To double frame, or not double frame?

[Daniël]

I'm not saying double framing is bad per se, but 99% of the time it is used it does look worse than it would without it. It often just makes the whole animation less dynamic, just so things look more powerful, for which there are many other ways to achieve that.

Even some of the best animators still have a terrible use of double framing in my opinion.

[Lush]

I have played around with double framing a lot and I can say as far as pivot goes it tends to only look good when adding emphasis on heavy moves coupled with nice poses (Firecracker, Doddsy etc), and it works decently with idling. Infact single frame idling tends to look shit since you have to animate a fair few pixels worth of motion to keep smoothness and a small amount of easing that it looks completely unbelievable a person would move/sway/bop around that much when they are standing still (it can be done well but most tend to over do it).

What really bugs me is that double framing doesn't translate well in pivot. I have messed around with flash at 24 fps, using double framing and even triple framing quite frequently and it looks perfectly acceptable, you just lay down your key poses and then double up any sections that go to fast to control the timing. I have tried applying the same method of animating in pivot with 24 fps for a much rougher looking result. I can't tell what it is that's the problem but I feel there's a very noticeable difference between pivot and flash despite using the same style of spacing (Tricky Combo in my pivot thread is a good example of how it doesn't turn out nearly as well if you compare it my flash stuff).

I'm gonna look into it further when I get home to see what the problem is, whether it's me as an animator, the program or if it's just in my head.

[Behemoth]

Doubling framing CAN be used to add a cool effect to an animation that isn't necessarily slow-motion (like people previously mentioned, Doddsy) but I think its okay when used for slow-mo. I don't think it can fully utilize the effect of slow-mo as well as animating every single frame, but unless the slow-mo effect is either too hard to animate or not that important in the scene, double framing should be fine. I do like to see people double frame at certain points of impact cause I think it emphasizes the strength of the hit and makes it seem a lot more powerful.

[Caleb]

I have played around with double framing a lot and I can say as far as pivot goes it tends to only look good when adding emphasis on heavy moves coupled with nice poses (Firecracker, Doddsy etc), and it works decently with idling. Infact single frame idling tends to look shit since you have to animate a fair few pixels worth of motion to keep smoothness and a small amount of easing that it looks completely unbelievable a person would move/sway/bop around that much when they are standing still (it can be done well but most tend to over do it).

What really bugs me is that double framing doesn't translate well in pivot. I have messed around with flash at 24 fps, using double framing and even triple framing quite frequently and it looks perfectly acceptable, you just lay down your key poses and then double up any sections that go to fast to control the timing. I have tried applying the same method of animating in pivot with 24 fps for a much rougher looking result. I can't tell what it is that's the problem but I feel there's a very noticeable difference between pivot and flash despite using the same style of spacing (Tricky Combo in my pivot thread is a good example of how it doesn't turn out nearly as well if you compare it my flash stuff).

I'm gonna look into it further when I get home to see what the problem is, whether it's me as an animator, the program or if it's just in my head.

It probably has to do with resizing. In Flash, your brain has a lot more interesting changes to see in a frame than in Pivot. Basically, key poses have little appeal in Pivot because they're so static, so 2 frames without movement don't really add anything.

[Lush]

I have played around with double framing a lot and I can say as far as pivot goes it tends to only look good when adding emphasis on heavy moves coupled with nice poses (Firecracker, Doddsy etc), and it works decently with idling. Infact single frame idling tends to look shit since you have to animate a fair few pixels worth of motion to keep smoothness and a small amount of easing that it looks completely unbelievable a person would move/sway/bop around that much when they are standing still (it can be done well but most tend to over do it).

What really bugs me is that double framing doesn't translate well in pivot. I have messed around with flash at 24 fps, using double framing and even triple framing quite frequently and it looks perfectly acceptable, you just lay down your key poses and then double up any sections that go to fast to control the timing. I have tried applying the same method of animating in pivot with 24 fps for a much rougher looking result. I can't tell what it is that's the problem but I feel there's a very noticeable difference between pivot and flash despite using the same style of spacing (Tricky Combo in my pivot thread is a good example of how it doesn't turn out nearly as well if you compare it my flash stuff).

I'm gonna look into it further when I get home to see what the problem is, whether it's me as an animator, the program or if it's just in my head.

It probably has to do with resizing. In Flash, your brain has a lot more interesting changes to see in a frame than in Pivot. Basically, key poses have little appeal in Pivot because they're so static, so 2 frames without movement don't really add anything.

This has always been my suspicion but then I think to myself people resize all the time in pivot these days and there's those in flash that use the line tool which can come out equally as crisp yet look much better with 24fps using single and double framing together.

I know it's not relevant to the final gif result since it exports properly, but when animating has anyone else felt the pivot fps slider doesn't really change the playback until you change it by like 3-5 fps? Unsure if this has been fixed since I haven't animated in forever but it definitely does make the whole flash style 24fps approach harder to tackle in pivot.

[MCToast]

Professional animators "double frame" tho.

[Cowboy Memebop]

yes double frame. of course double frame. nothing wrong with it. but not everything needs it

also depends on the style you're going for

[Ray]

I tend to alternate between the two sometimes one looks good and sometimes the other looks good

[-▲-]

Just in fights.
Its better to do impact moves :)

I use, firecracker use, Doddsy used.

[Mori]

Mori uses.

[Juke]

If we are talking about pivot, then double framing isn't the best way to achieve slower movements.
If we are talking about animation in a much bigger perspective, the majority of all animation is double frames. This is known as animating on 2's. I'm currently using flash at 24fps and I'm doing a good bit of double framing, it's ok it doesn't look choppy it helps with the timing like Lush stated above.
If any of you are going to do bigger animation when you are older, I'm guessing a lot of you will be "double framing". It doesn't really work with pivot but pivot is a basic program so it doesn't really matter.