KASBLUE

KODAMA

What is smearing? Smearing is a multitude of techniques used in animation to bridge two or more frames to create the illusion of motion through methods like blurring, warping, distortion, and a few others.

I wanted to start of with a fresh animation to demonstrate some movements.

It looks like it can definitely use some extra information to convey the motion of the sword. This is where we starting thinking about how to smear the object(s).

The most common approach that I’ve noticed that animators take, especially newer animators, is that they warp the whole object. As in they have a point A, and a point B, and then they just have a “mass” of implied motion in between those points.

Here’s a still shot

It works quite well with objects like swords. So here’s what my attempt looked like.

It definitely helped explain the movements more, but I’m not sure I liked it.

Thankfully there are other “types” of smears that we can look at to try to see if they fit in this particular animation.

The next one I wanted to try was “speedlining.” This is basically when you distort the edges or add speedlines to the edges to make the object appear in motion.

Here’s an example

and the still shot:

notices how the edges appear more sketchy. This one is really common and it can be executed in different ways.

Here’s my attempt

I really like this type of smearing, even though it still lacks some of the motion that the first iteration lacked. The speedlines really add character to the motion that would otherwise be missing in a normal warp, but I still needed that smear to bring it to the point where it needed to be.

So here’s what some call “doubling.” (and just as a side comment, I don’t think any of these have “official names” other than just smearing)

Here’s the still shot

This was a really well executed smear which I don’t think would have worked the same if you would have just warped the faces.

Here’s another slightly different execution

with the still shot

It’s like a distortion mixed with doubling, and that’s what I like about smears.. you can mix and match things you feel would work in the particular scene.

So here’s my mix n’ match smear.

Not the best execution, but for our purposes I think it works well.

Motion blurring is really powerful as well. Film uses it all the time, as does 2d animation. Notice the force of the impact being pronounced with the added blur at the head.

Here’s the still shot

There are a few other smears I thought were interesting because it just speaks to the way our brain interprets these frames without even considering the logical implications of the individual frames.

Here’s one example

I don’t know if you caught that, but here is the still shot:

The guy has a knob for a hand. It works so well, you don’t stop to think about implication of that hand’s morphology. 

Here’s another one that doesn’t make too much sense.

Like what is this

"from the river to the sea"

Android users: Go forth and GIF 

Your Tumblr app makes GIFs now, just like the iOS app does.

Any video on your phone can be giffed. You’ve probably already shot tons of them, and they probably contain tons of giffable moments. Just:

Open a new photo post. 

Pick a video. 

Thwack!—it’s a GIF.

Speed it up. Slow it down. Make it eternally loop, or fool it into rebounding back and forth across time. Have fun figuring out the things you can do with your GIF.

Some additional tips for your GIF-making pleasure:

The shorter your GIF is, the better it’ll look. 

Speeding up a slow-mo GIF to 3x or 4x makes for a crazy-smooth normal-speed GIF.

Tap the rebound once to make your GIF go back and forth, twice to make it run in reverse.