Economy of Motion
So, in the second of a series (probably of 3), we're discussing iconography. Specifically, what it means to make something recognizable. Last time, we went over how a picture is worth a thousand words. That isn't sufficient though; a picture is a picture. A large part of this is because of the whole Uncanny Valley effect. When a human sees a still image, that person will be more forgiving of certain abnormalities than seeing the object in motion. Most of this has to do with subconscious acceptance of flaws.



Setting the foundation here is what we're all about. Using something that is iconic is to help establish something for the viewer/player. As we discussed previously, somebody like E. Honda or Barbie can't exist in real life. However, they are acceptable in video game, movie and comic environments because of the various aspects of their design that are acceptable to us to some extent. We know that it's unrealistic, so we accept those flaws because it is unrealistic. It's already "not real" so mentally, so it's ok. The closer you get to being real, the more unsettling the small changes are. So, for a quick example:

This is a work-in-progress of a Sagat bust that some guys at Gameartisans.org are doing for a Street Fighter bust competition


Here is an example of a Zangief:


Obviously, Sagat looks more realistic than Zangief. When I presented these images to my friends, the immediate reaction was "sagat looks like he is made of rubber". Nobody says "Zangief looks like he's made of marshmallow".

When things start moving, it's even *more* apparent. We subconsciously understand how human motion works. That's why, when we start seeing it not working right, it looks creepy or weird.

Here is the original music video of "Thriller".



Now here is the version that was included as an Easter Egg in the Final Fantasy: Spirits Within DVD:



After watching the two, do you notice a few things? Aki Ross and her team seem much more "puppet-like" than Michael Jackson, despite Michael Jackson's intentions to pretend to not even be human. Even at the very beginning, when it is focused on Jackson and Ross, you should notice small mouth movements. When Jackson does it, it looks reasonable. He's making minute musculature movements around his face and mouth and tongue. Ross... doesn't quite do the same thing. It looks like she's trying but it isn't right. And since it's close enough to be right, but still missing those minute tiny things, it looks downright weird.

So pulling this all together and going back to iconography: When making a game, you need to not only understand what it takes to make a character acceptable to a player in terms of the immediate look, but also in terms of that character's motion. A character (or even an object) that doesn't move right will instantly break that sense of immersion and feel for the character, and catapult the player out of the "zone" of being "in" the game, and back to sitting in front of the TV with a controller in his or her hand. That's the enemy and the bad part. As a game developer, this should be the bad situation that you'd have to avoid as much as possible.

For characters, iconic motions come into play. Most motion is done in 3 parts: The wind-up, the hit and the follow-through. These three parts provide the feeling of depth to a motion (often in combat, but it can be applied to many other types of animations). From a very good blog post by Eric Williams, he explains how attack motions are important. This sort of thing is called Keyframing, and is even an important part of old style 2D animations. Keyframers would draw the special frames that captured the essence of the action that was happening, and then "in-betweeners" would draw the frames that linked the key frames together. See if you can find the spots you think are the lead-in, connection and follow-through spots for Zangief here:



This applies even for things like firing a gun or kicking a soccer ball. When you fire a gun, you first aim, then there's a slight jerk, then the muzzle flash, and then the recoil from firing kicks in. The aiming is your lead up, the muzzle flash lets you know that something happened, and the recoil is your follow-through.

Iconic motion is something that may or may not really be effective in real life, but is still recognized as being good because it looks cool, and is acceptable to players. When you provide the lead-in, connection and follow-through, you make your motion much more iconic and acceptable to players even on a subconscious level.