New Character Animation Reel - game work

sanhueza

Hola, everyone!
I've just finished putting together a new reel of my character animation
work. I'd love it if you'd take the time to check it out!
You can download the high quality .avi from my web portfolio:

45MB DivX video

Or, if you can't wait that long, check it out on YouTube:

Character Reel on YouTube


I'm eager to hear what you guys think! Peace,



David L. Sanhueza,
Digital Artist
www.sanhueza.com

Jeremy Lindstrom

Looks pretty good only thing that struck me is you should put a little line at the bottom explaining what you did 'texture' wise since you have 3 other people working on textures on those models. Up until the end I thought you did it yourself.

But I'm guessing your not going for a modeling/texture position but an animation one.

The animation work is pretty good. At the beginning it doesn't look like he is just pushing the spear through the air, needs more feedback of the flesh impact. The lean at :44-:46 looks unnatural as if he'd fall off the ledge. All in all the animation is pretty tight.

edwardE

The animation is really good, but the intro with the little walking sign guys is REALLY long - enough time for impatient could-be employers to lose interest and move on. It takes about 18 seconds before we even see any of your work - I'd recommend getting to the point and crushing all of the fading in-and-out contact info onto a single frame and holding it for for about 4 to 6 seconds at most.

Nice animation work, though - it was entertaining.

Randommonkies

You have a strong theme for the whole demo, but the walk/don't walk guy kinda breaks from that. Maybe integrate the Roman/Egyptian theme into that too?
I think it would really tie it all together nicely.

sanhueza

Thank you all for the feedback!

Here's a breakdown of who did the character textures:

Paul Brandl: Egyptian Priest with the cobra staff
Jeff Depuy: Roman Spearman
Cory Strader: Masked Persian who gets pushed off the wall, Drowning King, Ladder Guys
Myself: Hairy-Chest Guy, the Woman, Spartan javelin thrower, Greek Swordsman who gets knocked down


Dekard - thanks for the animation crit. You've got a good eye for detail.

edwardE - good point. I'm putting my faith in people's patience, and in the entertainment value of the intro.

Randommonkies - great idea about the ancient civilizations intro! Why didn't I think of that?



- me

www.sanhueza.com

Archanex

Most of the work looks pretty decent and at a consistent quality, except for the ladder climb, and the walk at 1:40, I'd take those out I think you could stand to cut it down a little bit anyway as it's almost 3 minutes as it stands.

t4paN

Yay, the Greek warrior's taunt/guts pose was awesome! I suppose it's too late to change anything (not that there's much stuff that could use a change here or there - just saying) so I'll just say that I like your basic animations a lot, and the more complex ones were equally nice.

The only one thing that I found weird is the guy drowning and then floating up with his shield on hand.

Those heavy bronze shields aren't made for swimming, and even if he could to a point swim with it, it'd be nice to have it drop from his arm and plummet in the water while the guy's corpse floats upwards.

Great stuff though.

Jeremy Lindstrom

yeah don't get too technical about the drowning bits as far as I understand it you first sink, then float up... but i could be wrong

sanhueza

Archanex - Thanks for the suggestion!

t4paN - Thank you for the kind words! You're right about the drowning animation. It was under the constraint of being for a game, so there were some things that could not be done realistically. First, the shield had to stay close to the bodies to keep the collision box reasonable. Secondly, players aren't going to stick around for several minutes waiting for a dead body to float to the surface, so the falling/rising aspect of the animation had to be sped up dramatically compared to what would happen in real life.

Dekard - nope, you're right.


- me

www.sanhueza.com

sanhueza

I added a higher-resolution, instantly streaming version of this reel to my CGPortfolio. Better quality than YouTube.


Character Reel on CGPortfolio