Critique on my Animation please
Hello!
I'm trying to be a successful animator and I like to get more feed back from my reel. This is from my college which they thought it was good enough for me to graduate with, but I don't think its industry ready. I'm currently working on more animation now, but I would like to get some feed back on how I can be a better animator.... Thankshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaeB-wQOhEM&feature=plcp&context=C4b0dc5fVDvjVQa1PpcFPDaY0JUGAKbHNjsuVgALZS5aEkdUl-dmg%3D
I'm trying to be a successful animator and I like to get more feed back from my reel. This is from my college which they thought it was good enough for me to graduate with, but I don't think its industry ready. I'm currently working on more animation now, but I would like to get some feed back on how I can be a better animator.... Thankshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaeB-wQOhEM&feature=plcp&context=C4b0dc5fVDvjVQa1PpcFPDaY0JUGAKbHNjsuVgALZS5aEkdUl-dmg%3D
Replies
However, since this thread is here now, let me give some feedback. It's not a bad reel, but you're right, it will probably need to be better to reach industry standards.
What I notice lacking in your animations overall is secondary and delayed action. For every movement, make sure you start with the part that is powering the motion, and everything else flows behind.
You also need to make sure every action you do is anticipated first! It shows thought from the character and makes it look more realistic.
I also think you should focus on shorter scenes. ("KISS"--Keep it simple, stupid) Some of your scenes have good parts, but other parts are lacking. It seems like you could do much better animations if you focused your attentions on shorter ones.
I really liked the hand-drawn walk cycle with the monkey. It was awesome!
Hope this gives you direction on what to focus on next, and be sure to keep posting your work (in the proper section!) so we can continue to crit your work.
Honestly, you`re missing a lot of the fundamentals. You need more anticipation, follow through and secondary action. You also need to work on your curves It feels sort of linear. And slow in / slow out. The whole thing lacks timing, as it all feels the same pace. A lot of the movement is very pose to pose and jittery. So, your arm will go out, but then come right back in without all that realistic motion of slowing down as it gets to the furthest point, and then coming back in with it speeding up, leaving the hand slightly behind.
Work on your curves and timing over all. Grab those key frames and just start shifting them around. You`ll be amazed at how much of a difference a few frames will make.
A good exercise for timing is actually the ball bounce. I hate telling people to go back to the ball bounce when they have been working on full characters, but I think just doing one could really help. To start, make the scene 100 frames. On the first frame, have the ball at its highest point, then skip to the 100th frame and make it its lowest point. With the from graph on linear, scrub through the time line setting a key every 5th frame. 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. Then, on every 10th, starting at 5, so 5, 15, 25, 35, etc, change the height from where it is to the lowest point. y = 0. You`ll have a linear bounce. From here, you can start grabbing all the keys from 1 point on, so to start, grab 5+, and move them ALL along the time line to adjust the timing of things. You`ll need to do this for most keys. When you think the timing is ok, spline the curves and see how the gravity feels. If it doesn't feel quite right, go back to linear and keep pushing that timing. Repeat this till you think it's right. Once the gravity feels good, you just have to get the bounce right by turning the curves into a V shape when it hits the ground.
Hopefully i explained that properly and helps you out a little. It helped me huge when I was starting out and was having issues with timing. The key with this exercise is timing. Now just animation wise, but take your time doing it. It's OK to spend hours on this at first. Don't rush it. Aim for quality. Not quantity. Once you get the ball bounce good and you understand the process and how the timing really affects it all, go back to the stuff you have and start doing it to your current pieces. I know it might feel like a step back to do the ball bounce, but trust. It's worth it. Then you can take what you have and apply it all and they`ll be that much better.
If you need more help, feel free to private message me.
What points to your work being 'amateur', is how slow and 'floaty' everything feels.
This including the walk cycle (which is a BIG no-no).
Also your sense of weight is a bit off. Nothing In your entire demo felt heavy at all (including the dinosaur). Even the shake the dinosaur did with the human in his mouth felt slow and floaty. It should almost be half the speed.
