What Is Animation Timing Chart And How To Practice Them

There are numerous animation techniques available that can assist animators in working faster and more efficiently while generating characters that look remarkably lifelike. An animation timing chart is a critical tool that you may be missing. They are a useful tool for precisely timing the movements of people and objects and generating a lifelike appearance.

In this blog post, we’ll look at animation timing charts and how you may improve them for your own animation projects.

What Is An Animation Timing Chart?

The animator creates timing charts to represent the number of drawings that go between the keys. This approach can be started at the thumbnail level and refined as you work on your keys. All animators draw timing charts in the same format.

>>>Read more: 12 Principles of Animation: Timing and Spacing principle

The Roles of Animation Timing Charts?

Practicing animation timing charts will assist you in producing high-quality animations for your clients, allowing you to attract more business in the long run.

Animation timing charts may appear tedious, but they can be extremely useful when it comes to timing keyframes, ensuring proper lip-syncing, and switching between 2D and 3D animation.

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Improve the Timing of Keyframes

Animation timing charts can help you enhance keyframe timing, resulting in more realistic movement sequences. Animated sequences that move too slowly or too quickly will appear unnatural and amateurish.

Using animation timing charts can help you plan and produce appealing sequences while adhering to physics principles. To properly finish movement sequences, keyframes require visuals in between, and timing charts have been helping animators do precisely that for decades.

>>>Read more: 15 Tips to Improve Character Animation You Need To Know

Improve Lip Syncing

Like other parts of animation, lip-syncing is all about timing. Again, animation timing charts might assist you in synchronizing the movement of characters’ mouths with the music. A timing chart can assist you in planning the movement of the characters’ lips from the moment they open their mouth to the moment they close it.

When practicing lip-syncing, keep in mind that you don’t have to animate every syllable. Concentrate on the parts of the dialogue where your character’s mouth would naturally open and blend over the other syllables. Timing charts can be useful again at this stage of the animation process.

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Create Hybrid Characters

Another advantage of using animation timing charts is that they can be useful when creating characters with both 2D and 3D elements.

There are a few methods for doing this, including rotoscoping, but when a character is primarily built from 2D animation and requires some minor 3D additions, an animation timing chart will come in handy.

Drawing timing charts to map out the character’s movement will assist whoever is responsible for adding the 3D elements in seeing exactly where the keyframes should be placed as well as the spacing that must be used. This can significantly accelerate the workflow for these types of projects.

Other methods may work in some cases, but animation timing charts are the most effective way to keep hybrid characters from moving in unrealistic ways.

The Fundamentals of Animation Timing Charts

To create useful animation timing charts, you must first understand the fundamentals. Timing charts are constructed from key drawings and inbetween drawings, which are then translated into movement sequences.

Key Drawings

When working with 3D animation, key drawings, also known as extremes or key poses, serve as the skeleton of an animation timing chart. The poses or images that mark the beginning and end of a movement sequence and are placed on either side of the timing chart are referred to as key drawings.

Inbetween Drawings

Fill in the gaps between essential postures using in-between drawings to create a full-fledged movement sequence. This takes the most time and is responsible for the realistic end result that viewers see on television. The number of in-between drawings and the rate at which they progress will be determined by the sort of animation timing chart used.

Animators who work in a team usually assign specific people to draw the in-between drawings — they’re known as in-betweeners — and animation timing charts are essential tools to help them do their job.

Practice Different Animation Timing Charts

As previously stated, there are several sorts of animation timing charts. The movement sequence you intend to construct will dictate the sort of chart you employ.

Halves Animation Timing Chart

This is one of the simplest animation timing charts, and it simply consists of placing an in-between image in the middle of two key poses or extremes.

Thirds Animation Timing Chart

This type of animation chart has two inbetweens, each one a third of the way between the first and last key poses. This chart is usually useful when creating movement sequences that are evenly spaced.

Favors Animation Timing Chart

Animation timing charts with favors enable artists to experiment with how a character or object travels in a specific location. Favors assist animators with creating more inventive and realistic movement sequences.

Favors are inbetweens that are intentionally positioned towards the start or end of a key posture to generate an easing in or easing out movement. This makes movement sequences appear more natural and less mechanical.

Cushioning is another term for this. This takes some practice because animators must apply their own discretion when adding favors to an animation timing chart. The more you do it, the easier it will get.

Favors can be used with any animation timing chart, and you can place them wherever you like on the chart.

1/4’s, 1/8’s, 1/16’s

This type of animation timing chart is used to show very minor movements.

The slower the movement sequence, the smaller the increments. This is yet another method for creating lifelike movements and is an excellent tool for animators.

Practice Animation Timing Charts in Motion

The major objective of animation timing charts is to ensure that objects and characters move in a plausible manner while also making animators’ work easier.

The timing chart you use will be determined by the movement you wish to generate. Organic movement and mechanical movement are the two types of movement used in animation, and each has a specific purpose.

Organic/Non-Linear Motion

This type of movement will necessitate more intricate animation timing charts, as well as the usage of techniques such as favors to generate more natural-looking movements.

Easing in and out is vital, as is blending image spacing to produce sequences that appear as natural as feasible. 1percussus1’s YouTube channel offers an outstanding video that illustrates this subject quite effectively.

Linear/Mechanical Motion

This refers to fairly simple movements, such as forward and backward motions, in which an item always moves at the same pace.

Consider a car traveling down a long stretch of road or a guy cutting wood with a saw. The movement is straightforward and linear. Favors will not be required in this case unless the car comes to a stop or the character ends up sawing slower as they progress.

Conclusion

Some may consider animation timing charts to be obsolete, but they continue to play an important part in producing high-quality cartoons to this day. The key to developing animation timing charts is to practice them on a regular basis and then animate the movements as you plan them out to detect any faults and try again.

The primary goal of animation timing charts is to ensure that animated characters and objects move in a realistic and plausible manner. Timing charts are important for timing keyframes, lip-syncing, and developing hybrid characters, and are thus a must-have tool for any freelance animator.

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