The story of how I finally learned to always take animation reference

Reference is akward..

When I started animating, I usually opened up Maya, referenced my character and started by blocking out poses. I loved ( and I still love ) blocking in poses and getting to play with the rig. It never really looked good. Obviously, I just had to get better, right?

I learned about all the small parts that make a good pose – line of action, shape design, silhouettes etc. It didn’t help. Even worse, once I added a second character, the interaction between the characters just felt flat. Unreal. Kind of random even.

I mean.. I knew about video reference. I read Ed Hook’s book on it and loved the idea. But when it came to getting up and acting in front of a camera, it just felt awkward – and that feeling increased when I had to watch the video back to analyze it. So I never really put my heart into it, just did the motion and raced back to Maya as fast as I could.

The results were what you’d expect – just enough to analyze bodymechanics ( which did help me improve a bunch ) but not enough to feel a performance.

So.. if you’re skipping video reference because you “can’t act”, I see you.

.. but there’s no way around it.

Starting to animate the Fallguys Trailers, my approach began to fall apart completely. We had, what felt like, no time at all, characters that can’t speak, who look mostly the same and still wanted them to show a ton of personality and no real animation style yet. The first trailer, done with Trailerfarm, aimed to show the Zero to Hero story – growing from sadness and constant defeat to winning through sheer perseverance and motivation. To make matters worse, this was the first time I had the dauting task of making sure the work of multiple animators came together in a coherent way. ( Including a language barrier, but that’s another story for another time ).

The first playblasts didn’t tell this story. The characters felt hollow. Just moving. ( I mean moving in a nice way, but still. ) So.. after drawing and thinking didn’t work, I decided to take and share video reference. Rather, I’d feel awkward acting like a bean with arms in front of a camera for a bit than making an awkward film. Over time, I grew very fond of Fallguys, especially the main character ‘Pink’.

This time tough, I had the benefit of ‘knowing’ the feeling of the main character. I knew exactly what they felt like. So.. I tried to channel that, tried different versions, shared that with the project’s creative lead Mary-Alice, got encouraged to try more things and finally ended up with a character performance that felt just a bit ‘more’ than moving.

I have been taking video reference ever since and I think it’s worth it. I even got into improv – just to try out more roles and characters and feelings safely.

( Also.. I noticed that the people on our team that take animation reference usually have a little spark that other shots are missing. )

So.. take reference!

So.. I encourage you to try it. Get up. Set up your phone. Put on music that fits the scene if it helps you. Read the lines, try out a few motions, try a few other motions. Try acting. Nobody is watching. Even if it is akward, it will make your animtion look and, more importantly, feel better.

If you lead or work with a team of animators, share the references. Discuss them with the directors. Yes, this means people are watching you now. It is worth it though – you’ll save your team a ton of work and you won’t have to go back and tell them that the directors didn’t like the animated performance and that they’ll have to redo their shot.

I’ll share more – maybe I’ll have another post with only awkward animation reference clips so that it is “out there” and you have to worry less.