Ohh ty very much for helping me out with that JMYoung, I'm using Max.
Here's the rolling punch with a some small changes (a little realistic bounce on the fall, slower flip, more hip and shoulder action into the punch, couple of changes to hand, little pauses)
I love helping out with animations, but i dont have much time right now since im in class, so here's just 2 little crits. My personal opinions, and im still just a student taking this stuff in class, so take from it what you will.
On the new ogre walk cycle, I personally think he needs a BIT of head bop. with how the arms kinda flay, if you will, such a static head just doesnt fit in i dont think. too much movement throughout the body and arms to have a head just sit there. add just a touch of head bop.
In your original reel. just before the slow climb soldier, when he runs and jumps onto that pole and swings onto the wall. Well, when the soldier builds up speed on the pole by lifting his knees, That just feels off to me. it might be the elbows, as they move forward with the knees. I think generally they might go backwards a little bit to exaggerate the thrusting action the soldier should be making with his lower body. Also, after he kicks forward, his body/legs goes too far up. if you look at where he swings backwards, then he goes forward, slows down ALOT to do the kick, finishes the kick, and then goes higher than in the backswing. for how much he slows down to do that whole kick forward thing, he shouldnt go much higher than the kick itself.
Ill probably take a look at this more later when i get home.
Ohh ty very much for helping me out with that JMYoung, I'm using Max.
Here's the rolling punch with a some small changes (a little realistic bounce on the fall, slower flip, more hip and shoulder action into the punch, couple of changes to hand, little pauses)
I love helping out with animations, but i dont have much time right now since im in class, so here's just 2 little crits. My personal opinions, and im still just a student taking this stuff in class, so take from it what you will.
On the new ogre walk cycle, I personally think he needs a BIT of head bop. with how the arms kinda flay, if you will, such a static head just doesnt fit in i dont think. too much movement throughout the body and arms to have a head just sit there. add just a touch of head bop.
In your original reel. just before the slow climb soldier, when he runs and jumps onto that pole and swings onto the wall. Well, when the soldier builds up speed on the pole by lifting his knees, That just feels off to me. it might be the elbows, as they move forward with the knees. I think generally they might go backwards a little bit to exaggerate the thrusting action the soldier should be making with his lower body. Also, after he kicks forward, his body/legs goes too far up. if you look at where he swings backwards, then he goes forward, slows down ALOT to do the kick, finishes the kick, and then goes higher than in the backswing. for how much he slows down to do that whole kick forward thing, he shouldnt go much higher than the kick itself.
Ill probably take a look at this more later when i get home.
Ty for the crits, I agree about the head bobbing, I was just sort of going form one extreme to the other, I'll find the happy medium.
As for the pole swinging, I can definitely do better and the reality is, it was the first animation i ever made of a guy navigating an environment, so I'm just going to redo it from scratch like that other animations I've been going over that are old, because it would be silly to keep trying to overwrite old frames.
Oh, I thought Id post this while I'm working on the pole swinging.
I'm been getting some feedback on the CG talk forums too, and one guy had quite a few crits for the latest cyclops lift, so here's a version revised based on his feedback.
I don't think you nee facial animation in the reel, but if its done well it can only help.
I'm not a big fan of the Alyx HL2 clip. HL2 facial animation really doesn't hold up to the games that are out today much less the games that are in production you would be working on. To be brutally honest, I think you fell under the HL2 standard.
The sniper clip is pretty good, but could use some polish. There seems to be quite a bit of drift from pose to pose.
The rock paper scissors seems kind of awkward and I would probably take it out also.
Hey guys, I reworked the horse walk (once somebody mentioned that it was 2 poses instead of 4 independent steps it became so glaring I wanted to fix it asap).
Here it is, it should be about right now, footwork wise.
As for the Half Life face stuff, I think it's a fun part of the reel, but the animation quality is definitely not good. It's a bit silly to have the only 2 facial animations Ive ever tried both in the reel, and I guess I thought I had to tick a box, you know? Until I have a good facial animation, I wont have one in the reel.
As for the rock paper shotgun, I like the premise, and I think people like it (when I first made it, it got on a lot of websites and got something like 40,000 hits) but the animation is nothing special or important. I think I'll either take it out, or rework it, probably just take it out.
