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Whooa, thanks a heap
Posted By: mattroe <matt_roe@live.com>	Date: 7/27/11 1:17 a.m.
In Response To: Re: RvB is hiring Animators. Just sayin' (GREAT JO (Ibeechu) : No kidding? I tried to find information on that but I couldn't find a job : page or anything. : And mattroe, really nice job. I'm surprised at how cohesive you made it. I'm : an Animation Mentor student and I hang around CGTalk and 11secondclub a : lot and I always expect any sort of link like this to lead to something : terrible. But yours definitely wasn't. : But, from one student to another, here are some critiques: You have a couple : of moments where the blue guy is twinning. Sometimes it's appropriate but : when he makes that W pose and says, "I can speak ALIEN," it : feels cliched. It's the kind of pose you see in TV a lot and it comes off : as the animator not knowing exactly what he's going for. I dunno how : in-depth you've studied pantomime and acting yet but the key is to always : be sincere. Act it out many many times and see what you do naturally and : draw from that. The best animation always comes from reality, and that W : pose doesn't feel real. : Again, getting into some really advanced stuff, but about the face (and take : what I say about facial animation with a grain of salt because I have yet : to study the face in-depth) but I noticed that the eyebrow's line of : action often looks broken, again on the blue guy. Treat the top of the : eyebrows as another line of action just like you'd treat the entire body. : Again, for example, on the line, "I speak alien," on the word : "I," his left brow goes up before the right and creates a sharp : break in the brow overall. Like with twinning, that can be appropriate : sometimes, but in most cases you want to keep the whole brow sculpted to : feel like a single unit. : Aside from that, your mechanics are actually pretty good. The one area that I : really think needs improvement are your weight shifts. Whenever the blue : guy turns around, it feels like his feet are just spinning on the ground. : I'm not getting a sense that he shifts his weight to one side, then moves : his foot, then shifts it back to center. : And there's a few other things I could comment on but it's all kind of : detailed stuff. My biggest advice overall would be to try to simplify : things as much as you can. You have the blue guy doing a ton of action, : which is a very good contrast to the gray guy, but at times it feels like : action for the sake of action, which should be avoided in all cases. Frank : Thomas and Ollie Johnston used to say that any shot could be conveyed in : one or two drawings. For maybe a longer scene like this, you might need a : couple more, but the idea is the same. : Push yourself to try to tell this story with only a few very, very strong : poses. Whenever you can distill an idea like that, that's where you really : start to see the brilliant stuff. My class 3 mentor, Brian Mendenhall, : would pound into our head that clarity is the most important thing. If you : have beautiful or appealing poses, but nobody knows what's going on, it's : a worthless shot. Ideally, you want to have both. But your shot is : definitely clear enough. Acting shots like this, where you need to craft a : performance, these are really, really, really hard. But remember that : we're just acting with puppets. And the finest acting comes from clarity : and sincerity. Always ask yourself, "Why is the character moving this : way?" because if you can't answer that, then the audience certainly : won't. : Sorry, I got into wall-of-text-critique mode. But, seriously, if that's your : first character performance, you did a really, really good job. That's the : Norman rig, right? What other stuff did you do before this? Because if you : just jumped right into doing an acting shot with a biped and managed to : make it this good, I'd be beyond impressed. Thanks heaps for that, it's really helpful. At first that W pose was him looking at the floor in shock and holding his hands out in front of him as though he didn't know what to do. I thought it felt more natural but the teacher said the silhouette and pose weren't strong enough...so I guess I took it too far in the other direction, haha. (Not trying to justify btw, the W pose was mine and I stuck by it, my bad) And yes, weight shifts I struggled with. I got quite lazy with the legs while I was posing since they're hidden by the table and so had lots of trouble doing the inbetweens for them. Bad bad bad. There was something about the eyebrows that threw me off too, thanks for pointing that out, I'll pay attention to that next time. Yeah that's the Norman rig. A couple of months ago we ran through the principles of animation and had a look broke down some 11 Second Club animations, then did some bouncing balls and poses with a flower sack, but yeah, this is my first real shot at character animation. Thanks so much for your wall-of-text critique ;)

Message Index

An RvB animated clip... sort of *sOT*	mattroe	7/26/11 11:46 p.m.
RvB is hiring Animators. Just sayin' (GREAT JOB!!) *NM*	INSANEdrive	7/27/11 12:19 a.m.
Re: RvB is hiring Animators. Just sayin' (GREAT JO	Ibeechu	7/27/11 1:05 a.m.
Whooa, thanks a heap	mattroe	7/27/11 1:17 a.m.
Re: Whooa, thanks a heap	Ibeechu	7/27/11 1:45 a.m.
Re: Whooa, thanks a heap	mattroe	7/27/11 2:02 a.m.
Re: Whooa, thanks a heap	Ibeechu	7/27/11 2:16 a.m.
Re: Whooa, thanks a heap	mattroe	7/27/11 2:20 a.m.
Re: RvB is hiring Animators. Just sayin' (GREAT JO	Louis Wu	7/27/11 8:56 a.m.
Dear Louis Wu:	Miguel Chavez	7/27/11 8:59 a.m.
lol *NM*	DHalo	7/27/11 9:02 a.m.
DOH!	Louis Wu	7/27/11 9:07 a.m.
Re: DOH!	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	7/27/11 11:13 a.m.
Re: DOH!	CaneCutter	7/27/11 3:38 p.m.
Re: RvB is hiring Animators. Just sayin' (GREAT JO	INSANEdrive	7/27/11 11:44 a.m.
Oops, couple of typos	mattroe	7/27/11 12:43 a.m.
Wow... awesome.	padraig08	7/27/11 2:18 a.m.
Great work	ZackDark	7/27/11 2:48 a.m.
One lone tear	jo	7/27/11 4:32 a.m.
That is awesome! *NM*	Elzarthebam	7/27/11 4:34 a.m.
Great job, dude.	AngelicLionheart	7/27/11 1:09 p.m.