Timing/Inbetweens

Timing is probably going to be one of the trickier subject for me to talk about… Mostly because it’s something I cheat a lot and it’s one of those things that I just draw what I feel is right.

But basically…

• The further apart your drawings are, the faster the animation will go
• The closer together your drawings are, the slower the animation will go

So:

Timing out your animation like this will make it look nice and smooth and whatnot. 

Your main key poses will always be the most extreme position your character can go.  The frames in between just show us how fast they get there.  It’s good to vary how fast or slow the character is moving depending on what they’re thinking or doing.

But for the sake of this tutorial, here’s how to go from pose to pose with TVPaint!

So here we’ve got two poses:

As you can see, I’ve got the light box turned on.  I made a new frame between my two keys and now all I have to do is draw between the lines!

There.  One inbetween down.  I gave the screen left hand a bit of drag (making that pose a bit more of a breakdown) to offset it from the other hand a bit… I just realized he’s totally twinning throughout, oops.  I don’t feel like fixing it. :T

It may seem a bit confusing at first, but you just have to go through it bit by bit.  I usually start with the eyebrows, which is why I coloured them in.  Makes it easier to see.  This is also where I use the , and . keys to flip back and forth a LOT to see the motion.  It’s difficult sometimes to see where a line should go when you have a character this detailed, so flipping helps a bunch. (:

From here, to add more of an ease-in from the first pose, I would put another frame before this one and draw between the lines there.  If I want more of an ease-in, I’d add another frame before that one.  If I want an ease out as well, I’d put another frame after this one, then another after that one and so on. 

Just make sure your inbetweens are always half of the previous space… If that makes sense.  Lemme try another way… Make sure you’re always drawing your inbetweens so that they’re half of what the space between the previous two frames was so that it creates a nice smooth settle.  Otherwise you’ll get some weird timing where your character will slow down, then speed up again and then slow down again.  Make it nice and smoooooth

And remember!!  You don’t have to have a drawing on every single frame.  Inbetweening mostly just makes it look nice and makes your actions read clearer.  If you find yourself just tracing the same lines over and over again, hold the pose and do the lip sync on another layer.

Also, I have my settings set to 24 frames per second and I animate on twos, meaning I only have one drawing for every two frames.  Sometimes I animate on ones for really fast bits or if I want to speed up the timing just a little bit.

Here’s my inbetweened animation!

I noticed he was being held for too long during “NOT” so I opened his eyes and added an inhale right before he goes down for “a”.

I uploaded a Quicktime of this here with the frame numbers (keyframes are circled, the B stands for breakdown): http://notquitenormal.skarrbag.com/animations/moron.mov

So yeah, you can look through that frame by frame with your arrow keys if you want.  Don’t judge me on some of those inbetweens, I just wanted to get this done, haha.

Inbetween is a Social Construct!

Over the last couple of months I learned that I’m considered an “inbetween.” (see: fyinbetweensies) This means that I’m bigger than a size 6 and smaller than an 18. I feel like that encompasses most women today, however by calling ourselves “inbetweens” we are reinforcing the notion that 0-6 is “normal” for everyone. We’re also making a point of unnecessarily separating ourselves from the “plus size” bunch. 

Truthfully though, does any actual person relate to and identify with these labels?

On Saturday morning I woke up to something better than cartoons. I woke up to a phone call from one of my favorite fashion bloggers, Nadia Aboulhosn. We talked a lot about our style, working on our blogs, and being seen as “curvy/plus-size fashion bloggers” instead of just being “fashion bloggers.” We agreed that we want our blogs to be for everyone, not just people that are “our size,” and we resented the notion that our work may only be viewed through the filter of a dress size. 

It doesn’t matter what dress size you wear. We all know about vanity sizing, it’s just a way to label a product that has no reflection on who you are in terms of worth and beauty. So I’m asking, why do we embrace that but still categorize ourselves? Why are we calling ourselves “inbetweens” and taking on a new label when the truth is, there are no lines that we haven’t built ourselves?

Inbetween is a social construct. WE JUST ARE. No dividers: this is what being a broad is all about. Caroline and I don’t photoshop, we don’t always wear make up, or shave, or even shower before taking pictures for Broadist. We just are and we’re proud of it.

When we look at who is following Broadist, we find women (and all sexes/genders) of different shapes and sizes all over the world. This diversity is incredibly inspiring. We are extremely grateful for your support, and we want to motivate you to just be, and to be unapologetic while you do so.