Is this the general consensus from experienced ppl, take out rock paper shotgun and facial animation?
the swing looks better, though, im not really sure why you have him bringing up his knees in the first place, he has enough momentum to do a nice swing without it. like on the down swing, if he brought his legs up in a straight manor, not bending the knees too much, as if he were on a swing set. when i think of people bringing their knees up, its usually when they are at a stop, or close to it.
The kick in that swing originated from a technical quandry going on behind the scenes, that I've since sort of worked out, and wont bore you with the details of.
Since I could quite happily take it out, it's only really there at the moment for flavour, I think youre right about the timing of the knees being brought up.
I don't really know what to do with it, I mean, is the animation at its core, good? Is it worth keeping? I want something of that nature in the reel, but should I just wack out something new? If it IS good, and I should keep it, shall I just nuke the kick and have a normal swing?
Sorry I post so many questions but I'm trying to get this reel all fixed up in record time and I plan to prey upon your juicy brains as greedily as I'm allowed.
vig thinks its good, and hes the pro here. i think its good, and definitely a good idea. just the whole knee bend thing, and him slowing down to do it when he already has momentum. if you had him stop, or slow down right after he jumps and grabs onto the pole, then have him kick out to start up again, that could work too. it really depends on how much time you wanna spend on it. if you`re getting sick of it. that sorda thing. I dunno, im picky. haha
eidt - BTW.... howd you get the models and rigs?know people that work at those places? or did i miss the site that has them? lol
The only other thing I'd say about the swing is that right about the 2 second mark, when he's on his first back swing, his legs (focus on the knees) do a sort of little "jolt" where they come forward real quick.
I think you could pretty much cut out the kick all together (roughly :02-:03), and basically make the animation the grab and first forward swing + the last final swing and launch off - that might make it a smooth single swing and jump.
I didn't want to say much about the swing just yet until I saw more of the motion after the pump, ending where it does it makes it hard to judge the effectiveness of the pump.
But I think I see something with the swing that bugs me now. When he does the knee pump he stops a little short, it seems to take away from his swing instead of add to it. He also pumps a little late. Try to find some ref of kids on swings and see when in the arc they start to pump their legs? I remember on the back swing pulling my feet in toward my body and as I swung forward pushing them out and forward but its been a while...
Your swinger kind of pumps at the end of his arc and is even starting to travel back a bit? The pump could be taking away from his momentum?
But what's really making it hard to nail it down, it is that it stops before the pump actually pays off. In order to judge it correctly you kind of need to see the gain he gets from the pump.
I agree that maybe one more swing to bleed off some momentum and then the knee pump to get it back could play out a little better.
Hey, took a little break for the first time in quite a while to play some video games! It's fun to remember PLAYING games is fun too. Rockin' Left 4 Dead.
I'm thinking about this sequence, and the more I do, the more I think I should fire up last years prince of Persia and reference some footage strait out of that.
gymnastics high bar is a great place to get reference for this. or you could go to a local soccer field and film yourself swinging from the goal. though, i dont think the issue is reference per say. you just have too much momentum coming into the leg kick for it to be needed.
what krypteia said is good too. skip the couple swings, as soon as he grabs the bar, swing forward and launch to the wall. or what vig and i mentioned, let the momentum die first, then start it back up with the reference from gymnastics.
Left 4 dead is siiiick, but ive recently purchased NHL 10, and need for speed shift. so ive been busy with those. lol but stop slackin! we wanna see updates!
Its funny you should mention high bar, last night I already did that and I have an almost completed animation from scratch referenced off high bar stuff
I really wanted to post it before going to sleep, but by like 4am it just wasn't going to be ready in time, but you should see a new high bar piece from me in 1-2 hours.
Hey, so here's what I came out with doing high bar gymnastics. To be honest I kind of hate it, but it pretty much matches the reference. I think I'll have to go a bit more off the beaten path, because the professional swinging looks way too sterile.
Hey, dont worry it's good that you did a drawover.
I see what you mean, I've actually been working on that old swing animation, and I should be able to show you in say, 40 minutes. I'll try and get that same swing timing as in that re-do video.
I wanted to completely replace the long kind of boring platoforming section of the reel. As you will see in this video this idea is for the swing to land in a roll, wall run, and then he will quickly jump up a small tower. All of this should only take about 12 seconds maybe, rather than the huge amoutn of time the current platforming section takes.
As you can see I haven't quite finished it, he still needs to climb up the tower, but tell me what you think.
