Critique - Walkcycle (Chien)

Direct Link: Chien's Walk, side and front

Good, there is attitude in the walk.

The major things to fix are his legs and arms. The both feel poppy. The arms need to be on a nice curve, also his hands (mainly his left one) seems to rotate forward as it swings forward.

The chest could use some (tiny) more Y rotation, showing that the chest is influenced by the arm swings.

With an angry walk like that, when his feet stomp down, the hips would get affected a bit more, the would move up a bit faster, taking in the weight. In the front view, his screen right foot seems to slide towards the left. From the side view, the feet seem to accelerate backwards before he lifts them, make sure that your curve is all linear, there can't be any speed change.

Yeah, main thing are his arms and legs.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

New Ratatouille Trailer

New Ratatouille trailer

Check it out, looks AWESOME!

Very inspiring indeed!

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Walkcycle (YK)

Direct Link: YK's Walk, front and side

Hey,

good stuff!

Animation wise it's already very far along, nice work. Side view: you got some knee pops here and there, like from 13 to 14 on the backleg. The same leg has a short movement forward from 19 to 20 (the spacing before and after seems bigger, make sure that's smooth out).
When the foot gets off the ground, it stops very abruptly from 4 to 5 (same from 15 to 16). Look at how his heel goes up and then suddenly stops going up, that spacing needs more love.
In the front view the tip of his stick could be on a nice arc. From 7 to 14 is very linear, a nicer curve would be a nice touch. You can tweak that arc using his wrist rotation as well (right now it looks like that hand doesn't rotate at all).

Next up you need to be a bit more specific about your character. The walk has a nice attitude, he looks mean and has a stick in his hand. But why? Is this going to be a sword? Is it a soldier? Is it a teacher with a stick for his students (SLACKERS!)? Or a parent getting ready to spank his kids? Or a kid beating up his parents? :-)

Have fun with the character!

Looking good, keep going!
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Weight (Chien)

Direct Link: Chien's Weight

Hey,

looking better! Mechanics are all pretty much there, now the fine tuning
part is next.

Your push:

once he pushes and moves his body forward, it stops at frame 18. That
stop is too sudden, you can smooth it out, slow down that stop.

You got a weird neck pop from 45 to 46.

The step from 122 to 127 is too fast, you can add 2 more frames to that.

The getting up til 161 is good, but his left arm swings back and the
suddenly forward. That forward move is too fast, plus it ends too
quickly, you could have the arm swing more.

Wiping the sweat of his head is good, it reads, but how he moves his arm
down is too fast. Also think about how that big arm movement will affect
the rest of his body. Nothing moves independently. So if his arm goes up
to his head, then the shoulder goes up, his chest will rotate, his
overall body might move. Same when the arm goes down again.

Look at the post on our class site about Animation Mentor. Look at the
student showcase, you'll see a box push assignment. It's more cartoony
than yours, but still, you'll see that the character has a lot of
personality and the animation is very polished. That needs to be your
motivation, you'll be competing with clips like that.

Keep going!
Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Weight (Erik)

Direct Link: Erik's Weight

Hey Erik,

the overall animation right now looks a bit swimmy, too spliney, you will have to work on the timing a bit more. Same with the mechanics of the throw. That's the tricky part once you get out of blocking into polish.
After frame 106 or so, when he lowers the pyramid tip, it looks like his arms stretch out, from 120 on til 125 his chest is moving too independent from the rest of the body. The overlapping of the bod and the tip gets better after that, but you have to be careful about the arc. Once he swings the tip til 157 the arc is good, but with that momentum and swing the tip would swing almost out of frame to the left. Looking at the image below, the red line is what you have now, the green one is what it should be doing considering your throw strength. You'll have to rework that throw a bit so that the arc looks more plausible.


















