Animating Wavy Things is Hard

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[@burrochapadogrl]

he LITERALLY thinks like how i do: overthinking

[@ohnonotthesun595]

Action lines dude. Ya gotta think of every frame as its own action line. Try taking a long string or cord irl, tie one end down, and then move the other end with your arm. You'll see the wave from that motion move over that cord and even snap back. Plus if you film it, it'll make for a really good ref to look at later.

[@sparrowdjack6360]

I see it but I still can't get it right in the animation

[@carlosortegaart]

I love this! Youre like a scientist or a philosopher trying all the shit trying to find the truth and we as the audience benefit from your exploration immensely

[@Syclopskitten]

I find it amusing to see the differences on how different creative types work. For me animating a organic shape is way easier then animating with rigs in toonboom. Arcs are your friend when animating frame by frame ;)

[@TMJBtv]

I wish I was good at technical animation. Or any animation. End me

[@TMJBtv]

4:48 Jesus Christ how could that possibly be easier to you? I am beyond confusion haha

[@Tbone9344]

Dude same.

[@MickaleafAnimation]

hey, cool video. not many people show their process of trying to learn something. that in and of itself is educational. i want to recommend contextualizing your excercizes. i think what youre doing is harder than it needs to be because youre approaching it as "animating a wavy thing." i think setting the scene a bit will help a lot. if its basic hair overlap, put it on a head thats doing something. this will give you something that drives the motion. if its a tentacle of a creature, its going to lead itself a lot more because it has control of itself. hopefully you dont mind the feedback, keep it up

[@DrNeroCF]

Crazy seeing someone logic it out in such a short time, I've been bumbling my way through animating stick figure pants for over a decade now. What I've found that makes it feel the most natural is to have that sound effect of flapping in your head, how the tips flick and flutter, follow the rhythm... The base of the wave is heavy, the end is light, and depending on the strength of the wind, the end if being thrashed around at the mercy of the beginning, I think this is where the 'natural' part comes from, starting with order then descending into chaos (how poetic). Anyways, shoot me a message some time if you want to discuss, I'm always up for talking some animation.

[@AndreBray]

Other solution, For wavy things, I use the balloon formula, here's my explanation: -Draw a straight simple line, that will be the "Path (A) to (B)" -Animate a ball the size of your wave going to point (A) to (B) and made it slower when it reaches (B) -Draw your wave without touching the ball and here we go you have something "Wavy" Note: Depend on the length of your wavy thing, more balloon can be added

[@LegendHeartsStudios]

As my professors emphasized over and over. Watch the arcs, remember those sweet S and C curves, and know what is leading the action. But I'm with you on the fire and water confusion. They can go anyway you want stylistically, and that is confusing as hell.

[@malahamavet]

shiiiiit this is the most useful video on animating wavy things!! I'm stuck but since you tried so many methods now I have something to hold on to instead of drawing random arbitrary things

[@patbradley9817]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who struggles with this! Thanks for letting us in on the exploration!

[@harrisenlysaght]

Your frustration is so cathartic for me

[@SwerveAlec]

I feel like the best way to do that stuff is just draw straight ahead. Like, draw frame 1, then 2. And if frame 2 doesn't feel like it's moving right when viewing it with frame 1, then redraw frame 2 before moving on to frame 3. Or just make the motion with your hand and use that as reference lol, I do that a lot

[@Makaruu]

Personally what I've found works quite well for me is using a mix of frame by frame and key framing! I usually first do a draft frame by frame to capture the organic flow of the motion I'm trying to recreate and draft it up as many times as it takes for me to get the feeling of the movement I want and then I reanimate over it using keyframes to keep the shape consistent throughout the motion! It sounds simple but really when I animate flowy stuff I just turn my thought process off and focus fully on the the feeling of the motion, sometimes when I'm stuck on where the flowing animation moves to next I genuinely close my eyes and try to visualize the different ways it could move and how I can interpret that image into a drawing if that makes sense? Idk i think when it comes to vfx and flowy stuff its 95% feeling and 5% technical thinking, staring for hours at how stuff moves genuinely does help a ton aha!

[@Sharum]

You are a teacher to a whole generation of animators! ❤️

[@nomysonisalsonamedbort]

My respect goes out to all the tentacle porn animators out there after this

[@Ellutii]

I’m crying

[@boudersaayman4574]

0:54 when i seen it i started laughing so much🤣

[@glitchartstudios_]

The one where you started at the end rather than the root kinda looks like a flame rather than a hair strand lol

[@drawminick]

that last example is basically what i animated for a scene in my latest video, and it was my first time animating wavy thing like this. let me tel you, i WAS banging my head against my wall in the dark. went to bed frustrated and picked it back up the next day. i've never been so stumped on animating something so ''simple'' looking. your ''bouncing ball'' method really lit a bulb in my brain on how to look at it in a way i can understand better.

[@Trotsworth]

Strapping all those waves to a single head would make a very arty octopus :D

[@coreyaruecker]

Honestly, it's not going outside and staring at water drops. The tradition and the way to do this is to study video footage frame by frame and studying how other animators did it, frame by frame, and then copying that.

[@FuFuAirline]

Why was this somehow more helpful than tutorials on youtube

[@RanDom-lk6rx]

(I’m just a lowly animation major) I think it is important to capture the difference between slow parts and fast parts of the animation. Like It’s not just the hair itself that is moving organically it is also the air around it. What happens when the wind slows? When it changes direction slightly and the hair is forced from its most natural path into an entirely new one? How does the hair resist the organic movement of the field around it? I also think having a clear separation between organic and rigid movement is important. Like the the rigid, nearly fixed head as the hair twist and turns around it. The writhing tentacle as the octopus’ body lies still. Throughout all the examples you showed there is a point of stillness that contrast the wild organic movement (calcifer and his wood, the tidal wave vs. the buildings, the ship vs. the dragon and waves hell the dragon head vs the dragon wings) this kind of grounds the animation to me. I don’t know if this makes sense I’m sorry. Its 3 am, your videos are nice though!

