Keys, Extremes, Breakdowns and In-betweens

Keys, Extremes, Breakdowns and In-betweens. A guide to the language of animation.
Study animation with us at www.animationapprentice.org

[@The100100Islam]

It is a good feeling to play an KZbin video and perfectly find what you are really looking for as you expected.

[@MicahBuzanANIMATION]

Super helpful and well explained. I've been animating as my job for a few years now, and I sometimes get some of these things mixed up. Thanks for the great refresher!

[@mansukhdeep]

I have started learning animation from Richard William book and I just read this page . And your video made it more clear. Really good job and we'll explained. My all doubts are clear like mirror

[@akashkarmakar3881]

Thank u so much for explaining the difference between storytelling pose and extreme pose. it always confused me and I never understand which one is key pose and which one is extreme pose. I always thought that both were same thing. Your video helps me a lot to clear my confusion. thank u

[@DDRandDSLover]

Thank you! Helped me understand as I was confused what breakdowns were.

[@asteuartw]

+DDRandDSLover My pleasure!

[@drewjackson3858]

Just finished the second readthrough of the survivial kit. I converted the pdf into jpgs and now use them as the best reference ever.

[@Blues_art_world]

The start was honestly hard to understand till u showed what u mean (tho i think i found it hard bc english is my 2nd langauge) but i finally understood it! Thanks you most animations tut i can hardly understood wich is why i am happy i understood this 1

[@asteuartw]

Glad to be of help!

[@Dakarie_0.1]

This is very helpful🥺. Thanks for teaching us .😊

[@asteuartw]

My pleasure 😊

[@WorldToAwesomeness]

Thank you so much!

[@asteuartw]

You are very welcome!

[@soniavivosarria8385]

Super helpful, insightful, and very well explained. It will stick to my mind how you explain the key poses: 'What are the poses without which you cannot tell the story?' Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@gamedevnow7551]

Helped me a lot to get my head around poses, thnx dude!

[@asteuartw]

+GameDev Now You are welcome! :)

[@FedericoSchiavoneArt]

one thing that I still don't understand so well is deciding the correct spacing for frames.. I work on digital, but if I think about paper, how can you know what's the best spacing for a frame without testing it on screen? Like how the hell did they do in the 30's when no computer existed??

[@asteuartw]

Good question! This is something that comes with time and practice. In the old days they had no way of testing their work other than by sending their drawings to the rostrum camera and then to the lab. So they really had to know their craft.

[@babakrashedi2058]

hi thx for helpful movie i really gratified your help i have got a question can you possibly tell me what dose the changes of direction mean in extremes?

[@timesoldier810]

Got stuck on what Extremes are representing. even after reading A.S.K for some reason. Thank you.

[@asteuartw]

It’s a tricky concept to grasp In the beginning

[@BuzzKirill3D]

Thank you, that was very helpful.

[@hebaadel1200]

Thank you so much..🌹 You have helped me

[@asteuartw]

You are welcome!

[@untonyto]

Great video. who is this excellent person "Maya"?

[@johnlecasu5371]

Thanks

[@karthikmuthukrishnan3111]

Hi Alex, Can you pls explain what does Sir Richard William mean when he tells do a straight ahead run on different parts. Do one at a time this is a little hard to understand?

[@asteuartw]

To be honest this is a little complicated to explain, and even understand. It's not something that I do. I generally rely on pose to pose animation.

[@taemon804]

this was insanely helpful!

[@590Studios]

So for the key poses the timing that’s acted out is that the timing for the main story of the shot for the key poses?

[@asteuartw]

To see more about how to time stuff out, see this blog post: animationapprentice.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-do-animators-time-animation.html

[@aanvor9943]

thank you so much! great video

[@cyberirev2gaming162]

I have a question I'm only a student😀 What are the different stages of key positions? And. In case of errors in key drawing and in-between drawings, who are the person in-charge of such errors?

[@asteuartw]

The key positions are the main storytelling poses. The animator is responsible for these.

[@GabyDomingos]

Thank you, this is really helpful.

[@DaanMacGillavry]

Are you the son or at least related to richard williams? You look so much like him. Awesome videos though!!!

[@asteuartw]

Yes indeed; I learned (almost) everything from him.

[@DaanMacGillavry]

Alexander Williams that is soooo awesome. Im a huuuuuggee fan of him. No wonder you teach so good.

[@ko95]

Thank you so much. This is very insightful. I'm going to read the animators survival kit. Any other books you recommend reading about animation?

