Research & Reference

Before you start a shot, before you plan out your animation, you need to know everything about your character and the situation he/she/it is in.

For example, let's take the tennis shot that Marie is doing. If you are doing a serve and attack animation, then you need to know how tennis players do a serve, how they move, what the timing is, what typical poses and gestures you see with players, etc. etc. You can't start without that knowledge because you will end up doing a completely wrong move (unless you are already familiar with the tennis sport, but even then...). Do as much research as you can, study as much reference as you can. You will only profit from it.

My favorite research method besides real life observation is Google. It's not without a reason that I have Google Ads all over my web pages. Googles search engine is great and you will find so much material for your animation, it's almost endless. For this assignment I typed in "tennis serve" and found tons of great reference images and sites. And it took me only a few minutes. So type in relevant keywords for your research and go to work. I switched to image results and started to pick out the best images. Two of those led me to great sites about tennis.

For instance, check out www.revolutionarytennis.com. Step 12 on that site is all about "The Serve". It's absolutely fantastic because it includes tons of pictures of tennis pros doing a serve, step by step pictures of the different serve poses and tons of written information about it as well. Good stuff.

Then Dr. Google sent me to www.tennis4everyone.com. This site is great for those who prefer videos. They have brief clips about The Forehand, The Backhand, The Volley, etc. etc. And of course, The Serve. So check this clip out for a nice side view of the serve mechanics.

If you need more video reference, then check out www.bbcmotiongallery.com or youtube, google video, etc. etc.

And here are a few pictures of great serve poses, facial expressions, hand poses and general body poses that are so typical in the world of tennis:

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Animation Critique: extended Walkcycle (Joey)

Direct Link: Joey's Football Character

Looking great! The timing change works and I like the hand gesture that you added before he gets the ball.
If the last pose is how you are going to end the clip, then you need to make it a bit stronger silhouette wise. But even if you add the casual throw away, that pose could be pushed more. Look at the screen right arm. Pose it out so that you can read a clearer bend in his arm and silhouette for his hand and fingers.

Here are some images with nice poses or typical gestures of NFL players. A lot of them don't really apply to your clip, but I'm posting those for inspiration. Google for more images and make sure that your last pose really reads as a typical football pose.

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You need to have a plan.

Earl Bassett: "Damn it Valentine, you never plan ahead, you never take the long view, I mean here it is Monday and I'm already thinking of Wednesday... It is Monday right?"



Knowing what you are going to animate is essential. I know it sounds redundant, but so many students (me included) are starting a shot without really knowing what to do, waiting for happy accidents, etc.

Take a day and really think about the end result, try to see it in your head, draw thumbnails, act it out, have someone else act it out.

There are shots that took me days to block out, shots that were only a few seconds long. It's really frustrating.
But my "Ze Chair" shot took me two days to block out, and the shot is about 45 seconds long. Why? Because I knew absolutely everything about that shot (I'm not saying that what I knew was right :-) ). I had a plan and I knew what to do. Plus I was motivated and I had a lot of fun. All that helps a lot in terms of speed.

When someone asks you what is going to happen in your shot and you can't tell that person frame by frame what you are about to do, then you're not ready yet to start animating the shot. But of course that's also a bit unrealistic. You may be faced with a deadline and have no choice but to animate, no matter what. But other than that, use all the free time to plan out your shot. When you wait for the bus, at the bart station, in line at the post office, in the bath tub, etc. plan and act out your shot in your head. At least have a solid idea of what you want to do before you start.



John Winger:
I have a plan.

Russell Ziskey: Great, Custer had a plan, too.

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Polish Notes by Andrew Gordon

As I was cleaning my laptop hard drive I found this pdf by Andrew Gordon. I hope I'm allowed to repost those tips. If not, I'll take this post down immediatly.

General Polish Tips…

1) Plot your arcs on body parks such as the wrist.
2) Pay attention to your patterns
3) work on your physicality - re reference a move if needed...
4) Get your contact points working well (for ex: foot squashing when it
contacts ground)
5) Make sure you are starting and stopping your character properly
6) break up twinned poses
7) Fingers? are they animated?
8) so on and so on..

Facial polish stuff....

