No updates today, but Sunday
Hey guys, lots to do at work today so there won't be any updates today, unless someone sends in a critique.
Cheers
JD
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
Fantastic "simple" animation
Purple and Brown
Go watch all those episodes, they are really funny and brilliantly simple. The sound design is great and makes the two guys really charming.
There is no fancy rendering, no crazy effects. Just two great characters.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Critique - Walk Cycle (Erik)
Front View - Side View
Your walk looks a lot better, nice job. Right now what sticks out is how long it takes for him to put his foot down. You extend his leg, but then it takes about 3 frames to plant his foot on the ground. It makes his walk very soft. His arms are also swinging pretty big. But you know, that could all be part of his character. In terms of animation, I have two things for you to correct:
First, in the front view. his head wobbles from left to right too much, it feels too stiff (from frame 17 to frame 19 going screen right).
The other thing, and really visible in the front view, are his hips. Take for instance his screen right hip, from frame 6 on. You are rotating the hip up at frame 8 already (the right side goes up). But the hip should be down until frame 16 or 17, because as you put your foot down and take a step, that's when you put your weight on that leg, and that causes the hip to go up.
Once you make the feet hit the ground harder it will help you with the leg/knee popping. Right now, looking at the side view, look at his screen left knee at frame 8 to 9, it goes forward, but then it goes immediately backwards, till frame 12, and stops again. That at speed will make it look like a pop, not super fast pop, but just too fast, especially the movement back.
Cheers
JD
Critique - Bouncing Balls w/character (Joey)
Bounce it to big one:
- 99% done :-) One thing that sticks out is the balls x curve after frame 52. The moment he stops bouncing he slows down too much. It's only the transition from 51 to 53. Your curve must suddenly flatten out. The amount of space it travels until around frame 87 is good.
Heavy Ball:
- FINAL!
Character Ball:
- Cool! You got great timing and squash & stretch, nice! Now all you have to find is a good ending to this clip. Right now, the ball has character, which is great, but once the ball gets on top, it just ends. Try to push it! Push it beyond a ball that's trying it's hardest to get up there. Maybe once it's up there, the big block opens his eye and looks up surprised, or angrily.
Btw. My wife just came in and thought it was really good, that it had a lot of character to it. Nice!
And yes, drawing on LCD monitors is fine. I've been doing it for 3 years now at home and at work, and so far I haven't had any problems.
Nice, you're done with your bouncing balls, concentrate on your character assignment. Add a tail, that could be fun!
Cheers
JD
Animation Question
I was wondering, how much hard work did you put in at school? What was an average day for you in school? 8-12 hours a day working on animation? What is your process of animating?
I worked long hours mostly because I wanted it to look good, but also because the majority of animation classes I took were during the last two semesters.
Towards the end I spent evenings (or afternoons depending on what time I'd come home) up until 3 or 4 in the morning and I would get up at 6 or 7 on week-ends or if I had school in the afternoon. I did a lot of days like that during my last semester.
I usually start animating once I "see" the animation in my head. I'm really bad at thumbnailing, so either I plan out the shot using super rough blocking (rarely, also depending on how light the models are), or (most of the time) I try to visualize the shot until it feels like I've just seen it on TV.
I then block out the animation with main poses and/or beats keying all the controllers on the character. Then I adjust the keys depending on timing issues.
After that I go in and key individual controllers for the more detailed stuff until final polish.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Quicktime and Codec
Please make sure that the filesize of your movies is small. A clip that lasts a few seconds should not be 170MB big.
Do a playblast from Maya, this will give you an .avi file. Open this file in Quicktime, then export that movie using a Sorenson 3 Codec (change the codec within the "options" menu). This should keep it fairly small.
Critique - Bouncing Balls (Jenna)
Two Heavy Balls:
- Looks great. One last thing is the last bounce of the first ball. It's a
bit much. Either reduce the Y or add one more little bounce to it. Second ball is sweet.
Light ball:
- I would add one tiny bounce at the very end.
Heavy ball:
- That one looks great, but leans more towards medium than heavy, and that's
mostly because of the amount of bounces. Spacing wise it's great, but
imagine how many times a bowling ball would bounce.