You also have the alien jump or get pulled by the tip after the throw. It's a good idea, but the physics of it need more work. Let's say he starts getting pulled at around 158, til 163 it seems ok, but then his arc is flattening. The alien just hovers over screen left til 166 and his legs bend, even though he didn't hit the ground. Then he goes down in a straight line til 169. That whole swing needs a consistent arc, it's too linear and breaking right now.
His upper body moves up really fast from 164 to 168, then suddenly stops and starts moving/rotating screen right.
The adjustment has a big pop in his body from 237 to 238, that needs some love as well.

Getting better, but it's getting down to frame by frame tweaking and fixing or some heavy duty graph editor tweakage :-)

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Ball & Walkcycle (Marie)

Direct Link: Marie's Walk and Ball

Hey Marie,

the ball looks great, call this one done! Nice work!

The Walk:

Alright, looking good. I would say the mechanics are there, only a few minor things. The hands rotate a bit too much back and forth. The rotation back as the arm swings back seems to early (side view btw.). If you look at frame 3, his left hand should be like at frame 25. As the arm swings forward the hand drags and has a backwards rotation.
His arms rotate a bit too much forward, like at frame 19. If he'd be mad, or walking fast, then ok, but the arms don't swing back as much and slow down midway during the swing back, which makes the forward swing stand out even more.
His legs need some love. It looks like the feet slow down as they move backwards just before the foot gets off the ground. Make sure that your curve is all linear from the moment the foot is hitting the ground and gets off of it.
Look at the thigh at frame 4 til 8. It moves forward, but then stops from 8 to 9 til 12, but the lower leg moves forward pretty quickly. Then from 12 til 20 the foot plant is really slow. That timing and spacing needs more work, you'll need to adjust the steps and the amount of swinging the legs are doing. Playing at normal speed the leg takes a fast step forward, then slows down, puts the foot down. That pause is too long.

The other thing: I'm glad you are adding color, but I'm a bit confused as to what he is supposed to be. It's not just color, but character that I'm looking for. Could be a training outfit? Is he a runner, sprinter, athlete? His character needs to be more defined.

Good start though, keep going!

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Animation Critique - Walkcycle (Jenna)

Direct Link: Jenna's Walk

Looking great! My first impression is that he is a bit swingy. Mainly his arms. Right now he really swings his arms, as opposed to the arms going along while you walk. To me the forward position is a bit too far, unless you'll give him a reason to swing his arms like that.
The hip movement is broad, but I like it, nice and smooth, yet a distinct subtle hit during the weight shift.
It looks like you are extending his fingers on the swing back? That might add to the swinginess of his arms. I'd tone that done.
The thing that needs more polish are his knees. The front view is not that bad, but the sideview reveals a lot of popping. Look at the knee "balls" and track your spacing, you'll see the pops. For instance from frame 3 to 4, his right leg (screen right at this point), doesn't move that much (looking at his knee ball/thigh), then from 4 to 5 a lot, the less and less til 10, from 10 to 11 suddenly more, then same til almost nothing up until 15, then to 16 another pop. Same thing for the other leg.

Good stuff!

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

New Animation Mentor Newsletter

I hope that all of you have signed up for the Animation Mentor Newsletter. If not, do it now!

First off, they got a Winter 2007 Showreel. If you want inspiration and a piece of humble pie, go check it out.

Next up, their Student Shortfilm section. Good example of course for putting your character within a story, but also to give you ideas as to how you can tweak your characters. The rigs are not the same, but they are not their standard rigs either. They are wearing things, they look different, they have character and are placed within a context, a story. The same should apply to your assignments, for a walkcycle, a jump, etc.

Then Shawn Kelly offers the usual goodness of tips and tricks. This time it's about twinning. Whenever I bug you about offsetting things (for you walk cycle people), it's about that. Some of you are starting to do a jump (nice start YK, critique will be up tonight), twinning will be an issue as you start out.

So sign up for the newsletter if you haven't already and enjoy the clips.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Class critique will be up to date tonight

I'm slowly recovering, but it's getting better. By tonight everybody will have their critique. There are still a few students who haven't sent anything, I wouldn't wait til next class, you must have had something ready last Monday, so don't be shy :-).

