Hey, thanks for the feedback!
More work in progress:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_47pC6Fqjo
Working a bit more on the keys now.
See you guys!
Diego
Animation Acting Challenge #6: Post Progress, Start Febuary 28 - End March 28
diegooriani
#41
mandeep
#42
hey diego nice work its comming along really nice bt wat it is that he is holding a bowling ball is my guess …
Cheers
Mandeep
diegooriani
#44
Ahahah! Belive or not, I got this idea from “The simpsons”.
You’re absolutely right mttjss! Good, good.
Another WIP, right now just cleaning the keys. Again feedbacks guys!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYLtLFGvyRg
Another thing now.
How is your workflow? I have this curiosity.
Do you guys use thumbnails and storyboards? Normally I just use thumbnails.
Another question. When you guys are blocking, do you place all the keys at the same frame? Like every 8 frames or 10. “Richard Willians” style.
Well, speak you later!
Diego
khet13
#45
diegooriani - looking good!! 
dang, I really want to participate in this month’s challenge but I cant touch my computer for the next 3 weeks…which is the end of this month’s challenge!!! :sad:
thedaemon
#46
I am scrapping my animation. After working on it, awkward stillness just wasn’t conveyed like I wanted it, so I am going to try the lipsync. Not giving up, just giving another go.
diegooriani: I am still new , but I use thumbnails. I would use a storyboard if this was a larger project. What I do to block it out is lay down the key poses, and the extremes. Which are not always evenly layed out, so I scale and move keys around until I get the timing I want. When I am doing a walkcycle, I do use evenly layed out keyframes for blocking it out. Makes it easier to adjust up until I am happy and laying down the final touches. Richard Williams’ book has helped me tremendously too.
SirRon
#47
diegooriani: I tend to plan a lot so I do storyboards, a fair amount of thumbnails, and just doing key posing and breakdowns before I start working in linear and spline. When I do my blocking I actually do it one frame after the other. When I’m ready for my breakdowns I add a blank frame between keys and do a breakdown pose. I can use the hotkeys to go next/previous frame so it kinda feels like I’m rolling the pages like in traditional animation. Once I get my key poses looking really nice, enough breakdowns to define my motion I go to linear and see how that looks. Do some tweaks, check some arcs, then I go spline. Polish the animation there. Hehe, easy for me to say but I’m still struggling. I feel like I’m getting better though.
Here’s my first pass at the key poses. I’m going to go over them again and make sure they’re really nice. Very rough timing applied, I estimate this going twice as fast as I intend the actual animation to be. There’s definitely going to be more moving around, I’ve yet to experiment with some ideas.
diegooriani
#48
Interesting.
When do you decide your timing? Is it when you are moving to linear?
By the way, looking foward to see you work. I like it so far.
Cheers,
Diego
RageArtworks
#49
Okay this is cool.
Great ideas so far!
I’ll be animating the Adams Family sound clip traditionally. I have roughly thumbnailed the basic poses in EasyToon, played around with the basic timing.
I think I’ll animate the basic idea first, looking only roughly at the seconds, and then lastly I’ll animate the lips. I’ll do penciltesting in a Digicel Flipbook Demo version, and I’ll do the final thing in Toon Boom Studio Express, all on an iMac.
I hope this will be one of the very few contest that I will actually finish! 
diegooriani
#50
Nice! Traditional animation is always more than welcome.
Jesus… the last time I did traditional animation was working on the “Asterix and The Vikings”. (actually was like a inbetweener not as an animator)
I would like to purchase a lightbox here in the UK (London) but I don’t know where!
Anyway, hoping to see the end result.
Cheers,
Diego
thedaemon
#51
Awesome, very glad to see some 2d animation thrown in the mix.
Update: Well, I finally took the time to figure out how to do pose 2 pose mode in blender (setting the IPO curves to constant) and I can tell many of my poses are off, so I am going to clean those up and get the timing right. Any advice on lipsyncing, this would be my first lipsync. I of course have the great Richard Williams book but any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Keep us updated, I get inspired to work harder when I see your updates.
LGM
#52
thedaemon,
I will oblige you in two ways.
1: There are two lipsync tutorials for Blender that I know of. One is mine:
http://www.nathandunlap.brickfilms.com/tutorials/learningtotalk/lst01.html
The other is AndyD’s (from blenderartists.org):
They’re both good. Andy’s only uses Blender, mine uses a second (free) program.
