Newbie in character animation
polycounter lvl 7
Hello
I start to learn animation about 2 month ago or so.
As i dont have any friends who could help me with that I'm walking along in character animation and collecting any kind of techniques, tips, tricks about 3d character animation through the internet.
At this moment i have created some animation and asked myself - Am i doing it right, does my animation looks correct and believable?
It's not kind of reel, this is what it calls ) animation progress, the latest video is the last thing which i have made.
For the model I download it from free website ( I don't remember exactly from which one) made retopology of it and create some rig just for body movements.
At this moment she have no facial emotion.... yet
but soon I'll finish her rig...well i think so ))
I would be very appreciative if you post some remarks or suggestion about this animation.
P.S. English is not my native language, sorry if I made mistakes
Replies
I must say I'm pretty impressed. Your work is pretty solid for only 2 months of practice. You're well on your way to becoming a kickass animator.
I recognize the push and the swing and roll as tutorials from Digital Tutors (if I'm not mistaken). It's not a bad thing that you've tried to follow tutorials (Digital Tutors was my go-to as well when I first started), but at this stage I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. I fell into the same trap of trying to do similar tutorials when I didn't really have a grasp of the basics quite yet. What I'm saying is I think you should back up and play with a simpler character, such as a classic ball + legs character. There are plenty of free ones available on CreativeCrash.com.
I think your biggest issue right now is not having a solid workflow. And by that I mean you jump in too early to the animation process, particularly splining, which is a common pitfall among newbies. Your poses don't really transition well from one to the next at the moment, the weight is lacking in a lot of areas (weight is definitely one of the hardest things to master as an animator).
If you have the means to do so, I would highly recommend looking into an online animation school, such as iAnimate, AnimSchool, or AnimationMentor. You need some professional guidance to keep you on the right track. All of these schools are fantastic in their own way, and you can't go wrong. I personally took iAnimate and I know from seeing your progress reel that you could place in to Workshop 2 Body Mechanics right away. I'm not sure if you'd be able to place in to AnimSchool or AnimationMentor, unfortunately.
However, if you do not have the means to pay for one of those schools, continue posting your work here and we'll be glad to take a look. Here is a list of animation exercises you can try to work through to hone your skills. I would highly, highly recommend filming reference of yourself doing some of these actions (as much as possible), or find reference on YouTube before jumping in to Maya. Get a program like Kinovea to analyze the footage. Be careful not to fall into the trap of simply rotoscoping your reference; try to take the main poses as a foundation and then push the poses beyond what you see in the video.
Good work, and good luck
What @WeatherMan said is 100% correct , the walk cycle and the push looks very robotic and without energy. But its only time man , if you keep practicing you will get better. I recommend you to look to the book called "The animators survival kit" from richard williams, It will help you a lot.
Good work and if you need anything , just post your work here and i'm sure the forum will help
And again thank you for reply and help.
What you think about it ?
jump
I was surfing around the forum and found SyncSketch so here it is )
http://syncsketch.com/playground/0752fda16ea84a769f7571448dfa75f5#71675
Now that that's out of the way, your animation! 2 months? Damn. As someone mentioned above, absolutely, keep doing what you`re doing and you`ll be just fine. It seems like the biggest thing you lack right now is reference. Your timing is all off. Your weight exercise, for instance. It's super slow. Do you have a smart phone or something that you can film yourself doing that exact motion? Film yourself and study it. You`ll learn a lot from doing that. You`ve got some great follow through and settle on some of your stuff, but the timing is hurting you.
Really, you just need to get more reference, and I think it will make a huge improvement in your work. Pushing an object? Look for football players doing their push exercises with the sleds. Find reference videos on youtube, or something like it and examine and follow them. Download the video and watch them in media player classic, or quicktime, where you can do a frame by frame. go through it and every 2-5 frames, match the pose on your character. any time a limb starts going a different direction, key that. pose that out. For walks and runs, count the frames in the video that the feet are on the ground, and match it with your character. If they are only touching for 4 frames, but you have them touching for 7, it's going to feel much slower than the actual walk.
Everyone uses reference, don't be afraid of it. Just because you film yourself doesnt mean you have to show it to people. You can be shy all you want.
You have a lot of potential. I mean that. Keep going!
There are 2 settings in maya that you need to change though. 1 is for the timeline, how fast your in maya playback speed is. and the other is for your export. A lot of the time, people only change the timeline, so when they playblast their stuff, it seems slower than what it shows in maya.
Did you shoot multiple angles? or just one? You may need another angle for that side shot.
Just one, from front, thought that will be enough.
And I had set up a game animation reel.
syncsketch is with mouth camera also.
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/119332#137088
So its been long time since my last post, time goes by, skill is getting higher and higher ))
Here is new video i have been working. it take me about 3 weeks to doA hand key animation, plus some lazy cloth simulation
https://player.vimeo.com/video/349474682?amp;loop=1
Do you have any advice for newbie in animation?
Com'on men, we all trying our best, so dont say that, no one is better then any one else, so keep practicing, the more you fail the more you will be good in animation, cuz practice is a controllable failure, keep doing what you are doing, jump higher than you think you can, cuz you can do this, you just haven't realize this yet
@Pain Thanks you too, I really appreciate your comment guys, yet there is no point called as master level ))) There are still so many thing to learn and observe
Advice, hmm.... observe life, as animator you are not make just and animation, you are creating illusion of life, something that is believable and it shouldn't be always be realistic as hell, believable animatoin this is what cost the most. There is a book called just like it "Illusion of life", highly recommending to read it, most principles was misunderstooded by me until I read it
Find your weakness and practice it, don't be lazy to work on your footsteps, human body is such a pain ))))) constantly re-balancing it self
You can try to rotoscope animation, just dont post it, its your learning path of the animation, how the stuff work, which part leads, which is following, try finding more then 1 reference on movement you want to animate, record yourself and try different approach between you extremes, later on think about reference as a guide, cuz animation is not about rotoscoping, its creating believable animation, you are creating things not for yourself but for the audience, look at your animation as it is not your animation and what would you like to improve so it could be looking more appealing for you as if you were that audience, some stuff might be harder to change, but it will cost the effort trust me ))
I remember leaving that first comment all those years ago. You've come a long way in a relatively short time. It'll literally never get old seeing someone's progress as they experience the craft of animation. Keep it up.
I must say though, you might start a new thread for your latest reel. The current title is a bit misleading (:
I think keep posting here, need to know from were starting point was, even though knowing tricks of animation, now I'm having more struggle with idea and learning composition, camera, but as you said it literally never get old seeing the progress so I think I'll have to keep this entertainment )))