But your spacing is really good. I would start on the ball with tails and
block that out, then at the end go back to physics balls.
Nice job Jenna, you got it down!
Cheers
Jean-Denis
Critique - Bouncing Balls (Joey)
Lightball: FINAL!
Heavy Ball:
Spacing and bounce wise FINAL, but the ball bounces too far
screen right. I would split the difference at least, have it move screen
right just a tiny bit.
bouncing it to big one:
99% Final, but I will have to check it tonight.
The only thing that I see (or think I see) is once it stops bouncing, it
moves screen left too fast and too far.
But as a whole, those clips are FINAL and very well done. I'm just being
picky. Unless you want those balls on your reel, I would move on and do
the ball+tail version if you want to, or whatever you want to start now
that's on your syllabus.
Good job!
Cheers
JD
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Critique - Bouncing Balls (Jenna)
Heavy Ball:
- The physics are pretty good, but the ball doesn't look heavy. Imagine a bowling ball falling down, it wouldn't bounce that many times.
As for the animation (if we pretend another weight class), be carefull with your spacing. It's pretty even at the beginning, but from frame 39 to frame 40 the ball suddenly drops very far down. I would add another tiny bounce after frame 87.
Medium Ball:
- This one looks great, I like the added squash and stretch! Final!
Except one TINY detail. It looks like you added geometry to the floor. Right now it looks like separate pieces, so if a ball rolls over that, it wouldn't roll smoothly. Hope that makes sense.
Light Ball:
- Looks good too! The only thing I would tweak the last bounces after frame 125, they seem a bit fast.
AAU - Upcoming Class on Monday
Hey guys!
Here's a rundown of what's going to happen tomorrow in class and what you are going to do.
Bring the latest version of whatever you are working on, which can be:
- bouncing balls (light, medium, heavy)
- bouncing ball with character (with or without tail)
- walk cycle
- acting piece
If you haven't started on any of these and were figuring out your individual syllabus, bring your detailed outline (see student example on our class site for help) and we'll talk about it. Be prepared to start working on your assignment(s) in class.
Students who are following the AAU syllabus should bring the bouncing balls assignments. The next step for you is to add a tail to the ball.
REMINDER: even if you follow the AAU syllabus doesn't mean that you can't hand in assignments early. You can stick to the outlined time schedule of course, but if you are done early, I encourage you to email me your work for critique.
- for those of you who are starting with the flower sack, start thinking about what kind of emotion you want to show. Since the flower sack has no eyes and no mouth, every emotion has to be shown through body language. Some emotions could be: happy, sad, angry, tired, shy, nervous, etc.
I will critique each student's work at my desk displaying the animation via the projector for those of you who want to follow the critique. If you prefer to work on your assignments instead that's okay too.
Either way EVERYBODY SHOULD BE ABLE TO WORK ON THEIR ASSIGNMENT IN CLASS.
REMINDER:
- set your animation scene to 24fps
- the scene must include a frame counter
- movies should be in quicktime format 640 x 480
Don't forget to visit www.academyanimation.blogspot.com for daily updates!
Alright! See you tomorrow!
Cheers
Jean-Denis
Critique - Bouncing Balls (Marie)
Light Ball:
- Looks great! One detail thing, either have the movie be only 64 frames long, or smooth out the end of the roll of the ball. Right now the ball suddenly stops at frame 64.
Medium Ball:
- Looks good too. And same detail here, either stop the movie at frame 95 or smooth out the roll after frame 95.
Looking at both the Light and Medium Ball, they do feel similar in weight. I would make the Medium Ball a bit heavier. But the mechanics are good!
Heavy Ball:
- This one needs a bit more work. Check the spacing. From frame 1 to 2 it moves a certain distance, but then from 2 to 3 it moves a lot less screen right but too far down, and after that the spacing is very even until the ball hits the ground. Everything that falls will have a gradual increase of distance it covers. After the first hit the balls moves to far screen right, especially from 8 to 9 and from 9 to 10. The end should get smooth out as well.
Looking good, just a few things to fix on the heavy ball.
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