Belly Dancing Animations and Art

Kracko

New member
Hello all. I'm new to this forum and I've made it known that I am an animator/artist that has been a big fanatic of belly dancing. I'd like to post this thread for posting belly dance related artwork. Anyone can post here in case anyone wants to contribute their artwork as well. We can also have discussions and feedback on the artwork posted as well.

I'll start it off with a little animation I did today. I was fascinated with a motion called the "hip drop" move and I wanted to animate the motion of it but it sort of turned into a hip shimmy (if that is the correct terminology)



I would totally appreciate feedback on this motion! Constructive criticism is always welcome!!

I might attempt making other animated belly dance movements as well. Feel free to suggest something I could possibly tackle. I always like a challenge :D
 
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Shanazel

Moderator
Okay, you're new here and maybe you really don't know any better so I'm going to try and explain the situation nicely.

If you had any idea how long and hard we've had to fight against the image of belly dancers as impetus for male fantasy you wouldn't come around here posting barely dressed elves for us to comment on. Put some decent costumes on your characters and then we'll talk about the animated movements.
 

Kracko

New member
Put some decent costumes on your characters and then we'll talk about the animated movements.

I apologize for the offense. As an animator it's important to have an audience understand the movement of a characters' anatomy and I thought it would be much easier to visually understand my work with that model as opposed to having a character that didn't visually show enough anatomy to understand the motion.

Here is a different model with the same animation applied to it. I hope it can be a much more decent representation.

http://sta.sh/0d74pm09wtd

Morgana Hip Drop.jpg
 

Daimona

Moderator
Hi there.

A lot of belly dance movements are relatively small and controlled, and may as well as isolating moves.

Considering a belly dancing hip drop, your animation is exaggerating the move and it goes both both up and down and out with her hips (swaying).

A pure hip drop is either a small movement from the neutral position and down, or inclues a hip lift which will make the move much bigger (to or below the neutral position). Notice that the other hip should not be moving outwards, but move in the opposite direction (up/down). The skirt would only have a small ripple, not swaying from side to side.

You should also be aware that your animation is bouncing up and down, while a belly dancer would usually stay level while doing it and not letting the head and body bounce up and down.

Look at this video for inspiration and further explanation of the hip drop move: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4bMFdLH3FU.
 
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Kracko

New member
Thank you so much @Daimona

I appreciate the feedback a lot. I gave the animation a second go. It's not perfect but hopefully it's going in the right direction. Right now I should probably look into animating other basic movements but I digress.

http://sta.sh/0fw7buxsvby

The bone node that accounts for the models hips unfortunately cannot isolate the hips seperately so I tried to fool around with the segmented structure they gave me. Oh well DX Maybe someday I can get it to look legitimate but for now I think that's the best I can do.

Anyway thank you again @Daimona. Your suggestions and sources helped out a lot!! :)
 

Darshiva

Moderator
That's okay, because hips don't actually move in isolation because of the way our bodies move. Think of the modelling program as a beginner student. To begin with you will see a lot of motion on the supporting side but over time, with practice you will be able to get the motion to be more emphasised on the working side and a lot smaller/more subtle on the supporting side. When I place my hands on my hips when doing wahda wa noss, I can feel motion in the supporting side even though I can't SEE motion there, and that corresponds to what I see in my beginner students.

Can I suggest that like a beginning student you focus her on alternating hip lifts/hip drops. That way as an animator you will get a feel for the moves generated and like a beginner student, you can grow from there.
 

Darshiva

Moderator
Here's an instruction on how to do a hip lift/drop. Listen to her instruction and try it out. Getting a feel for the movement will help you to understand how to animate it.

[video=youtube;OouxwBZZnTs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OouxwBZZnTs[/video]
 

Daimona

Moderator
Yes, that was not a precise explanation from me (I just edited and rephrased my previous post). What I wanted to say was not isolate one hip, but isolating the hip movements from the rest of the body.

It is a good idea that you try out the movements yourself and feel where they come from.
 

Shanazel

Moderator
Zorba beat me to it. Sign up for classes! You might end up enjoying them even better than animation. ;)
I appreciate the prompt costume adjustment; thank you. You might like to check out the Thought Provoking Costume thread for some other ideas.

I'm curious: what is your goal as an animator? Are you looking to provide instruction, entertainment, or just stretching your skills?
 

Kashmir

New member
Sorry - nothing like a hip drop. It should only go vertically and what makes a hip drop different from a hip lift or a plain old hip rock is timing. Although far from accurate, think: down, stop, sneak up ie fast down, a short pause and an unaccented return up.
 

Aniseteph

New member
Agreed. The animation looks to have too much side to side motion, like a dog waggling it's tail enthusiastically, and it's accentuated by the stiff skirt.

For hip drops think of the motion you'd get with a stringed puppet/marionette if you pulled only a string from the point of the hip straight up and then let it go. That's what is happening at the skeleton level. A live dancer has different ways of powering that movement and a variety of ways to change the feel of it, but as Kashmir says, the hip is dropping vertically.
 

shiradotnet

Well-known member
Back in the early days of the Internet, some web pages featured what was known as "animated dancing pages". They played background music, and had animated figures "dancing" to it.

So, of course, as the owner of one of the first belly dancing web sites out there, I felt an uncontrollable urge to play with creating my own animated dancing pages. Nowadays, I think I'd want to make some improvements to the quality of the graphics. At the time I created these, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the original cartoon and its modifications for creating the other stills to make the movement. I then used a stand-alone tool (which probably no longer exists) to assemble the individual panels into the animated gif. This was back in the days before software such as Poser existed.

Here are my specimens, from 1997 or 1998. The music links are broken, I need to fix them. But you can at least see the animations:

http://www.shira.net/animated-bellydancing.htm

http://www.shira.net/noahs-ark.htm

http://www.shira.net/noahs-ark2.htm
 
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