Here is a site that has some tips about character animation. This however is mainly aimed at computer generated animation (3D) rather than 2D but a lot of the tips can be applied to 2D as it's focus is still "Character Animation"
"THE THINKING CHARACTER
When animating characters, every movement, every action must exist for a reason. If a character were to move about in a series of unrelated actions, it would seem obvious that the animator was moving it, not the character itself. All the movements and actions of a character are the result of its thought process. In creating a "thinking character," the animator gives life to the character by connecting its actions with a thought process. Walt Disney said, "In most instances, the driving forces behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character—or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them."
To convey the idea that the thoughts of a character are driving its actions, a simple trick is in the anticipation; always lead with the eyes or the head. If the character has eyes, the eyes should move first, locking the focus of its action a few frames before the head. The head should move next, followed a few frames later by his body and the main action. The eyes of a character are the windows to its thoughts; the character’s thoughts are conveyed through the actions of its eyes.
If the character has no eyes, such as an inanimate object like a Luxo lamp, it is even more important to lead with the head. The number of frames to lead the eyes and head depends on how much thought precedes the main action. The animator must first understand a character’s thought process for any given action. Consider a character wanting to snatch some cheese from a mouse trap; the eyes will lead the snatch by quite a bit because this is a big decision. The character needs time to think, "...Hmm...This looks tricky, is this cheese really worth it or is it just processed American cheese food?...Oh what the heck...," he decides, and snatches the cheese.
Conversely, if the action is a character ducking to miss a low flying sheep, the anticipation of the eyes leading the action should be just a couple of frames. "What the...," and the next thing, he is spitting wool out of his mouth.
The only time that the eyes or head would not lead the action would be when an external force is driving the character’s movements, as opposed to his thought process. For example, if that character was hit in the back by the low flying sheep, the force of the impact would cause the body to move first, snapping the head back and dragging it behind the main action of the body.
MOVING HOLDS (POSE TO POSE)
In hand-drawn animation, it is very common to animate an action, then slow into a pose and hold the drawing of that pose for several frames, then move into action again. Being two dimensional animation, the action stays alive even with the use of held drawings. The same goes for puppet and clay animation. But in 3-D computer animation, as soon as you go into a held pose, the action dies immediately. I’ve seen it happen with every animator that came out of traditional animation.
It must be the combination of the dimensional, realistic look and the smooth motion (usually on "ones") that makes a hold cause the motion to die. The eye picks it up immediately, it begins to look like robotic motion. To combat this, use a "moving hold." Instead of having every part of the character stop, have some part continue to move slightly in the same direction, like an arm, a head, or even have the whole body.
Even the slightest movement will keep your character alive. Sometimes an action that feels believable in traditional animation, looks too cartoony in computer animation. Because of the realistic look of computer animation, an animator need to be aware of how far to push the motion. The motion should match the design of the character and the world. Animating very cartoony motion with lots of squash and stretch on a realistic looking object may not look believable, as would realistic motion on a caricatured object.
This is the pitfall of using motion capture devices to create final animation. Motion capture from human actors will always look realistic... for a human. But apply that motion to a chicken and it will look like a human in a chicken suit. You can use the motion capture data as a starting place, tweak the timing and poses to make it more caricatured, then apply it to the chicken and the motion will match the design of the character.
EMOTION
The personality of a character is conveyed through emotion and emotion is the best indicator as to how fast an action should be. A character would not do a particular action the same way in two different emotional states. When a character is happy, the timing of his movements will be faster. Conversely, when sadness is upon the character, the movements will be slower. An example of this, in Luxo Jr., is the action of Jr. hopping. When he is chasing the ball, he is very excited and happy with all his thoughts on the ball. His head is up looking at the ball, the timing of his hops are fast as there is very little time spent on the ground between hops because he can’t wait to get to the ball.
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To make a character’s personality seem real to an audience, he must be different than the other characters on the screen. A simple way to distinguish the personalities of your characters is through contrast of movement. No two characters would do the same action in the same way. For example, in Luxo Jr., both Dad and Jr. bat the ball with their heads. Yet Dad, who is larger and older, leans over the ball and uses only his shade to bat it. Jr., however, is smaller, younger, and full of energy, he whacks the ball with his whole shade, putting his whole body into it.
