This is an excerpt from Jungle Book that I'm going to go pose to pose and break it down to its smallest pose-components, and then maybe get into arcs and weight and patterns and who knows what else, maybe go from one breakdown to another and see the inbetweens, how they were drawn. I'm only analyzing King Louie. So let's start, here's the excerpt in all its glory, click and watch the quicktime video (1MB):
First pass for my analysis - key poses, or expression poses. They represent major changes, important stuff going on - everything revolves around them. A key pose can be hold, or animated, but the idea is that, phrasing-wise, it represents a sentence: as in "I am Joe. Joe is not happy. Can you make Joe happy?" This is a phrase with 3 sentences, and the animation equivalent of it is a shot with 3 key poses. Sometimes a shot can have 1 key, and all is built around it, it doesn't change to "something else", or 2 keys... where you could have a change of expression for example.
I've divided this shot into 6 key poses, although the action is an ABCB... :) intro | dance | hands-switch | dance. Simple. But I've added 2 more keys because I thought they were pretty significant visual changes. Let me explain:
This is the intro (A), it's a key that transitions from the earlier shot.
This is an extreme actually, maybe it shouldn't be here, it's an anticipation to the first dance section.
This is B, the dance.
Here we have the transition (C) to the 2nd dance section. One big arc that I've described with 2 extremes.
And B, the dance, again (different animation on it, but the idea is that of "grab Mowgli, dance, switch hands, dance").
OK, so let's get down to business and see things in more detail. Let's start breaking things down, I'll explain each breakdown present below, which is main key pose, which is an extreme, and which is a simple breakdown, yeah, it's gonna be a really long post (cuz I happened to chose a, well, fairly complex shot with lots of body action, so there are quite a few changes that need to be captured in a breakdown.)
So to clarify - I'll have 3 layers, or passes:
pass 1 - already discussed above - the key poses, only 6 of them (4 + 2)
pass 2 - extreme poses, mainly describing the body up-and-downs in this shot
pass 3 - breakdown poses, adding definition to the movement by describing head rotation and important limb moves. All pretty much goes along with the body, on the music beat, during the dance section, with small overlaps, so the dance sections don't really have breakdowns, it's all-extremes.
I'm not going to go into arcs and details of the movement here, maybe just a little bit... but I'm planning to load this shot into PAP, and draw a bouncing ball on top of it, to clarify timing and main body movement. So that's when I can draw more stuff, like lines of action, arcs... I should probably render out separate movie files of different layers of analysis, like only head arcs, only wrists, only main body bouncing, timing on separate elements... all this in another post.
Key - as I already said, continuing from the earlier shot, King Louie just hears that Mowgli doesn't know how to make fire... it's an expression key, that goes straight to the next key, the breakdown, over 10 frames (5 drawings, on twos).
Breakdown - not much change, except for his body going up and back and rotating left a little (I always refer to the character's left and right, so his left hand will be in this case on the right side of the screen, as you see it here), and his head rotating, so now he looks at Mowgli. Also, his right hand that used to rest on the boy's head now is grabbing his hair. All on twos.
Key - more like an extreme, as I already said, this is the highest point of the anticipation, before going into the "dance section". His body keeps rotating left in anticipation for the dance pose, his spine curves in the opposite direction, head continues the arc I'm not drawing here but will do on a PAP session... his left hand arcs up (notice the round hand pose flowing along the path of action), his right hand continues to go up, lifting Mowgly off the ground, and his feet push him up. This is not exactly the most stretched pose you've ever seen, but it is a stretch, compared to the first key which is a squash. His right foot and spine are clearly stretched. The entire shot is a continuous squash on down position & stretch on up, of course :) . From here on all animation goes on ones.
Breakdown - this is here to help define the arc, it's an extreme of the arc as he goes down into the next key. His body rotates back now and goes into squash, but his hands keep going up.
Key - first section of "the dance" starts here, on the down pose, everything up until here is an anticipation for this. So let's analyze the dance in this section. Pretty simple, straightforward, all goes on the beat: there's an up and down per each beat, he keeps jumping on his right foot on every beat (which slowly translates him backwards), while the left foot goes on a cancan-like move, a forward move on one beat, a backwards move on the next beat. His spine reverses from the anticipation and stays squashed like this for the entire B section. His hips do rotate though, as his left leg goes forward and backwards, but the chest doesn't. His right hand is holding Mowgly and so it follows the ups and downs of the body with a little offset (after hitting the down beat, the right had continues its downwards movement for 2 or 3 frames, I can't tell exactly because I don't have a 24 fps version of the video, but a 25 fps PAL). The left hand hits up on the beat, as you see in this key pose. The head follows the logic of the text, but as he sings, all goes on the beat: he hits right (again, his right!) on DON'T, TRY, KID', ME, MAN, CUB, so we have 6 accents, but they are grouped as 2 + 2 + 1 + 1. So the logic is "don't try to | kid' me | man | cub", this would be the phrasing. After TRY and ME there follows a larger head rotation that creates a bigger accent. MAN and CUB are separated by, again, large head movements. Now! Even though the text logic is "man-cub" as a single word, the animator (don't know who he is btw, if anybody knows, please post) has chosen to follow a musical logical pattern and go 1 2 | 1 2 | 1 1, for an extra punch at the end of the sentence. So here we go:
The following images are all extremes, 2 per beat. Notice the diversity ;)
Extreme - this is the end of the first dance section, and an extreme of the body arc going up and right and then left on the next extreme. It's the beginning of the anticipation for the switch-hands move. Basically, it's the right extreme of this arc.
Extreme - and this is the left extreme of the same arc, continuing the anticipation. The spine arches in opposite shape, and again we have a stretch. This whole switch-hands transition is sooo beautifully arched.
