May 1, 2008

BLINKING IS NOT JUST SOME RANDOM OCCURRENCE

Video thumbnail. Click to play

Okay, okay... so the Suns and the Mavs lost in the first round of the playoffs and what Steve Nash and Jason Kidd are saying here seems pretty irrelevant at this point, but that has nothing to do with why I am posting this. After seeing these commercials a few times I began to notice something. Not only are the two players saying the same words at the same time, they are also blinking at the same time! It doesn't happen just on this one. There are a series of these commercials and as far as I can tell it happens in all of them regardless of which two players are speaking. You can check them out here.

Alot of times as an animator, you never stop to think about when your characters should blink so you randomly throw them in. Shawn Kelly calls this "Randomblinkitis." What's the cure? Well he says it's observation. We blink for a lot of reasons but according to Shawn the most important ones to remember when animating are:
1. When we shift our thought process
2. to show or hide our emotion
3. in the middle of a fast head turn

If anything these commercials have only reinforced what I have learned. Blinking is not just some random occurrence.

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