Your timing seems quite a bit off, but the overarching motion is there, but everything moves at the same speed. Your walk run, jerks and slow hand movements all feel like they're at the same speed. There's almost no accelleration where it should be. It's like you hadn't played with the curves at all.
Also the performance animations are another beast. I felt no 'character' or performance behind them. The hands are slow, floaty and distracting.
You almost have no posing. I think you have some 'poses' you wanted to convey, but everything just floats from one pseudo-pose to another.
Surprisingly, your lip sync isn't bad.
I think what you need to do with the dialogue parts, is give each character in the scene an actual "character". One guy is mopey, the other is spastic. Then play on that.
Your silhouettes are largely uninteresting, and you don't seem to play enough with overlaps.
The ONE thing I think you did pretty well in regards to posing/silhouette was when your mannequin started pushing the button. It actually felt like there was legitimate weight behind it, and even the pose with the lean forward was a bit more convincing. But when your name came down, it looked completely confused and 'floaty' again.
I really think slipsius nailed it on the head with a lot of it. You're missing a lot of the fundamentals.
I'll add some thoughts you can take it or leave it
With a Demo Reel you have 15 seconds to sell the next 15 seconds.
In a demo reel you have an incredibly short time to make your case. Having the first 10 sec with static white text on a black background is kind of annoying. The longer you delay the actual animation, the bigger the pay off need to be when you finally break into the animation. Which believe it or not anticipation is a key fundamental principle of animation...
Man eating Ice Cream
Poor eye/head tracking.
It's kind of weird for a hand to slowly move from one pose to another while the head moves around slowly looking at the fly.
He is very slow to follow the fly around and his body has very little movement in reaction to his tracking of the fly.
His hand and his head animate almost independently when he is looking around without much motion in the shoulders or spine connecting the motions.
When someone looks around their shoulders and spine twist a bit, which effects the hands. I'm not sure if you drive or not, if you do the next time your driving put one hand ontop of the wheel and look out the right passenger then left and see how straight you drive. Normally people swerve the opposite direction they look. These same mechanics come into play when holding a spoon of ice cream and looking at a fly buzzing around.
Hardly any overlap or follow through.
The hand clap at the beginning is very pose to pose. Animation is managing kinetic energy as it travels through things. Just because you can stop a character on a frame doesn't mean the energy in that motion actually would stop dead in its tracks.
Even if something hits a brick wall it doesn't just stop (notice the dummy's delayed reaction) The energy travels and dissipates, it spreads through connecting pieces. When you start to move one piece it starts to tugs on the others, but they don't start or stop at the same time with the same force applied. By default most simple skeletons don't really do this kind of interaction between joints so you have to fake it when its not handled for you.
When he raises his elbow to flick the fly it raises at a constant speed and sticks in space. This happens in a lot of other areas all over the demo reel.
When the fly lands, his spoon hand sticks in world space as he leans back. Probably just locked down the hand IK? The hand should move in reaction to the fly and his leaning back.
He should be mildly guarding the spoon? His free hand stays firmly attached to the bowl. It might make better sense to have him lift it up as if the fly comes back he'll smack it. It's this reluctance to move things around and only animate a few pieces that leads to its lack of believability.
Too many poses and gestures.
When the guy points to the book and says "when there is no more room in hell" there are 4-5 poses in only 1-2 sec. It's almost a pose for each beat in the sentence. If you act out the motion the guy makes it feels like you're over acting.
It might be better to use one pose and make the head hit the beats in a very subtle way.
Guys on a curb
Too many poses and not really the kind of poses that reflect the dialog. If you turn off the dialog does the acting still come through?
Alan gestures across the street twice in a short span of time.
If Alan shouldn't be there, maybe he would be trying to hide a little bit more like someone might recognize him?
The other guy taps his foot and its a bit distracting so are his hand gestures. He could be ignoring Alan almost the entire time until he delivers the punchline, it could give it more comedic impact.
Recommended reading:
The 12 principles of Animation (most apply to 3D, in fact a lot of the old 2D animation stuff applies to 3D don't only listen to 3D wonks)
Richard Williams The Animators Survival Kit, great book, lots of great illustrated examples.
Keith Lango has a great set of observations.
The Angry Animator