Monday, April 23, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
New Animation Mentor Newsletter
I hope that by now everybody signed up for the AM newsletter (didn't I write that before?). If not, then... WHY NOT? It's free and you want to learn all you can about animation, right? If you haven't signed up by now, then you're not really serious about this whole being-an-animator thingie. Unless you know everything about it already. ... Yeah, right.
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Featured in this month's newsletter:
Got the gig! Advice for Preparing for Your First Animation Job
Short Film: Chocogreed by Fernanda Veloso
Mentor: Mike Belzer - Disney Animator
Student: Valdimar Baldvinsson
Tips & Tricks with Shawn Kelly: Black Out Your Character
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Now if I were you I would also go back to previous issues:
- March 2007
- February 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
Use every resource that you can find!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Disney/Pixar's "Ratatouillle" - Cooking 101
It seems to me that JV Pixar is now the best place for news about Pixar. There's a link to a new featurette about cooking, which shows new footage from the movie.
pic source
Monday, April 16, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Animation Critique: Character Balls (Jenna)
Direct Link: Jenna's Character Balls
Looking good!
As you get into the polishing, make sure to fix there things:
Little Ball:
After it turns around on the wall and jumps up, the timing of the jump needs a bit more love. Give it a little anticipation (add tiny squash to it), one or two frames of hangtime and a fall where it accelerates at the end. Sounds like a lot to squeeze in, but basically go from this timing: V (curves are very linear), to U (more rounded), just like you have the rest of the jumps. Also, delay the tail up movement so that it follow the ball, right now it's moving up at the same time (and give it some nice overlap just like during the jumps around the sack).
After the ball jumps onto the sack and falls back down, you have it land, and then it slowly rolls backwards. That's looks a bit funny because the tail is not moving, so it's not really rolling but moving across the floor. I would have it land and then take one or two tiny bounces backwards. And don't forget to animate the tail as it lands and bounces, right now it just falls down and then stops. The tail would bounce a little bit as well, don't have it look like it's glued to the floor.
Sack:
- I really like the little wobble you have with the foot as the ball is on him. Cute! What I would change is how the sack bends over afterwards. Right now he feels tired. But he was freaked out because of the ball and at the end he is mad and kicks the ball. So I would have him bend over fast, in a "What the...?!" attitude and then kick the ball.
Pose wise, is it possible to bend down the "shoulders" of the sack? The top part is very straight, it would be nice to have more of a curvature to it. Is that going to screw up all the top animation? Can you maybe pull up a joint that's in the middle of the sack? Let's take a look at the rig on Monday.
Keep going, nice work!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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:
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.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
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.
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
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.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Spline Doctor's "The Power of Silhouette"
The Spline Doctors got a new post about "Silhouette". As usual, don't miss it.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
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!
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
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!
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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.
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!
Monday, March 26, 2007
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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