Short Acting Piece

Mannykins

Hi everyone, long time lurker, not quite first time poster, but as good as. 

It's really cool how active things have gotten around here lately, I hope we can keep up the momentum!

In that spirit, I have an acting piece I am working on atm. I have some changes I am planning to make, but I'd love to hear your opinions on the state of the animation and what needs improving.



Syncsketch: https://www.syncsketch.com/sketch/136324#156652

Looking forward to your critiques, thanks!

_adamturnbull

Hey man, great stuff so far. I've left a couple of notes on syncsketch.

I'm not the master of dialogue shots but hopefully some of it helps!

Archanex

Hey Mannykins, cool stuff so far. I'm not sure what stage you're at, so feel free to disregard some or all of my comments.

1. Be careful with your staging, right now if you look at frame 1, you've got the character almost dead center in the frame in a very symmetrical pose. I think I would try to get more asymmetry both in your characters pose as well as where he's standing in relation to the frame
2. Try to add more variety in your characters body language, right now you have the character going everyone signed? (pose A) Yes.(pose Good (pose B mirrored) , OFF we go (pose A moving screen left). Maybe at the beginning of the shot his movements are slightly more reserved, and then when he says OFF we go we get a big movement that will greater contrast his smaller movements, right now the first 3 beats all feel like they're a similar intensity and the 4th beat being only slightly larger. I think if there was one simple piece of advice I could give, it would be to not make the actions for Yes and Good to be such a close mirror of each other. You can accomplish this in a lot of different ways, but one way I might try would be to have the gesture that he does for "good" use the same hand the he pointed with for Yes. then you could use the arcs of that hand to guide the viewers eye into the big OFF we go action. 

Anyway, I hope that helps, I tried to not be overly specific because I think there are many ways you could solve the problems pointed out. Best of luck and keep us posted on the progress. Cheers!

Mannykins

Thanks very much for the comments guys! Super helpful stuff in there, trying to address the beginning framing and the last big movement mainly (as those were my big concerns too) as well as all the other changes I can accommodate. I'll have an update for you as soon as possible.

Thanks again!

Mannykins

Updated the original syncsketch with a revised animation, made some tweaks bearing in mind Archanex's feedback about framing, and a bigger action on "On we go", which is spaced out a little after received a few comments about it.

I'm hoping to consider this finished, but far from perfect, so let me know if you see anything glaring!