WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.060 --> 00:00:02.370 Hey, I got something new to talk about today! 00:00:02.370 --> 00:00:04.140 It’s called “twinning.” 00:00:04.140 --> 00:00:09.110 But never mind what that means just yet, let’s watch Double King, a wonderful, imaginative, 00:00:09.110 --> 00:00:14.510 fluid animation by an Australian fellow named Felix Colgrave. 00:00:14.510 --> 00:00:19.960 I really love this film and there’s a lot I could talk about. 00:00:19.960 --> 00:00:21.980 I think I’ll start with the style. 00:00:21.980 --> 00:00:27.810 So in Adobe Animate aka Flash, there’s a tool called the pencil tool, and the way this 00:00:27.810 --> 00:00:30.310 works is it creates a line as you draw. 00:00:30.310 --> 00:00:33.520 The line is independent from any fills or paint strokes. 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:36.140 You can fill closed areas with the paint bucket tool. 00:00:36.140 --> 00:00:40.510 You can make the lines thicker and give them fun shapes or strokes and drag them around. 00:00:40.510 --> 00:00:45.330 But the thing about the pencil tool is it is maddeningly rough. 00:00:45.330 --> 00:00:49.190 No matter what settings you use, you get all these stupid nodes everywhere. 00:00:49.190 --> 00:00:51.740 Does this look like a circle to you? 00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:53.320 What is this?! 00:00:53.320 --> 00:00:57.620 And yet, it’s this exact tool that Felix Colgrave uses. 00:00:57.620 --> 00:01:01.900 Double King absorbs your attention and you don’t notice it, but these lines are wobbly 00:01:01.900 --> 00:01:03.120 like crazy. 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:04.309 Look at this mess. 00:01:04.309 --> 00:01:05.659 It’s beautiful. 00:01:05.659 --> 00:01:08.660 Felix takes the weakness of the tool and makes it part of the style. 00:01:08.660 --> 00:01:09.869 The style as a whole looks so good, so organic, so real. 00:01:09.869 --> 00:01:12.960 It’s not perfect curves you can get with the pen tool. 00:01:12.960 --> 00:01:14.479 It’s gritty. 00:01:14.479 --> 00:01:15.479 Textured. 00:01:15.479 --> 00:01:20.469 Underneath the etchy lines is some exacting precision, though, so don’t let it fool 00:01:20.469 --> 00:01:22.039 you. 00:01:22.039 --> 00:01:27.679 Complementing the organic look of the artwork is the overall natural flow of Double King’s 00:01:27.679 --> 00:01:28.679 story. 00:01:28.679 --> 00:01:33.469 The storytelling has a strange spontaneous feeling to it, so I wondered how much planning 00:01:33.469 --> 00:01:35.719 when into writing the animation. 00:01:35.719 --> 00:01:40.170 As you probably know by now, most animations are storyboarded all the way through before 00:01:40.170 --> 00:01:41.869 they hit the drawing room floor. 00:01:41.869 --> 00:01:46.590 Double King is a two year production that started with the very first scene of these 00:01:46.590 --> 00:01:48.390 little shell creatures. 00:01:48.390 --> 00:01:51.109 Felix invented the rest of the film as he went. 00:01:51.109 --> 00:01:53.920 Just made it up, with no plans. 00:01:53.920 --> 00:01:58.689 If the process is to start with a scene and keep animating more scenes, how do you know 00:01:58.689 --> 00:02:00.009 when you’re done? 00:02:00.009 --> 00:02:02.659 Well, you’re done when you want your life back. 00:02:02.659 --> 00:02:06.310 So just… stop the animation there. 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:09.799 The straight ahead writing method has some interesting side effects. 00:02:09.799 --> 00:02:13.620 Look at how the king’s character design evolves throughout the cartoon. 00:02:13.620 --> 00:02:19.270 It begins with a sloped back and neck, clearly revealing the black undercoat with big slappy 00:02:19.270 --> 00:02:20.270 feet. 00:02:20.270 --> 00:02:22.632 The neck goes away and the robe now covers the feet. 00:02:22.632 --> 00:02:24.120 The feet and hands float independently from the body. 00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:29.260 By the end the body is a nice, simple arch. 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:32.849 Felix has a lot of fun with shapes like this by repeating patterns like the arch. 00:02:32.849 --> 00:02:37.930 Putting the character of the same shape through an arch, fitting crowns inside one another, 00:02:37.930 --> 00:02:40.000 making a forest of arches. 