Components of a Soundtrack

Components of a Soundtrack

Recently, in a conversation about the music in an animation film, I got confused between the different terminologies used when talking about sound. Sometimes I spoke about music, sometimes about a soundtrack, and sometimes about a score, while actually referring to the same thing. I decided to do some research about the components of sound used in an animated film and found my answers in The Animation Bible written by Maureen Furniss. The components of a soundtrack, namely the dialogue, score, sound effects and the sound mix, are discussed below. They all work together to create the overall feeling of the animation.

Dialogue

Dialogue is achieved in a soundtrack through voice artists recorded quite early in the production process before any animation is done. This voice recording can be done either by recording every voice individually or as an ensemble where the group records together. The advantage of this is that the finished recordings are more energetic than the individual recorded voices. Although the ensemble recording has its privileges it makes it more difficult to edit the individual voices when they overlap, and when one performer makes a mistake the whole group has to redo the recording (which takes more time and money).

All the recordings are combined into a ‘scratch track’ that contains all the dialogue in the correct order. The scratch track is then combined with still images from the story board that results in an animatic. This animatic shows the correct pacing of the work and can thus be a useful tool for detailed planning of individual movements. Pre-recording voices is not something all studios do as many animated films contain no voices at all, which is probably an easier way to go because no lip syncing or subtitles are needed which also makes the production cheaper. If accompanying sound effects or even music with words telling a story are added successfully, there is no need for voice-recording. Viewers rely on visuals, music and sound effects to interpret the story.

Score

Where dialogue isn’t used, score plays a significant role. Visual music works usually aim to create a visual equivalent to music by using design and other components of motion picture production. Sometimes films are done without any score and in silence the visuals are supposed to generate their own kind of ‘music’. Norman McLaren was a master of drawn and photographic sound.

The score is generally used to create an emotional context for the work or to create a bridge between images or frames. Instrumental pieces affect viewer on a more subliminal level whereas music containing vocals have a different and more direct effect. If, however, music with vocals is used that do not portray the intended message, the viewer can become confused and the visuals and music will be competing for the primary role. It is very important that the rights are cleared when animating to existing music. If not done correctly, the film will not be shown at festivals or distributed. This means that the existing music has to be replaced with other music. 

It is common practise to use popular music as a scratch track and then replace it with original music later. This method also helps the musicians to get an idea of the tempo and type of music that needs to be created.

Sound Effects

Sound elements can either be ‘diegetic’ meaning it comes from within the world of the film like footsteps or ‘non-diegetic’ which comes from outside like a voice-over. Diegetic sounds can be onscreen from sources that can be seen or offscreen coming from a world beyond its borders like unseen birds chirping. Sound effects typically added after the animation has been done are useful for developing spatial and temporal aspects of the visuals. Often an animated action happens more quickly than in real life. It is speeded up for effect and as result pre-recorded library sound effects used in live-action soundtracks are not always as useful but can be manipulated to achieve creative results.

Sound effects can be created by using instruments or objects. This process is called ‘foley’ where objects can recreate sounds like fire, rain, footsteps, birds in flight and campaign bubbles. Throughout animation history, zany sounds have been used to highlight the antics of cartoon characters.

Sound Mix

All the separate sound elements are combined in a re-recording mix where the various components are made louder to stand out or softer to act in the background. In real life numerous sounds occur at the same time but people tend to be selective listeners. This effect is recreated in film or animation film so that people don’t get confused. If not done, the viewers would find the sound unappealing. The sound designer is in charge of editing the sounds and music and balance out the elements in the story in order to manipulate the perception of the viewer.

The dialogue is generally the loudest but in some cases to create a certain effect the music may be louder. For instance if the sound effects are louder than the voices a curiosity may be  created about what is being said.  Silence directs viewers’ attention to the visuals and may heighten the impact of any sound before or after it.

All of the above components are important in creating a successful soundtrack.  I now know the right lingo or terminology to use when talking about the soundtrack for an animation film.

Reference: Furniss, Maureen. The Animation Bible. New York: Abrams, 2008. Print.

Animating a Walk Cycle

My method of animating a walk cycle

Recently we were tasked to animate an emotive walk cycle. I did a walk cycle before by following a tutorial so I thought this task would be easy… then I started and it turns out it’s not.  After many failed attempts I think I got it! Here’s what I did (I am animating in 3D):

As you might know there are two ways to approach an animation namely pose to pose and straight ahead. With pose to pose you would key the most important positions and then add the in between positions later. With straight ahead you would start with one step and key all the positions of all the limbs then the next key, and so forth. There are great books on how to do a walk cycle such as The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams, which is good reference.

