First Animation Reel - C&C Welcome

KrazyTaco

Hey guys!! This is gonna be my first time posting an entire thread with something related to animation, so please have no mercy with my humble work here presented .

Well a little of background story: This reel is the result of 4 months of a basic 3d animation course at my school at M

JR

It's a good start. I'm not an animator, but I think that lack of weight it's being shown clearly on the three parts of your video. The guy is floating while running, and over the ball. And when he jumps, he's not landing as firmly as it should, considering his mass. From the little I studied about animation in the past, I think this is one of the most critic and important factor to make a successful animation. All the fancy stuff can be added later, but make the mass of your char works correctly above all.

I guess your guy could land a bit more deep, to make his weight pop out. But I believe real animators will make better crits than mine.

jmg06

When your character jumps the movement and the anticipation make you think he is making a big jump but when he jumps it's more like a little hop. You can also see this a little bit in the walk animation. He make very big steps but moves very slow.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Use a lot of video reference and keep working. You're on the right track.

Alidium

You have a bunch of twins you should try to break up.
A twin is where you have two or more things synchronized exactly. In your jump, both feet contact and leave the ground at exactly the same time. Both arms look like they mirror each other. In the anticipation for the jump your character looks like he is off balance. He is squatting with his arms way back. He should lean forward quite a bit more and hold it for a few frames. Bring the arms down. It’s fine to have them behind him, but they are too high up for the anticipation of a jump. His jump is too small and has slightly less air time than it should.
Remember the principles of animation. One of the biggest things I learned from my animation professor was to really push exaduration. It’s much better to go way over the top and scale back if you need to, than not go far enough.
Are you doing pose-to-pose animation? That can help get your motions down. Pose-to-pose is where you block in only the major poses of a character first then go back and fix up the in-betweens.
In the third scene the feet need to follow the surface of the rolling ball when in contact. Most of the upper body and arm movement look ok in that for now.
Watch for joint popping in the run. You should try to avoid extending any limb 100% because the joint will “pop” and look unnatural. The hips need to rotate with the legs. It looks like you already got the counter rotation with the upper torso. He needs a bit more weight in the run. Bring him down a bit more when he lands and keep it down a bit longer. His body starts moving up again slightly too soon (like 1 or 2 frames). I think his arms extend too much in the middle of a step, bring them in a bit. Actually, they are extended just a bit too much for the full cycle.
After a while you will get it. Over all it’s a great start. I should stop now or my thoughts will just run into a mess.
I would like to see how it looks when you fix it up some.

KrazyTaco

Ok guys sorry for the late response.

JR wrote: »

It's a good start. I'm not an animator, but I think that lack of weight it's being shown clearly on the three parts of your video. The guy is floating while running, and over the ball. And when he jumps, he's not landing as firmly as it should, considering his mass. From the little I studied about animation in the past, I think this is one of the most critic and important factor to make a successful animation. All the fancy stuff can be added later, but make the mass of your char works correctly above all.

jmg06 wrote: »

When your character jumps the movement and the anticipation make you think he is making a big jump but when he jumps it's more like a little hop. You can also see this a little bit in the walk animation. He make very big steps but moves very slow.

Thanks JR and jmg06. Until now I see with my own eyes that floatiness on my animations. Actually I am finding the representation of the mass and weight the most difficult tasks.

@Alidium dat feedback. I have to admit that the jumping cycle is the one that I dedicated the less time. It was very challenging to me to eliminate the twining, altough I did some changes in the timing of the arms, the angle that I used turned not to be appropriate for this case. Yes I make several passes for my animation, first the key poses then the refining. I found this way of working very useful and efficient. Also what I use is the siloueting to a better understanding of the movement.

Thx for your commentaries and critics, they were very useful, you helped me to see some flaws not just in this 3 animation but in my way of working. However, I will not dedicate more time to those 3 but I will start new fresh ones applying what I learned from you guys.

Archanex

Congratulations on finishing your first demo reel! The good news is the hardest part is behind you! Future demo reels will only improve the more you put into them! However this reel needs some serious work I'm sorry to say. Honestly I would recommend going back to bouncing balls and very simple overlap exercises. If you insist on sticking with characters, this is what I would recommend..

run- spine needs more twisting, on the lateral/medial axis, pelvis seems to have a hitch on the way up, arms need to bend a little more at the elbows

jump- feels like feet are glued to the floor and you are just translating his pelvis, there is no pushoff of the feet, also the root needs to have more hang time in the air (like a bouncing ball). bigger follow through on the landing, drag the arms and the spine more, spine should form a reverse C shape on the landing

ball roll- this is the worst one, the feet are slipping like crazy, ball also slides like crazy on the way back

anyway, hope this helps!

KrazyTaco

Probably is not a bad idea to go back to the basics, do some ball animations and restudy and enhance everything I know to hopefuly get some good results. Thx again for your commentaries people