my ANIMATION showreel - crit please!

giasgrace

Hello!
I'm currently employed as a general 3D Artist/Animator for a Fruit Machine company and I'm looking to get into the Computer Games industry purely as an animator/character animator.
My showreel:

[ame]http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36584566[/ame]

This Showreel isn't finished as I want to cut it down to about a minute and a half ( currently 2:18 ).
So the best way you can help me is to let me know which bits need to be taken out. Or parts of the longer sequences that need to be edited out.
Other that that any other crits are welcome as I'm sure you will all rip it apart :-)
All the modelling is me except for the UT3 model at the end which I will mention on the final reel.
Thanks.
-Nick

Sage

Animation seems pretty good. I would cut the guy getting hit by the ball and the unreal character stuff. The talking head as well as the ones I mentioned don't seem to have the same amount of life as the first few. I really liked the bird animation. The brown dude in the simple scene seem out of place mostly because the modeling and texturing distract from the animation and it seems like an attempt to create a final scene.

LEViATHAN

The second animation is really impressive, although I think that the character moves too slow in some sequences (especially in the first bit).

Also, minor crit. When the guy hops in the second movie, his knees don't bend enough, so it looks like he doesn't really have enough power to jump up the wall.

flow3d

wait, you're CURRENTLY emplyed as a 3d generalis/animator - so you're actually animating for a company?
wow.. ok

well, I think the timing in all the animations is just .. breathtakingly slowpaced.
also, are you working with FK at all in anything? everything looks to be IK, it not only looks like it, but it FEELS like it.
there's not much life in any of the movement, the characters don't come through as anything else than that generic 3dmax biped charcter which was taking for ever to do nothing.

a superb example of IK in this .. reel, would be the joker with the spear.
oh wait, let me just crit that whole shot instead of just making it as an example for the horrible IK driven characters.

as mentioned, you can really see and feel the sluggish IK driven animation in this.
not only that, but the pose .. oh lawd.
first of all, did you take 5 minutes out of the day to read Animators Survivalkit?
I'm not feeling any anticipation before he's attacking .. you'd might want to pull his right arm back, and have him turn his uperbody. and if you really want to add sharp poses - which I see none of in this reel, then. before he stabs with the spear, have his left leg go up, almost like a baseball pitcher does, but not all that extreme. but still, have him rest on just his right leg, pulling the spear back, and then lunging all his weight forward, jaming the spear into whatever beast is standing in front of him.

the second animation with the spear dude is better. you're moving his arms back, and I kinda feel when the spear gets a hit ..


the guy jumping of the ledge or whatever ..
the anticipation is just really floaty, with his (IK?) arms just moving around to get to their next keyed pose.
you'd want A LOT more extreme poses when he's getting ready to do the jump.
also, hold poses, when he anticipates the jump, and when he lands .. the landing pose is also very very very dull .. seen matrix? copy paste

the lipsync (?) animation .. well, you said you wanted to cut down the reel length ..
this part would be good to remove. not only to cut down on the length, but also because it's waaay of as far as .. anything goes.

when the unreal inspired character came in, I thought "oh lawd, thank you. there might be hope for this reel yet!"
but yet again, the poses are just so dull.
well, the initial pose, like .. the idle or whatever, is fairly ok. it's common and its nothing we havent seen in any mocap session before.
so yeah, he's standing around being somewhat cool .. then he gets down on one knee and asumes another fairly cool pose! yay!
then it kinda just goes downhill from there. yet again, the animation is floaty and IK-ish.
there are no hold-poses or .... bazing?
after the first shot (looks like he takes one in the head aswell), when he changes pose to shoot again, thats just .. no ..
and the second shot is just not existing ..

then it all just interpolates back to his original knee pose, and then he floats back up..
and like any drunk who has been sitting down, he gets a rush to his head as he stands up, and almost falls over .. all this while floating around .. again, horrid timing and no hold poses makes all of this feel like he's drunk or .. that we are drunk, observing him ........ being drunk

the runcykle ... I'm not touching that



seeing as I kinda critted some of the later stuff, I could have just crited all the shots ..
but whatever ..

the same goes for the rest of the shots really..

floaty, ik, hold poses, slooooow timing, lacking cool poses - which in turn don't give your characters .. any .. character


fin
終わり
the end
slut

giasgrace

Thanks Sage, leviathan and flow3D.

Really helpful comments and I will definately be removing the lip sync (never felt happy with morph tagets) can anyone point me in the direction of a good 3DS Max facial rig?

Wow, Flow3D, you really ripped it apart. Worth keeping in mind that I wasn't going for a styalised or cartoon form of animation, just for passable realism. But maybe you put me in my place.