If the swinging still sucks, and people think the newer one I did (based off olympic gymnastics) is much better, I can simply cut the swinging part of this animation, use the olympics for the reel, and then cut in from the roll onwards for the patforming section of the reel. Thoughts?
yeah I agree it is too slow. I had a reference (although it wasnt great, very low quality, very bad angle etc)
But thinking about it I did space out the frames a bit once Id done it. I think maybe I was just very tired and not looking at it right, ill make it snappier.
I didnt have any reference for the bit where he spins around before he jumps off, does that look OK?
He swings from the bar straight into a somersault and then immediately out of the roll goes into the wall run. A wall run of that distance would take some serious momentum, probably more than he would have coming out of the roll, and then adding the spin out of the run, it all comes off as a bit impossible.
The roll looks good, but maybe consider adding a few yards to the platform so that the runner may recover from the roll, get a few good strides in, and then make his jump into the wall run.
Also, I don't know about the whole spin, it might just be a little too over-the-top for the otherwise realistic parkour moves.
I agree with Jakelear.
- Bring the far right wall closer to close the gap?
- Possibly angle the bar he swings from so he jumps from the foreground to the background, nothing extreme maybe just 15-20 degrees, it would give him more momentum to stick to the wall.
- Possibly slope the roll down toward the gap so he picks up more momentum as he rolls?
- I think there is too much swing the first time he grabs the pole. It seems like that's the most momentum he will ever have. If that's the case why not go for it, why slow down and play around on the bar?
the swing looks much better! though, as he lets go, he seems to build too much speed. slow that down a touch. the wall run, i just dont like. he starts it WAY to soon after the roll. the angle at which he runs up the wall seems a bit too steep. generally with wall runs, they only build altitude for a few steps, then start sliding down. their feet usually slide as they run too. a very subtle thing in an animation, but i think it would help alot.
Totally agree with all these points, I pretty much just got the concept in my head and ran with it, and now I need to apply some proper thought to it.
I'll add some strides after the roll to build momentum for the wall run, I'll not have him go up at such an angle, and I'm going to slope the platform slighty for his roll. I may try to have the swing bar at an angle but I'm not 100%.
I'm going to take a fair amount of swing out of the first part where he lands on the bar, or maybe I'll just speed the shole thing up and have him swing strait off.
If I can get everythign else right and make the spin on the wall look good I'll try to keep it, b/c I like little over the top things like that, but I'll see if I can make it fit.
Wont be able to update tonight, but ill be working on it tomorrow.
Hi here's where Im at with the animation, gotten quite ill so Im not thinking super clearly and Im not 100% about the animation, it still needs work for sure.
You should try and get crits from 11secondclub.com (seeing as we're mostly modellers here, our opinions are likely more objective, and not really based on a lot of professional experience).
You have amazing attention to detail, and subtlety in movements. I agree with others, who have stated the lack of weight in your timing as an issue.
Another issue I have is some of your posing isn't necessarily the strongest, and your choice in camera angles tend not to help your silhouettes.
His attacks have a lot of WEIGHT and power behind them. The posing is slightly exaggerated where they need to be, and there's a very strong sense of posing and silhouette (when the silhouette to portray the pose isn't available, he tends to make sure there is a lot of overlap).
The other thing is your facial animations aren't very poignant or emotive. Yes you've managed to capture the lip sync properly, but there's almost no expression, and the body language doesn't seem to support the dialogue either.
(same friend, different examples of facial animation, dynamic posing)
IMO your work is very strong, and you have the calibre to get a job. If you keep at it at your same pace, I firmly believe you're going to be a superstar.
the angle he runs up the wall is much better, though, it seems as though he seems to slow down as soon as he hits the wall, then speed up. it could just be the camera, cause it stops briefly. and when he comes out of the roll, he kind of hops to his last step before jumping onto the wall. thats caused by him leaning upright almost right away. if you get him to keep leaning forward until he jumps onto the wall, it should be good. dont make him lean TOO far forward on those last couple steps, but definitely not upright like that.
also, with what jacquechoi said about the camera... for what you`re doing, the camera is good... the links he posted are more for a film style game, and if you go to his friends personal webpage, he has animations with the same camera as you.
Hi, I've changed his leaning after the roll, and Ive changed the slowdown on the wall, but I wont upload a new version right now since its so similar in most ways to the previous version.
To Jacque I'd just like to say that I bought and completed Far Cry 2 and I really really enjoyed it
I agree that my silhouettes and weight/timing need to be improved vastly. The particular animation you linked by your friend was gorgeous in both those aspects.
