Flash character illustration (for animation)

[Ron]

WHEW!

THat's pretty damn good Tone. I've actually been to BANDAR before and must say you've got some impressive work.

How long have you been working in LightWave?

[moshi]

Hey,

don't mind your character at all, but I had a look at your motion test and I have some things which may help.

The movement of the hat/hair feels really sudden and jerky when the wind starts, and I think there needs to be more animation in this rather than just rotating it.

I think it will also feel better if there is some follow through action on this as well. When the wind stops the hair/hat will come to a sotp too (not to suddenly) but my also sawy back an forth a little until it comes to a complete rest.

The turing of the character feels really stilted. I think you need to use more arcs in your animation. This means when he turns, thee will be a little downward motion at the beginning of the turn and then at the end he wold return back to the full height, ie. the head will follow a curved arc.

When someone turns quickly they tend to close they eyes in anticpation of the turn. So a frame or two before the turn, close his eyes, then a few frames before the end of the turn open them.

The hat/hair would also have a follow through action on this fast turn. It would sway around a little in result to that quick movement.

Finally people tend to blink once every four seconds, and I feel like this character has something stuck in his eye! There needs to be a lot less blinking (blink mre for a reason, aniticpation of movement etc.) It sometimes also looks more life like if one eye blinks one frame after the other. ie. if you have two blinks worth 4 frames each the first may blink on frame 1 and finish on frame 4. The other will start on frame 2 and finish on frame 5.

Hope all of this helps a little.

michael
moshi
http://www.moshidesign.com

[CGTone]

Ron,

Thanks for the kind words! I actually only worked with LightWave for about 4 months... and I haven't really touched it in about a year and a half now! :shrug: But I really want to get back into it. I really enjoy working with 3-D.


moshi,

Thanks for the observations! Let me comment on some of the suggestions you made:


The movement of the hat/hair feels really sudden and jerky when the wind starts, and I think there needs to be more animation in this rather than just rotating it.
This is definitely true. Ideally, I should create some subtle frame loops to give the hair a more organic, life-like feel. Though I should mention that I was striving to keep the character fairly stylized to simplify animation. Of course, that doesn't mean I can't do something more elegant. Maybe I'll experiment a little...

I think it will also feel better if there is some follow through action on this as well. When the wind stops the hair/hat will come to a sotp too (not to suddenly) but my also sawy back an forth a little until it comes to a complete rest.
Well, I did have some follow through at the end of the wind, but I guess it does look a bit awkward. I think I was hoping it would more naturally blend back into the regular sway loop... but it came out a little weird - maybe I can touch that up.

The turing of the character feels really stilted. I think you need to use more arcs in your animation. This means when he turns, thee will be a little downward motion at the beginning of the turn and then at the end he wold return back to the full height, ie. the head will follow a curved arc.
A very good point about the arc. I do have her duck down and back a bit before turning, but you're probably right that smoothing the main action into less of a straight line would help a lot. Though honestly, this part of the animation was really just testing to see how well the "motion blur" effect would imply movement as well as to see if I could flip her to a mirror image while repositioning the asymmetrical parts (like her katana and bandolier) to maintain the appearance that she really turned. If I were going to do a real sequence of her turning, I'd need to create lots of secondary movement in her body, arms, etc...

When someone turns quickly they tend to close they eyes in anticpation of the turn. So a frame or two before the turn, close his eyes, then a few frames before the end of the turn open them.
This is a good point though! Even if I were to animate the whole thing out, I might have missed that subtlety.

The hat/hair would also have a follow through action on this fast turn. It would sway around a little in result to that quick movement.
Yes, definitely.

Finally people tend to blink once every four seconds, and I feel like this character has something stuck in his eye! There needs to be a lot less blinking (blink mre for a reason, aniticpation of movement etc.) It sometimes also looks more life like if one eye blinks one frame after the other. ie. if you have two blinks worth 4 frames each the first may blink on frame 1 and finish on frame 4. The other will start on frame 2 and finish on frame 5.
Heh heh... yeah I guess there's a lot of blinking. ;) I think it's probably just because I wanted to try out all of my different eye movements that I had designed! I really like your suggestion about staggering the eye blinks ever so slightly. I can see how that could be subtle, but very effective.


Thanks again for taking time to give me suggestions. This animation isn't really a full-fledged piece. As its name suggests, is really only a test of something I was developing - specifically, I was working on a hierarchical animation setup (sort of based on concepts borrowed from 3-D animation). I created mini-libraries of movement for the different body parts and used them sort of like morph targets are used in 3-D. I'm pretty happy with the results!


Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and I'd love to hear what other people think!
-Anthony

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