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:44.610 Part of the visual appeal of the style comes from the shapes, especially a shot like this 00:02:44.610 --> 00:02:45.610 one. 00:02:45.610 --> 00:02:47.650 Which brings me to twinning. 00:02:47.650 --> 00:02:52.420 Twinning is when both sides of the character’s body are doing the same thing at the same 00:02:52.420 --> 00:02:54.480 time. 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:59.940 Go a bit deeper and it means the character’s pose has a bunch of flat angles in it. 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:02.269 Here’s a shrug with twinning. 00:03:02.269 --> 00:03:05.610 Here is a shrug without twinning. 00:03:05.610 --> 00:03:10.680 The two sides of the body are different over here. 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:14.870 Twinning is basically perfect symmetry. 00:03:14.870 --> 00:03:17.730 Twinning is usually seen as a bad thing for two reasons. 00:03:17.730 --> 00:03:23.239 One, in animation it makes it hard to see what the character is doing. 00:03:23.239 --> 00:03:25.400 Twinning. 00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:26.540 Not twinning. 00:03:26.540 --> 00:03:29.629 Two, it is boring. 00:03:29.629 --> 00:03:30.870 Twinning. 00:03:30.870 --> 00:03:32.290 Not twinning. 00:03:32.290 --> 00:03:38.489 One way to avoid twinning is what Felix does a lot, and that is to offset the left side 00:03:38.489 --> 00:03:40.349 and the right side by one frame. 00:03:40.349 --> 00:03:44.680 I’ll rewind a bit here, and watch how the left hand comes out later than the right. 00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:49.180 Now they both lower the hat, and the right hand begins the retreat cycle two frames earlier 00:03:49.180 --> 00:03:50.750 than the left hand. 00:03:50.750 --> 00:03:54.749 Even though both of those hands are exact copies of each other, no twinning happens 00:03:54.749 --> 00:03:59.249 because the timing is different. 00:03:59.249 --> 00:04:02.510 Back to the shapes here, I’m going to slow this way down. 00:04:02.510 --> 00:04:06.900 Watch how each of the flowers starts its animation at a different time. 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:10.030 The diagonal rows are all on the same frame. 00:04:10.030 --> 00:04:14.709 Even though every object here is going through the same animation cycle, you avoid the twinning 00:04:14.709 --> 00:04:17.739 problem by staggering in rows. 00:04:17.739 --> 00:04:22.229 If all of the flowers bloomed at the exact same time, this sequence would be much less 00:04:22.229 --> 00:04:24.690 trippy than it currently is. 00:04:24.690 --> 00:04:27.090 But it’s fine to twin time to time. 00:04:27.090 --> 00:04:29.550 Sometimes it’s even necessary to get the effect you want! 00:04:29.550 --> 00:04:34.789 I’ll go back to five minutes in and show you some twinning in the king’s hands. 00:04:34.789 --> 00:04:35.789 Perfect sync. 00:04:35.789 --> 00:04:39.569 Here, the twinning serves a purpose, and that is to make the king look brutally efficient 00:04:39.569 --> 00:04:43.080 while he dumps the butterfly. 00:04:43.080 --> 00:04:46.530 There are not many more examples of twinning in Double King. 00:04:46.530 --> 00:04:50.250 You can go through the animation a frame at a time and you’ll see very rarely are the 00:04:50.250 --> 00:04:53.490 left and right hand doing the same action at the exact same time. 00:04:53.490 --> 00:04:57.120 Any time they are, it’s for a reason, and it’s immediately preceded or followed by 00:04:57.120 --> 00:04:59.550 a unique action from the other hand. 00:04:59.550 --> 00:05:02.150 That’s your animation lesson for today! 00:05:02.150 --> 00:05:05.900 If you enjoyed Double King, you can visit Felix’s channel and really dig deep into 00:05:05.900 --> 00:05:07.460 the evolution of his style. 00:05:07.460 --> 00:05:11.750 There are plenty of fantastical creatures and disturbing images. 00:05:11.750 --> 00:05:17.670 Finally, some of you are dying to know, how many drugs did it take to make this stuff? 00:05:17.670 --> 00:05:19.060 Answer: none. 00:05:19.060 --> 00:05:20.060 None! 00:05:20.060 --> 00:05:22.520 Come on, animators are naturally strange. 00:05:22.520 --> 00:05:36.389 You know this.