I'm hoping that as I go through each animation in my reel I can slowly do better regarding these issues, especially as I'm starting from scratch with a lot of it. Oh, and with the facial animation, I'm taking those out of the next version of the reel, I'm only going to include facial stuff once I have a good one, not just shoehorning it in.
I'm still looking for more feedback from people on the swing, but I will also ask for critiscism on some other parts of my reel now. If you could look at my reel video (which already feels very out of date heh) and tell me whether you think the first scene, and the scene that starts as 2:08 are
A) both needed? Or are they similar and I should just keep 1
Which is better?
C) Are there glaring problems with whichever one(s) I should keep?
EDIT: oh and so you don't have to go back to page 1, here's the reel again
Why is the dwarf hitting the knight with the back of his axe?
It always looked off to me, but not until just now when I went back several times and played through it, yeah its the back of the axe. I'd assume he's trying to ambush him, and thus kill him, so no blade? This may have been asked before (sorry if it was, I read the thread, but by the time I got here its hard to remember all of the crits/questions)
Looks good overall, and I like the changes you've made--especially to the roll/throw, I'm no animator for sure, but still looking nice.
Hi, 2:50 is really long for an animation reel, especially if you're trying to break in. It's hard enough to have 30 seconds of really high-quality material, much less 3 minutes. In addition, the pacing suffers. This guy has a ton of professional experience yet his reel clocks in at 2:10 and feels just right. You want to hit them with amazing stuff and then get out ASAP, leaving them wanting more.
If you want nitty-gritty critiques, you'll need to post .mov files instead of YouTube clips so that we can step through your animations frame-by-frame. You can tell Polycount isn't crammed with animators or you'd have been asked that 10 times by now :P
In general your stuff is solid, but shows that you don't completely grasp all the fundamentals -- focusing on strong posing and shape changes will help, but the lack of weight on the reel is a combination of the poses, timing, spacing, overlap, etc., all working together. I also think your stuff could do with more polish. Don't be afraid to go back and do simpler exercises between working on reel shots. I find I often learn the most when I practice on simpler stuff; much easier to reinforce the concept.
Your attitude (and willingness to accept criticism) are your best asset. It's clear that you're really motivated, and it shows in your updates. The piece you posted above is a definite improvement.
Holy fuck David Lam has done some amazing shit. That's the sort of stuff I want to be involved in however many years it takes.
With the length thing, it's too long, and in case I didn't make it clear in any previous posts, my new reel is going to be significantly shorter, like, a huge amount shorter.
With the youtube thing, I actually render out all my animations as quicktime files, and I do in fact have a professional website where all animation is embedded as quicktime. The reason all this is youtube, is b/c I didn't think anybody would care enough about some random guys animation to download large quicktime files.
HOWEVER, I have infinite webspace so if you guys want to crit quicktime files instead, then I will upload all future animations as quicktime so you can download them frame by frame. Would you prefer embeds or zipped files?
With the fundamentals thing, you are correct. My first animation was creating all weapon animation for a shotgun in a mod. This was just self taught and I had no direction. After that had my first attempt at skinning and animating a biped to a human character and I started doing full body animations with that.
Then I went on to just working with the biped rig (a special one not the max biped) and from then till now I've just been doing stuff that's in the reel, learning as I go along. I have done some ball bounces and obstacle course things, even some 2D stuff in flash along the way. But really the only way I've learned the last 7 months is just by trying it out for myself and looking at great animation in games.
This is a problem and it shows in my animation, but I couldn't go to any classes and for some dumbass reason I never purchased the animators survival kit. After people having mentioned it in this thread I'm very much going to get a copy, ideally I'd like to get the dvd's.
And as for the attitude thing, it's just that I live and breathe gaming, and more the culture of development just as much as games themselves. For the longest time I thought that getting into games was basically the most impossible dream you could have, and for me, the people who were doing it were like, rock gods, untouchable. But for whatever reason after I quit uni and got a job interview for a QA position (which I get rejected from) I was like ''I got in the building! I saw real people!''. So now I'm doing everything in my limited power to get where I want to be, and I'm not precious about my work, I am in the bottom 5% and I know it.
You can tell Polycount isn't crammed with animators or you'd have been asked that 10 times by now :P
A lot of people use youtube because they lack the means to upload mov files.
It happens on a lot of forums, even on animation boards. I give up and save the youtube videos using www.savetube.com and then covert them to .mov if I need to step. It's more work on my end but I find it faster than the back and forth you get over asking for mov files.