1) Avoid even timing on the jaw
2) Slow in and Out
3) Watch the corners of mouth
4) Arc corners and jaw in dialouge
5) Compress closed mouth shapes
6) Overlapp fleshy parts of mouth
7) Don’t forget to animate the cheeks where needed.
8) Layer in Squash and Stretch
9) Do close-up records for detail
10) anticipate shapes
11) Don’t over complicate brows
12) Remember how the eye works
13) Get those eye blinks looking good.
14) Don’t have those lids hit a wall
15) Change shapes on eye direction changes
16) Use the brow in conjunction with the eyes

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Why are CG animators so much slower than 2D animators?

Keith Lango has as usual great posts about this question and the comments are very insightful as well.

Make sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2.

I'm definitely guilty of noodling and I scrub through the timeline as much as I can, two major problems that Keith points out when it comes to wasting time.

He doesn't think that rigs are the culprit (unless they are super heavy), but even if they are light, posing out a CG character still takes a lot longer than drawing the same pose in my opinion. Yes, you can have a library of expressions and finger poses to speed up the rough blocking process, but once you get into polish mode tweaking facial featurees and fingers is a huge time sucker. To me definitely an area that needs improvement and where 2D animation has its advantages.

But I still have so much more to learn in terms of technique and work flow that I will shut up for now. Go read the posts, it's well worth it.

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Spline Doctor's "The Power of Silhouette"

The Spline Doctors got a new post about "Silhouette". As usual, don't miss it.

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Walk Stanchfield notes on Gesture Drawing for Animation

Jason Schleifer has a post with links to a series of pdf files from Walt Stanchfield. Fantastic resource, go check it out!

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No more H1Bs

WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2008 (FY 2008). USCIS will use a random selection process (described below) for all cap-subject filings received on April 2, 2007 and April 3, 2007. USCIS will reject and return along with filing fee(s) all petitions received on those days that are not randomly selected.

Remember how I always mention how difficult it is to land a job as a foreigner? There you go. April is the time for all the filings, so that in October the Visa can get handed out. It's April 3rd and look at the above announcement. Holy moly!

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Reminder - Make Up Class

Happening NOW!

:-)

3rd Floor, Room 351

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Animation Critique - Walkcycle (Curran)

Direct Link: Curran's Walk

Hey,

some more notes on the walk.

Right now he looks off balance leaning screen right (from the front view). He could just always walk in a circle since he's leaning sideways. So to be honest, I don't know if you can get away with that. It's hard to know because the camera is always in front of him.
When I act this out I start falling over when trying to walk forward in a straight line. That's why I tend towards you either fixing his root and move it so that the center of gravity is correct, or incorporate that direction change into your walk. So that after a few steps he's traveled screen left and then comes back screen right to start over.

Other than that I would accentuate his left him during the step. It looks like they are swinging pretty much the same during both steps, but the steps are different. One is a real one, the other is a harder hit.

With that hard hit I would show the effect in the head a bit more. You have a harder swing on his head in the front view, but I feel that you could push the up and down (side view) a bit more.

And as we said, you could push the arms a bit more.

Looking sweet though, nice model! You guys did a great job with him.

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Animator - Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez

3Dtotal links to Animator Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez and his "Batman: Chapter 1" short.

It's really cute and well done. Love it when he jumps in front of the safe with his cape fully stretched out!

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Workflow

Today in class I will talk about workflow again and show you different approaches to it.

In the meantime you can check out Amrit Derhgawen's workflow tutorial. Like he says, everyone has a different way, so check it out, it might be yours.





















Something I absolutely agree with is the use of dry erase markers to plot out your arcs and checking your spacing. I hope you guys use some sort of tool that's similar, like ghosting, or onion skinning, whatever you prefer.

See you tonight!

Cheers
JD

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New "Ratatouille" Trailer @ Disney.com

Brand new Ratatouille trailer rant @ swench.com

Go check it out!

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Story and Animation Tips

Head over to the Blackwing Diaries, for a great post on Story and Tips on Animation, part 1 and 2.

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Spring Break & Midterm Update

Hello boys and girls,

time for another update.

It's that time of the semester, the midterm showdown.

Unless you have received a separate email about your grade, you got a "C". What? Just a "C"? What's going on?

Well, here's how I grade:

"A" students would mean absolutely ready to start at a company right now, "B" showing creativity and doing more than asked, "C" understanding and applying the mechanics and animation principles but work being average, "D" for NOT being able to apply the animation principles and "F" for simply failing in all aspects.

For midterm and finals I will grade in full grades, no B+s or -s or whatever. So even if you got a "C" now, you might be really close to a "B". At the same time, you might be really close to a "D".

