Yo, breakdown time again!
This time, as a gift to June, my oildude friend from Texas who's a great fan of Belle, and he named his cat Belle... hahaha, I'm doing a breakdown of this amazing ! amazing shot from Lady and the Tramp, OK, that was a joke, from Beauty and the Beast. Here's the shot in its original version (600k):
Now, with my King Louie shot analysis I used a ton of jpg images in the body of the analysis and used enormous space, so this time, I'm being less explicit and more space-efficient, and I'll keep referring to this video below, that has a numbered breakdown. Each pose has a number and there are 27 poses that describe the shot. Click to see my breakdown (600k):
I think I'm learning a lot from analyzing these shots and writing about them, so I put down my ideas and spend time chewing on this fantastic animation. Belle's animation is especially hard, I think, to analyze, because it's subtle, I can't even understand how they managed to trace all that microscopical movement. And besides being subtle, a lot of it is on ones!!! Craaaaaaazy! There are 2 things in 2D animation that I know of being insanely difficult - slow movement and rigid bodies. Nothing rigid in Belle though :D OK, so while analyzing Belle I just had a major "ooops, I didn't see that before" as I realized she is...
...
...
...
walking!!!
Yeah, silly, and obvious maybe, but I was breaking down the shot, and I got to the last part where she is turning back to look away (from the camera), when I realized I didn't even notice that she is walking on that action, and then I went to the beginning of the shot, just to check, 'cause I was sure I overlooked her body ups-and-downs, being so focused on what the hands were doing, and the head, and guess what, of course, she's walking, sort of... "into and out of" the shot. And it was the most difficult thing to break down, how many steps are there and where exactly they occur.
A quick overview of the shot: The shot is built on an ABCBA pattern, like a mirror: A = rotate into camera view, B = look concerned, thinking and reaching a decision, C = major event, she takes off the hood, B again = thinking, but with a different attitude, A again = rotate out of camera view. OK, so here we go (I'm completely disregarding the logic behind the acting choices and I'm not explaining where the shot is in relation to other shots around it, what it adds to the story, nothing like that, I just want to analyze the motion here, not the reasons, sue me! :) Also, I'm not going to analyze facial animation nor cloth movement.):
1. First pose is just a starting place for the rotation into camera view. She's holding the tree. Period.
2. This is a low key - the first step. The body is down, at its lowest, and I presume it's the left foot that takes the weight, but... hard to tell. Head rotates faster than the rest of the body, and the builds an arc from 1 to 3 (goes down and then goes up), right hand slides gently off the tree.
3. High key, concluding the first step. Head and body continue to rotate, but the body gains speed (notice the inbetweening of the head, not at all even, slowing down around 3 and around 4, this is what Richard Williams calls soft accents: a change in speed while not changing the direction creates an accent). Head tilted left. Right hand continues to slide off the tree and twists right from 3 to 4.
4. Low key for the second step, probably the right foot has relocated and took the weight. Head tilts right and continues to rotate along with the body. It's a low position for the right hand too, who also twists right until here, but from 4 to 5 will untwist towards left. Also, I think I made a mistake here, and there is another high key from 4 to 5, let's call it 4b... Now I'm thinking the walk is actually a move UP / settle / move up / wait / settle.
5. Body continues to rotate. We're on the "wait" position now - the body goes down, but the shoulders go up, in a "waiting" pose. Head continues to tilt and rotate right, but only a very tiny amount. The right hand goes up and is twisted towards left.
6. End of right-rotation for the body (the head stops rotation towards right just a bit before the body). The head is slightly tilting left now. I won't go into facial expression, but one very appealing squash is happening here in between 6 and 7, as the expression changes a bit (this squash is an exaggeration of the mouth action - lips pressing). Shoulders, still on "wait", are going down to 7. Right hand at its highest point on this arc.
7. The left hand didn't do anything of any importance up until here, but from 6 to 7 it goes up, with a slow out from 7 to 8. The right hand goes down as an anticipation to the going up towards 8 (at 7 it's at its lowest). Head tilts left and down.
8. Head stops going right and from here on to the end of the shot it will only go left. From 8 to 9 we have a splendid expression of confusion - the reason for the left hand to enter the stage was that Belle needed to twist it while holding the pinky with her right hand, it's a left-twist. Also, she blinks 5 times (plus closed eyes at the extremes) during this B section of the shot (I can't really cut clear delimitations for the sections since the movement is so fluid, but you get the idea). Done explaining facial stuff :D
9. This is the end of the confused-reflection section (B). Held expression that moves fast to 10, and section C.
10. Here the head tilts forward a bit to help with the hands movement grabbing the hood. Shoulders go up. This is a contact pose for the hands.
11. Head and shoulders keep doing the same thing. Hands reach the highest key.
12. Head and shoulders keep doing the same thing. Hands reach the farthest-back key.
13. Hands and shoulders going down, also, hands extend in laterals to stretch/rearrange the hood - this is the extreme for the lateral-movement. From here on she doesn't rearrange the hood anymore, but only slide along its margins. Head goes back and up. Also there is a little hair that moved out of place :)
14. Facial expression changes significantly here, also... she pulls her hands out of the hood... and the little hair has reached its extreme :) (now this little hair is extremely important, don't laugh, it's logical to displace some hair after such a movement, even if just a tiny lock, and besides that, this little hair is going to generate the main action of the next section. So have more respect for it! >:| )
15. This is the end of the hood-movement, an extreme, with shoulders, elbows, wrists down, and head up.
16. Right hand moves left a bit, along the edge of the hood, but the main action is of course... the rearranging of the hair lock. For that the head tilts forward and left, and the left hand goes up...
17. ...and left, twisting right...
18. ...twisting some more...
19. and down, twisting right a little bit more... Notice (for this down movement: 18-19) the fingers follow the contour of the face, and there is overlap keeping them soft and flexible. The head rotates left here...
20. ...and goes up, while the left hand keeps going down, and twisting right (OK, for y'all who didn't realize this yet, and/or didn't read my King Louie post, I'm only referring to the character's left and right. In this case, twisting right means twisting her wrist so it rotates towards her right).
21. Here the last section starts, and I've tracked down 3 steps... The right-twist continues, followed by a full body left-rotation (basically, it all goes towards left, but in order to do so, the wrist has to rotate right, it sounds confusing but it's simple, cuz you can see the video :D ). Right hand comes down while its fingers gather with overlap. A blink on the turn... but there's a blink on pretty much every head move (but none on the "intro", and non on the "exit" !! so it flows better, without weird twitches people can't read properly, but notice and not understand exactly what was that... like... "what was that??" ;) You don't want people go "what was that..??.." :D ).
22. Low key; this is the first step, a small one. Left hand planted on the tree (but it moves a bit, it doesn't have weight on it anyway, and it looks alive stretching like that, very subtly) to help with the rotation, like a pivot - she pivots around her left hand, without leaning on it. The right hand's path also follows the ups and downs, but with overlap, so its low key is some 5 frames earlier, and on the body's low key, we have a right hand high key.
23. High key; the pivoting continues.
24. Low key; this is the second step, the big one.
25. High key of the second step.
26. Low key of the third step - this one I wasn't even sure it's a step, I thought it must be hood overlapping, it's so microscopical...
27. High key (or if you don't want to treat it as a step, then just... hood settling).
That's it. Insanely subtle 2D animation, it's really impressive that a human hand can draw this kind of stuff... (is it James Baxter?) Oh, and for the people who made it this far (and the ones who didn't... I guess... :D ) here's a video of both original and breakdown together, in parallel, for comparison (1.2MB).