.mov please.
Where can I upload my files so they play as .mov?
Your site, dropbox, skydrive, zipped to a file transfer site.
Why do I need to use .mov?
It allows people to step though your animations.
Why is that important? Can't you just watch the youtube and give me crits?
Can't you upload a .mov? Nevermind I worked around it here are my notes.
Animation is now 'finished' in the sense that he climbs the tower and that's the end of the sequence, but I'm sure they will be things I needs to revise.
you can start with the cameras. if you can notice the camera moving, you set them up wrong. right now, its hard to judge the animation cause the camera is all over the place.
Yeah to be honest I have no idea how to shoot this scene. The characters move around such a lot. Would it be better for the camera to just switch positions rather than transition between them?
I agree I think the camera moves around a little too much and possibly a little too quickly. I think the shots are different enough that doing it with cuts might disorient the viewer a little. With so little stationary landmarks in the scene and ogre moving so quickly it could be jarring to do cuts?
Also the scene seems to transitions from active participant to safely observing which could also be a little confusing or at least breaking things a little.
Maybe start it off with a 3/4 shot something in between the two extremes and then transition it a little bit toward both as the shots come up. That way its not moving around as much and you're not having to cut?
The first shot is a bit hard to judge depth because its straight on. When you see the next shot, the guy in the foreground looks pretty far away and it seems unlikely he would be thrown to the ground by the impact of the ogre landing.
The last shot you're looking down on the ogre as it tosses and yells, which puts your viewer in a place of power over the ogre. I think it steels a bit of its performance being where it is. I think you could lower it, and have the body tumble just over the camera maybe shaking it as it lands behind? Possibly switching the camera back to a human pers would bring the viewer back into the danger of the scene, where they started out.
Hey, so I've been working on that cyclops sequence. It used to be my favourite animation I had done, and now I dont really know if I still like it for legitimate reasons or not.
Here's where I am with it, you should pretty much ignore the soldiers, they're no longer sync'ed up at all.
What I want to know is, is the animation cool, is it different from the other stuff I've been doing, to the point where I should definitely include it. And ofc general crits on the animation itself. I know it's very zoomed out but I wanted a simple shot that showed you the thing in 1 perspective.
Hey, so I'm compiling some finalish shots for the reel. I'm actually already doing a fair bit of changing to the acrobat one right now but I'd love some general crits on these two animations, but also, I'd like feedback on the presentation. I want muted clay like renders on the characters and strong silhouettes against vibrant backgrounds.
I don't like how hunched he is getting up after the roll, normally people spring back pretty up right, it looks like he's getting too much traction when he's running on the wall, he needs to be quicker/lighter on his feet.
Replies
Here's the rolling punch with a some small changes (a little realistic bounce on the fall, slower flip, more hip and shoulder action into the punch, couple of changes to hand, little pauses)
SO yeah,
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Judging by the speed you're working at, are you using biped?
Can't do any work atm, but I'll be back home in about 3 hours and I'll get back to the grindstone.
On the new ogre walk cycle, I personally think he needs a BIT of head bop. with how the arms kinda flay, if you will, such a static head just doesnt fit in i dont think. too much movement throughout the body and arms to have a head just sit there. add just a touch of head bop.
In your original reel. just before the slow climb soldier, when he runs and jumps onto that pole and swings onto the wall. Well, when the soldier builds up speed on the pole by lifting his knees, That just feels off to me. it might be the elbows, as they move forward with the knees. I think generally they might go backwards a little bit to exaggerate the thrusting action the soldier should be making with his lower body. Also, after he kicks forward, his body/legs goes too far up. if you look at where he swings backwards, then he goes forward, slows down ALOT to do the kick, finishes the kick, and then goes higher than in the backswing. for how much he slows down to do that whole kick forward thing, he shouldnt go much higher than the kick itself.
Ill probably take a look at this more later when i get home.
Yeah that looks a lot better, and you added the pause I suggested
Ty for the crits, I agree about the head bobbing, I was just sort of going form one extreme to the other, I'll find the happy medium.
As for the pole swinging, I can definitely do better and the reality is, it was the first animation i ever made of a guy navigating an environment, so I'm just going to redo it from scratch like that other animations I've been going over that are old, because it would be silly to keep trying to overwrite old frames.
I'm been getting some feedback on the CG talk forums too, and one guy had quite a few crits for the latest cyclops lift, so here's a version revised based on his feedback.
