| Archive for 2dornot2dforum.myfastforum.org A place to discuss all issues relating to traditional 2D animation in a digital world. |
| idragosani |
In-betweeningA question brought up on Cartoon Brew:"Is anyone employed in the U.S. as an “inbetweener” anymore?" I imagine for CG animation (3D and vector 2D), this doesn't apply (as some of the comments in the article suggest), but what about for traditional 2D? |
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| DavidN |
Re: In-betweening
The essence of most Flash (2D vector) production is the utilization of a Library of character images that have been pre-drawn and are used sort of like cut-outs , so that different body parts (arms, legs, heads, mouths, eyes) are repositioned to create movement , but not too much is actually redrawn frame-by-frame like in classical animation . However, there are some people who seem to use Flash more as a digital ink & paint system , so they are actually animating their rough keys on paper (then scanned into Flash) or drawn directly into Flash with a Wacom tablet , then they do their clean-ups in Flash and break up the character parts into various levels that can be further manipulated as needed . This approach is more of a hybrid between the classical hand-drawn approach and the library of "cut-out" character parts that you typically see in Flash production. You can see this approach in the work of someone like Jessica Borutski or the Copernicus Animation Studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia , where some of their work is animated with full inbetweening (i.e. a new drawing for each frame ) and some of it has elements that are "tweened" in the Flash program , but have been manipulated by the animator so it's not just mechanical "tweening" by the computer. From what I've observed the animators doing this type of hybrid approach in Flash seem to agree that the automatic "tweening" feature in Flash is something to stay away from . At the very least there's a lot of extra adjusting to be done after the fact to make the auto-tweened stuff look good, but in most cases the Flash work that actually looks something like full animation has been inbetweened manually , with the animator doing the inbetweens , not leaving it up to the Flash "tweening" program to figure it out. I may be wrong, but it's my impression that Flash animators are expected to do everything in their scene, animation, clean up , inbetweens, etc. so the old division of labor seems to be gone and a single animator nowadays has to shoulder the work of three or four people . On the other hand, I'm not that familiar with Flash production pipelines in big studios like Cartoon Network so maybe in those studios they do have the equivalent of the old Animator and animator's Assistant hierarchy , with the Assistant filling in positions between the Animator's keys ?
There doesn't seem to be much traditional 2D production going on in the U.S. right now . With the independent animators who still work in traditional 2D they're probably doing their own inbetweening, so the position still exists , but it's one person doing that along with the animation (and everything else in most cases) . On the last "traditional animation" project I worked on , for Cecropia Games' video game "The Act" , we had a fully staffed studio of Animators, Key Assistants, Assistants/Breakdown, and Inbetweeners . That system developed at Disney and the other Hollywood studios for the purpose of speeding up production with the division of labor . The more experienced and skilled artists were responsible for the key antion drawings and the key clean up drawings , then there were other assistants under their supervision who did the "breakdown" drawings which are sort of like secondary extremes, important transitional drawings such as the middle position on a head turning from left to right , and finally the less important drawings were done by the inbetweener who was considered an entry level position. This system can be more or less elaborate depending on the needs of production and the varying skill levels of the artists. A supervising Key Assistant clean up artist can churn out more work if they only have to do the most important key drawings and can depend on their follow up team to do the secondary extremes, breakdowns, and inbetweens . Sometimes it's as simple as having a team of one animator doing the rough animation, with a single assistant who does the clean up keys and the inbetweens. In the early days of animation the animator did all of the drawings in a scene. As I understand it the "inbetweener" position was invented at the Fleischer Studio in the 1920's when their head animator Dick Huemer told the Fleischer's that if he had an assistant to fill in his inbetween drawings then he could increase his footage production significantly (since he would only have to concentrate on doing the key poses) . This spread to the rest of the industry gradually. According to the recent Michael Barrier book on Walt Disney this practice was met with some resistance by Ub Iwerks who preferred to do all his own drawings and did not want an assistant to do his inbetweens . It created somewhat of a rift between Walt and Ub, and was one of the factors that led to Ub Iwerks leaving Disney . Mark Mayerson has some good material about the early days of studio animation and the development of what became standard production procedures posted on his blog : Historical Roots Of Animation Industrial Practice In The Silent Era (that just sounds fascinating doesn't it ?  Well, actually , it is ! Go take a look. Mark's blog is one of the best things about animation , both historical and contemporary, on the internet .)
