Basic Rules (Which can be broken, but generally they should be followed):
1. Shoulders and Hips have opposing angles.
2. Feet point towards interest. If a guy likes a thing, his feet would point to it in his pose. If he doenst like it, his feet will point away.
3. Head is almost never straight. Spine is almost never straight too!
4. Show the character to the audience. If the character is looking the screen right, dont turn the head into a profile.. rather turn it a little and let him see through corners of the eyes! This helps the audience read his expressions more.
5. Face shows the expression. Then the hands.. then the next most importance is shoulders and spine. Never forget the shoulders and hands while posing! Practise hand poses while keeping different attitudes in mind. Observe shoulders in a lot of emotions too! Its not JUST action lines.. its also about gestures!!
6. Watch those silhouettes.. squint your eyes and see if your pose is readable or not.
7. Avoid symmetry as much as possible.
8. Think of mobility over stability. That is, dont have perfect stable pose all the time.. Taking it off balance a little goes a great way to show "life". By off-balance, I dont mean to take the character so far to make it fall.. make the character lean more on one leg.. or have one shoulder higher than the other and so on.
9. Think of ways to show "life". Think of irregularities. Regularities happen in nonliving things. So anything too regular looks lifeless. Thats why, drawing one eye bigger than the other makes the character appealing instantly.. ofcourse, it doesnt always apply, but most of the times it does!
10. Kill someone! Rob someone! Propose to love someone! Drop someone's pants! Think wild situations like that when practising. They are better than "standing", "watching", "reading" and so on while practising. If you can show wild emotions, its easier to show subtler ones. Its harder to learn the subtler ones.
11. Show weight. I will write more on how to do this later.
Some more rules if you can digest :)
Line of action: Always try to catch the Line of Action while you animate a Pose. For better understanding of Line of Action,
study dynamic poses and the way body makes a different line formations in different poses..
Twinning: It is exact symmetric poses or mirrored poses, should avoid twinning to keep the posing more dynamic, natural and lively.
Body Language: All the body parts are equally important in posing to show the feeling of the character. Even a slight wrong head angle can change the feeling
of the pose, a wrong knee position can turn a male pose into a female gesture.
There are 3 level of Posing while we Animate a shot:
Basic Blocking (Key Poses or Majors): Where we animate the key poses for the major actions or events happening in the shot. (At this approval stage Animation director make it sure..that animator is going in right direction or not) It saves a lot of time and energy if animator or lead misinterpret the story board.
Breakdown: Where Animators key there breakdown poses in between the Key poses to define the other events happening in between.
In Between Poses : These poses comes in between Breakdown poses..Animators maintain the proper arcs and follow through these poses.
Source - http://abhinavsaxena-animator.blogspot.com/
study dynamic poses and the way body makes a different line formations in different poses..
Twinning: It is exact symmetric poses or mirrored poses, should avoid twinning to keep the posing more dynamic, natural and lively.
Body Language: All the body parts are equally important in posing to show the feeling of the character. Even a slight wrong head angle can change the feeling
of the pose, a wrong knee position can turn a male pose into a female gesture.
There are 3 level of Posing while we Animate a shot:
Basic Blocking (Key Poses or Majors): Where we animate the key poses for the major actions or events happening in the shot. (At this approval stage Animation director make it sure..that animator is going in right direction or not) It saves a lot of time and energy if animator or lead misinterpret the story board.
Breakdown: Where Animators key there breakdown poses in between the Key poses to define the other events happening in between.
In Between Poses : These poses comes in between Breakdown poses..Animators maintain the proper arcs and follow through these poses.
Source - http://abhinavsaxena-animator.blogspot.com/