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Do I NEED to have facial animation in the reel, or how big of a pro is it on the list?
How are the facial animations in the reel? If I need to have facial stuff, shall I start over with it with a pretty decent facial reel I have for max?
I don't think you nee facial animation in the reel, but if its done well it can only help.
I'm not a big fan of the Alyx HL2 clip. HL2 facial animation really doesn't hold up to the games that are out today much less the games that are in production you would be working on. To be brutally honest, I think you fell under the HL2 standard.
The sniper clip is pretty good, but could use some polish. There seems to be quite a bit of drift from pose to pose.
The rock paper scissors seems kind of awkward and I would probably take it out also.
Here it is, it should be about right now, footwork wise.
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As for the Half Life face stuff, I think it's a fun part of the reel, but the animation quality is definitely not good. It's a bit silly to have the only 2 facial animations Ive ever tried both in the reel, and I guess I thought I had to tick a box, you know? Until I have a good facial animation, I wont have one in the reel.
As for the rock paper shotgun, I like the premise, and I think people like it (when I first made it, it got on a lot of websites and got something like 40,000 hits) but the animation is nothing special or important. I think I'll either take it out, or rework it, probably just take it out.
Is this the general consensus from experienced ppl, take out rock paper shotgun and facial animation?
Since I could quite happily take it out, it's only really there at the moment for flavour, I think youre right about the timing of the knees being brought up.
I don't really know what to do with it, I mean, is the animation at its core, good? Is it worth keeping? I want something of that nature in the reel, but should I just wack out something new? If it IS good, and I should keep it, shall I just nuke the kick and have a normal swing?
Sorry I post so many questions but I'm trying to get this reel all fixed up in record time and I plan to prey upon your juicy brains as greedily as I'm allowed.
eidt - BTW.... howd you get the models and rigs?know people that work at those places? or did i miss the site that has them? lol
I think you could pretty much cut out the kick all together (roughly :02-:03), and basically make the animation the grab and first forward swing + the last final swing and launch off - that might make it a smooth single swing and jump.
I didn't want to say much about the swing just yet until I saw more of the motion after the pump, ending where it does it makes it hard to judge the effectiveness of the pump.
But I think I see something with the swing that bugs me now. When he does the knee pump he stops a little short, it seems to take away from his swing instead of add to it. He also pumps a little late. Try to find some ref of kids on swings and see when in the arc they start to pump their legs? I remember on the back swing pulling my feet in toward my body and as I swung forward pushing them out and forward but its been a while...
Your swinger kind of pumps at the end of his arc and is even starting to travel back a bit? The pump could be taking away from his momentum?
But what's really making it hard to nail it down, it is that it stops before the pump actually pays off. In order to judge it correctly you kind of need to see the gain he gets from the pump.
I agree that maybe one more swing to bleed off some momentum and then the knee pump to get it back could play out a little better.
I'm thinking about this sequence, and the more I do, the more I think I should fire up last years prince of Persia and reference some footage strait out of that.
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gymnastics high bar is a great place to get reference for this. or you could go to a local soccer field and film yourself swinging from the goal. though, i dont think the issue is reference per say. you just have too much momentum coming into the leg kick for it to be needed.
what krypteia said is good too. skip the couple swings, as soon as he grabs the bar, swing forward and launch to the wall. or what vig and i mentioned, let the momentum die first, then start it back up with the reference from gymnastics.
Left 4 dead is siiiick, but ive recently purchased NHL 10, and need for speed shift. so ive been busy with those. lol but stop slackin! we wanna see updates!
I really wanted to post it before going to sleep, but by like 4am it just wasn't going to be ready in time, but you should see a new high bar piece from me in 1-2 hours.
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-Buddikaman
www.andrewhking.com/swing.zip
I just captured your video from youtube, brought it in and cut a few frames using a video editing program. It's not perfect, but it gives the idea.
Please let me know if it's not alright with you that I captured your video and did that.
I see what you mean, I've actually been working on that old swing animation, and I should be able to show you in say, 40 minutes. I'll try and get that same swing timing as in that re-do video.
I wanted to completely replace the long kind of boring platoforming section of the reel. As you will see in this video this idea is for the swing to land in a roll, wall run, and then he will quickly jump up a small tower. All of this should only take about 12 seconds maybe, rather than the huge amoutn of time the current platforming section takes.
As you can see I haven't quite finished it, he still needs to climb up the tower, but tell me what you think.
