Making the animations themselves is where the principles of animation come in. The first thing I focus on is Staging AKA Posing AKA Silhouette and appeal. I pose the character at the start and apex of a particular movement and evaluate them. Do these key poses convey the impact of the animation I’m looking for? Are they readable? Are they fun to look at? If not, keep working on them until these conditions are met. I also like to place the poses on the timeline to get a rough sense of timing so I can test the animation in the engine.

At this point, the animations are very rough but they give me an idea of what the movement will feel like. I bring these into the Unreal Engine and playtest them to see if they read from the player’s point of view. When they do, I move to the next phase: “Inbetweens”. Here, I establish the movements between the base poses that were made previously – they start to form the arcs and help me refine the timing of the movement. Again, I do a test in the engine and if I’m satisfied with the result, I move on to breakdowns.

With breakdowns, I start to establish the snappiness and weight and really try to push the poses. Here, I put in any squashing and stretching that I think the animation should have, making sure the arcs are correct and the punch is punchy. Mind that between each phase, the timing tends to change a bit as the number of keys for the character increases.

For something like a Superhero landing, it’s important for the character to fall fast and quickly land in a stable pose. Timing is incredibly crucial in delivering a satisfying performance, especially in a game like Monster Hunter where you want the weapons to feel heavy and have a lot of OOMPH when the players land their attacks.

Timing & Posing

For games, timing is generally very fast. If you slow down your timing too much for gameplay animations, the result will be clunky and unresponsive. As soon as a button is pushed, something needs to happen. For a jump, the character tends to do a squat very quickly and then starts to jump shortly after. For the aforementioned Great Sword, the character will quickly lift the sword over the head in anticipation of the attack, and then attack.

Posing is especially important in animation, both CGI or for video games. In games, with much less time to animate, you have to find ways to convey your movements as quickly and reasonably as possible. With posing, the line-of-action is invaluable. The way the character stands says everything about what will happen, what is happening, and what has happened. If an archer is charging a magical arrow in his bow with all his might, then his pose needs to absolutely convey that idea. Is the bow heavy? Is the arrow heavy? How much energy is being built up? All of these questions and more need to be answered by a single pose so that the player knows exactly what is happening. How can you convey the most of your idea while keeping it in the shortest amount of time possible? It’s all in the pose – and if it’s readable, then you have your answers.

How to Make Poses Readable

For a pose to be readable, a few things need to be considered. I will use an Archer character as an example. I imagine the character nimble, acrobatic, and a quite flashy. This, accompanied by the fact that he’s an archer, means that many of his movements need to curve smoothly like he’s giving a performance showing he’s been practicing. For the first few moments of this particular animation, I wanted him to feel like he is winding himself up to use knock up the wooden log with his bow.