.Eric Noble said …
Very interesting post. I will have to make sure that I don’t do that when I start animating. Thanks for putting this up.
on 03 Feb 2010 at 5:29 pm 10.David Nethery said …
Good post on a nuts & bolts topic. This is part of the craft that shouldn’t be ignored. I think you’re right on the money about it coming from over-reliance on character layout poses in many cases, or just plain sloppiness in other cases.
Interestingly that Elmer Fudd/Geico spot was also made using Flash by Renegade Animation. What I was told was that the animation started off as traditional pencil on paper roughs (very rough roughs) , then scanned into Flash , had a tie-down pass (still “rough”) , and then the clean-up artists used the line tool in Flash to create the final clean-up images on a new layer , pushing and pulling the vector points to position the clean-up lines to match the rough animation layer underneath. That seems like an extraordinarily slow way to work to my way of thinking. It probably would have been faster to just do it all traditional on paper , then scan the cleanups and use Flash as an ink & paint tool to fill in the colors. But Renegade has used that pipeline for years: start on paper, clean-up and ink & paint in Flash. So it’s working for them.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 6:42 am 11.Tom Carr said …
For the life of me, as many times as I watch this GEICO spot, I can’t see anything wrong with Elmer’s feet. All I can tell is that it’s a cheap knockoff and it isn’t done nearly as well (as a whole) as the original WB-Chuck Jones animation of Elmer was in the “Wabbit Season! Duck Season!” cartoons.
There’s nothing wrong with my vision, but I suppose that’s why most of you guys are professional animators, and I’m not… you can see details that a “Joe Average” like me just totally misses.
on 05 Feb 2010 at 8:47 am 12.Michael said …
Tom, if a character – animated or live – plants its feet in a position it should move from one position to another less than 2 secs apart from each move. Actually, it’d be impossible in live action. It’s just bad posing on the part of the layout guy, then made worse by the animator who stuck to it.
As drawings, they look fine. But it’s impossible for a moving character to go back and forth without some necessary purpose.
on 09 Feb 2010 at 7:51 pm 13.Bob said …
Um, If the foot position didn’t change the character would look stiff and would trip over themselves if both feet were planted they would have the movement of a tree.
on 09 Feb 2010 at 10:45 pm 14.Michael said …
No, they would have the movement of human beings.
on 10 Feb 2010 at 12:48 am 15.Bob said …
You are wrong, elmer fudd opens him self up ever time he talks to the “voice” then closes back up when he continues acting his part. If his feet were planted it would look stiff. Watch it again.
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