How devs break bones to make animation feel right
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- Smear frames are body horror snuck into seemingly normal video game animations. There was a time when smears were vital in games, but they don’t happen much any more, and there’s a very good reason for their disappearance. With help from the animators of Overwatch and Cuphead, Jenna Stoeber is going to teach you how these weird smears make animation better, and why we don't see them as often as we used to.
0:00 Watch out for SMEAR FRAMES
0:31 Where do smear frames come from?
1:57 How do smear frames work?
7:01 Smears in 3D animation
Subscribe to our TH-cam channel! goo.gl/D8prdf
Like us on Facebook: bit.ly/PolygonFB
Follow us on Twitter: bit.ly/PolygonTwitter
Follow us on Instagram: bit.ly/PolygonInsta
And for more gaming and entertainment coverage, visit www.polygon.com - เกม
![Smoother animation ≠ Better animation [AI ENHANCED]](/img/n.gif)
Okay weirdos, anyone got a favorite smear frame?
And why is it the one of McCree that we used in the thumbnail
Marge. You know the one.
Mordekaiser's Q smear is unbeatable
Broken neck sideways head Sasuke definitely
@@Cleverconveyence OH YES
Jenna: okay, say the line!
Animators: Meant to be felt, not seen.
Jenna: *Confetti*
They really make you feeel like Spiderman
He's in boys, he did it, he said it!
"everyone knows theater is supposed to be seen and not read" - Brian David Gilbert
Top 10 Most Threatening Notifications to Get From Polygon
leak the list
Yeah, I thought this Video was when I first saw the title about how animators of for example Mortal Kombat have to watch videos about breaking bones in order to animate them correctly
@@jamesmayle4712 bro this is a polygon video on funny cartoon frames take your preaching elsewhere
@@jamesmayle4712 only dude i'm kneeling for is the screen to play donkey kong 64 my guy
@@jamesmayle4712
Shhhh, we’re talking, man.
Jenna: Here is the skeleton of animation
Jenna a few weeks later: We are going to punish the skeleton
th-cam.com/video/oLRuX4Dbq5c/w-d-xo.html
So simone is slowly becoming an architect and jenna is becoming an animator, good on y'all for being productive during quarantine
I'd say Pat has slowly been becoming a pro wrestler, but that journey began LONG before quarantine
And Clay is, uh, doing his own thing
@@HimanXK perhaps he's doing mation
I worked on My Little Pony as an animator, and a lot of rigged shows discourage smear frames these days bc of the ability to pause (though they're coming back into vogue bc people started realising they just straight up look better and there's a reason animators use them lmao).
I imagine it'd also be a lot of extra work because you'd need to draw a new Flash asset for any given smear you wanted to use. Compared to older and newer cartoons where every frame is freshly drawn by hand anyway. You got a lot of mileage out of those generic motion blurs that looked like crayon lines, though!
Oh yeah like that one GIF from Naruto that everyone was memeing on
@@stevethepocket not necessarily! A lot of rig smears are just draw overs with a timeline layer, so they're not that hard. You only make them into assets when you need to reuse them often.
I do think a lot about how certain games and shows (even back in the VHS era) intentionally do or don’t do things with the intention of people being able to pause it, and how that informed their decision. I don’t think “I’m not going to do this just because people might screencap it and make fun of it” should be a deterrent for creators.
@@governor_explosion A lot of the times, the memes make the media.
I come to Polygon to escape my animation homework and find that Polygon has BECOME my animation homework. What would Professor Kroyer say to me now
"Good job."
SAME LMFAO
@@jamesmayle4712 .....???????????
Professor Kroyer would say do your homework.
literally supposed to be animating 2D effects homework right now
11:21 I respect Jenna's drive to make "honka honka" her new thing
3D smears are so glorious, never knew they were used a ton in Overwatch
Lucio falling animation attaches him 2-3x his normal size, definitely not hidden there
Smears in old Simpsons are super cursed
Yeah that's a good example of a smear that's definitely meant to be seen! Like when Bart's mouth will move from left to right and then his eyes will follow after 😅
336 likes
And My Pride
afaik the babysitter for bart was done in a way to feel unsettling specifically as it was more fluid
Damn, and I'm over here breaking bones just for sleeping the wrong way
- me ever since i turned 30 - Simone
same bro the first thing i felt when walking out of bed is that neck pain
Y'all need to thank Mr. skeltal for good bones and calcium. I read it in a meme, so it must be true.
Sounds like a bad case of boneitis.
I love how every time I watch one of these videos I walk away feeling I know so much more about how [X] works, but I don’t feel like I was just lectured. This video is great, and Jenna is great in it. The jokes are funny but don’t distract from the information, and the whole video just flows very well. Jenna’s videos are always so well researched but never feel dry. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for the lovely compliment!
