I know I've talked a lot about anticipation in the ebook and elsewhere, but it's worth hitting this a little here on the blog, because it's something that I still see missing on demo reel after demo reel.
As human beings, we are programmed to conserve as much energy as possible, and to find the least taxing way for any movement. If you combine that with Newton's Law of an object in motion tending to stay in motion, while an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an *UNBALANCED* force, you end up with the principle of anticipation.
The key word that Newton used is "unbalanced." If we are standing still, perfectly balanced, it's impossible to move your feet, let alone take a step. The only way that we can get moving, is to unbalance ourselves. Don't believe me? Try it! Stand up, concentrate on keeping your hips centered perfectly between your feet, and try to take a step to the side.
OK, are you back? Impossible, right? You just can't do it without shifting your hips one way or the other.
So, if you do want to take a step to the left, what are the hip movements that would allow us to do that?
Well, we'd have to get unbalanced, so that means we can either push our hips left or right. Either way will get us out of that stationary balanced pose that has us locked in place.
However, by now, we all know that you can't lift your left foot without moving your hips (or your center of gravity, which may be different if multiple characters are physically interacting, or if your character is holding something super heavy, etc) to be centered over your right foot, right?
So that pretty much rules out moving your hips left. You CAN do it - you can move your hips left and take a really quick step with your left foot. You won't fall if your footstep is fast enough.
So that pretty much rules out moving your hips left. You CAN do it - you can move your hips left and take a really quick step with your left foot. You won't fall if your footstep is fast enough.
Go ahead and try it.
C'mon - stand up. Give it a whirl. We won't laugh, we promise.
OK, did you try it? Do you see what I mean? It's totally doable, but it's awkward, and more importantly, it uses a LOT of extra energy that you didn't have to waste.
Let's try it with moving our hips to the right. If you want to try it again, go head.
See the difference? If you shift your hips to the right, it frees up your left foot to move in a very relaxed way. And then when you plant that left foot onto the ground, what happens? Your stance has widened, and now your hips will naturally overshoot your center of gravity as they fall down and to the left, moving to be closer to your left foot than your right foot.
See the difference? If you shift your hips to the right, it frees up your left foot to move in a very relaxed way. And then when you plant that left foot onto the ground, what happens? Your stance has widened, and now your hips will naturally overshoot your center of gravity as they fall down and to the left, moving to be closer to your left foot than your right foot.
So, why is that important? Because your hips are now using gravity to get them moving to the left. Which is much less taxing movement! Your hips now have momentum to get the body moving to the left without you having to use much muscle energy to make it happen. You've found the *easiest* way to get moving left, which is always the most natural way to move, because, as I said, humans are lazy and programmed to conserve energy!
If you extrapolate this out a little more, the hips moving left will make it very easy for you to lift up your right foot and move onto your next step. At this point, the placement of that right footstep will completely determine the rest of the movement. If the right foot just shifts 10 inches to the left and plants again, you've just done a sidestep, and the major sideways movement is pretty much over now until you get unbalanced again. However, if that foot plants further left than the left foot, you've just initiated a full walk, where the momentum of the hips will continue to free up each foot, one at a time, and keeping the balance forward a little will keep the body moving forward.
Remember, a walk is just a "controlled fall," where each step is catching the body and preventing it from falling over.
So, that's just one very simple explanation of anticipation. Another important use of anticipation is to create a build-up of force and power within the body. The spring-like wind-up of a baseball pitcher or the crouch before a jump are great examples of this type of anticipation. Again, it's still about being unbalanced, and using the weight and twist of the body in order to help put more force into an action, so we aren't talking about anything radically different from the sidestep anticipation, but these would be more advanced uses of those concepts.
Again, if you don't believe anticipation can help you put some force into your actions, stand up one more time, and see how high you can jump without crouching down first. You aren't going to get far, unless you have superhuman toe strength. :)
One last comment about anticipation -- the amount and speed of anticipation will completely determine what the audience expects to see in the following action. If you do a very small anticipation, but follow it with a HUGE jump, it's certain to stand out and be noticed as looking wrong. Likewise, a fast and extreme anticipation followed by a slow movement (a small jump or slow walk) will look very odd and jarring.
However, you can use this to your advantage in some instances, particularly for humor. Depending on the style you are working in, and the style of the scene, it may be very funny to see a big windup anticipation followed by a slow walk, or the tiniest anticipation followed by a character zipping out of frame. Loony Toons does this all the time to great effect, so there are certainly instances you'd break some of these rules...
There isn't enough room in a blog to really get too deep into anticipation, because it's such a major and deep principle, but I hope that helps someone!
Over and out,
Shawn :)
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