Animations (crits needed)

tda

This semester at uni my animation lecturer is tasking us with 1 animation per week which is great compared to doing just 1 big project, i can already feel my progress. As long as i keep my schedule this thread should fill up with plenty o stuff over the coming weeks. There's an internal forum on the uni website to get crits from my classmates but it's nothing compared to this place, rip these to shreds guys

The first 3 are assignments already handed in, odds are i won't be going back to change these (i'd rather just make another from scratch) but if anyone wants to crit them i'll apply it in future work.

Generic walk
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eQKY0sBHhE[/ame]

Walk + bouncing ball
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuOZDR0p118[/ame]

Climbing
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PHUkXXJgo[/ame]

And here's this weeks task, a jump. Looking for crits/comments on this one mainly
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLjZYbUoh7o[/ame]

Saman

These look great! Very good sense of timing. Some critique though;
The body should move to the left and right while walking to keep a good balance. When the left foot is in the air the body should be tilted to the right and so on. This is pretty obvious on the last animation with the gorilla character. You should exaggerate all the movements too, the feet hardly leave the ground and there is no secondary motion on the head or the back either(The arms have it, you should apply the same principle to the back and head as well).
Very good work on the rest of the objects too!

Bruno Afonseca

Really good stuff! The last one doesn't work as good as the first 3 ones though. The heavier the action is, the longer the anticipation should be. The jump feels too quick IMO, and there's something about the arms. Maybe more weight on the shoulders? And on the impact, the arms' reaction to it could be delayed a couple of frames i think. I like how the car responds to it but it should tilt and move a lil bit to it's right, since the impact is on its' side.

James9475

I dont think the right arm needs to be swinging like that in the basketball walk. The big creature jump kind of feels like its in slow motion in the lead up to the jump, and also in the period after impact. The walk is nice but could maybe do with a little action on the hips.

But yeah good stuff, it's mostly 90% of the way there. Looking at what you have here I think it would really help you to do a scene now that is very high action with 2 characters interacting with each other. You'll be surprised how fast you get better if every piece you do is challenging in a way you haven't experienced before. So yeah, I would totally do 5 or 6 seconds of very high octane action between 2 characters.

PLyczkowski

These are really great! I think big heavy characters don't wave their arm so much, try limiting their motion in the last one...

tda

Thanks for the crits guys. This is pretty much my 2nd attempt at animating properly so it's good to hear that they aren't total garbage.

Goraaz
Yeah i got told to add some left/right swing while walking by my animation tutor after i handed in the first two, i've incorporated it into the climb/golem jump but maybe it's not exaggerated enough like you say. I'm actually purposefully trying to avoid too much over-exaggeration, i think it leads to more of a cartoony or non serious result which is not what i'm after. I'll definitely tweak around though

fonfa
I agree with you about the jump coming too soon, it almost pops out of nowhere. I'm going to mess around with that bit. I agree with your other points too

James
Yeah my tutor mentioned that right arm swing as well, it's a good call. Some character interaction does sound fun, i'll have to have a go at that between assignments.

PLyczkowski
Cheers dude

I've got till tuesday to add more work to the jump, i'll probably hit it this afternoon with some tweaks and post up a new vid. Cheers for the crits so far

tda

I made time tonight to have another pass at the jump anim. I tried to incorporate as many crits as i could (added more left/right sway, more secondary motion in the chest/head) but adding a longer anticipation before the actual jump was tricky. There's too many keys after that part to edit manually or else shit gets really messy, to the point where i don't even know where to start to fix it. Instead i used a CAT layer to keep him down in a crouch for a bit longer and fire him into the jump a bit later and with more speed. I think it works to disguise the problem but it still doesn't seem 100% right to me.

I'll have to live with it for this one and bear it in mind next time not to get ahead of myself before the core timing is down, or else i'll be fudging with layers again.

Here's the new version with the changes, definitely an improvement imo -

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moc-tWo-P1s[/ame]

JGcount

I think your modeling is realy boxy.

Aside from the bad joke, I think you have a natural talent for animation and that's something thats very rare imo. You have only been animating for two weeks, and you are already better than people that have been doing it for months.

