WIP :: The Matrix cartoon-style

[FlaminGlow]

it seems interesting, looking forward to see more of this.:)

[F3D]

The poses are fairly weak right now.

The first image, where you've got Neo blocking a punch from the agent, both those poses feel super weak and flat. Then it kinda goes on like that, with straight poses where the characters don't really seem to give any effort into what they are doing.
The 5th image is really suffering from this, Neo's kick feels very wrong so does the agents, in the shot below.

Now, to me, the teaser video did not give that impression at all. But then again, you can hide alot of fawlty animation in fast clips, and I think you've managed to get away with those weak poses by having all those fast clips in that teaser.
The timing howerver looks very smooth and sweet, and I personaly love the last clip where you're only shooting the feet!

Jeff Lew talks about dynamic poses in his DVD, if you haven't heard of it there's an image on his page which will illustrate a good pose.
http://jefflew.com/dvd_images/p2_01A.jpg
See how he's streaching out the whole body, making the character really come to life?
Your poses kinda lack that expression, again the 5th image - very dull kicks, kinda like "yeah ok, I'm gonna fly up into the air and kick you now"
http://jefflew.com/dvd_images/p3_01A.jpg
Where as that kick feels like it's going to hurt..real bad.

Hopefully I'm making some good points here, which hopefully you'll think about. And, hopefully it's not too late to rework most of the poses!

Kick ass! :)

[CGmonkey]

agreed, and jeff lew is the fella who animated da matrix dudes.. so.. a thing or two to learn from him.

Cool animation though! :thumbsup:

[Rainman.nl]

Thanks for your comments people.

~ flow3d
Thank you very much for your critics. I agree on most of what you say.
I've seen some of Jeff Lew's stuff. He's really good. Might buy his DVD one of these days, cos I'm liking the animation process and want to learn more about it. This is only my first animation with Cinema4D, so I'm kinda learning along the way. This clip was only going to be used as an animation-tryout for me, to learn all the tools involved with rigging and animating. Then a friend of mine told me I should post it here.
I've already animated over 900 frames so it's kinda too late to change all those poses.

The goal was that the characters had fairly realistic movements, not like a cartoon where the movements are "overdone". I have the scene from the Matrix as a reference clip, so I'm trying to match that as closely as possible. The speed of the clips in my teaser video is the speed of the entire animation.

Since this was my first character rig (and it was a basic one) there are a lot of things that can be improved. Still, I was pretty satisfied about the outcome so far. I'd done some pose-testing but nothing as extreme as in this clip. So some of the poses look ugly.

I hope to finish the animation somewhere next week. I'll keep ya posted. :D

[Rainman.nl]

Alright, the time has come to post the completed animation. I tried to contact WB to ask if I could use the soundclip from the movie, but my email was rejected several times.

SMALL download version (8MB) 320x160 (http://www.rainman.nl/other/cinema4d/matrix/sml_release_01.mov)
LARGE download version (23.6MB) 720x340 (http://www.rainman.nl/other/cinema4d/matrix/big_release_01.mov)

Hope you like it, even without sound... :D

[NeilMarriott]

Turned out really nice :) Although, some of the poses, while work fine in live action, look at bit weak (as already pointed out above) in this.

Maybe try pushin' a few a little bit more? Just to add that zest!

But yea, definitely nice work. Flows really well, timing's nice, looks great. Just a couple of the kicks, look a little weak.

Then again, it is that quick paced, sparring, dance style kung fu so y'know it does work ^^.

Well done anyway! Good stuff.

[FlaminGlow]

realy it is very nice animation, congratulations.:thumbsup:

[Rainman.nl]

Thanks for checking out my animation! :D

Added a HyperNurbs object to smooth the characters, lighting has been improved and sound has been added.

SMALL download version (8MB) 320x160 (http://www.rainman.nl/other/cinema4d/matrix/sml_release_01.mov)
LARGE download version (27MB) 720x340 (http://www.rainman.nl/other/cinema4d/matrix/big_release_01.mov)

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