Acting Animation

[mistasam02]

lol.. cool dude. nothin to say yet. more keys!

[dsbum]

my first impression is that his walk is too exhaggerated. The pose where he leans back for the stride is way too off balance. Remember a walk is a controlled fall. Meaning the balance of the character should be leaning forward, of not balanced. And I suggest trying to walk like that just a bit. His head is leaning WAY too far back. Once you start adding inbetweens, he's gonna look like a chicken.

Since the topic of ur post says its an acting exercise, maybe you should start off by describing your character. The 'character' of your character, determines your poses.
From the vocal of the sound track, I image your character to be a sophisticated kinda guy. But half of your poses suggest a more wacky, and weird fella. The pose where he holds his stick high in the air, saying "if you are not in idol," IMO his back is way too bent. Smart and sophisticated people have really strong and straight backs.

Also, the sound track suggests that your main character is talking to somebody else? (sorry if I heard it incorrectly) But look at where your character is looking. First he looks at all over the floor during the walk cycle, leans back to get stick (visually way off balance btw), looks at an invisible short figure, looks at the camera?!?!, looks up in the sky, looks crazy and crossed eye at somewhere...., and looks back down at invisible figure.
Couple of things here. If this is a clip from a movie, I dont think any character should ever look at the camera directly. Second, if the charcter is approuching a character he's going to talk with, he should be look at him alot more.

Haha, If I got this all wrong, I'm sorry ><". Its like 1:30 in the morning, and I'm blabbering on. Hope that stuff helped. :buttrock:

[diegosocart12]

thanks for the suggestions. I had finished this clip before I saw what you had written, altough, I think I did fix a couple of the things dsbum pointed out. I will be continuing on now with the help of your suggestions. As far as who he is talking to, I am going to have a couple of heads poking up just in front of the camera, as though he is a headmaster talking to the children. Anyway, here is the update-
http://jamescditmer.com/videos/linearPass001.mov


thanks for your help

[Harregarre]

Okay, I'm just a starter but something I say might help you anyway. ;)

1. I see what you try to do with the walk but the movement is too aligned with eachother, if you know what I mean. What you have now is: leaning back + foot going forward at the same time. I think it'll look better if he leans back first, then put his foot forward and along with the foot straighten his back.

2. The length of the walk. It looks like putting his foot forward and backward takes the same time but it might look better if the time he takes for putting his foot down is slightly reduced.

3. The thing that will improve this the most, I think, is a slight up/down movement from the hips. Just slightly lower his hips at the end of a step and it will look more organic. Maybe even add some rotation to the hips.

Okay, I might be wrong, because I'm just a beginner, but maybe this can help you. (It would be the way I'd enhance it.)

I'd love to see how this develops. I like the extremes you've chosen, although I wouldn't bend him over in the last extreme. The tone of the soundfile is kinda "arrogant", so standing right up, looking down upon the other character would look best, I think. (Or if the other character is going to be very small, it could be a nice pose. Just make sure he is looking down on that character, don't let him look up because he will lose his arrogance when you do that.)

Greetz,

Harregarre

P.s. Lol, I got carried away. I meant to write a short comment. :P

[zzacmann]

I like the arm movements but the footwork needs some major tweaking.

First, once the heel of the leading foot hits the ground, the foot only needs to stay pointed up in the air for a frame or two then slam it down on the ground flat. Plant it hard.

Second, the back foot needs to stay planted flat on the ground much longer before coming forward. And remember, the heel will lift off the ground first, followed by the ball of the foot and toes last. Right now, the toes come off the floor first and I think thats why it looks so weird. The toes will 99.9% of the time be the last thing off the ground when taking a step (unless youre animating frankenstein or someone with a foot injury)

By the way, are you in animation master? Where'd you get the cool rig?

[diegosocart12]

Thanks guy. I think in my update, which hopefully I'll be able to post soon, you will see some of your suggestions used. The walk will definitely get great attention. I have a problem with it as much as everyone else I think. As far as the rig goes, I got it here: http://www.jugglersanimation.com/


thanks again,
-james

[diegosocart12]

ok guys,

Here is an update.

http://jamescditmer.com/videos/accentsAnticipations.mov

I hope to here more from you guys.

Thanks for all the help so far,

-James

[Harregarre]

Hmm, may I know what exactly has changed because the walk still feels unnatural, you might want to try and walk this particular walk yourself. If you have a webcam/camera you can take footage of yourself or just walk it repeatedly while making marks/little sketches on your movement.

[diegosocart12]

I have another update. I added facial accents and smoothed the f-curves out. Yes, the walk is still the same, but I am having trouble fixing it. Before it was too stiff, which is how it looked when I acted it out and filmed myself, so I tried changing it, to limber it up (where it is now), but it is still off. Anymore suggestions would be helpful. I will keep trying different things with it in the meantime.

http://jamescditmer.com/videos/blackBeetles.mov

thanks,
-James

[Harregarre]

The lipsync is kinda off and the walk is still a bit awkward. Keep improving though, it's already better but not quite there yet.

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