Ed Love: Connecting Held Poses

From :"Drooler's Delight":
Ed Love is great at varying how he connects his bold and clear poses. Here's a real simple general way:

STRETCH WOODY'S NECK

Here are the 2 poses we see and feel in the animation. They are holds. They are drawn with perfectly clear negative spaces, contrasts and lines of action. The action happening between them is visually obvious. Buzz stretches Woody up. The action is clear in just the still poses.

But to feel the the distance (or contrast) between them even stronger, Ed Love has created 2 more poses between them that caricature the held poses. He has made an anticipation pose and an overshoot pose. These 2 poses created more space between the extremes. That extra space gives the action more punch than if he had just inbetweened the 2 holds. (The farther you travel in the same amount of frames, the more punch the action has.)



Not every part of the second pose overshoots. The overshoot is focused on the main part of the action: Buzz' arm stretching Woody.
Focus of action gets to the final pose first. The rest catches up.

Here's a longer clip with more poses and more ways to connect them.

BUZZ ABUSES WOODY

A good animator like Ed Love varies the way he connects consecutive poses. He doesn't always do an antic and an overshoot, and he doesn't time the connections the same way for each pose. What he does do is control the whole sequence with a hierarchical structure of poses. Some poses and actions are more important than others, and he uses all the drawing and animation tools to keep your eye following the important parts of the action. He does it all with flair and fun too.

The more variations you use in your poses and actions, the more natural the characters and animation feel. Lesser animation uses the same handful of formulaic ways to connect the same stock poses over and over again and the action gets monotonous and robotic. At least for me.

Remind me to tell you about the stock Canadian anticipation pose sometime.

A Perfect Limited Animation Cartoon For Kids by Ed and Ed

I have a million theories and observations about this cartoon, but can't find a dvd copy of it to make clips from.

Head Bobs Using 3 Key Poses

Ed Love usually uses 3 rather than 2 poses for his head bobs. One in the middle, another tilted down and one tilted up and back.
He uses the same basic principle as in the last post. He hits the different poses on accents in the dialogue. The goal is the same in limited animation as in full animation - to use poses to help accentuate the meaning in the dialogue track. Sometimes Ed uses more than 3 key poses. You can use as many as you have time and money for. In limited animation the idea is to use a few poses and animate in and out of them while varying the timings between the poses.The first thing an animator should do - whether he is doing limited or full animation - is to listen very carefully to the dialogue track. Close your eyes and hear the accents and timing. Then customize your drawings and timing to match what the actor gave you.

Don't rely on some abstract formula for timing. Use what the actor gave you - then be creative on top of it.

In the clip, Fred says:

"Awwww It's My job."

In this sentence, Ed doesn't use any inbetweens. He just pops to different keys on each word, while animating the mouths to the dialogue. This gives the accents in the dialogue some punch.

1MIDDLE...2DOWN - "AWWWWWW" 3 "IT'S 1 "MY" 2"JOB"
(This file is large, so it'll take a couple minutes for it to load - sorry.Technical problems)
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Flintstones/itsMyJob.mov

Squash and Stretch your keys to make the action have life.

One way Ed makes his head bobs look smoother and "fuller" than some of the other animators, is by squashing and stretching the different head poses.

When tilting the head up, he stretches the front of the face up, and squashes the back of the head and neck down.

He does the opposite for the tilting the head down pose.

Changing the shape of Fred's head logically makes it not look like a cut out of one head position rotating up and down (like most Flash and TV animation today.)

Here is a longer sentence. Ed uses the same key poses, but also an inbetween this time going in and out of the poses.


He varies how long it takes to get to each pose according to how the dialogue sounds. If he used the same amount of inbetweens each time, or held the keys the same amount each time it would get monotonous really quick.

In all he probably only has 5 total head drawings in there, 3 keys 2 inbetweens. Sometimes he uses more.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Flintstones/FredSickTired.mov

Like I said, you can use as many keys as you want or can afford. The more poses you use, the more full it will be. The main thing is to make them fit the sound of the dialogue. Follow the natural accents. Draw what your ear tells you to, not what the animation formula does.


Here are a couple more Ed Love scenes:
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/EdLove/RangerBobsLOve.mov



http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/EdLove/YogiBobsLove.mov


Next post, I'll show you my variations of Ed's technique.

Ed Love upside down curly mouths and Clinton Oafs

Ed Love is one of my favorite animators. He had a varied career. He worked on 30s Disney cartoons (I just realized some of my favorite Disney cartoons have his animation in them), 40s Tex Avery and Lantz and TV Hanna Barbera cartoons. He really has his own style of movement.

When I was a kid I recognized his style 2 ways:
1) Upside down curly mouths
2) His movements were more fluid than the other animators. -he did fully animated HB commercials too! I'll show some later

Upside Down Curly Mouths

Mixing different animators with different layout artists

Here are two animation drawings by Ed Love. They have different proportions. The one on top is more even and tastefully on-model. The one below is more awkward and dumpy.

The one above is probably layed out by someone like Dick Bickenbach who drew everything with even pleasing gentle proportions. The one below is by Walter Clinton who always drew Fred (and other men) dumpy and oafish, which is funnier to me.Above: Bickenbach

Below: Clinton

There is a ton more to be said about Ed Love, and I will in further posts. This was just to give you a quick superficial clue to recognize his work from the drawings.

Some Clinton and Love oafs to admire