Im not an animator myself btw. Two things though:

On the basketball one. HIS right arm seems to loop oddly and its path is kindof weird imo. And a thing that I think you should do on your next animation to challenge yourself would be to make a snappy animation. All of these are really "soft" right now. Making a really cartoony snappy one(Like those pinguins from madagascar fx) would probably challenge you AND give you new tools to mix with your current skillset.

But this is really impressive imo.

tda

Cheers Hboy. Just to clarify, it's meant to be some kind of a rock golem

JGcount- I've been doing this class for just over 2 weeks yeah but i've done a whole semester of animation before, so i'm not totally new to this! Strictly speaking though i've done more and learned more in the last 4 weeks than i did in the entire 8 months prior, so it's going well.

I agree with you about the basketball one, the whole animation a bit of a cheat that desperately needs more TLC. It's basically just a layer to add the extra arm movement to the first walk cycle, but i didn't take time out to tweak out the unnecessary movements from the walk.

I'll have to have a go at a more cartoony animation as well sometime. Like you say, it'll definitely be a challenge and i'll undoubtably learn something from it.

Veneficus

This is looking great! You definetly have a talent for animation!

Apart from what's been said before, I think the head movement on the basketball animation is weird. To me, it makes more sense that his head would be more fixed at an andle, and his eyes would be flicking between the ball and his direction of movement.

tda

Thanks Veneficus, good point there. I'll keep that one in mind.

Hboy - It's just my local university. I've removed my rant as this wasn't really the right place for it. However, without going into specifics the course is pretty much not worth the money, and especially not worth the time when you consider how much you actually learn. With a good work ethic, some determination and 3 years to spare you can achieve what my course has taught my by yourself from google, and a lot more. You won't get a degree (which is what i naively thought i needed when i signed up 3 years ago), but a degree doesn't really mean shit if your work sucks. Make your work good, and the degree becomes obsolete.

The only place i would recommend going to study animation is either a work placement somewhere where they do lots of animating, or a dedicated animation school. Videos from animation mentor on youtube always blow my mind and that's just an online course.



Next class is tomorrow so hopefully i should have my next assignment up within the next day or so for more sexy crits from good ol' polycount.

tda

Here's this week's one. I've been way too busy to spend as long as i'd like on it, but nevermind. I've got more planned for after the end, a bus is gonna slam into him which he'll flip up over onto it's back, but its nowhere near presentable yet.

I've got tomorrow afternoon and a bit of tuesday morning free to tweak it more before class, so bring on the crits.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVl_ek64qek[/ame]

jackalope

I am not an animator so take this with a grain of salt. When he grabs the car and does the hop thing on one leg. For that one second, the hop makes him and the car look really light. I am not sure how you would go about fixing that. The rest of it looks great, i really like your work.

bejkon

You got some good stuff going here!
I liked the throw to be a bit faster and the anticipation more exaggerated.
Agree with jackalope about the hop, try make his left foot come down faster maybe.

GodfishB16

It looks pretty good overall. One problem I'm seeing though is that its a bit to floaty overall. When the car first contacts him and hes regaining his footing you need to speed that up a little overall...he floats a little to long in the air. I know your trying to show lots of weight, but hanging stuff a little to long like that kind of kills the sense that hes this really heavy guy.

I also think that a stronger contact pose for the guys could also help a little and getting him into that bracing pose sooner would help. Remember that weight is all about change in shape. If you have a more dynamic pose on that contact pose and then snap to the complete opposite...the stretched out pose holding the car in the air, you'll feel the weight a little more. Example: Hunch him over a little more and squat him down...really let him lean into the car on that first contact pose....The next pose should then be his compression..obsorbing the car in his arms (flip back and forth between those key poses...if your not seeing a real good change in shape..Compression...then you need to push it a little more) and then the following pose should be that pose you've got going on with him layed back holding onto the car off balance. But you don't want to trail into that pose to slow...really let it pop and then hang.

and on the landing of that in the air pose...bring his back foot down a little sooner and then let his whole body drop a little faster...try and really break it up with the overlapping actions...foot....cog (Hips).....upper body....arms...car.

