character animation demoreel

[neonoodle]

The animation on the reel is pretty nice. You seem to have a few scenes that either begin too early or end too late, though. Like the first lip sync clip in the absolute beginning of the reel has a dead face which goes into the laugh. I think it might be better if it starts out at the laugh and get rid of the few frames going into that laughing pose.

About the lip sync, it's really great. The overexaggeration works for the most part on it really well but there are some segments that I think are too overexaggerated. The most noticeable one for me was the clip that starts with "One day a ball... " I think he opens his mouth too far when he says "one" and it might be throwing the whole thing off for me, I don't know if I've pinpointed the exact problem I'm having with that one, though.

The animation is good overall. I especially like the guy getting hit by the car clip and the last lipsync looks really good to me.

[JBarrett]

Julian,

Looks like the best stuff on your reel is the full-character stuff, and even that could use some polish in a few areas. The head-only stuff is maybe halfway there, but really needs a lot more solid attention.

One of the main problems with the head-only shots is that there's no sense of any of the rest of the body even being there. I'm not talking about the sight of an actual body, but the motion itself. It's just a head rotating on its base. Heads don't exist in a vacuum, and IMO they shouldn't be animated in one, either.

Even if you don't build a full body mesh, attach the head to a full body rig (just a bone skeleton) and animate the rest of the body motion, or at the very least the hips and torso. Also add some bones to the neck so that it'll bend and not just pivot at the base. Then animate the whole thing, but only render the head. I promise you, it will feel totally different.

The lip sync on the head needs much more work. You've got a good start on it, but it's still too rough, especially for such a realistic head. The head motion itself also feels pretty rough...almost linear in some places, and swimmy in others. I'm not feeling any emotion from these shots. Work on your pose timing, easing in and out, arcs, overlaps, etc. A lot of the basics are missing. Getting a grip on these (especially timing) will help you understand how to incorporate the much-needed emotional delivery into these shots.

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