If the swinging still sucks, and people think the newer one I did (based off olympic gymnastics) is much better, I can simply cut the swinging part of this animation, use the olympics for the reel, and then cut in from the roll onwards for the patforming section of the reel. Thoughts?
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But thinking about it I did space out the frames a bit once Id done it. I think maybe I was just very tired and not looking at it right, ill make it snappier.
I didnt have any reference for the bit where he spins around before he jumps off, does that look OK?
The roll looks good, but maybe consider adding a few yards to the platform so that the runner may recover from the roll, get a few good strides in, and then make his jump into the wall run.
Also, I don't know about the whole spin, it might just be a little too over-the-top for the otherwise realistic parkour moves.
- Bring the far right wall closer to close the gap?
- Possibly angle the bar he swings from so he jumps from the foreground to the background, nothing extreme maybe just 15-20 degrees, it would give him more momentum to stick to the wall.
- Possibly slope the roll down toward the gap so he picks up more momentum as he rolls?
- I think there is too much swing the first time he grabs the pole. It seems like that's the most momentum he will ever have. If that's the case why not go for it, why slow down and play around on the bar?
check your PM
I'll add some strides after the roll to build momentum for the wall run, I'll not have him go up at such an angle, and I'm going to slope the platform slighty for his roll. I may try to have the swing bar at an angle but I'm not 100%.
I'm going to take a fair amount of swing out of the first part where he lands on the bar, or maybe I'll just speed the shole thing up and have him swing strait off.
If I can get everythign else right and make the spin on the wall look good I'll try to keep it, b/c I like little over the top things like that, but I'll see if I can make it fit.
Wont be able to update tonight, but ill be working on it tomorrow.
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You should try and get crits from 11secondclub.com (seeing as we're mostly modellers here, our opinions are likely more objective, and not really based on a lot of professional experience).
You have amazing attention to detail, and subtlety in movements. I agree with others, who have stated the lack of weight in your timing as an issue.
Another issue I have is some of your posing isn't necessarily the strongest, and your choice in camera angles tend not to help your silhouettes.
Here's a few animation snippets from a good friend of mine:
http://dalvarez.cgsociety.org/gallery/
His attacks have a lot of WEIGHT and power behind them. The posing is slightly exaggerated where they need to be, and there's a very strong sense of posing and silhouette (when the silhouette to portray the pose isn't available, he tends to make sure there is a lot of overlap).
The other thing is your facial animations aren't very poignant or emotive. Yes you've managed to capture the lip sync properly, but there's almost no expression, and the body language doesn't seem to support the dialogue either.
(same friend, different examples of facial animation, dynamic posing)
http://dalvarez.cgsociety.org/gallery/728022/
http://dalvarez.cgsociety.org/gallery/728012/
IMO your work is very strong, and you have the calibre to get a job. If you keep at it at your same pace, I firmly believe you're going to be a superstar.
also, with what jacquechoi said about the camera... for what you`re doing, the camera is good... the links he posted are more for a film style game, and if you go to his friends personal webpage, he has animations with the same camera as you.
To Jacque I'd just like to say that I bought and completed Far Cry 2 and I really really enjoyed it
I agree that my silhouettes and weight/timing need to be improved vastly. The particular animation you linked by your friend was gorgeous in both those aspects.
I'm hoping that as I go through each animation in my reel I can slowly do better regarding these issues, especially as I'm starting from scratch with a lot of it. Oh, and with the facial animation, I'm taking those out of the next version of the reel, I'm only going to include facial stuff once I have a good one, not just shoehorning it in.
I'm still looking for more feedback from people on the swing, but I will also ask for critiscism on some other parts of my reel now. If you could look at my reel video (which already feels very out of date heh) and tell me whether you think the first scene, and the scene that starts as 2:08 are
A) both needed? Or are they similar and I should just keep 1
C) Are there glaring problems with whichever one(s) I should keep?
EDIT: oh and so you don't have to go back to page 1, here's the reel again
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Why is the dwarf hitting the knight with the back of his axe?
It always looked off to me, but not until just now when I went back several times and played through it, yeah its the back of the axe. I'd assume he's trying to ambush him, and thus kill him, so no blade? This may have been asked before (sorry if it was, I read the thread, but by the time I got here its hard to remember all of the crits/questions)
Looks good overall, and I like the changes you've made--especially to the roll/throw, I'm no animator for sure, but still looking nice.
