Drew's Animation Technique Thread

[KyleG]

Your off to a pretty good start. As it is now the character feels pretty floaty and stiff. He doesn't really feel like he has a lot of weight. If you want a "ragdoll" feel I would recommend looking at Woody from Toy Story for some reference, or relax your arms, walk around and get a feel for them flopping around. You could also get a stuffed animal and watch how their arms and legs flop when you move them around. You'll really want a lot of overlapping and exaggerated action in the arms, legs and head to get the ragdoll feel. I would recommend doing a little research and then work on some blocking. Also its kinda hard to understand what the character is doing, for this you might want to do something else, like a walk cycle, or a jump. I would also recommend just working on the keys and timing first and then refine after you get something that you feel will work. Keep up the good work!

[lizardj]

ah, yes, the 12 principals of animation from the nine old men. they are, squash and stretch, ease in and ease out, anticipation, followthrough, and, urgh... im sure you can find a complete list on the internet somewhere. as far as animating in 3d goes. i think you are off to a good start as well. but you might want to spend some time and check out some of the online tutorials. click here (http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?page_id=226) and then here (http://www.navone.org/HTML/Tutorials.htm) for Keith Lango's famous pose to pose keyframe animation technique and Victore Navone's very educational tut on dealing with the graph editor. keep it up!:thumbsup:

[thehive]

i like the lighting , yea the animaiton is floaty, open up your GE and add point to make him hit his pose it , you may need to do some stuff like lingo adding frames till its right works well on some thing pay attetion to your key dont let the computer do the inbetweening

[rickmann]

hey drewfarr, keep up the good work. I would agree with kyle. It looks kinda of stiff. If you hadn't told me it was a ragdoll, I would have thought you were going for like a zombie animation (Night of the living Dead look). And when it drops down it looks like he is going to do some kinda of push up. Other than I say keep going at it, refine it, and reupload it. Lets see the progress!

[drewfarr]

@KyleG: Great advice man, I definately see what you mean. I guess my follow thru isnt quite right yet.

@lizardj: Thanks for the links, those are extremely helpful. And as usual, the encouragment doesnt hurt either :D

@thehive: I think I get what you mean: too floaty. Thanks for the comment

@rickmann: Well, at least the pushup made it across. You guys have all been right, it isnt very ragdoll-like, perhapos thats a tad ambitious for a first test, but what the heck :)

@Everybody: Thanks for your Encouragment and Help, its greatly appreciated. I understand there are a thousand threads like this one, so thanks for taking the time to comment.

And sorry for taking so long to comment back, Ive been out of town for the past week.


Thanks again,
Drew

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