Animation Techniques and Terminology

For my blog post this week, I wanted to talk about some really cool animation techniques and the different terminology used by professionals in the field.

As we learn how to use After Effects in more depth, I think it is important to learn more about some of the other techniques used in animation. Some of these are old and some are new but they are all pretty cool.

Inbetweening: Basically inbetweening or tweening is the process of adding animation between Pose A and Pose B of a character or object. It is essentially filling in gaps between two actions. The example below demonstrates it better.

Onion Skinning: In this 2-D animation technique, onionskin paper is used to draw each frame of an animation under a light source. The frames are then placed one over the other to show the different frames. This helps the animator, mostly inbetweeners in this case, see the fluid motion of an object or character.

Moving Hold: This is an animation means that I found particularly interesting. In this technique, a character is given more dimension by making it look more lifelike. It serves to add emotion and in a way show that a character is breathing even when they are standing still. The video below shows how the Moving Hold technique is added to a character in Maya.

There's so many more techniques and means of animation that you can find online and it really shows how accurate and detailed we can get with our work.