[@asteuartw]

See this reading list here: animationapprentice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/animation-reading-list-for-our-november.html

[@asteuartw]

Yes The Illusion of Life is a great classic

[@ilikedrawing4371]

@@asteuartw Is Layout Useful For Storyboard If So How To Use It

[@hunt_er92]

Hmm the audio works but not the video? It's like a static screen

[@asteuartw]

Weird, works fine for me. Maybe try a different browser. Firefox is good these days.

[@dannyh1891]

Great info, A little confused regarding keys & extremes though. If it's just a regular walk cycle with no story or regular ball bounce with no story. Would there be any key's or is it purely extremes?

[@asteuartw]

These terms are not really scientific- just general guidelines. The idea is to establish a hierarchy of importance.

[@pdfp2372]

You are correct! Since keys are the important poses to storytelling, extremes are the important poses to actions! That´s why on the animator´s survival kit, on the extremes & breakdowns section Richard Williams doesn´t use any keys to his examples. Because his examples were actions instead of stories!

[@dannyh1891]

@@pdfp2372 Good observation, I just noticed he wrote that too. There's another great animation book that's less known than the "animators survival kit". Check out "Character animation crash course" written by Eric Goldberg if you haven't already. My favourite part is the breakdown chapter. He highlights how important understanding the breakdown was for him & that the breakdown is used for adding drag & overlap. He includes a few examples.

[@david_t_nethery_animator]

Every scene can have a story. The Story here is: "a man enters a room, picks up a piece of chalk from the floor, and then proceeds to write on the chalkboard" ... admittedly this is not a big story, perhaps not even a complete story , in terms of a whole film, but for the purposes of this scene that is the "story" the animator needs to get across to the viewer. The animator can't tell this "story" without first establishing those three main KEY POSES that are shown. Then the animator fleshes out the animation with the EXTREMES , further refining it with the BREAKDOWNS and INBETWEENS.

[@david_t_nethery_animator]

"it's just a regular walk cycle " .... Not really. While a walk can be animated as a cycled action , this example here is not a "walk cycle". Every time you animate a character walking it is not necessarily a cycle. This is a scene of a man entering a room, picking up a piece of chalk from the floor, and then writing on the chalkboard . For the purposes of this simple scene , that is the "story" the animator needs to get across to the viewer. I will say that in the book he probably could have used a more complex scene to illustrate this idea of KEYS - EXTREMES - BREAKDOWNS - INBETWEENS , but doing so would have taken up many more pages of the book (and may have been even more confusing for the neophyte ?) However, the simple example used here gets across the idea of "establishing a hierarchy of importance" , as Alex says.

[@warker6186]

trying to understand, thanks

[@jiaminghuang7570]

nice video!subscribed!

[@Soda_F1]

Thank you! When you are adding In betweens is when you can use for example the tween machine or is pure maya interpolation only?

[@asteuartw]

It's a mixture. I would use the tween machine to get your poses down (roughly) to one pose every 4 frames, on stepped curves, and then spline.

[@asteuartw]

I use the Tween Machine to create breakdown poses and I don't spline until I have the animation blocked out on stepped curves with a breakdown every 4 frames or so. If its working at that point, then I hit spline

[@justabout6979]

Wait what? 3d animation doesn't require in betweens, it's generates them for you?!? Only for 3d animation right since that's what maya is typically for ?

[@asteuartw]

Exactly. Maya does the in betweens for you. But not always terribly well.

[@justabout6979]

@@asteuartw wow, i never knew and thanks for the reply

[@MahmoudNammous]

well that's clears the fog thanks

[@asteuartw]

Glad it helped out!

[@gremlincomicsllc3126]

I created the animation of pei Mei to fight Elle of Kill Bill

[@sumsumab1809]

Still not clear extremes vs breakdowns

[@asteuartw]

It isn't a perfect language. Just a guide for a hierarchy of poses.

[@bored_person]

How come a lot of TV series lack breakdowns and sometimes also lack extremes?

[@asteuartw]

TV series have very low budgets and can't afford to refine animation to a highly polished level. Hence they have to cut corners.

[@bored_person]

Alexander Williams Actually, there are a lot of high-budget shows that can afford extremes and breakdowns and yet do nothing more than in-between the layouts. I'm not 100% sure you understood my question, which is strange as you are a professional. Maybe you just haven't worked in the tv animation industry, I don't know.

[@asteuartw]

You're right, I have mainly worked in feature films.

[@bored_person]

But his answer didn't make sense. I don't think you even understood my question, so why are you even responding?

[@bored_person]

@@MrBongers this comment is 3 years old.