Shark Mech

DellBarnes101

I'm starting a little quick animation with this awesome HammerHead Rig (Shout out to Brian "panda" Choi https://jadeeyepanda.com/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwgcN_6FsYo
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/1c63a91710c0/

DellBarnes101

Whoops That Sync Sketch wasn't public here's the new link.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/1c63a91710c0/

DellBarnes101

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un0d8l-Yvgk
Here's the final draft of my block out, moving on now to fixing problems and polishing


https://syncsketch.com/sketch/1c63a91710c0/#701009/627557

EVernier

Hey!

A few things to think about: You could move your camera to screen left so that you can get a stronger silhouette, making the shark shoot a target that's close to the camera without being directly behind it. You could get stronger action lines going in your poses and make the action more dynamic. Having the character 100% facing the camera can make your scenes look a bit flat.

Before moving to polishing, you should play around with your timing and spacing:

You have 3 actions in your animation: The shark runs in, he stops and takes aim, he shoots his missile. You could, for example, split each action into 3 different beats.

The first beat is fast, we can assume he's taking his target by surprise by sprinting right in front of him, so it's fast and intense.

The second beat is slower, he has to stop his momentum to turn and take aim. This also works as an anticipation for the last beat.

The third and last beat is fast again. The anticipation you've built with a slower 2nd beat will also make the last action, the missile firing, stronger and more impactful.

That's just an idea of how you could adjust timing and spacing (more so spacing than timing. The length of your animation can probably stay close to what you have).

You can keep the slow-motion at the end, but keep in mind slow-motion is a lot harder to pull off than it may seem and you'll end up spending more time polishing that part than the rest!

Hope that helps. Keep working!

DellBarnes101

Thanks for the feedback! I finally figured out how to make the sketch sync public. I'll take another pass at the timing and some of the poses.

DellBarnes101

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji1lKgrI3ik
update

tholmes3d

If you're going to keep working on this, I'd animate a run cycle and use what you learn from that to inform this piece (or just work directly on this, I just thought a cycle would be easier). The contact of the feet, the up-down motion of the hips, and the readability of the silhouette can use use some work. This is a cool rig, but also presents some challenges for an intro like you have, because my eye has a hard time figuring out what I'm looking at, and then by the time I figure it out he's stopping the run so I don't get to enjoy the intro. Clear poses will really help that run read better. If you can curl the fingers of the hand to maybe hide the crazy long fingers, that could help since it's one of the parts I got confused by. Anything to help simplify things so that I'm not trying to process the run, while figuring out what's going on with this creature who has a tail, chunky robot legs, something big on his shoulder, and long fingers that can look like an extra appendage if the silhouette isn't clear.

I like the slide you have into the stop. I'd shoot reference for this and see how your weight transfers on a stop like that. You should of course push the timing and posing, but I there will be good info in the reference that helps ground the action. 

Lastly, I'd keep the missile lower on screen instead of having it arc up towards the top so far. In general I'd try to keep the main action away from the edges of the screen because it's easy for people to miss it. Also is he aiming with his hand? If so I'd add a red laser or something to show that. 

Looking forward to the next update!