[@Reg3e]

Welcome back :D Been experimenting a few things based on your advice since your last video ^^

[@LimboGene]

I think I learned something from your audio wave drawing!

[@christophermoonlightproduction]

I'm sure you're a lot farther along since you made this video but for anyone else wondering, the answer is to have the end tip of your "wavy thing" make a figure eight.

[@burrochapadogrl]

thank you for helping me understand that im not alone.

[@Ludifant]

The traditional 2d recipe for this is to create eddies, which are like traveling vortexes. They just travel in straight lines. Then you draw around those eddies a constant or less constant deforming shape. It's described in " the illusion of life" by a lot of disney animators. If you do this process, you get some control about the kind of motion you set up in the context of the eddies and when you actually draw the wavy subject you get to feel out the animation for dramatic effect. This gives emotional wavyness rather than "just" a physics simulation, which is hard enough in itself. Doing this type of thing in physics (and 3D) gives you a number of options: cloth simulation, making a mesh or chain and simulating the propagation of the movement, fluid simulation, which creates actual vortexes and spin around those vortexes by calculating the pressure in each cell, though there is a problem with keeping the volume of the fluid constant or gasous simulations, which is a more loose version of the fluid simulation and allows fluids to dissipate. Problem with all of these is that, yes they will give you a lot of accuracy (more and more these days) but you lose a lot of control as an animator and you have to use forcefields and what not to create shapes, that you'd normally just draw. I found another way is to just draw the shapes you want, animate them and have a perlin-wave distortion field move over the animation to give the ripple effect. But the actual method is very much dependent on what you are trying to achieve..

[@anamikachowdhury9359]

I practice it by doing my hand moving like wave,

[@TheDuckPone]

Now we know where you've been all theese weeks! 😋 Glad to see you back!

[@OnionSkin]

I’ve actually just been neck deep in making my game. Balancing both that and onion skin is an ongoing challenge. When I get super into making videos the game gets neglected. But getting there!

[@Firelillylove77]

This was sooooo cool and interesting 🧐 love your explorations!

[@seanharmiel4275]

I actually find this funny because its so sooo relatable 😂😂😂

[@jasongil4861]

I love you man, really thanks a lot for this!

[@user-mj5ot8cn5e]

Me : 1. Try 2. Not working 3. Watch a video 4. Try again 5. Its worst 6. Give up.

[@OnionSkin]

Try creating in a way where getting it to ‘work’ isn’t the goal. But to take risks and experiment just to see what happens. It’s easier to achieve a goal and feel more positive the because the goal is simply to learn. To understand more than you did previously.

[@Sergey6838]

Thank!!!

[@AmyMist]

I've had a bit of luck doing something quite a bit like what you do at 2:20, but with more circles, and the line sort of pinned between them, I -blatantly ripped off- got the idea from Felix Colgrave, who posted a gif on Twitter showing how he animated a flag in Double King that way!

[@enderredacted112]

Yes.

[@wilhelmsanchez]

There are classes!

Cool!

[@soup_underscore7710]

Leaders and followers -FlashBepler

[@allisonmenge1702]

i feel like when im looking at this i can see that each point in the line makes a different shape. The base rotates. the second point moves back and forth on a straight line. the third curves. the last point makes an infinity symbol. maybe try drawing an infinity symbol and make a point move along the line, then connect that point to your base.

[@bryceellis112]

awesome content!

[@YoannDessin]

So interesting thx !

[@thatnickid100]

my god more, I have such a hard time with this stuff

[@vbutterflyx]

Could you make a tutorial on how to animate flowing hair in a bit more stiff way than the hair animation you did in this video?

[@jacintahunt9888]

Cool

[@voxieart]

Thanks for this, entertaining and educational! btw what software are u using???

[@derekwalker647]

I have no idea where to even start with this 😬

[@venderfeednature]

Hi, I love your videos. Do please have an idea which animate software can I use if I can’t afford the Adobe’s animate software please? And which one are you using in this video?

[@kioly_ah]

谢谢你啊

[@kdsm6424]

Oof why didn't I find this earlier?

[@joshuacentro7981]

youre a vihart of animation to me haha!

[@azietheone]

Or.... Fake it till ya make it! :D

[@animatricfirestone2741]

lol I've been using flipnote studio for my first time animations and I still cant draw my anatomy right ive been an animator for years XD I really dislike hands I really dislike bounchy items and things like hair it takes ridiculous hours of our time if you have no idea how to draw but slowly getting there slowly and painfully.

[@R_candy]

Never tried hope i never will

[@justapenguin9]

yee

[@str84wardAction]

Lol

[@ellerona5918]

HAHAHHAHAHAG

[@kelsieplayzrblx1718]

You sound like Dolan from planet Dolan 😂

[@adil0028]

What do you use to Animate, please tell me...

[@RetroactiveHell]

Oof

[@fearshad8203]

0:53 - 0:54 what is it :D?

[@archismanguchhait3534]

what software is this

[@toonsandro]

Yeah, what program is it?

[@Nezumi99]

what program do u use for animation

[@SSquidFishh0]

Toonboom harmony.

[@animationinventory]

hard?

[@taiyosketches]

Yippee I feel like I might be first for once