Secondary Action

This follows on from primary action, which is the main large movement that creates secondary and possibly tertiary action. It usually follows a particular limb like going to catch a ball; the primary action would be to throw your arms forward. The secondary action would probably include the preparing the legs for jumping to catch it. Secondary action mainly covers action like this by which I mean helping the characters efficiency by supporting the previous action and this is something that should be carefully planned. It can also be used to add a fuller dimension and extra personality through ways of making the character discreetly flick their hair bite their nails or add clumsy traits. Tertiary action is anything that follows from both primary and secondary action and is usually saved for appendages, such as lip synch, hair or clothing ruffles. It goes along the same theory as overlapping action by encouraging the animator to ask him or herself; what else is affected if I move this?
Secondary action should not be more interesting or more dominant that the main action that is moving, if this is the case than it is either the wrong movement to use or it needs to be much more subtle in its composition. ‘All your choices will be wrapped up in the reason why you are making animation, the type of audiences you wish to reach and how you intend to distribute your work,’ (C. Webster, 2005 p.3) The principle ‘Staging’ has a close relationship to this principle for this very reason, as the audience will be very confused if any secondary or tertiary action masks any of the major action that is necessary to the animated story. Yet at the same time this cannot be taken so literally to the point where the secondary action is barely noticeable at all, as it will seem far too constricted. All these actions must be planned so well that they can be animated in an extremely interlaced natural way. The easiest way discovered to help with this process was to use the primary action as a starting point, by animating that part first. Then going through that action again move onto consider any secondary and tertiary animation that may compliment this natural movement and adding that in. finally the animator must critically analyse and review this movement and tweak it in points to ensure that it flows correctly and is unmistakably convincing.
Sometimes expressions (usually the secondary or even tertiary actions) will need to be the main focus on the screen, this means that large body movements need to compliment them. This can prove quite an arduous task especially if the zoom shot is in particularly close, the solution is to make the expression very obvious, almost to an excessive exaggerated point so that the audience gets a clean clear message or its value will be lost.