Seconded!! I love seeing these sorts of videos, they bring back the feel of not having to know anything about the game(s) at hand while still enjoying myself. Plus, I love learning about game design and animation, and I love the Polygon team, so it's a match made in heaven.
Agree 100%
“Animation is the art of movement, not moments." And thus a billion Twitter pedants slamming the animation of a certain work as being bad bc of weird-looking frames erupted in chaos
Not every tweens and smears are good. In a lot of Japanese animations, it's done to be cheap and save budget, not to be stylistic or increase the impact of a movement.
@@exu7325 Even then smears mark a conscious decision to add an extra bit of hand drawn motion, rather than just sliding characters around, putting on still frames, or using a far worse practice to fill a similar role: Just blurring the inbetween. The fewest of production disasters would actually take the time to animate anything that would call for smears.
Creating movement not pieces of art
@@calvin5426 It would be extremely time consuming
@@exu7325 >cheaper
>Drawing smear frames instead of just jumping to the next state
Pick one
I love how polygon is super down with jumping into a really esoteric topic like animation smears and doesn’t baby the audience while they take us along for the ride. For me its just like listening to someone be really passionate about something, it doesn’t matter what the topic is but if you’re interested, I am. Great content as always!
I've always hated seeing people make fun of smear frames, I know amazing animators and it's so frustrating when people are like "Wow look at these lazy animators who couldn't be bothered drawing frames well". Thanks Jenna for showing off this awesome feature of animation! :D
To those people calling the animators lazy, i have this to say: do you _know_ how much work goes into animation? Drawing every last one of those frames is time consuming!
@@esmooth919 Exactly and I totally agree! But I'm mainly refering to the fact that smear frames have an actual purpose, and that smear frames aren't lazy. My friend who is a well known animator spends his whole day animating for big studios, he rarely takes breaks to make his own art or play video games with us, animators are NOT lazy, they are hard workers who are often times underpaid and overworked.
"Animation is the art of movement, not moments" is a nice quote! Thanks for a great video!
As a kid I always tried to freeze frame the tasmanian devil when he did the tornado. Now I understand about it.
Polygon has a thing for Bones
Jenna: Animated Bones
Simone: House Bones (architecture)
Pat: Bone Salt
what about brian
Of course, they break the bones of the bad animators
I very much appreciate that you managed to work big vampire lady in here.
Smears are some of the best part of animation! It's so cool to see how they're being worked into 3D
Honestly impressed by Polygon's tendency to interview the literal industry giants on small, niche topics.
Oh we wanna do a short video on smears?
Let's interview the woman WHO ANIMATED ALL OF CUPHEAD BY HAND
“Animation is the art of movement, not moments.” Damn that’s good
9:44 omg i lost it with the dancing tracer
source filmmaker
bottom text
how did I know this was Jenna before I even clicked?
You win the title game today
@@polygon Oh noooo I lost The Game 😫😭
As an animator, it should be noted that smears are not always necessary to sell clean movement! You can make snappy action without them.
That being said, they can be a very effective tool when used correctly. Don't be afraid to use smears in your own animation, just be careful of overuse and combining them with anticipation (as mentioned in the video)!
you: the massively inbetweened walk cycle from the animators survival kit isnt real it cant hurt you
the massivley inbetweened walk cycle from the animators survival kit: 2:18
it looks like panel from junji ito manga and it haunts my dreams
@@Victor_Graves It's more or less what animating in 60 frames per second looks like. I remember watching a video about an artist whose passion project hand drawn animation was made this way. Absolute madman, godlike results
[pounding my fists against the table] it is polygon bone time
Tina seems so badass, just a dope Eastern bloc lady in a gamer headset making incredible animations, what an icon
Lol! cheers for that! ^_^
@@TinaNawrocki
Tina, do animators use smears in pixelart, or is that an art style where we can’t do smears because of the blockiness?
@@britneyspheres7yearsago11 The video shows smears in pixel art....
@@britneyspheres7yearsago11 Hello! Smears can be used in pixel animation as well! The blockiness doesn't stop the animators! The principal is exactly the same!
Jenna's whole energy in this vid was incredible, especially when she mirrored how I feel about old capcom fighting game animation: so fucking good.
you're RIGHT video subtitles, that WAS an enjoyable video experience
You guys should have totally talked about the smears that ArcSys do in the newer Guilty Gear games where they achieved cartoon smears with 3D models by literally asset swapping in the middle of the animation.
Dang, I actually waved my hand in front of my face in the beginning of the video
Jenna’s hair looks so cute!
