Tips on Anticipation

silhouettes, it prepares the audience to what is about to happen in your scene. It gives them time to process your character’s actions and intentions, thereby making it absolutely clear what the character is doing or thinking.
On another level, anticipation helps to emphasize the physicality of your character. Flesh and blood characters have muscles and need to overcome gravity with each move they make. If you wanted to animate a baseball pitcher throwing a fastball, for example, you would need to have a big wind up (anticipation) pose before going into his throw. If the wind-up is left out of the scene, the physicality, believability and the clarity of the animation would suffer.
As a general rule, the broader an action I’m animating, the bigger the anticipation I put in. I also try to make sure that I incorporate it into my blocking as early as I can to feel out the overall timing and the rhythm of my shot. The advantage of doing this is that it is easier to dial down, delay and adjust it accordingly down the road.

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Written by: Pradeep Mamgainis a VFX Educator at Frameboxx Animation and Visual Effects, Gurgaon Haryana, India. He writes Visual Effects, Post and Dynamics tutorials using various CG Packages. He is founder of the websites CGSutra.com and Aniquito.com.
Last revised by: on March 4, 2010.