Don't Be Bounce-Happy
Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing!
Anything repetitious becomes annoying.
When every movement in your animation ends with a bounce, you need to be alarmed.
Pose A bounces into pose B — slight squash, slight recoil, slight settle, sometimes small, sometimes fast.
Is it bad? You tell me. Is it a crutch? Sometimes you can’t help it. Production dictates it.
I see it all the time. Some shows feed on the bounce as if it’s part of the design. Some shows are just teamed with beginning level animators who found a gimmick that “worked” and it spreads like gangrene. The animators can’t animate, but they can follow a formula.
When you bounce your character into every pose — boing, boing, boing — it’s not just bad, it’s annoying.
Bounce into pose B
Bounce into pose C
Bounce into pose D
Bounce into pose E.
This is bounce-happy.
It works for characters made of Jello.
If your character isn’t Jello, do this:
• Introduce overlap and follow through.
• Use successive-breaking-of-joints so that not all the parts of the character arrive at the pose at the same time.
• Keep the business going into multiple poses around the main pose.
• Put variety in your timing so that it’s not all the same.
• Be inventive.
You can do it. Even with shows that thrive on bouncing into poses, try to introduce new ideas. Force yourself to break up the bounces with something different.
You’re creative. You can do it.
If the director or producer keeps asking you for more bounces, ask yourself if you’re happy being a bounce-happy animator at a bouncy-castle studio.
Maybe it’s time to bounce.