https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRVhtMxQWRsneptune432 said:
Could someone tell me how to tell good timing vs good spacing apart? The two are so linked that it can be hard to tell the difference most of the time.
Pretty much explains what each one is, if you need anymore help lemme know
Yeah, I've seen this. It's a good explanation, but I'm asking what's the difference between *good* timing vs *good* spacing. I've seen people compliment cuts for either having good timing or good spacing, but I can't tell what makes them decide to compliment one over the other. Is it even possible to have an animator do one of those well but mess up the other one? Like, a cut where the timing is good but the spacing is just OK?teiadam said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRVhtMxQWRs
Pretty much explains what each one is, if you need anymore help lemme know
Sorry, I hope this is more clear than my first post. Let me know if this makes enough sense to you.
Hi! This is an interesting question! As a professional 3D animator for games and TV and a longtime hobbyist in hand drawn animation, allow me to try differentiate these two.
I'd say good timing has to do with being able to purposefully match a beat with your animation, or intentionally go off beat.
Good spacing on the other hand has more to do _how_ the thing happens. Does it gradually speed up? Slow down? Jitter all over the place? Spacing controls what feel the action has.
So, while the two are very related, you could have a sequence timed nicely to have a rhythm, but still have the spacing messed up with random pockets of slowing down or spastic movement.
You can sometimes see this with digital animation, for example, since it is very easy for the artist to add more inbetween drawings in order to fill up the timeline to a certain point What happens however is that adding inbetweens in random places makes the movement unevenly spaced, so the thing will speed up and slow down randomly.
In the other extreme, you could have a very nice and smooth spacing by adding a ton of inbetweens where ever you want the action to be slower, but the timing would never hit a beat precisely this way, since you're not intentionally looking at a specific rhythm.
The best approach is to plan the timing AND spacing ahead, before drawing any serious frames. You can do a rough keyframe pass and figure out the timing and spacing of everything, or do a bunch of thumbnail drawings to plan out the action. It's not like you have to stick to the plan once you have it, you can make improvements along the way, but without a plan you most likely will naturally favor either timing or spacing. To get them to work in unison takes discipline and understanding of animation and film as a time based art form. The most challenging part is to get something to feel believeable, To make a bunch of circles look like a convincing bowling ball or a rubber ball is a matter of timing their bounces and spacing the heights of the rebounds in order to create the illusion that it really is a real object with actual weight and dimensions.
Now with anime (esp. Yoshinori Kanada's style) this gets pretty interesting. In this sort of limited animation, you often don't have a good spacing, since there is such a sparse amount of frames that any kind of smooth action is impossible. Instead, the reliance is placed heavily on the impressiveness and readability of each frame when contrasted against another in sequence. The little spacing that is there is to exaggerate the tendency of how something is moving, without actually requiring a ton of inbetweens in order to work. The result is a fun, sparkly kind of movement, that is very far detached from reality but also has a ton of energy and feeling that comes across to the viewer.
I hope this helps clarifying the two! Sorry for going on so long about it, but it is a very central topic to the medium itself.
I'd say good timing has to do with being able to purposefully match a beat with your animation, or intentionally go off beat.
Good spacing on the other hand has more to do _how_ the thing happens. Does it gradually speed up? Slow down? Jitter all over the place? Spacing controls what feel the action has.
So, while the two are very related, you could have a sequence timed nicely to have a rhythm, but still have the spacing messed up with random pockets of slowing down or spastic movement.
You can sometimes see this with digital animation, for example, since it is very easy for the artist to add more inbetween drawings in order to fill up the timeline to a certain point What happens however is that adding inbetweens in random places makes the movement unevenly spaced, so the thing will speed up and slow down randomly.
In the other extreme, you could have a very nice and smooth spacing by adding a ton of inbetweens where ever you want the action to be slower, but the timing would never hit a beat precisely this way, since you're not intentionally looking at a specific rhythm.
The best approach is to plan the timing AND spacing ahead, before drawing any serious frames. You can do a rough keyframe pass and figure out the timing and spacing of everything, or do a bunch of thumbnail drawings to plan out the action. It's not like you have to stick to the plan once you have it, you can make improvements along the way, but without a plan you most likely will naturally favor either timing or spacing. To get them to work in unison takes discipline and understanding of animation and film as a time based art form. The most challenging part is to get something to feel believeable, To make a bunch of circles look like a convincing bowling ball or a rubber ball is a matter of timing their bounces and spacing the heights of the rebounds in order to create the illusion that it really is a real object with actual weight and dimensions.
Now with anime (esp. Yoshinori Kanada's style) this gets pretty interesting. In this sort of limited animation, you often don't have a good spacing, since there is such a sparse amount of frames that any kind of smooth action is impossible. Instead, the reliance is placed heavily on the impressiveness and readability of each frame when contrasted against another in sequence. The little spacing that is there is to exaggerate the tendency of how something is moving, without actually requiring a ton of inbetweens in order to work. The result is a fun, sparkly kind of movement, that is very far detached from reality but also has a ton of energy and feeling that comes across to the viewer.
I hope this helps clarifying the two! Sorry for going on so long about it, but it is a very central topic to the medium itself.
neptune432
Timing vs Spacing