New Reel - Critiques Welcome

HeyGafilimore

Hey everyone! 

I put together a new reel of some of my personal work, and any critiques would be welcome! 

slipsius

This is some great stuff, Nick! Few notes, if you dont mind. 

-Your first summon animation. Real cool! The casters hips feel a bit stiff to me though. When that right leg goes back, the hips dont seem to match the rotation. that piece can also end sooner. You`ve got a lot of dead frames at the end of it.
-Across all your pieces, your feet seem to be the weakest point. They tend to move to a position and lock in place. Not much movement in between stuff.
-Your walk cycles. From what I can tell, if you were to take your walk cycles and slide them forward to make them look as if they are walking forward, the feet will slide. They dont appear to have a linear movement when touching the ground, which is needed when doing game cycles. If the programmer is moving a character forward at a flat 2 units per second in a linear manner, the feet need to match that. Looks like when the land they kind of pause a bit first. 
-Your big guy walk feels like it could use some more fluidity. More follow through and over lap. Feels a bit stiff as is. 
-Multi-armed walk. The arm holding the staff, that elbow is super distracting. you also have a weird almost pop in the middle of the cycle. Doesnt look all that great. Again, it could just use a bit of polish for better follow through and what not.
-It appears you could use some more settle in a lot of your stuff. When the hands fall on the ground. when the guy dies by the sword. they kind of fall, hit the ground and jiggle once or twice, but they feel like they just stop dead pretty quick. could use another small bounce/jiggle. 

On that note, It's some really good stuff! Just needs a bit more polish. I love your ideas for these things. That hand summon is such a fantastic piece. I really love it! 

HeyGafilimore

Thanks a bunch for the input! I can definitely see where you're coming from, and I totally agree, especially on the feet thing. I think I'm worried about too much footwork and it kind of polarizes me towards little footwork, so I need to find that balance. I'll definitely keep an eye on that. Same goes for the settling thing, I didn't want them bouncing around towards the end but it could probably use one more little jiggle at the end. 

I'll be sure to go back over these

slipsius

In terms of settle, you could probably get away with just adding a key 3 or 4 frames after the last key, then in the graph, just make sure the curve follows through. So, if {A} is what it currently is, then {B} would be what it looked like after. It's the same exact key with just some curve work. You basically just select the second last key (the original one) and hit auto tangent. Works for the most part. I think even that will help with your settles.  (ignore the terrible mouse drawing in MS paint... haha)

 

HeyGafilimore

OMG yeah! That totally makes sense and I'll make sure to stay conscious of that. If you're looking at "A", I usually have the tangent settle into the third keyframe, but I'll do something like "B" at the start of a movement to get that quick anticipation. But I can see how that should be applied at the end, for sure. And no sweat, circles and lines in MS paint totally do the trick haha

KielFiggins

Nice mspaint @slipsius : )  Here's a few more examples of settling and how their tangents look

https://twitter.com/the_jan_man/status/709787788942544901

slipsius

Haha, Thanks @KielFiggins And that gif is fantastic. I think ive seen another one around as well. But, that's not really the settle we`re talking about, right. thats more getting from pose to pose. bouncing off the ground, or just a weight shift where it doesnt look like it hits a wall is a bit different. 

KielFiggins

You're right @slipsius those are the exact means of having settle, just wanted to share.

slipsius

Ah ha. I knew I've seen another one before. Any good one that might help someone around these parts. Good call finding these, Kiel.

HeyGafilimore

Yeah, wow, these are super helpful. Thanks guys!