Anymore comments appreciated!

CheeseOnToast

I know you said you're taking out the lip-sync anim. Just for the future though, I think you're making a very common mistake and relying on brow movement way too much to convey emotion. During the "angry" expressions for example, there is hardly any change in the eye shape, no squeeze around the eye area itself and the brows just move up and down instead of squeezing together. Cover up the brows with your finger and see if the eyes say "angry" to you by themselves.

I'm no animator myself, but I also have to agree with flow3D. A lot of the animations felt very "floaty". Game anims often have a very short time period allocated to them. Generally, animators I work with try to get as much anticipation as the frame-count allows, followed by a very quick reaction. This makes the anim a lot more "punchy" and dynamic looking.

If you're interested, I'd recommend the book "Stop Staring : Facial Modelling and Animation Done Right" by Jason Osipa. Also " The Artist's Guide to Facial Expression" by Gary Fagin is very good too.

Cody

Find quicktime movie trailers of animated films such as kung fu panda, madagascar, that sort of thing and scroll through them frame be frame. This helped me when I was trying to do animation stuff for class. Also, film yourself or a friend doing whatever it is you are animating from several angles, and study those clips. If you don't have a video camera, rent one of those disposable video cameras from CVS or borrow from a friend. It will help A LOT. Keep working, buddy.

Archanex

yeah, all of this stuff is too slow, ESPECIALLY the jumps. Other areas that stuck out as being worse than the rest were the part where the biped gets off the slide, he needs to follow through with the momentum of the slide, but right now he's stopping WAY too quickly. There's a rig called "Max" for 3d Studio Max, it's by the same guy that did lowman, and it has pretty good facial controls. I think that run at the very end definitely needs to go. Don't listen to me though, I"m the animator who's unemployed

breakneck

second what Cody says, reference helps!! i use my cheapo digital camera to record crappy videos but they help with timing issues that seem to make some of your animations too puppet-like. Timing and poses need work.

also, like Archanex mentioned, i would do the facials on a better rig. Max is pretty good, i've used him in maya. i'm not familiar with other 3ds max rigs. is there a MooM for max?? i like MooM.

final suggestion - study the 12 principles of animation. they were written for 2d but completly help 3d.

kinikuR6

The guy diving into the swimming pool:
Great start. I like how he gets ready and the realism is on point. When he dives and goes into the water I don't feel any impact. I like how you have him floating up after the dive but the swim upwards could use some polish. Maybe have him shake his head after he get his head above water.

Your second animation piece:
The little hop he does before he climbs the wall seems off. I think I know what you were going for but it might be better to just take it out or work on the timing. The part where he latches onto the wall and climbs up is awesome. If you wanna add a little personality to it I would speed it up a bit. Overall, the transitions from one obstacle to the next is where I think you could improve. I would speed up those areas and I think it would make the animation piece feel much more dynamic. It would be nice to see how one obstacle affects the way he moves into the next hurdle rather than having him pause after each one.

The creature running cycle is pretty good. Perhaps you could try to offset the keys on his limbs and neck.

The knockback form explosion:
I don't get a sense of good weight when he falls to the ground. The part where he's looking around is good though.

The spear man:
Overall good animation. Just snap the attack a bit more.

The walk cycle in the desert:
I would take this one out for sure. Looks like maybe this was something you had worked on when you first started animating.

The lip synch:
As the others have said...take it out.

Unreal dude shooting:
My personal favorite. This one to me shows some good timing and acting. After he finishes shooting I like how he pauses and looks and then kneels down and goes back to shooting. The get up isn't bad either.

Unreal dude running:
You did a great job on the shooting animations but the running motion has to go. Its too floaty and jerky. The legs are too far apart and no offsets in the keys.

Well I hope this helps. Overall, you have some really good moments in your reel. I think your strong points seem to be more subtle movements such as kneeling down or sitting. Just work more on navigation type animations and learning to speed things up.

aesir

i feel lilke you are soooo close to being really good, but not quite there yet. Probably all your works from here on out will rock.

Also, I've seen people with worse reels then you employed as game animators, although I think you'll have a hard time of it.

for crits, others covered it.

Keep up the effort!

commander_keen

Im no animator, but I really dont like the first half. the second half is pretty good for the most part. I would really suggest you remove the first half.

gavku

Definitely cut it down. You don't need to have so much stuff on there. Just pick a couple of things and really polish em up. Some of it feels like your trying to do too much without having the basics down first.

giasgrace

Some fantastic comments everyone! Thanks so much.
I feel like I can go back to it now and improve it loads, and cut it down.
I knew I did the right thing in posting it on this Forum!