Heya, Ben! Here's just a few things that I noticed after a few views of your demo reel:
I noticed that many parts of Mathilda's face isn't expressive enough to make the dialogue convincing. For instance, when she says 'Hi', her face doesn't say anything. She doesn't seem happy or cheery, she mostly just stares blankly. I'm somewhat familiar with that rig and there are many controls there to get the meat of her face working with what she is saying and how she is saying it.
I would also go back and look into the hands of your acting piece. The way that your fingers and palms are moulded can really sell an acting piece. Right now, the hands in your piece are mostly either claw shaped, a closed fist or flattened out almost completely. Try posing them to express the profoundness of the dialogue. Lead with the index fingers, go for asymmetry between the two hands, get creative.
The timing for some many of the pieces (the head swing in the emotion head turn, the arms in the acting piece, the head bob in the greeting, etc.) could be reworked. Sometimes it feels too fast for what is going on. I would definitely try to get some more reference to completely understand how long give action should take (and this is coming from someone who needs to film more reference). :P
Also, the nose in the acting piece expands and retracts too a tad much and can come off as distracting rather than giving off the impression that she's breathing through her nose.
Hope that you can pull something useful from this mini text wall. Can't wait to see more.
Thankyou very much for the feedback. This is a really helpful critique and I'm really happy that you responded. I'm definitely going to improve on these.
The motion capture data in the monologue is a bit iffy, I must admit. Tried as much as I could within my deadline but yeah the hands are definitely a weakness in the monologue piece. I've only been using Maya for about 24 weeks so I'm learning still, but confident at the same time.
The reference I used for the 'Hi! I'm Ben and I'm an animator' piece was actually my own recording of myself and used it as reference. Problem was though that I barely moved my face XD. So that made things more difficult than it should have been.
I'll definitely keep this response to improve my pieces.
Replies
I noticed that many parts of Mathilda's face isn't expressive enough to make the dialogue convincing. For instance, when she says 'Hi', her face doesn't say anything. She doesn't seem happy or cheery, she mostly just stares blankly. I'm somewhat familiar with that rig and there are many controls there to get the meat of her face working with what she is saying and how she is saying it.
I would also go back and look into the hands of your acting piece. The way that your fingers and palms are moulded can really sell an acting piece. Right now, the hands in your piece are mostly either claw shaped, a closed fist or flattened out almost completely. Try posing them to express the profoundness of the dialogue. Lead with the index fingers, go for asymmetry between the two hands, get creative.
The timing for some many of the pieces (the head swing in the emotion head turn, the arms in the acting piece, the head bob in the greeting, etc.) could be reworked. Sometimes it feels too fast for what is going on. I would definitely try to get some more reference to completely understand how long give action should take (and this is coming from someone who needs to film more reference). :P
Also, the nose in the acting piece expands and retracts too a tad much and can come off as distracting rather than giving off the impression that she's breathing through her nose.
Hope that you can pull something useful from this mini text wall. Can't wait to see more.
Thankyou very much for the feedback. This is a really helpful critique and I'm really happy that you responded. I'm definitely going to improve on these.
The motion capture data in the monologue is a bit iffy, I must admit. Tried as much as I could within my deadline but yeah the hands are definitely a weakness in the monologue piece. I've only been using Maya for about 24 weeks so I'm learning still, but confident at the same time.
The reference I used for the 'Hi! I'm Ben and I'm an animator' piece was actually my own recording of myself and used it as reference. Problem was though that I barely moved my face XD. So that made things more difficult than it should have been.
I'll definitely keep this response to improve my pieces.
Many thanks!
Ben.