As for updates, this is a test render for the style I’m going for for this contest.
In case you were doing it one-by-one, by hand, shift+T in the action editor allows you to change the IPO curve of as many channels as you have selected. All at once.
LGM
SirRon
#54
diegooriani: Thanks. How I find timing is still undefined. Usually I work on it after I put down the keys and breakdowns. Using the dope sheet and/or MonkeyJam along with a script that Keith Lango made for his VTS subscribers.
thedaemon: About lip synching have a look at this tutorial. It’s more on general principles than a tutorial specifically for Blender.
diegooriani
#55
SirRon,
So I can guest you always use animatics before your animations, is it right?
This is good. I need to start get use to do this as well. Normally I am so excited to start a animation that I go through all these steps. Bad, bad, bad!
Please guys, post always your WIP if possible. I really enjoy to see the evolution in the animation.
Speak you soon,
Diego
jpencilworks
#56
SirRon Sir,
Could you please elaborate on this Monkey Jam One? What is this one? Is it good for the Maya 7 one?
Diego Sir,
Will post my progress in a minute or two, rendering right now.
This contest thing is the Junk, I got to get my fix every day my friend.
Have the good one.
jpencilworks
jpencilworks
#57
Hello all,
Here is a link to my latest contest entry. This marks the first time that I have ever posted a link to a clip on my website, so please let me know if you are able to view it.
http://www.joncoppock.com/Adams_Spline.mov
I started with thumbnails, then shot some footage of me and a friend taking turns acting it out. Next, I chose a performance I liked, and blocked it out in Maya.
I started with stepped keys, then flat, then splines, and that is where you see me at right now.
I didn’t do much with the Lurch character yet, figure I’ll give him a breathing idle, but there is not much going on with him. The roll on the mouth shapes for him will be fun though.
The nose on the blue Ollie character is just for tracking arcs using the ghosting tool in Maya. I couldn’t get the tracker script that SirRon gave me to work, but it’s probably my fault, I’m a Max guy, just learning Maya.
This is the first time I have ever attempted to animate these characters. They are both really sweet though, I love the shelf for the Hogan character, and the Ollie interface just blows my mind, it’s such a joy to work with, and they were both free, gotta love it.
Jon
SirRon
#58
diegooriani: Yeah, I guess they would be called animatics You know now that I look at my update down below you could say I do pencil tests.
jpencilworks: The method I work on animation I use MonkeyJam to replace playblasts in Maya. Notice I’m still working in stepped. I’ll add some more breakdowns to make it less choppy. I’ll use MonkeyJam to play around with spacing of my frames. MonkeyJam makes the “playblast” much faster than Maya’s playblast. What it does is it captures and saves each frame and I change the duration of each frame then output a MJ playblast. If I want to increase a duration of a frame by 2 more MJ doesn’t have to recapture the images because they’re already saved. Maya’s playblast has to recapture everytime you do a change. The script that Keith Lango has makes MJ even better to use because when I change the timing it can automatically apply them back to Maya on the rigs. Without it you have to do it manually by moving keys to the right frame.
Since you’re already in spline on your animation I think you’re far into it already to use MJ. Your progress looks great btw. Very nice head movement on the blue guy. Two things though. Not having the spine bending makes him look stiff and there’s a little hiccup on the right arm just when he says “Lurch”.
Update with breakdowns:
I made another rig to help me mark what frame is a key pose, a breakdown, and some other things. Arrrgh… the sob (Frames 37-41) looks more like a sneeze, I’ll add some more to make it look like he’s crying.
BTW, I don’t know how many people know this but you can play animated gifs in quicktime so you can scrub through the timeline. Isn’t that cool?
diegooriani
#59
SirRon,
This MJ looks very good. I definitely want to try it. Do you have any tutorial for it?
Just wondering how it works, correct me if I am wrong:
First I will need to have all my key poses set, then export these images with the fcheck, is it right? After that I will be able to play with the timing on this MJ and in the end, somehow import the timing inside Maya with KL script, right?!
Well, probably this will save a hell a lot of time.
This thing about GIF on the quicktime I knew it already. Pretty handy.
Honestly, really interesting on your workflow SirRon. Keep in touch mate.
Guys, all the WIP looking good so far. Keep up the good work. Hopefully I will play a bit with my animation tonight.
So, see you guys later,
Cheers!
Diego