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Bouncing Ball (Sheba)

Direct Link: Sheba's Balls

Hey,

looking better!

A few things:

Big Ball:
watch the arc. From 10 to 11 it looks like it goes more towards the left than down, as if it hit a tiny bump. The fall could be accelerated. Take your dry erase and draw a line at the top of the ball. As it falls down you'll see that until it hits the floor, the ball moves in even steps (half a ball distance). It then takes the ball six frames to bounce up and hit the highest point, you could cut that in half and half the fall in 2 frames and then add a tiny 1 frame bounce (TINY).

Medium ball:

same here, watch the arc as it rolls down. With this ball you need to round out the arc more. Right now it rolls over the corner nicely, but after frame 12 it goes straight down.























See the sharp change in the red curve? That's what's going on right now. If you have it roll over the block, then the curve will be smoother. With that momentum the ball will move screen right once it hits the ground and bounces. (The heavy ball could do the same, towards the left, but the movement would be minimal, since the ball is so heavy).
The bounce of the middle ball need more hang time, it looks like the ball is being pulled down right after it hit the highest point. The spacing of the fall could also be broader, so that the spacing gets bigger and bigger. Can you do a screen capture of your y curve in the graph editor and send it?

Light ball:

the spacing of the fall is still too even, it would travel more and more as it falls. Same with the bounce up. The first couple frames the ball travels one ball height at a time, instead of a big movement up and then a gradually less (which you have at the end), same with the next fall. The last few bounces feel too fast. Your light ball and middle ball stop bouncing at almost the same time. A light ball would bounce longer, right now it starts to get too heavy towards the end.

It's getting better, but it still needs work. Your next assignment (once this one is down, but you can start on it already to keep things going) will be a medium ball entering screen left and bouncing screen right. It will bounce towards the edge of the movie clip and bounce off that "wall". Once that one is done, you'll add a tail to the ball (4 joints or so). The tail will be tricky because the overlap and follow through will need frame by frame work during certain parts. Check out the examples and critiques on our site, there are a few about the tail.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Walkcycle (Frank)

Direct Link: Frank's Walk, front and side

This is for hips and below only.

Ok, you are at an early point, so a few things. First, no grey character. Since you are early on in the walk, you can still add a look and character to the rig. I'm not trying to punish you guys, but you are making it that much harder on yourself by doing a default walk with a grey character. Be creative!

It's a bit hard to look at the side view when the character is moving from A to B. Either have it walk in place or parent a camera to the rig so that you get a steady side view.

Right now, what feels fast, are his legs as they take a step forward. After the foot roll and one frame after the foot gets off the ground you move the feet forward a lot, the spacing is a bit jumpy in there.

Front view: His root up and down is also a bit fast, you would need at least a variation in speed. The get up and fall down will be different in speed. The feet are pointing straight forward, the need some rotation, it looks too default. The feet are swinging out as they take a step, which is good, but you can add more complexity in the rotation. Due to the snappy movement of the feet, the knees pop, so you will have to smooth that out.
Don't forget the weight shifts in the hips. When one leg moves forward, the other hip carries all the weight of the body, so adjust the hips accordingly. And since the weight is only on one leg, you will have to move the root side to side in order to keep the balance.

Good start, but think about the character, don't have it be a default walk. Right now the walk seems fast. If that's your intention that build a story around that. An obvious thing would be that the character is in a hurry. But why? Explore those possibilities.

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Walkcycle Presentation

Please take a look at Jungmin's walkcycle. It's a good example of a nice presentation, showing the front, side and perspective view all in one (except that the grid shouldn't be visible).

He has also modified the look of Norman, which some of you are doing, but not all of you. Even though I believe that I should give you as much flexibility as allowed, so that you get the most out of this class, I will start to enforce the rule that no clip should include a generic looking rig or walk cycle. For those who have already started a walk cycle or an animation exercise, keep going. If there is room for change and it won't set you back dramatically, then re-examine your character, who he/she/it is and how he/she/it looks like. Let's look at it tonight and see what we can do.