You can tell a whole story with a walk and thus it is important to decide on what story you want to tell and do all the necessary planning before just jumping right into it. I decided to do a male model walk which is fast but not as fast as a run and there is allot of hip action involved. To make it interesting I used a bulky big character rig.

The process I follow isn’t pose to pose or straight ahead but rather something in between. I struggled at first with the positioning of the body and the feet and decided to let my character walk on one place instead of moving forward (I’ll try that when I’m more comfortable with this process).

When animating a walk cycle you first have to plan it. There are 5 important phases or positions in a walk which is contact, down, pass, up, and then it ends with contact. This is where I got confused… because then in actuality you have to repeat these twice to get one full step, which I figured out the hard way. When the planning is done, let the animating begin!

First I figured out the rhythm of my walk. This was most possibly the hardest and most important part of the process. I used a framerate of 24 and decided to do one step on the 12th frame for a brisk walk (which was at frame 13 because you cannot key frame 0). I keyed my feet at the right positions in the Z axis but I suggest you play with your rig a bit before animating and then realizing that it’s not what you’re going for.  Also remember that even if key 25 is not showing in your 24 frame clip, you have to key it because otherwise if you loop it your action will just die down at frame 24. I found Williams’ example a good one to use as reference but I made my own adjustments to understand it better (my brain got confused with both legs in one picture). I then keyed the feet’s positions in the Y axis.

After keying the feet I keyed the body’s up and down movement in the Y axis. I keyed the positions at frame 1 and 25 first as they were the same and then 13 as it was the opposite of 1 and 25. Only after that I keyed the other positions in between. The next thing I did is to key the hips’ rotation, first on the Z axis and then on the Y axis. Please note that I did have actual video of footage of a model walk that I used as reference (I encourage you to do this as it helped me immensely).

After the hips I went back to the feet and did their rotation and the toe’s rotation on the Z axis. I then animated the spine and upper body’s rotation and the feet’s position in the X axis before moving to the arms. I keyed everything to key 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25. Only later did I do the offset by moving the keyed movements to one or two keys before or after the original position.  Last I did the hands which I positioned in a natural pose and rotation them where necessary. Do a play blast regularly to see your progress and tweak the positions when you are unhappy with them.

And there you have it! Everyone will have their own style of animating so I encourage you to play around until you find it.

Reference: Williams, Richard. The Animator's Survival Kit. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2009. Book.

Animating to Music

Getting the beat  

Ferdinand Engländer wrote an article on tips and tricks for animating to music on the Animation Island community forum. These can be used when animating characters dancing to music or even for animating a slight head bob.

The rules Englander developed for syncing movement and music in animation are as follows:

The beat rules!

A song has fixed beats on which a character will move: on every beat the character will do a big move (hit move) and on an offbeat a in between move. It’s very important to understand the beat of the song before animating to it. A beat of a song will usually stay constant throughout unless the song slows down or goes faster. When animating, Englander advices, it is important to always do the visual hit 2 to 4 frames earlier than the actual beat (light travels faster than sound) but never later than the beat.

Cycles
It is easy to use loop-able cycles of movement for a character. This makes it less work to animate but can seem too repetitive. Instead of using two full repetitive cycles, repeat the first half cycle two times to make up for the same amount of time (Disney does this in their films).

Up and down

Instead of moving a character from left to right only, move him/her up and down, for example, from the left side standing up straight to the right side bending down. This will make his entire body contract and expand. By moving his body weight and using his limbs to stretch or bend visual contrast will be created which is appealing to the viewer (it makes the overall movement more interesting).

Make it snappy

The character should not ease into the position; rather make him snap into the hit position.  The phase before the beat usually creates anticipation so experiment with holding a position and then snapping or with different timing between two beats as illustrated below:

Finding the beat

Obviously before starting to animate you have to know the rhythm of the music. If you do not have the right beat, the movements and music will be out of sync. You can do this by marking every time you hear a beat or by using a metronome to make the beat visible/audible.

Preparing the music

You can use math to do this. Musicians work in beats per minute (bpm) whereas animators work in frames per second. So to work out the correct beat per frame in one minute if you are working in 24fps you have to multiply 24 (amount of frames) by 60 (amount of seconds in a minute) which equals 1440 frames. Therefore, to calculate which frames the beat is on, you divide the song’s bpm by 1440. That means that if the bpm of the song is 120, the beat will fall on every 12 frames.

To conclude, the beat of the music is one of the most important things to consider when animating to music.

Reference: Engländer, Ferdinand. “Animating to Music.” Animator Island. 26 Dec. 2011. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.