[Animation] Characterising movements

Characterised animations are just like Coke ice cream. Allow me to explain.

In earlier posts, I've mentioned that I want to start adding character to movements in my animation, rather than having them all use almost canned animation for every movement.

I was first made aware of this when a friend of mine who works in animation made a post saying something along the lines of:
"I'm sure I've animated this shot before"

After some conversation about it, what he meant is that he had not only a similar layout in a shot in the past, but also animated the character doing essentially the same movement. This made me think back to the Animators Survival Kit, where it extensively covers walk cycles in a variety of styles, each showing a lot of information about the character using simple NVC (non-verbal communication) This same trick can be applied heavily to almost any form of animation. For the sake of emphasis and proving my point, I'm going to use possibly the simplest thing ever to animate; a blink.

A "standard" blink may be something as simple as the eyes closing for two frames, and then opening. This is what I'll be referring to in this entry as "vanilla". It's plain, uncharacterised and not very noticeable. In many cases, this is favourable, some movements don't need to be emphasised. Let's say though, that the blinking character is sleepy, the movement would have a lot more easing in and out, to create a dull, droopy feel to it. This could be characterised even further if desired by making one eye blink after the other, making it look as if they're being lulled to sleep. Or what about the shot in Tom and Jerry where Tom, desperately trying to stay awake, supports his eye lids with matchsticks that then break by the sense of weight this new, tailored blink has brought to his eyes.
On the opposite end, what if your character was jittery after consuming a truck full of coffee. They may blink faster and more frequently than the vanilla sample. Their eyes may jump from one side of their eye to the other, and the size of their pupils may be dilated, or shrunk to simple dots. These two cases are fairly extreme for something so potentially simple as a blink, but this entry should illustrate that there's a lot more you can do with animation to communicate things to the viewer and avoid repetition. A famous goal by the creator of Ren and Stimpy was to never use the same face twice, this leads to extremely memorable (and hilarious) new faces that can act in themselves as a joke. Why should this same effect not be applied to every other form of expression too?

So to summarise, put more thought into personalising animation, think why it's happening and how you can communicate it. Is that guy over there waving in joy? Or is it sorrow that he'll never see his favourite pet again? Is that woman picking her nose sneakily and self-consciously in public, or rooting for a total winner, while giving no fucks? The possibilities for characterisation are everywhere, so bring them out!

Also, mint choc chip kick's vanilla's ass any day. Go make some mint choc chip animation. Actually, sod that, make your own flavour! Coke ice cream for all! Take the classic formula and play with it.

Characterised animations are just like Coke ice cream.