If you want nitty-gritty critiques, you'll need to post .mov files instead of YouTube clips so that we can step through your animations frame-by-frame. You can tell Polycount isn't crammed with animators or you'd have been asked that 10 times by now :P
In general your stuff is solid, but shows that you don't completely grasp all the fundamentals -- focusing on strong posing and shape changes will help, but the lack of weight on the reel is a combination of the poses, timing, spacing, overlap, etc., all working together. I also think your stuff could do with more polish. Don't be afraid to go back and do simpler exercises between working on reel shots. I find I often learn the most when I practice on simpler stuff; much easier to reinforce the concept.
Your attitude (and willingness to accept criticism) are your best asset. It's clear that you're really motivated, and it shows in your updates. The piece you posted above is a definite improvement.
With the length thing, it's too long, and in case I didn't make it clear in any previous posts, my new reel is going to be significantly shorter, like, a huge amount shorter.
With the youtube thing, I actually render out all my animations as quicktime files, and I do in fact have a professional website where all animation is embedded as quicktime. The reason all this is youtube, is b/c I didn't think anybody would care enough about some random guys animation to download large quicktime files.
HOWEVER, I have infinite webspace so if you guys want to crit quicktime files instead, then I will upload all future animations as quicktime so you can download them frame by frame. Would you prefer embeds or zipped files?
With the fundamentals thing, you are correct. My first animation was creating all weapon animation for a shotgun in a mod. This was just self taught and I had no direction. After that had my first attempt at skinning and animating a biped to a human character and I started doing full body animations with that.
Then I went on to just working with the biped rig (a special one not the max biped) and from then till now I've just been doing stuff that's in the reel, learning as I go along. I have done some ball bounces and obstacle course things, even some 2D stuff in flash along the way. But really the only way I've learned the last 7 months is just by trying it out for myself and looking at great animation in games.
This is a problem and it shows in my animation, but I couldn't go to any classes and for some dumbass reason I never purchased the animators survival kit. After people having mentioned it in this thread I'm very much going to get a copy, ideally I'd like to get the dvd's.
And as for the attitude thing, it's just that I live and breathe gaming, and more the culture of development just as much as games themselves. For the longest time I thought that getting into games was basically the most impossible dream you could have, and for me, the people who were doing it were like, rock gods, untouchable. But for whatever reason after I quit uni and got a job interview for a QA position (which I get rejected from) I was like ''I got in the building! I saw real people!''. So now I'm doing everything in my limited power to get where I want to be, and I'm not precious about my work, I am in the bottom 5% and I know it.
It happens on a lot of forums, even on animation boards. I give up and save the youtube videos using www.savetube.com and then covert them to .mov if I need to step. It's more work on my end but I find it faster than the back and forth you get over asking for mov files.
.mov please.
Where can I upload my files so they play as .mov?
Your site, dropbox, skydrive, zipped to a file transfer site.
Why do I need to use .mov?
It allows people to step though your animations.
Why is that important? Can't you just watch the youtube and give me crits?
Can't you upload a .mov? Nevermind I worked around it here are my notes.
http://www.bensonanimations.com/persia2.rar
and here's the youtube,
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Animation is now 'finished' in the sense that he climbs the tower and that's the end of the sequence, but I'm sure they will be things I needs to revise.
Here's the youtube: [ame]
Here's the .mov download http://bensonanimations.com/cyclops_smash3.rar
Also the scene seems to transitions from active participant to safely observing which could also be a little confusing or at least breaking things a little.
Maybe start it off with a 3/4 shot something in between the two extremes and then transition it a little bit toward both as the shots come up. That way its not moving around as much and you're not having to cut?
The first shot is a bit hard to judge depth because its straight on. When you see the next shot, the guy in the foreground looks pretty far away and it seems unlikely he would be thrown to the ground by the impact of the ogre landing.
The last shot you're looking down on the ogre as it tosses and yells, which puts your viewer in a place of power over the ogre. I think it steels a bit of its performance being where it is. I think you could lower it, and have the body tumble just over the camera maybe shaking it as it lands behind? Possibly switching the camera back to a human pers would bring the viewer back into the danger of the scene, where they started out.
Here's where I am with it, you should pretty much ignore the soldiers, they're no longer sync'ed up at all.
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What I want to know is, is the animation cool, is it different from the other stuff I've been doing, to the point where I should definitely include it. And ofc general crits on the animation itself. I know it's very zoomed out but I wanted a simple shot that showed you the thing in 1 perspective.
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