Fabric Dynamics
A sexy skirt for a sexy animation
A new concept to me is fabric animation. To be more specific animating fabric and how it interacts within the world around it. How the world interacts with it and how it interacts wth the world. So I thought a simple yet effective way to show fabric interacting with a person, as suprise suprise people often tend to wear fabric, and to make the world interact with it? Blow some wind over a skirt. This out of all the animation tests I have done this term was by far the most challenging for something as simple as just basic lines and curves with no exaggeration alot goes into getting a realistic tooking skirt blowing in the wind. Fabric in general to do realistically is more difficult then one would think. Has alot of science to it like the creature animation.
This here is the finalised dynamic fabric animation. As just stated fabric is new to me the only other work I had with it was on my Rick and Morty parody animation. Ricks lab coat was animted. That's the most I had done before this and even that wasn't as detailed as this is. Additonally the only focus of this animation to make a realistic skirt blowing in the wind. To that degree I say I succeded. It starts with the lady turning and adjusting her legs shifteing the weight of one to the other, and you can see the fabric bend and stretch with the legs. so it interacts with her and then the gust comes along blowing it up forcing her to hold it in place, and you see the skirt interacting with some wind. I'm happy with how it turned out.
This was the very first segment of the blocking stage that I made. I hadn't even added the skirt at this point. Only the body. The reason for this is that since the skirt is confined to the body like any bit of clothing I needed the frame there to animate it on top of the legs. Likewise with the hand since the hand comes and keeps the skirt in place that to needed to be finished first before I could get onto the skirt itself. While not the focus I do still like the body. It looks accurate if not a little rough in the blocking stages. But all the movment of the body and timing had been 80% figured out at this point and minimal changes happen to them.
Still in the blocking stage at this point along. You can now see the first hints of the skirt itself being implemented from the refrences I was following and using. Since I new it was going to be blown in the wind I realized that the skirt would end up being blown in a curving motion. Similar in a way to my snake animation with slight alterations. So there is a little overlap in the technique. Since it would be animated along the curve that the wind is formingI knew that would be the base of it's motion so I just did a rough animation of the curve itself.The pink is the line of action and the green is the hem of the skirt itself.
Now we get into the first pass Blocking, Timing and Overall motion were all sorted so the first pass now began. Like with the blocking stage I got the body itself out of the way with first since without that being finished I couldn't even start the skirt. Since agian the skirt is acting as it is due to it being worn in windy weather. The body was a must in terms of what to finish first. I would later alter the timing of the body ever so slightly. But the main thing I wanna point out is how smooth the leg animation is.
Now we see the incomplete first pass of the skirt. Firstly I wanted to have the skirt there itself before adding any details into it. You gotta have the base there before you can refine it you know? Anyway as you'll see the skirt or at least the base skirt is now animated. It's animated on 2s cuase having it on 1s would take alot of time and a thing I did notice is that, for something fast, such as wind, having it all on single frames to a degree makes it look to smooth for a thing in the wind. It looks more like it would be floating in open water. Those initial lines of the skirt at the beginning was me just testing them out.
Now lastly we have the major details of the skirt added on top of the base skirt. As you will notice the lines seen in the last gif are now fully realised here. Besides those lines added smaller detials like the top line of the skirt now distorts in th wind. I also made the skirt on the whole have more of a wave type motion to it. Clean up some parts of the animation, messed with the timing a little. It was mainly small touch ups at this point. Polish if you will.
Refrences
So the inspiration for this animation test in the first place was thanks to these very famous photos and scene from the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch. In which Actress/Model/Singer and all round sex idol of the Fifties Marilyn Monroe has her skirt blown up by a passing Subway train. For those who aren't aware the scene consists of Marilyn walking the streets with co star Tom Ewell which ends up with Marilyn standing on a grate which connects to the subway. As the Subway goes by it blows wind up the grate causing her skirt to blow up as she is standing directly ontop of it. Thusly she holds her skirt in place while, according to my father and relatives, simultaneously giving the baby boomer generation their first sexual awakening. A famous scene from a famous movie and a famous photo. Thats is what gave me the idea in the first place. I realised I wanted to do a test of something really new to me like the creature test. So this made me think as a character animator I will inevitably animate clothes and thusly clothes are fabrics so best get a sense for how to animate them and how they move and work in relation to what may be in your scene. While not pertinent to the final animation it helps give context for the origination of the idea.