The throw looks pretty good but the landing has kind of the same floatyness going on...really bring him down hard to show that weight.

I'm just nit picking right now...Looks pretty good overall, I can see that you have a sense of timing and weight..just keep fine tuning it, you'll get there Keep up the good work!

-Godfish

Rico

Man...I love watching animation vids like these. Everything I do in max is just model still objects, seeing things move inside of Max is pretty cool!

My only crit is for your latest video. It feels like he's on the moon, seems like there is less gravity. The car doesn't feel heavy enough....yeah I'm not an animator, that's the best I can do to explain my self, lol.

Keep 'em coming dude, loved watching them!

slipsius

Lookin good!

For the walk though, are the hips moving at all? doesnt look like they are rotating at all. some side to side, but no rotation

roosterMAP

top notch stuff!

Ewaf

I really like it. I'm new to animating, I'm guessing you use 3ds max? Do you do it by hand with keys or use a different technique? Any tuts around?

Cheers

tda

Thanks guys, great crits. I tried to incorporate as much as i could into this update, although i haven't played around with the speed of his anticipation before the first car hits him yet. I also managed to find time to add the last half of the animation. It's still super rough around the edges, but im not falling into the trap of spending ages on secondary motion before the timing is exactly how i want it, quadrupled my workload last time. Anyways, have at it!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUT578_inTU[/ame]

Ewaf, i can't recommend any better than thejazzman, or James9475 here on poly. There's tutorials on his youtube channel, i stumbled into them yesterday while looking for his dance fortress for inspiration. Best animations i've ever seen period.

wretchedgoat

awesome! love the motion of grabbing the first car, nice and fluid

Ewaf

Thanks for pointing me to the tuts. Appreciate it! Like that last animation alot.

Stromberg90

I just love these, you defently have it going
I havnt animated all to much, but i still have some critics.

I think you biggest problem is weight, cause on both the jump and car catch animation, things start out looking realy heavy, then it suddenly gets realy light weight, like the bus on the car catch, it looks heavy when he starts to lift it but at the end it looks like i just fly's away.

Something that you could try is that he does one more lift on the bus where he kinda get's under it and uses the palms of his hands, if you get what i mean :P

tda

Here's the final, im not 100% satisfied but i gotta call it done.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QysD4Ub5Cn8[/ame]

Stromberg - i wanted to do something like that but i didn't want the animation to drag on forever, and it would have taken another 5 seconds or so to punt the bus one more time so i just made it flip out of shot instead. It kinda sucks, but maybe i'll revisit it later

Stromberg90

Looks better now, altough there is some feet sliding when he catches the first car... just something to keep in mind to later

tda

That was actually intentional strom, i thought it looked good.

I rendered out the jump + the catch just for kicks, its fun seeing it all together. I can see more problems now in the run and jump that i didn't before, but that's good i guess.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9GXYO4uoew[/ame]

tda

So here's what i managed to do of the last (2 week) assignment, a fight between 2 characters.

I had big plans for this but i only got as far as blocking in to the halfway mark. I hit loads of snags and bugs with 2011 when i was rigging and animating these guys so everything i was doing ended up taking twice, sometimes 3 or 4 times as long. I wish i could have given it more time but i've been too busy with other things, too busy to even take time out to post it up for crits. Here's how it looks anyways, not happy with it at all yet...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSBn_-0fH7w[/ame]

I'm really annoyed i didn't get to finish it in the 2 weeks given. On the upside though the final handin for these isn't while late january, so i'll be returning to it during the christmas hols to finish it. I might even tinker with it before then if i get time, i really want to finish it.


Thankfully this week's task is a lipsynch, no annoying rigging to do just pure animation. I should have some wips up in a day or two.

Ashley

These animations are looking good :-)
I do agree with Stromberg90 about showing more weights it some spots. One thing that would help is to rotate the root/hips of the character. This should especially make a difference in the impact of his first landing and when his feet come off the ground where he lifts the car. Hope this helps but overall its looking good :-)