Take a look at the "Virgin Voyage", or the latest Animation Mentor Showreel. That is your competition, that is the standard that other students are setting. Anything below that and your chances of getting a job are small. The chances are still there (it's also about luck and timing, but the reel is still your ticket in), but it's really tough.

Again, look at the competition and be aware of the kind of work is needed in order to make it nowadays.

But it's all doable. Do the research, work hard and have fun with it! You can be the next Doug Sweetland or Maia Kayser, it's all in your hands.

I haven't see everybodies work for a while, due to the super-late-notice-retarded-teacher-failing-to-show-up-for-class incident and this weeks spring break. So please, EVERYBODY send me your latest and greatest this week.

Also, take a hard look at your schedule, be it the class schedule or your own. Are you on track? Are you falling behind? Are you keeping the deadlines? Be mindful of the goals that you set for yourself. If you are having problems with it, let me know and we will work something out.

Any questions? Complaints? Recommendations? Ideas? Don't be shy, let me know. It's your class, your money, make sure you get the most out of it.

Ok, that's it. Have fun during spring break, remember to drink a glass of water for every 2 or 3 cocktails so you don't have a hangover the next day, eat before you drink so you don't puke, girls, don't tease boys too hard, guys, "No" means "No".

Cheers
Jean-Denis

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Spline Tutorial Part 2 by Victor Navone

Victor Navone has posted his 2nd part of the "Splinophilia" tutorial.

Make sure to mouse over the images as a lot of them have rollover images. Part 2 is excellent and a must-read for all of you.

His tutorial explains:

• Smoothness
• Curve containment
• Economy of keys
• Variation
• Easy Eases
• Easy Overlap
• Blocking
• Converting to Splines
• etc.
  

So stop what you are doing, grab a drink and read through it.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

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Animation Critique - Bouncing Balls (Alison)

Direct Link: Alison's Balls, light & medium & heavy & character

Light Ball:

Over the 9 to 13 frames or so the ball slows down. The first rolling down is faster, so slow that down so that part falling down is at the same speed. From 10 15 the ball is moving screen left on a very straight path, as if there was still a ground beneath it. Then it starts going down. That arc needs to be smoother (see image below).















The bounce afterwards is good til 37. From 37 to 38 the ball moves only a tiny bit down, then from 38 to 39 a lot more. That end bounce/fall needs to get worked on. The spacing needs to get gradually bigger, don't have it stay even, and at the end there shouldn't be a pop.

Same with the next bounce. It's all good til the end, during which the spacing is very even and seems to get smaller til 54 (again, should be the opposite). Then from 54 to 55 there is a bigger move down, resulting in the same pop as before.

The bounce from 55 on goes too far screen left. You can cut that distance in half and make the bounce a bit faster. That means you'll have to add one more tiny bounce at the end.

Medium Ball:

In this one you are having more problems with spacing unfortunately. You need to take the dry erase marker and at every frame mark a dot in the center of the ball. Do this for the beginning and you'll see that the spacing is very uneven.
























First the ball maintains the same speed, then on frame 4 speeds away, same on 5, then it's small again, moving in a straight line to the left, then suddenly down.

The dry erase marker is not a gimmick. You NEED to use it. If not that, then use the ghosting method in Maya, or whatever is convenient, but you need to use something to track your arcs and make sure that the spacing makes sense.


















The second bounce shows you that you have two big gaps and that throughout the rest of the bounce the spacing is very even.














The third bounce shows a gradually smaller spacing and then a pop at the end.












Here you can see that the arc is not smooth enough and that the spacing at the beginning is too even.











This one is hard to judge because I can't zoom into your file. But I think I made my point pretty clear. You can still see that the arc needs some work and that the last bounce is too wide.



















This is a ball falling onto ice, so don't pay attention to the bounce, but look at the spacing of the initial fall. The spacing gets gradually bigger, there are no pops in it. Same thing with a bouncing ball assignment.

Heavy Ball:

Same problem here:
























The ball is all over the place. It starts off slow, then super fast, then ends up suddenly slow again.

Character Ball:

The spacing and timing in this one is a lot better. What I would take out is the pause (double bounce) that you have at frame 115. You can cut out 116 and 117.

I would work on the other ones first before you finish this one (it's pretty much done anyway).

Cheers
Jean-Denis

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