READABILITY OF ACTIONS
Proper timing is critical to making ideas readable. It is important to spend enough time (but no more) preparing the audience for: the anticipation of an action; the action itself; and the reaction to the action (the follow through). If too much time is spent on any of these, the audience’s attention will wander. If too little time is spent, the movement may be finished before the audience notices it, thus wasting the idea.
The faster the movement, the more critical it is to make sure the audience can follow what is happening. The action must not be so fast that the audience cannot read it and understand the meaning of it. 4
To make sure an idea or action is unmistakably clear, the audience’s eye must be led to exactly where it needs to be at the right moment, they must not miss the idea or action. Timing, as well as staging and anticipation are all integral to directing the audience’s eye. A well-staged anticipation will be wasted if it is not timed properly. 1
It is important that only one idea is seen by the audience at a time. If a lot of action is happening at once, the eye does not know where to look and the main idea will be overlooked. The object of interest should be significantly contrasted against the rest of the scene. In a still scene, the eye will be attracted to movement. In a very busy scene, the eye will be attracted to something that is still. Each idea or action must be timed and staged in the strongest and simplest way before going on to the next idea or action. The animator is saying, in effect, "Look at this, now look at this, and now look at this." 3
In most cases, an action should not be brought to a complete stop before starting another action; the second action should overlap the first. This slight overlapping maintains a flow and continuity between whole phrases of actions.
In Luxo Jr., it was very important that the audience was looking in the right place at the right time, because the story, acting and emotion was being put across with movement alone, in pantomime, and sometimes the movement was very subtle. If the audience missed an action, an emotion would be missed, and the story would suffer. So the action had to be timed and paced so that only Dad or Jr. was doing an important action at any one time, never both. In the beginning of the film, Dad is on-screen alone and your eye is on him. But as soon as Jr. hops on-screen, he is moving faster than Dad; therefore the audience’s eye immediately goes to him and stays there.
Most of the time Jr. is on-screen, Dad’s actions are timed to be very subtle, so the attention of the audience is always on Jr. where most of the story was being told. If Dad’s actions were important, Jr.’s actions were toned down and Dad’s movements were emphasized then the attention of the audience would transfer to Dad. For example, when Jr. looks up to Dad after he’s popped the ball and Dad shakes his head, all eyes are on Jr.
ASK WHY
In every step of the production of your animation, the story, the design, the staging, the animation, the editing, the lighting, the sound, etc., ask yourself why? Why is this here? Does it further the story? Does it support the whole? To create successful animation, you must understand why an object moves before you can figure out how it should move. Character animation isn’t the fact that an object looks like a character or has a face or hands. Character animation is when an object moves like it is alive, when it looks like it is thinking and all of its movements are generated by its own thought process. It is the change of shape that shows that a character is thinking. It is the thinking that gives the illusion of life. It is the life that gives meaning to the expression. 3 As Saint-Exup�ry wrote, “It’s not the eyes, but the glance - not the lips, but the smile...” 2
Every single movement of your character should be there for a purpose, to support the story and the personality of your character. It is animation after all and any kind of motion is possible, and in the world of your story any kind of rules can exist. But there must be rules for your world to be believable. For example, if a character in your story can’t fly and then all of a sudden he can fly for no reason, your world and story will lose credibility with your audience. The movement of your character and the world of your story should feel perfectly natural to the audience. As soon as something looks wrong or out of place, your audience will pop out of your story and think about how weird that looked and you’ve lost them. The goal is to create a personality of a character and a storyline that will suck your audience in and keep them entertained for the length of your film. When a film achieves this goal, the audience will lose track of time and forget about all their worldly cares. For all that any audience truly wants is to be entertained.
REFERENCES
1. Lasseter, John, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," SIGGRAPH ’87, Computer Graphics, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 35-44, July, 1987.
2. Saint-Exup�ry, Wind, Sand and Stars, Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932.
3. Thomas, Frank and Johnston, Ollie, Disney Animation— The Illusion of Life, Abbeville Press, New York, 1981.
4. Whitaker, Harold and Halas, John, Timing for Animation, Focal Press, London, 1981."
This information speaks about the "thinking character" and that every movement is for a purpose. Every movement is driven by a thought process which is then followed with action. The eyes are extremely important when showing thoughts through characters and should be the first thing that moves that can be physically seen followed by the head and then the body's main motion. However if the character is driven by another force other than his/her own free will/thought process, such as a strong wind or being hit by something causes the part of the body to move first as the character might not even be aware of the external force.