Anybody else who is starting now with a new clip, is required to modify the rig. It doesn't have to be huge, with dynamic hair and props and whatnot (but if you want to, take it as far as you can), but at least avoid the generic looking model. Make it a guy, or a woman, or a kid, or whatever. Think about who the character is. I know I'm repeating myself, but you need to have your character come alive, you need to know who that person is and why he/she/it is doing what he/she/it is doing.

There are too many generic animation examples out there, you need to stick out, in a good way of course. :-)

It's not just about clean animation, but the personality that you give to the character.

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Walkcycle (Jungmin)

Direct Link: Jungmin's Walk

Nice, sweet looking character.

Tiny things:

Your backlegs are still a bit springy to me. His left leg on frame 3 to 4 moves back quite a bit, then from 4 to 5 not that much, same from frame 15 to 16. That makes the legs pop back.
And his wrists still rotate too much during the swing, especially on the move back.
In the front view his hips are going up 2 or 3 frames too early. You have them go up as the foot plants, but at that point there wouldn't be enough wait on the leg for the hip to go up already. So delay the whole thing by 2 frames or so. You can also make the up movement sharper, cut the amount of time the hips take to go up in half.

Other than that, I would say move on to the next assignment. Great job!

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

More Hotkeys

This post has moved to Spungella.

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Walkcycle (Jenna)

Direct Link: Jenna's Walk

Ok, so this is for legs and root only.

Before I start with the detail, I encourage you to really think about
who this character is. I understand that it's difficult to get the
mechanics done for a walk, walks are hard to do. But you can still learn
the mechanics while doing a walk with more character behind it. Who is
he/she? Where? Don't have it be a plain old Hogan.

Besides that, here's what I see:

In the front view, your feet are too straight forward, you can angle
them out. The hip movement could be a bit sharper when the foot is
planting and the weight goes over the leg, right now it's very even.
The biggest things to fix are the legs and the knee pops during the foot
plant. You will have to adjust the hips and root so that this moment
gets smoothed out. Also on frame 17 and 2, when the legs are in the back
position ready to take a step, your legs are straight and then bend
drastically, that pop needs to get smoothed out as well by adjust the
hips and the footroll as well as the root. Those sections are very hard
to do, so frame by frame work is needed.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Custom Hotkey - Nurbs Controller On/Off

This post has moved to Spungella.

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Critique - Tongue (Joey)

Direct Link: Joey's Tongue

Sweet! A few things:

I would make the ball bounce away further screen left. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. I think it would add to the tension if you would let the ball "almost" escape. So have the ball almost reach the screen left frame. Don't extend the block, extend the tongue.
I would also make the tongue swallow zipping back movement more complex.



















How about this? Break up the bounce distance of the ball. So after his jumps down from the block, he can only do little bounces, because he's just fell from a high place, so he's weak and scared and then starts bouncing away and gaining ground more and more, making the audience believe that he will escape. Then right as he is about to exit frame the tongue snatches the ball. Now, instead of going back straight like you have it now, it would form that S curve (see picture) and at the end go into the rotation that you have (start coloring your tongue, the ball, etc. so it's not all grey).

In terms of animation there are a few things as well. The snatch: from 245 to 246 you have the ball touch the tongue (tongue already bent). Have the tongue go down in front of the ball (cutting him off), then have the ball jump into the tongue. From 246 to 247 there is a slight movement screen left and then to 248 a huge jump screen right. That could be more fluid, with the ball stretching/pushing the tongue more screen left when it gets grabbed. As you roll back the tongue now to frame 250 you have pretty much nothing moving til 253, I would keep it going, keep it fluid. The spiral swallow down is cool, but a bit hard to heard that it's twisting, due to spacing from frame 262 to 263. Also coloring the tongue will make it read better that it is twisting.