Some studios expected the animators to do their own key clean up drawings , then the assistants were basically inbetweeners, doing the clean up drawings between the key poses . Some animators would have a their inbetweeners do "rough inbetweens" first , before the clean up drawings were made , so the entire scene could be shot and viewed to be sure all the timing was working . Other animators prefer to do their own rough inbetweens , depending on the complexity of the action. The "Rough Inbetweener" might also be the same person who then did the cleaned up version of those drawings after the rough animation was approved, or a different inbetweener who specialized in only doing clean up drawings might take the rough inbetweens and transform them to the final, slick , cleaned up line. At the Disney Studio in particular there was a more specialized hierarchical system of Rough Animator ---(Rough Inbetweener) , then Key Assistant --- Assistant---Breakdowner--- Inbetweener . This hierarchy was based on skill level. Obviously , the Rough Animator was responsible for animating the scene and may or may not have used a Rough Inbetweener, depending on the complexity of the action and whether or not they trusted the Rough Inbetweener to fill in the drawings between the rough key poses . The Key Assistant would be the most experienced and the most skilled clean up artist, specializing in beautiful line quality and adding details to the drawings . The Key Assistant was the direct liaison to the Rough Animator and also functioned as a unit manager, keeping track of who is working on what scene and when scenes were due, keeping everyone in the clean-up unit on track to meet the weekly footage quota. The Assistant would be almost as skilled as the Key Assistant , but not necessarily have the same responsibilities in terms of overseeing the entire clean up unit. The Breakdown Artist was something of a Jr. Assistant or a Sr. Inbetweener , depending on how you looked at it . The "breakdowns" are important drawings in the scene, not necessarily key or extreme poses , but still not just simple inbetweens either . The entry level position was the Inbetweener , who was responsible for filling in the "less important" inbetween drawings. Unfortunately this has sometimes led to the attitude that the inbetween drawings are not as important and can be done with less finesse, but bad inbetweening can kill a scene , even if the keys and breakdowns are gorgeous . In full animation every drawing is important , it's just that some drawings need to be handled by more experienced artists , while some drawings can be done by less experienced artists , but that doesn't mean that any of the drawings are unimportant to the overall success of the scene. Speaking from my own experience I always considered a good inbetweener to be worth their weight in gold. If the inbetweens weren't right then all the hard work done by the Key Assistant setting up the scene would be for nothing and the scene would have to be redone or else would go to final camera looking like crap and no one was happy. Wow, that was a long-winded answer ,wasn't it ? Short version: I don't know if anyone's currently working very much in the U.S. as an inbetweener or clean up artist in the traditional animation sense. A lot of people have transitioned to Flash , but in that case it's usually one artist doing all the work from animation to clean up , without the tradtional division of labor that was developed in the Hollywood studio system. Disney Animation is preparing to do another traditional hand-drawn film (The Frog Princess or Princess and the Frog , whatever they're calling in now) and that will no doubt put some traditional clean up artists back to work for a year or two . Hopefully the movie will be successful and hand-drawn animation dept. will be reinstated at Disney as a regular part of the Animation Dept. along with the CG films . |
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| idragosani |
Re: In-betweening
Hadn't heard Disney was going to do another traditional animated film. With all of the studios cranking out CG movies these days, maybe it will stand out better. Never used Flash to animate beyond some stupid web graphics (animated buttons and menus) ... although I've used Moho (aka Anime Studio Pro) which handles tweening similar to 3D apps, since it does skeletal animation and IK. But the best animation I've seen done with ASP (Grey Kid) pretty much does very little tweening and like with traditional 2D, most of the work is done in pre-production in design. Thanks for the long response... lots of good info there. |
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| DavidN |
Re: In-betweening
Hand Drawn Animation Returns to Disney Here's some info. on Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" . Word is that they may be doing it "paperless" , drawn on Cintiq tablets, but otherwise a "traditional" hand-drawn movie. (hand-drawn, just not drawn on paper) . They have done at least one short film at this point which was partially animated on Cintiqs using ToonBoom Harmony software. This was reported on The Animation Guild Blog earlier this year. (see link) This short film could be a dry run for the feature to test out the viability of doing it paperlessly on Cintiqs , but still preserving the classic Disney look. |
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| idragosani |
Re: In-betweening
I think in the long run going paperless with drawing tablets is a wise choice -- it saves trees and saves several steps in the production pipeline. |
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| DavidN |
The "saves trees" thing might carry some weight with me , except that trees are a renewable resource and paper is biodegradable . On the other hand out-dated computers, monitors, and wacom tablets will continue to add to our overflowing garbage landfills and those things don't biodegrade very fast , if ever .
(and I say this as an enthusiastic user of TVPaint software and the Cintiq tablet. But I wonder about how environmentally friendly it is in the long run ... ? ) I think the push to go paperless has more to do with expediting production management . It's easier for management to track stuff if it's digital , rather than thousands of individual sheets of paper stuffed into hundreds of scene folders that need to be transported around the studio to different departments and then stored after production is finished. |
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| idragosani |
They both (paper and paperless) have their place, of course I read about some guy recently who took old parts and built his own Cintiq-like tablet. |
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| Nancy Beiman |
Bill Plympton used inbetweeners, I believe, on HAIR HIGH. I'm not sure though. | ||||