"Overwatch uses smears the same way fighting games did"
Next week: Bruce Lee is Overwatch
Really take a look at all of Arc System Works 3d fighters. Keeping with their amazing work on cel-shading, there is an incredible amount of modeled distortion they use to keep with the style. Just look at the moves in the recent Guilty Gear titles. There's plenty of other tricks used, such as expanding or shrinking parts of a model to emphasize perspective, which actually goes back to a live-action film technique that uses oversized props, such as a dramatic shot of a ringing telephone in the foreground.
this is the bone growth we need, from finding bones to learning how bones are made to how bones are broken.
the next step of the journey is frigthening.
Animation is about motion, not moments, that's a dope quote
now that unraveled has ended, my favorite new polygon videos are the ones that /feel/ like Jenna is info-dumping the thing she accidentally spent several hours reading about instead of sleeping. the vibes are immaculate
everybody say thank you jenna!!!
+
Thank you Jenna!
For whatever reason this makes me think about the speech patterns of some comedians like John Mulaney or Jim Carrey. I dont know that it is entirely conscious, but there seems to be a similar pattern of compression, distortion, expansion, and momentum to the cadence of their delivery.
P.s. I nearly took this opportunity to coin the term 'oral smearing', but was too grossed out.
The Mask
No, pretty sure it is conscious: comedians spend a long time developing their act and learning how to properly deliver a joke, for maximum impact. The same goes for regular acting as well.
@@zenogias01 I get that they are specific and intentional in their vocal cadence, I just think that it might be a bit of a stretch for me to claim they were intentionally transposing the structural pattern of an animation technique onto their vocal expression, compared to having grown up watching looney tunes animation and naturally developed associations which they then chose to emphasize. Though watching John Mulaney play Spider Ham in Enter the Spiderverse recently made me think that perhaps animation was already doing that type of audio delivery to begin with.
This is the most in-depth beginner friendly explanation of smears
One of my favorite kinds of smear is when they bend a weapon that would otherwise be rigid to sell the speed, you see it a lot with katalina's sword in GFV, and also, if you look close you might notice that on DW6-8, Zhao Yun's spear flops all over the place like a pool noodle
also!!! i am extremely grateful that the captions uploaded at the same time as the video, as this makes it a lot easier for me to understand the info that was so meticulously researched :) thanks video team!
Polygon puts such care into that (and chapter titles) and I'm always delighted. Love those beautiful captions on the outro music this time.
Honestly, Polygon does some of the best captions I've seen on TH-cam!
hell yeah I love looking at smear frames in animation!!
I love where Jenna filmed her portions of the video, looks like a chill place. Jenna ofc does a great job explaining things, as per usual!
I’m glad Polygon decided to put out a video on why those freaking “AI make thing go at 60fps” videos are so terrible.
The gender euphoria I would feel if I had smear frames would be incredible
right? hate abiding by the laws of physics, get that outta here I wanna smear
I... have absolutely no idea what the concept of smear frames have to do with gender whatsoever, but regardless of that strange aspect of your comment, I agree, having smear frames would be cool as all hell.
Um, why? What does smear frames have to do with gender dysphoria or euphoria?
@@MrGamelover23 Think of it as a form of gender expression. Imagine if you could add smear frames to your whole aesthetic in real life.
Gender:
⬜ Male
⬜ Female
✅ Mesh Frame Surrounding My Skeleton Able to be Manipulated for Greater Visual Interest During Movement
You show me Overwatch on the day of mourning.. Sad times
Papa Jeff has sadly left the Overwatch team to those who do not know.
On weed day?
We did not plan this :(
Wait what
Wat?
Saw the title and thumbnail and new immediately that this was gonna be a top notch Jenna video
4:59
I knew a guy who also sold speed. Didn't work out quite as well
That SEO trick really got me, but I'm glad it did. This video is so good
It must have made Jenna so happy to say "We have a full video about skeletons"
more reason I want to see an animated movie that looks like an arcade fighting game
This is reminding me a lot of a game my brother tells me about, Guilty Gear, and (besides how they convincingly make the 3d models look like still art) how they went out of their way to change to stretch the 3d models and redoing the frames that the computer would automatically put in.
They should talk about ballooning. Like when you hit something with your fist in smash and Mario's fist expands to show impact. Or when Tom swings a hammer at Jerry and it smeers down and sort of expands and smooshes when it hits the ground.
8:53 Animated the *polygons* I see what you did there.
"Animation is the art of movement, not moments" is extremely good
as both someone who works in tv and someone who teaches kids' anim workshops i LOVE that y'all used the dover boys. it's my go-to teaching tool. timeless, wild-ass smears.
God I love these kinds of episodes nothing like learning more stuff about something im obsessed with and cant do
For people interested in the animation of Sonic, I cannot recommend enough this video by professional animator Dan Floyd over on New Frame Plus th-cam.com/video/GxCcHOvSVJQ/w-d-xo.html
It is feature length, because he goes through the animation of EVERY SONIC GAME, and the video is helpfully broken up into chapters for each game if you need to take a break and come back to it.