As it is swallowing I would close the eyelids a little, then when it's done, look down while opening them again, and have a mouth appear with a smile. :-) Or something like that. You just need an ending to all of it, not just a swallow. With some reaction by the monster, you give the whole meaning a little bit of meaning.

Hope all that makes sense. Cheers!
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Wow

Doesn't seem to be my week. I really wanted to post stuff tonight, but the animation meeting we had (there's a short that a friend of mine is doing and Thursdays is animation review), ran longer than usual. It was around 11:45pm. Then I sat at my desk in order to check my email and my email application just wouldn't show the mail folders. I fixed it, but now it's 12:44am and I'm dead tired.

Alright, so... TOMORROW should really be the day of new posts... Fingers crossed.

In case you're bored, here's a shameless plug, just entertain yourself with SWENCH, that will keep you up to date. :-)

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

AAU - Class update

Hello again,

sorry for the hiatus. I finished working on "Transformers" this week, which looks great btw. (sweet renders, the robots look so real, sometimes they look like well animated animatronics - just like Davy Jones had you guessing if it is make up or not, this time you will wonder, is that real or not? Obviously the action will give it away that it absolutely can't be an animatronic...). I started working on "The Spiderwick Chronicles" and switching shows had me busy for a while, finishing Transformer shots and making sure that the files are clean and getting prepped on the doings of the new show.

But everything transitioned fine and overtime work seems to be scheduled for Saturday instead of during the week AND Saturday while on Transformers. So critique and updates should appear either during the day, but most definitely after 7pm if I didn't get to it at work.

I hope you guys are not completely crushed after my "reality check" ramble on Monday :-) But as I said, I won't sugar coat the current state of the industry nor your work. Better you hear the good and bads news now than later. I will post more specific dos and don'ts at a later point for demo reel creations, rig usage, how to get a foot in the industry, etc. etc.

Speaking of ramble. It's really unfortunate that this class is so big. You guys are great, it's not that, it's the difficulty of combining lectures and critique. Both are important, so every now and then I will lean more on one than the other. If you feel that you didn't get enough feedback for your shot, please let me know. Drop me an email with your work and I'll embelish on what I said in class. Last class lasted til 10.45pm which is crazy. Thanks for those who were waiting for the feedback. If you need to go home, again, just write me an email and I'll look at your animation later that night or the next day.

What you guys need to do is complain, or politely suggest, to the Academy that classes need to be smaller. I mentioned it already and will defninitely continue to do so. I don't see the benefit of doing a lecture for 30 to 90 mins and then critiquing your work for a few minutes. Last week I think it worked well when I combined the lectures with the critique, and we all finished at 10. But the moment I focus on something (like last time on the reality of how much work and dedication is needed in this field), there is just not enough time. I'll work on focusing on the most important things in my critique during class (even though I LOVE detail stuff), but let the school know that classes just can't be too big and that JD sucks. :-)

Now that it has been around 7 weeks into this semester, don't be shy in telling me what sucks about my class and what doesn't. I want to make sure that you guys get the most out of it, so speak up when something is not working or if you feel that I'm not covering certain things you'd like to know.

Midterm is coming up and the grading hammer will slam down. Most of you guys are doing good, so no need to worry. My grading will depend on your work and how creative you are with it, not just the technical side.

[ Wow. I started writing this in the morning, then had to go to a client transmission, then lunch, then an animation meeting, then back to work, than a Harry Potter "it's a wrap." celebration, then back to work and now it's suddenly 6:30pm.]

Uhm... totally lost my train of thought after all those hours. ... Uh... Yeah...

I'm gonna go home now and work on other posts that will pop up later tonight. A few handy tools while animating in Maya, good sites for help and probably some critiques.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.

Animation Buffet

Looks like the big reveal has to wait a bit. When you only have one free day a week, it seems that it's being spent doing house cleaning and phone calls and general catching up.

:-)

I'll tell you guys tomorrow about it. [Edit: Alright, how about next Monday.]

Tata
Jean-Denis

>>Click here to read the rest of the post...

>>Minimize the post by clicking here.