Friday, October 28, 2005

Eric Goldberg Timing Notes

Thanks to our good friend Tim Hodge for sharing this page of timing notes from animation master, Eric Goldberg (he was the supervisor for the Genie in Alladin).

Golberg TIming Notes

Here's what Tim had to write when he sent me this...
I found that page of Goldberg Notes. I remembered them as being a
little more in depth than they are. Probably because they accompanied
a lecture.
The idea behind the timing chart is that instead of spending two
frames of the same drawing in the middle of a fast action, spread it
out into three drawings on ones, thus making the action snappier.
Then go back to 2's because the drawings are so close together,
drawing on 1's becomes overkill.
You should go through his genie animation frame by frame sometime.
It's really amazing. He'll have a character hit a pose very quickly,
then spend 6 to 8 frames for the rest of the body to catch up and
another 6 frames to totally settle in. Very snappy and natural looking.
(In Disney animation, drawings are numbered to the frame, not just
1,2,3... then shot on ones or twos. If drawing 112 is held for 18
frames, the next drawing is number 130. Oh, and the numbers for keys
are circled, breakdowns are underlined, inbetweens are left alone.)

Eric always analyzed action and timing like this. He wanted to make
sure each drawing had maximum impact, not so you'd notice the drawing
itself, but so the action would be clear and entertaining. You may
ask, "can one frame make that much difference?" And I will ask you,
"Do you know the difference between a gold and silver medal?" Split
seconds, that extra umph, mean everything!

Great stuff and three cheers to Tim for sharing with te rest of the class. Be sure to go check out Tim's site. He's got lots of goodies there. I really love his John Henry drawings. Lots of talent that Mr. Hodge.

ps: Oh, and if anybody finds my posting of these notes to be bothersome to you, just drop me a line. My email link is on the side. If it's a big problem I can take these down. Hopefully that's not going to be the case, though.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a whole book ,an Eric Goldberg's Animators survival kit,lots of similarities with richard williams work but in erics own toony style,including this page,Its all photocopies of course.If there is enough demand i can scan the stuff and put it up.

Siju Thomas

Benjamin De Schrijver said...

I think some of those notes used to be on animationmeat.com, but Eric asked to get them off because he was writing a book. And right now, he's actually writing two books... so I definitly don't want to spoil the fun cause every bit of info and tips from Eric Goldberg are gold for me as well, but everyone who wants to keep this should save it to their HD, cause the same might happen with this as at Animationmeat.

Still thanks for putting it online, though ;-)

- Benjamin

Josh Bowman said...

In that case Suji, I demand you scan it and send me the link and I demand you put it in a PDF file.
Is that enough demand?

David Alvarez Carrascal said...

Great notes! Thanks for share!