ABSTRACT

Skill in animation is about having a broad bag of tricks an animator can draw from to achieve certain objectives with storytelling and movement. A stagger is a fast and effective way to underpin impact in an action. Staggers can be applied to all aspects in animation, including a stagger on the background when a heavy weight or character crashes down onto it or into it. This is traditionally known as a camera shake. It is always important that animator's animation, specifically action animation, is smooth, natural, and as realistic as possible. The great old animators of the golden past used to talk about the "successive breaking of joints" when animating full-body action with their characters. Eye blinks are such a small item in the greater scheme of things, but it pays the resourceful animator to focus on them a little more than animator would think.