Animation technique, turning a 2D head

[Blaise Douros]

Unless you have intermediate frames already drawn, you may be stuck with a snappy transition. You could fudge it by horizontally compressing the head a bit before it switches, creating the illusion that it’s turning towards the camera and foreshortening. But without actual intermediate drawings, you’ll just need to animate the movement of the head so that it telegraphs that it’s about to switch directions, in order to reduce the impact of the transition.

[Jim Scott]

There is no way to smooth (make less snappy) a “transition” between two adjacent frames because there is no transition. What you need to do is to create intermediate frames — what the head would look like in-between the two positions — so that there is a transition between the first and final positions. The more you have, the smoother it will be. Rather than drawing the frames yourself, make the layer 3D so that a quick rotation will give the illusion that the head has thickness.

Edit: I was writing my response while Blaise’s was posted.

[Steve Davies]

Jim thanks for your reply, I was fearing that.

[Steve Davies]

Blaise, thanks for confirming my fears! Thanks for answering

[Steve Bentley]

also if the 3D rotation that Jim suggested is done fast and you crank up the motion blur, that will cover a lot of sins.