Breakdown - body goes down into a squash, the spine arches to follow the left hand (who's leading the action), hands are fully extended and continuing the amazing arc, the right hand stays level because the force is actually coming from below, ready to push Mowgly up into anticipating the going-down. Also, the left leg squashes into an anticipation for the next move - another nice arc to reposition the leg.
Key - this is a stretch, an anticipation for the down move. The left hand has reached its goal, has grabbed Mowgly, and both hands have pushed Mowgly up and back a little. The body is twisted (hips less, chest more) towards right.
This pose is an excellent example of dynamic balance (the stuff I've talked about in my older post: static vs dynamic balance): King Louie wouldn't be able to hold Mowgly in an unbalanced pose like this - the pose itself actually seems nice and balanced, and the left foot extends exactly for this reason, to balance the hands extended in the other direction, and we have a center of weight around his right foot, right?? Wrong. It would have been be right if the character was in a hold, and if we didn't have Mowgly in the picture... but obviously, a hold with Mowgly being held like that would be pretty unbalanced. King Louie would need to hold himself to something, or adjust the pose a bit not to topple over. And that's because he is very strong, and Mowgly very light, otherwise this pose would be impossible anyway. But obviously, this pose is logical because of the movement involved - at this exact point in time, it's not entirely King Louie's strength that's holding Mowgly, but inertia as well, and the fact that the move is fast. Mowgly gets to travel along this great motion path (the arc that follows), being led by the ape's hands and inertia.
A sidenote about strength. I just thought about this now: we can't really read strength very accurately, which is good in animation, because it allows some flexibility. How strong is strong... and where is the line drawn between believable and not believable? When King Louie is holding the entire temple so it doesn't break down, he's supposed to have an immense force... like that of a giant. Obviously, not possible, he's just an ape. But we buy it, we don't think it's not believable, because it's cartoony... it's an exaggeration: he looks like he's putting a lot of effort into holding that temple, so if we see the effort we buy it :) If he'd hold the temple like holding an apple... we'd expect him to be Superman (Superape). And we'd expect to see that superstrength in everything he does, everything he interacts with. So things are relative, even what's believable and what's not, that's relative too... If Superman has sort of... infinite power, how do you show effort, to make him look more human, so we can relate...? It's relative, because you decide "ok, if he's pushing a planet, it's gonna be hard for him, so show effort there, but if he only has to push a skyscraper, that should be a piece of cake...". But it's hard to keep this logical. What if he'd be pushing a mountain?? How much effort would he put into that? I say - no effort at all, or minimal, Hollywood seems to generally be saying different, because there's this prejudice, I guess, that "you have to show effort to make it believable"... but I say "you should show the logical amount of effort"... And I've seen this done wrong a million times, and people go "neeeaaaaah"... It's relative, but has to be logical. End of sidenote.
Breakdown - this is here to help showing the arc Mowgly is traveling along, this is the lowest pose. Spine untwists and... I find it really hard to tell what the spine exactly does, and how it bends, so I won't insist. It's clear as daylight that the line of action keeps reversing, but telling exactly what the spine is doing.... if it reverses or not, and how it reverses, I find that very difficult. This is also the last frame where King Louie's right hand is in contact with the boy's head, from here on, the left hand does all the work. The right hand goes up on a different arc (like a train splitting in 2 and half of it goes on one track, the other half on another track). The left leg is solid on the floor and takes the weight.
Key - OK, so it all moved on the left side, like in mirror, so to speak... although it's not really a mirror, since the actions are different. But the right leg is in the air now and the left leg supports all the weight, the body/spine twists left now. Also, notice that his head keeps targeting Mowgly. This is the end of the hand-switch, and an anticipation for the section 2 of the dance. A stretch. His right hand opens.
Breakdown - overshooting the stretch, and moving the right hand into a new... how should I call it.. "definition"... or just pose. For the remaining of the shot he points with his index finger (for diversity, so we don't have an exact mirror of what the left hand did in the first dance section). The right leg also continues to go up and in an arc, anticipating the next key.
Key - and the second dance section starts here (from the last breakdown to this key the body slides left a bit, starting to move left again, and it'll keep moving left for the rest of the shot). The body goes in ups and downs on the beat, the right hand/index finger hits right on every beat as well, the right hand is holding Mowgly and does what the left hand did on the first dance section, but with a different grab. The head keeps targeting Mowgly and hitting the beats, the chest twists just a little bit with the hips, the hips twist left and right a lot, to accommodate the legs movement. And the legs twist the most, although the hips lead the movement. While the left leg only hops and twists, and keeps most of the weight on it, the right leg has a different dance pattern, based on the left, going along with it, but also adding an ornamentation: the full pattern is Right and Left and Up and Down(left). He does it twice and then half of the 3rd time. Now all this left translation is a bit sliding, but we have to take into account the difficulty of matching drawings with background movement in the 50s, and in 2D animation in general anyway. He's a really great "bouncing ball" anyway, so who cares about the sliding. Another little problem I've discovered is, in Mowgly's movement, at the end of the shot, there are a few illegal twitches :) But the one really interesting thing happens with the lipsynch on and before the words "what I desire"... it looks like he was animated on other words, and then they've changed the text but not the animation (if you know about this, please post, I'd be curious to know the story).
The following images are all extremes, again, 2 per beat.
Aaand the rest is inbetweening. The overlaps are generally very subtle, 1, 2, 3 keys apart... say his body hits the down pose, next frame he takes the weight and so we see his belly at its lowest, and the next frame his right hand hits its lowest pose (well, followed by Mowgly as a prop, on his lowest key, on the next pose).
That's it, the whole shot, almost 8 seconds.
Cheers!