Straight Ahead and Pose to pose Exercise

                                                             

    Straight Ahead - Basically animating frame by frame. In this exercise I have animated this character doing a simple action, jumping on something, only using straight ahead type of animation.

I think when animating in this style you are not supposed to use graph editor because it is more artistically, the animator only uses his talent to make the animation look good and pleasant to watch.

In general the best way is to use straight ahead is when adding details or refining. In my example, I tried to choose a short action because it is hard to do frame by frame and not to plan everything and then adjust the timing, so at first it was too fast and I had to change the frames per second to look good. Maybe the anticipation is not really clear and at the end I should have added some more frames to show he is stopping when it is in balance.

Pose to Pose - Means that the animation is clear in the animators head before he/she starts animating. It is planned carefully, the timing and the main keys and breakdowns, and also the characters poses.

First, the animation is usually done in stepped mode which means there are visible only the main keys without in-betweens. In this step mode it is ok to decide if the timing is correct. Then it is switched into spline mode which creates all the in-betweens but after that the animator must take care  of how those in-betweens are spaced in time (using the graph editor).

This method should be used first because it is essential to plan everything and after that when the animation needs to be refined it is ok to use the straight ahead.