Silly robot, tricks are for kids! (Animation)
polycounter lvl 8
Started my next animation scene!
Fairly rough, so lots of work to do still. As always, any comments, critiques, etc are very welcome!
First pass:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN7fkl0dXl8"]Robot Scene (Animation) - WIP 01 - YouTube[/ame]
Thanks for looking!
Fairly rough, so lots of work to do still. As always, any comments, critiques, etc are very welcome!
First pass:
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN7fkl0dXl8"]Robot Scene (Animation) - WIP 01 - YouTube[/ame]Thanks for looking!
Replies
He doesn't look very well planted, when hes walking, and crawling with his arms, they slide a little bit.
The drop from his upper body isn't really believable, the body kinda drops straight down...It should probably fly back a little bit more. Also, the black thing that swings out doesn't feel particularly heavy...not enough to smack a robots torso off at least. Some ease in could help the swing feel stronger.
While the body is disconnected, and the torso is getting a hold of itself, the legs are motionless. I think you could swing the hips back and forth...as if the hips are acting like a head and looking around for the torso counterpart.
I thought the slap was pretty good, it made me chuckle. The way the legs just drop so he can reattach them is kinda stiff....give the legs more personality. Same with them looking around..you wan't them to feel like another personality/character. Instead of just dropping like that...have them excitedly drop on the ground, like a goofy obedient dog maybe.
Jumping up from the robots back is mostly good, but the balance is a little off. I think having the weight shift towards the front when he lands, from the momentum of swinging foward so hard, would be more believable. You kinda get that from the torso a little bit, but get the hips and his entire upper body leaning foward.
For the head getting knocked off, maybe allow more time for the robot to recover from jumping up...right now the action just happens too fast. Maybe have him look around angrily..or take a sign of relief..something to kinda make it feel like hes relieved and his troubles are over now..that way the second hit is more dramatic/unexpected/funny. I won't comment to much on the action of the head getting knocked off, since it seems like you stopped there and maybe you aren't finished with it yet.
The only part you'll find I did not address is the ending--my plan is to cut the scene off right as the head is knocked off, and not see the full settle of the body. So don't worry about how it finishes now.
Because of all the changes, I know there's a LOT of smoothing to do, and some areas I'm still not happy with, but I'd love to know what people think of the changes from the first version!
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All comments and critique appreciated!
You pretty much fixed the feet, which is good. But the robots right root still slides a bit right before it gets hit.
-The hit itself is much better! The flip really helps it.
-I did like the original struggle more than what you have now though. Like, when the torso is pulling itself back to the legs. The first video showed more weight than this one. Very subtle movements, but there isnt much of a struggle with this one.
-The legs are moving around are great! pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I do think the legs still need some tweeking when it first gets hit though. When it gets to the edge of the screen, the legs go into this drunken wobble around to look for the torso, which is great. But I think the drunken stumble should start almost right away. With the momentum they have from the hit, and the lean back with he leg in the air, it would suit it better to start it earlier rather than wait a few steps. if that makes sense?
-I would lose the pause where the legs go back to the original stance from your first video, while they wait to be hit. I would have them still moving / "looking around" while the torso comes up and hits it right away, rather than waiting a few seconds. The pose they are in just before they go back to that original pose would be a good place to hit them. Around the 7th or 8th second. Just add a longer moving hold to that pose.
Definitely some great improvements though. Keep pushing it!
I agree with slipsius and i would like to add the following:
You could definitely make the whole thing a bit snappier, not in terms of the speed of every movement individually, but rather getting rid of long pauses that don't support the comical aspect of your scene.
For instance:
The walk in the beginning, maybe you could make the character walk into the scene, without the camera movement. This could make a good introduction for the character and it would make the walk less long.
You could consider making the legs walk less far away from the upperbody, so that it, in its turn, doesnt have to crawl so far. Right now it crawls for about 150 frames, thats roughly 6 seconds.
The upperbody stares at the legs for good 80 frames. Thats about 3 seconds. I think it should just crawl to its legs, then immediatly slap them, or if you want to keep the stare, make it a lot shorter, like around 10 frames.
Another thing that i noticed:
The metal flap hits the upperbody very abruptly, which is good. But! Imo it could use some anticipation. My eyes watched the character walk in and then the flap hit the upperbody so fast that my eyes didnt manage to catch up to the motion, since i was still looking at the character and that made it a bit confusing.
Making the flap rotate ever so slightly backwards, then slamming forward like you did, would prepare the viewer and make him expect that something abrupt is going to happen. Now, obviously that is unnatural for a mechanical part, but, again, it could help make it funnier, since the eyes dart to the flap and then expect the flap to do something cool, which it does.
Hope this helps!
Keep at it Mezz. Again, good job.
I've taken note of all the comments and hopefully have addressed them all for this next version. There are still areas that I don't think are quite there yet, but I'm hoping I've at least moved in the right direction.
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Thanks for looking, and keep the critiques coming!!
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Hopefully you can spot the differences... notably in the upper body crawl, the slap, and a bit of the inital leg walk. Tweaked a few other spots too.
Please let me know what areas still feel off! Thanks for looking!
Also, bunch of other tweaks. Smoothed some stuff, sped up some parts, etc:
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Hopefully getting close to the end now! Any part that still doesn't feel quite right, please let me know! Thanks
Its great to see you steadily improve with your animations. I think that by now you pretty much know all you need to know from a technical standpoint : motions are clean, and so on.
However the timing of the action beats is off and feel very forced. I think you should simply take the time to physically act the scene yourself to get a good sense of its timing. You can do so with your whole body ... or even just your fingers (they are good enough to get a feel for a good swinging motion for instance.)
Another problem I see is that I think you are trying too hard to make it funny with the jumpy toon walk and the overall mannerism. The scene in itself is not hilarious, and that's fine - not every scene needs to be that way. So instead, why not making it more believable by simply turning it into ... a rendition of the every day life of a clumsy robot. If nicely animated, it could be even more memorable that a "funny-ed up" version of the same scene...
Hope this helps!
Pior -- Thanks for the critique, I really appreciate it. I am happy to hear it looks like I have all the basics down, which I agree is now feeling that way for me.
Now that you mention it, I definitely see what you mean about this scene feeling forced. Since I won't have to worry quite so much about the basics now (hoping they're becoming habit!), I'm looking forward to focusing more on this acting part for my future work.
I'd love for the scene to go more in the direction you suggest, but I think that's a lot of extra work on this scene. I believe it'd be more beneficial to kepp all this in mind and put the effort towards my future scenes.
I'm planning to polish up this scene a bit more, and then I'm gonna call it done and move on!
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Calling it done unless anyone notices a part that's still sticking out!
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Hoping I can call this one DONE! Thanks to everyone that commented