Why does sonic work when it does, why doesn't sonic work when it doesn't, and the evolution of Sonic's animation through the years is fascinating to look back through, and there are some surprises in there!
my brain at any moment either has far too many or far too few metaphorical smear frames... except the psychologist just called it ADHD instead
when i was little i used to love pausing cartoons frame by frame to see all the smears, they felt like easter eggs. Also pausing frame by frame on VHS players was not easy!
"Animation is the art of movement, not moments" is a great quote.
12:18: "(pleasant, jazzy pianos rise in volume to play us out of this enjoyable video experience)" Thank you not only for accurate helpful Closed Captions, but also for this gem at the end. 😃🧏♀️
Edit: I almost snorted my tea a couple seconds later at "(a throaty horn enters the chat)"!
And here I was limiting smears to my bagel.... the more you know...
I'm glad you're putting this content out, but also I've watched so much New Frame Plus and Video Game Animation Study that this is familiar territory for me
First time I head about 3D Smears was in League of Legends when they redid Poppy and demonstrated her hammer being squashed and stretched. Before it was explained, I couldn't put my finger on why Poppy's new animations looked so good. Then after they broke it down as smears, it made sense.
The repeated use of "smear" made me feel tingly
I don't know if this exists yet but I'd like to see a movie with real people use smear frames, using photo manipulation on in between frames
Well the thing is, if someone in a live action movie is moving fast enough to require a smear frame, then motion blur has probably already come into effect.
Crash really was a bit of ahead of it's time when it released. They even managed to make the spin move a separate smear like model that swaps in and out with the normal Crash model seamlessly.
y'all pick the coolest and most specific topics to do videos on and i love it
“a throaty horn enters the chat”
Loving the captioning
Ah yes, jazzy piano. Play me out of this pleasant video experience.
I’m so glad The Lion King was shown as an example. It’s one of the many reasons I’m not so fond of these realistic live action versions of animated classics. They lack the appeal and motion the originals, to me it’s one of the things that gives character to the character. I’m also so happy you got Tina on to talk about this subject, I adore her animation work in cuphead. Also reminds me to tell those who like looking closer at animation in games, I suggest New Frame Plus, they are a channel that looks at animation in video games and they recently did a huge video looking at all the animation in every sonic game.
That invincible czars poster is SICK
“So how did they put smears in 3D games?”
*jeff goldblum voice* “Animators, uh, find a way”
"Consider Street Fighter III: Third Strike"
I always am but continue
Oh this is like Kazuya in Tekken. Whenever he does a move involving tons of spinning, he literally shatters his fucking spine to get that satisfying spin necessary to make the move look better. It's not smearing but it's a similar concept.
Appreciation comment for the final two captions. Polygon is truly the gift that keeps giving
This is all part of Jenna's smear campaign
Oh, McCree’s poor face.
4:52 love that undexpected F bomb lol
This is so good, I love seeing the smear frames. It's so satisfying.
Also jenna's haircut is so so good
Every time she said *szchmear* I felt that
jenna!!!!
Jenna, the not-so-hidden smear that makes Polygon so great. It's..a... compliment- I swear!
I love the art that you're exhibiting in your background, Jenna!
Still waiting for a Polygon Plays Going Under for some delicious corporate irony
Am I first to be here lookin at bones? Cool :)
Polygon is really living up to its name lately with all these videos about graphics and I love it
As soon as the video started I thought of how smears were probably used heavily in Hit’s design in Dragon Ball Fighterz, glad Jenna touched on that.
They did so well in making that character, the animation really sells that this is someone who can manipulate time
These videos are so damn good! Thank you Jenna and all the staff involved in this series of videos, you are doing an amazing job :)
Surprised there was no talk of Guilty Gear Xrd, that game is what helped Arcsystemworks, the guys who made Dragon Ball FighterZ, nail 3D mimicking 2D. A lot of the smears in that game are different from the ones in FighterZ and Junya C. Matamura, the art director, gave a GDC talk on how they achieved this.
No idea why I got this recommendation. Never seen this channel before.
But I loved the topic (while not knowing anything about it beforehanf), the tone and the quality information provided.
New subscription to me! Thanks for this research!
Wow, I thought i was going crazy by not being able to see the actions on certain games frame by frame. Very cool!
god this is such a great video !! i’m planning on majoring in sequential art and minoring in game design so this is literally exactly the sort of thing i need to study
This is one of my fav polygon videos, I fucking loved seeing how smears are being used in 3D!
that's pretty tight like now that I see them I can easily be like "oh yeah I've noticed them" but when they mentioned how more frames could mean a chopper look I could definitely see how that would play out. this is Hella interesting.
This has been such a technically brilliant and delightfully silly series and I am very here for it. Thank you so much!