It also contains information about pose to pose animation and the difference between 2D and 3D animation when it comes to this principle. Speaking more about the 3D side than 2D as 2D is more open to using longer still poses unlike 3D which require more movements even in poses that doesn't contain much movements at all.
Emotion is an important part when it comes to character animation because this causes the character to move differenetly depending on what state he/she is in, even if they were to do the same action such as a straight forward walk cycle. The viewer should be able to tell if they are sad of happy by the way they walk and move. This greatly affects the timing of the animation as a happy person would by more enthusiastic and thus move a lot faster than a depressed person so emotion does influence the character animation greatly.
It gives information about the importance of clear poses and making sure that the audience can tell what is happening in each pose. Too fast and the audience won't see what happened thus being lost in following the plot. Too slow and they can loose interest. We (the animators) must control everything that happens in a scene and must make the audience follow what we want them to follow by making things stick out more than others. This can be achieved by huge movements or no movements at all of everything around it are moving rapidly.
It is important to ask yourself "why" so that the character doesn't make any unnecessary movements. Make sure all the movements support a thought process that contributes to the plot. Even not moving can be part of a thought process but ask yourself why as it needs to be for a reason.
Mark Kennedy’s Drawing Tips August 21, 2006 1:13 am
"Disney story artist Mark Kennedy has been posting a wonderfully informative series of thoughts about design and drawing on his blog
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels. There’s five entries so far and each one is well worth your time."
Cartoonbrew.com
This is just an example of how to create a character by using shapes as a base and then building the rest on those shapes. -
These are just examples of some characters and what shapes they are based upon when looking at the planning lines. Also how the characters look in different poses to see if it will work.-
Here it's pretty clear to see what shapes are used to creat Mickey when looking at the red lines that was used to plan his character. Alsp kept very simple.
A bit of information I came across that I found quite useful about making a scene more affective.
"The life of the scene is all in what the character is experiencing. What thoughts go on in his head for each moment? How will he react to what is happening to him?
A lot of this is spent trying to make the character think before he moves. Make it clear that he is reacting to what is happening, not anticipating or driving the action. If a character is going to do some action, put the thought in his head, “Oh, I want to go do this.” Then make him go do that. If a character would simply get up and do something without thought, the scene feels a bit lifeless and less real.
Another way of getting into the character and how he would react is to think, ‘emotionally, what does he think of the situation that is going on?’ Is he gung ho about the event? Is he ambivalent about doing it? Does he do it begrudgingly but needs to put on a happy face? These are all questions I will ask of my character before starting a shot. This allows the life to breathe into him naturally.
So where can you put in this idea of thinking? The easiest place is in the eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul but they are also the doorway to your characters thoughts. There are all kind of books that will teach you about body language and more to the point, eyeball language (new term, just coined it). When a person lies he looks down. When he honestly doesn’t know the answer but is afraid to say he doesn’t know, he looks up (almost as if to find some divine inspiration). Looking around a room can show fear or anxiousness. Excited eyes are normally pretty transfixed on what has their attention. It’s almost as if they don’t want to miss anything.
Lemme give you a quick example of how powerful the eyes can be when dealing with emotion. I did a shot one time where the character felt sad for another character and really didn’t want to face him to show her sadness. I made the eyes be the last thing that “looked” at the character. The body got there first, then the head and then finally the eyeballs. It really sent the message of emotion from this character.
Think. Feel emotions. React. Eyeball language. (Trademark on the term still pending)"
Animation Tips & Tricks Blog In this information he talks about how important it is for the character to show thought before he/she acts. This makes the character seem more alive and real instead of not having any thoughts.
Also how the character's reaction to what happens around him/her and the situation he/she is in. Does he/she need to hide their emotion for some reason and does he/she actually want to do the following action.
He also talks about how crucial the eyes are when showing emotion and that it should be focused on as much as body movement giving an example of one of his works where he had a character feeling sorry for another and showed it by having the character 'look' at the other near the end when most body language has already been show withought the eye contact.
Here are some notes I took from Ed Hooks that relates to character animation and acting. The information given by him works out really well as they can be incorporated into my animation with great ways to improve the effectiveness of my animation.