So this video here is one of the many main references I used when animating this fabric test. While not a skirt in the refrence it gives good visualisations of how fabric and the wind interact. I didn't do this for the look, as much of the animating technique on 2s as I stated earlier. You can see it gives several diffrent examples of diffrent frames, diffrent types of wind (irregular waves vs regular waves) and it also gives some diffrent angles to look at so this here was definitely a really big help for me. If you look to the right hand side of the video you will see a piece of cloth that kinda? Alreadly looks like a skirt or atleast it behaves how a skirt would. It doesn't give very realistic animation but it shows how a gust of wind will make a piece of fabric move in a wave formation with many different concave and convex curves countering each other in a desending fashion. Similar to the Snake.
This reference I didn't use as much as the others but it still provided insight. Obviously From the get go one can tell it's rotoscoped but that doesn't matter. What I really picked up from this one is that despite not actually seeing any of the leg, only the feet, one can still see the leg. using the fabric and how it flows and interacts you can see where the leg is even if you can't actually see it. Additionally another thing I took note of was the hem of the skirt and the ruffles within in. This was usefull as my skirt also had slight ruffles, not like this but, to give it more complexity and challenge. How the ruffles slow in a wave like motion, flapping and folding over themselves and the skirt in turn with the skirt itself being in its own motion.
Lastly we comes to probably my favourite of the references I used for this fabric test. Simply beacuse this one has more charm to me. Anyway I digress. This one whilst looking the least like mine played a huge part still. Not in looks but in technique agian. Timing. The timing in the short animation is insanly good. You get a actual sense of a gust. It has no sound but you can hear it in your head. How I implemented this was I get the two extremes and I maybe put one frame between them as a mid point. But I just fill out the latter end so instead of a smooth transition between both frames its a sudden jolt of energy from one state to the other. Which be fair is what a powerful large gust does to things.
Now we are getting onto a reference and tutorial I found online for skirt dynamics specifically. I'll put the link below if your interested. But it's a series of images and gifs giving you the basics for a skirt being blown in the wind. The first image here. As I did started with what I wanted the frame to look like with the body and the line of action for the skirt.
This image here is just laying out how the flow of the skirt would go. Less for looks, more so that we understand the dynamics behind and flowing skirt. she illustrates it in a very visual way which I found helpful. This specifically is what you see with the green line of action in the blocking phase. That is representative of this technique here.
Agian here we have a representation of what those dynamics are talking about put into practice. They even colour coded each wave formation in the skirt to see how they interact with one another in a sequence. While I didn't colour code mine or anything like that. I did make the lines of the segments of the skirt. To illustrate the same principle.
Here She is illustrating how you could do each fold one by one to make things easier for oneself. This impacted me kinda? At least in the sense of me having a pink line of action and the a green hem line for the bottom of the skirt. Following along the line of action. so I did break it down into stages in my own way.
Agian she is illustrating a way to simplify the process here recommending that you use a gif of a wave in motion tp help you with you animation as refrence. On account of them following the same principles. I didn't end up doing this but for those who it would benefit it is good advice.
Lastly we have an example she made of a fully finished and technically applied skirt animation with all of the principles techniques and advice applied. Just so you can get a sense of what the end product should hopefully look like when the lessons are applied correctly.
Link to Blog were this refrence is from
Relevance, reflection, application and future
Now onto relevance. Well this one is rather simple, with me being a character animator and all presumably most of those characters are gonna have some form of clothing or cover. They are probably gonna be made of some kind of cloth or fabric material and thusly I'm gonna need to know how to draw them for one but more importantly, and the main reason I did this, was to understand the mechanics behind the fabric and how they interact with people and the world around it.
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Secondly we have reflection. As to my reflections for this animated test. I would say this one without a doubt proved the most difficult for me and I would even be as brazen to say it wouldn't be easy for others. The intricate curves and folds of each skirt segment and how they interact with the body and the envirmonet at the same time is no easy task. But for changes? I like the body the most that would stay the same. I would add more skirt ruffles and adjust the ones that are already there. Additionally if I had the time I would of added in some extra frames to make the skirt even more smooth. But not to smooth, then it just looks off. Lastly I think I would still play around with the timing. As even though on the whole I think it's good. It could be better still.
Next on the list application. Well I would hope this to be obvious but the application in theory is quite limitless understanding fabric and materials will enable me to draw them better in application when adding such materials to my animations. Which will undoubtedly happen alot. From clothes to curtains to blankets the same theory applies to it all so now that I am familiar with that theory I'm now able to go and apply that to anything really.
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Lastly future. Well certainly as I apply this theory more I will pick up more information and skill as I go along. Sky's the limit. My proficiency in this will grow as I grow as an animator. My experience will lead my practice in the future. Additonally so many characters and creatures would have fabric and interact with it so this knowledge going on from here is critical that I have it. I will do more tests and practices of this kinda work in the future. I'll just be doing more with and looking into fabric in general.