From the course: Animating in 2D: Loosening Up

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Loosen opposing action

Loosen opposing action

From the course: Animating in 2D: Loosening Up

Start my 1-month free trial

Loosen opposing action

“

- [Instructor] A very simple technique to understand is opposing action. And that is the basic principle that when one part of the body moves in one direction, a different part of the body moves in the opposite direction to balance it. And we tend to do this unconsciously, so much so that we're not even aware that we're doing it. So this is an animation from a previous course about how to animate in the 1920s style, and it's a great way to illustrate it because they built entire scenes just using opposing actions like this. And in this case, the character squishes down in a little happy dance and the arms move up, and that's it. So when the body moves down and the head moves down, the hands move up and vice versa. And that is sufficient to create many many scenes. So as you can see here, this is the end result. It's literally an entire scene built around an opposing action. Now one of the great things about this is that we oppose all the time when we walk. When you're in a walk cycle,…

Contents