Intuitive Timing

In the last week of classes before the mid year break I gave the first year animation students at Southbank Institute of Technology a spray about taking their knowledge of timing to the next level. An intuitive level.



I thought this clip of Richard Williams picking the timing of peoples walks would make for an interesting point off reference, watch how he just knows the timing of the different walks, there is no way of knowing for sure if he is getting it right (he probably is). But is that the point? The thing is that he is thinking about it, breaking it down in his mind, getting a FEEL for it.

Its not something many students manage, they do something once, it kind of works and they think they know it. But as I said in class there is a difference between knowing OF it and really knowing it. The only way to know it is to do it over and over and over in as many different situations as you can.

So I've suggested they spend their holidays doing lots of short simple exercises that require different object to move in different ways (I'm a hard task master >:). I'm borrowing a term from the Spline Doctors blog and calling them Animation Workouts. Some students have already produced quite a few, check out Brendan's Blog, he's doing great.

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