Ed Love usually uses 3 rather than 2 poses for his head bobs. One in the middle, another tilted down and one tilted up and back.
He uses the same basic principle as in the last post. He hits the different poses on accents in the dialogue. The goal is the same in limited animation as in full animation - to use poses to help accentuate the meaning in the dialogue track. Sometimes Ed uses more than 3 key poses. You can use as many as you have time and money for. In limited animation the idea is to use a few poses and animate in and out of them while varying the timings between the poses.The first thing an animator should do - whether he is doing limited or full animation - is to listen very carefully to the dialogue track. Close your eyes and hear the accents and timing. Then customize your drawings and timing to match what the actor gave you.

Don't rely on some abstract formula for timing. Use what the actor gave you - then be creative on top of it.

In the clip, Fred says:

"Awwww It's My job."

In this sentence, Ed doesn't use any inbetweens. He just pops to different keys on each word, while animating the mouths to the dialogue. This gives the accents in the dialogue some punch.

1MIDDLE...2DOWN - "AWWWWWW" 3 "IT'S 1 "MY" 2"JOB"
(This file is large, so it'll take a couple minutes for it to load - sorry.Technical problems)
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Flintstones/itsMyJob.mov


One way Ed makes his head bobs look smoother and "fuller" than some of the other animators, is by squashing and stretching the different head poses.

When tilting the head up, he stretches the front of the face up, and squashes the back of the head and neck down.

He does the opposite for the tilting the head down pose.

Changing the shape of Fred's head logically makes it not look like a cut out of one head position rotating up and down (like most Flash and TV animation today.)

Here is a longer sentence. Ed uses the same key poses, but also an inbetween this time going in and out of the poses.


He varies how long it takes to get to each pose according to how the dialogue sounds. If he used the same amount of inbetweens each time, or held the keys the same amount each time it would get monotonous really quick.

In all he probably only has 5 total head drawings in there, 3 keys 2 inbetweens. Sometimes he uses more.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Flintstones/FredSickTired.mov

Like I said, you can use as many keys as you want or can afford. The more poses you use, the more full it will be. The main thing is to make them fit the sound of the dialogue. Follow the natural accents. Draw what your ear tells you to, not what the animation formula does.


Here are a couple more Ed Love scenes:
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/EdLove/RangerBobsLOve.mov



http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/EdLove/YogiBobsLove.mov


Next post, I'll show you my variations of Ed's technique.

In the late 50s when theatrical cartoons became too expensive to produce, Bill Hanna developed a system of limited animation that kept a lot of animators in food. A lot of people hate it, but the reality of TV production is you can't do a lot of drawings. My own solution to that was to use more interesting key poses, instead of stock - "on-model" poses that all look the same.

Bill and the 50s animators figured out some tricks to "keep the characters alive" so they weren't just held drawings. Probably their main tool for this is the "head-bob". They animate the heads bouncing up and down slightly according to the accents in the actor's dialogue rack.
There are all kinds of variations you can do with head bobs and other techniques to make it more interesting, but here is a super basic one just to get the idea across.

Each head bob starts from a main position- with the head in the middle - not up or down.
This particular head bob only has 2 keys- middle head position and down position. You can also have an up head position, but this one doesn't.


mouths are animated on another level.

The animator draws the head in another key position - this one is tilted down slightly.
Then he calls for inbetweens. There are 3 inbetweens in this particular head bob. They are timed pretty evenly. This is the inbetween in the middle between the first key (middle head position) and the second key (down position).

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/QueenBee/1HowBoutHoneyBob.mov

The animator listens to the sound track.
He listens for the accent in BooBoo's sentence.

"how 'bout HONEY Yogi?"

Then he moves the head down on "Hon" and leaves it there for "honey" before the head comes up again.

This visual accent reinforces the meaning of the dialogue, by following the actor's reading.


http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/QueenBee/2CmonYogiBobs.mov

Here there is some extended dialogue, and the animator creates his head bob drawings, then re-uses them in different orders according to the accents in the dialogue.

It's not a modern timing formula. Today, especially in Flash we tend to rely on avoiding inbetweens by anticitating the first pose and then zipping past the final pose and "cushioning" back into the final key.

That technique can be useful for fast actions, but becomes monotonous when used to connect every single key pose. You don't always want to draw attention to each action - and this Flash technique does that and competes with the meaning of the scene.


The old animators used a variety of techniques and timings - even when doing their "limited animation". The head bob is one technique of many that has a lot of potential variations when a clever animator does it. Ed Love was great at making limited animation sem fuller than what it really was and I'll show some of his stuff in another post.



Mouths are animated for each of the inbetween poses as well as the keys. Then when the head bobs up and down, there is a continuous flow of dialgue.



http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/Yogi/QueenBee/3RangerFrontBobs.mov


Of course, nothing is better than good full animation, but not too many TV shows have ever been able to afford that, so we make due with the tools we have. These old HB cartoons were produced for about 1 10th the budgets of their earlier Tom and Jerry cartoons. Sad, but that's the ugly reality! The funny part is, I like these cartoons better than Tom and Jerry.

Not having beautiful full animation to rely on, Joe Barbera switched the focus of his cartoons to character, rather than action - at least for a couple of years until it all became another formula.

I would never recommend animating even semi-realistic men in cartoons, because it's so damn hard to do and it seldom amounts to anything entertaining.Here is a scene from a Clampett cartoon that has a "realistic" man in it and for some reason I find it hilarious.
Just because it's such a wrong thing to do and Clampett did it anyway and made the animator move the head in every impossible angle.
Human heads just do not look very appealing from every angle, but they sure are funny.
This scene really demonstrates the difference between the Warner Bros. cartoon entertainment philosophy and Disney's.
The characters in Disney cartoons are very idealized- realistic man type characters are either good or evil, "comedy characters" are grumpy or they have drippy noses or they are stylized fruitcakes.
The men in Disney cartoons are not anybody you can relate to and they don't act at all like actual men.
This guy is like an actual guy. He looks like someone you can sit down and have a smoke with, watch Ultimate Fighting and tell dirty jokes.

He is a regular guy with sleaze written all over him, like all us guys. It's not hard to imagine a guy like this being a Dad. Foghorn Leghorn would be a good Dad too. He'll slip you a small glass of beer when Mom's not looking.

LOOK AT MAN.


Here's a typical Disney man to compare with.
He's made up of animation principles instead of flesh, blood and guts.
Warner Bros. cartoons are street-wise. They look at life with a realistic point of view. They take the same animation principles and use them to make fun of the real world.
For Disney, it seems just having the principles is enough. The cartoons don't reflect any acute observations of humanity.
Who do you think would be more laughs to hang out with, this guy or the Clampett man?
Look at thing.


While you are making comparisons, look at the 2 different approaches to drawing lip-synch. The Disney animation seems to completely ignore the dialogue track and rely on formula squash and stretch.