ANIMATION BOOTCAMPOSCILLATIONS, ANTICIPATION, OVERSHOOT

Fancy words, simple ideas.

Oscillation means back and forth... like a pendulum.

When motion decays, it follows a pattern called a DECAY CURVE.

Don’t be freaked out by all the curvy, graphy goofiness below. Oscillation is a fancy word for “back and forth.” The cool thing about learning how to make a convincing back-and-forth animation is that it also lets you start creating proper Anticipation and Overshoots. Watch the video lesson, and reference this PDF if you forget any of the rules or the way your animation curve should look.

NOTE: The graphs below are all VALUE graphs... not Speed graphs.

Imagine a pendulum swinging back and forth. The value of the ROTATION of that pendulum will follow some rules. If the pendulum swings forever and never decays (stops swinging) then its curve looks like this:

These types of movements (like the pendulum on a clock) will follow certain rules. • Equal Timing (number of frames) between each extreme position • Smooth Eases in and out of each keyframe • Equal Spacing on each subsequent “swing”

If the pendulum swings less and less because gravity is pulling it down and stopping it, then the motion decays following a DECAY CURVE which always looks like an inverted umbrella. Here are 2 examples:

This is a gradual decay curve. Notice that there is no EASE OUT at the beginning of the curve, but there is a slow EASE IN at the end.

This is a steeper / more extreme decay curve. The motion slows down much more rapidly.

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ANIMATION BOOTCAMPOSCILLATIONS, ANTICIPATION, OVERSHOOT

Apply a decay curve to a standard Oscillation and...

Now, if we also decay the TIMING, decreasing the number of frames between extremes...

What does this have to do with Anticipation and Overshoot?

Note that the Timing (number of frames) between each extreme position is still unchanged. Only the value at each keyframe changes, and it decreases according to the DECAY CURVE. For an oscillation move, you have to sort of imagine the decay curve affecting both the “top” and “bottom” of your curve like you see above.

The same principles that affect the TIMING and DECAY of a curve in an oscillation will be in play during an Anticipation and, especially, during an Overshoot. Look at the graph below to see what I mean. That overshoot sure does look like the above “springy” graph... don’t it?

When both the value and TIMING are decayed, you get a springier feeling movement. This is far more common in MoGraph than a standard Pendulum-Swing type of move, and the concept of DECAY is something that you’ll apply to many other types of animation.

This is what you’d get if you had a pendulum with a spring that was forcing back to a complete stop every time it was moved.

Linear Movement With Anticipation and Overshoot. Note the oscillation at the end of the movement as the Overshoot “settles.”

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