Hello fellow animators,
I’m a newb to CGTalk, and I’m hoping to get some good advice on my animation so far. In the link you’ll find a video of my animation with just the key poses in stepped mode. This piece is more physics than it is acting. Is the idea working for you? Anything I can improve on? I really want to get the keys right before I take this to the next step.
Thanks guys, more to come later.
Looks good. Would rethink the landing though. Looks as if he is smashing his face and knees into the ground. Maybe have him land with his face looking forward and knees absorbing the shock more or less.
Got an update:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9q2BolDsA
In this version I tweaked the key poses, added a middle pose between each foot contact for the initial walk and run, and set the interpolation to linear to get a better sense of timing.
Brilyent, I thought his head was rotating a little too much on the landing. I’ve gone ahead and pulled it back.
In case you can’t tell, I’m trying to make it look like he hits the wall and pushes off of it. I DON’T want it to look like he’s sticking to the wall like spiderman. I think that push off the wall needs the most attention. It doesn’t seem to be reading like a push off. Let me know what you want think. And if you feel like it, I’d like to hear peoples’ workflow methods for after they’ve laid in their key poses…
I would revisit the poses from where he leaves the wall… the fall pose and the pose just before the land could be made bit more interesting also the land 
just my opinion
Its off to a great start. Here are a few things that caught my eye. I think you could add some time to the part the switches from the walk to the run. That is hard to do and at the moment it is like he takes one step and then the next he is running. Perhaps start to speed up the step before to see the transfer from walk to run. His left foot is the second one to leave the ground when he jumps and also the second one to land after coming off the wall. After the wall hit if you have that left foot transfer down and the left one go up so he hands on the left foot first when he lands on the ground after the wall it make the shot more dynamic. Then you may want to try and have his right hand land before the left but he main thing is to keep those hands not landing at the same time. Even if it is just a three frame difference. Over all I feel like you can still see every pose as he goes from one to another. I think it is far enough along to start to smooth those out and break them up so you can’t see them so clearly. Start to offset legs hips and arms so they are not all landing in the poses at the same time.
Hope that helps a little. Lots of good stuff going on!
Thanks guys. This is all really helpful stuff. That’s the great thing about critiques I guess, other people can see things I can’t, even though they’ve been right in front of me the whole time.
I’ll get right on it!
Here’s the next iteration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzB3Q9hBZ8
Everything’s still in stepped mode because I want everything to work without relying on plateau or spline mode. But I think I’m getting to the point where I’ll be converting it to plateau mode and messing around in the graph editor pretty soon. What do you guys think? Are the poses working? Are there any poses I should add inbetween any of the poses I already have? Is it time to convert to spline or plateau mode? And also is the camera movement working for you? I put a camera on spline curve with a motion path, and that seems to have given me the best results. I’m not gonna do any fancy camera moves because it’s all about the animation.
Let me know what you think, and don’t pull any punches.
looking good keep it up where can u get that model i saw it some where but never able to find it again
looks good.
as next iteration to tweak the timing, you might want to go from Stepped to Linear - this way you get no funky surprises with spline curves and can tweak the timing. (I personally work only in Linear in the beginning and step through the time-line with shortcuts, but judge the timing seeing linear interpolation)
some quick thoughts, which I might change (just tiny stuff):
the jump away pose on the wall 113, I would try more compression, so you have more change to the jump in the air, for the timing, I would hold him there a bit longer to gain more steam.
Around 86 the hips are a bit far back, looks a little bit like he’s loosing steam. On the run I would add more up/down, but it’s probably too early for that in your iteration process.
around 90 you could pull the left arm further back to get more change to the jump away extreme. Something around 95 with the left arm, maybe the shoulders are a bit too low and you might want to raise the lower arm a bit more, so there is more tension in the elbow angle. Maybe not such a flat hand on this pose to get more tension.
around 36 I would already add some overlap in the hands, but again, probably too early for this in your process.
For the camera I wouldn’t worry too much about it at this stage and tweak it in the end, but probably you might see a bit more silhouette if the camera is more on the guys left side, so you have more of a side view.
around 164 you probably get a bigger push-off pose with both hands at the same time.
Just a few personal thoughts, but it looks cool already. But I am really looking forward to the next iteration.
Good luck,
Leander.
Thanks Leander. I’m starting to convert keys to plateau mode and mess around with the graph editor. So now the fun really begins!
Took the torso and head into plateau mode and got a decent first pass on them. Now I’m working on the arms and they’re taking forever. I find myself putting a key on almost every frame in order to get good arcs with them. And on top of that, I have to offset the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist for the walk and run part of the animation so they’re not all arriving at their extremes at the same time! ARG!
Here is a 1st pass on the walk and run section of the animation. I can probably do better with it, but for now I’ll move on.
Every frame of the animation is now in plateau mode. Don’t quite know how to post quicktime videos in a forum. If someone knows how, let me know. Or if you want to see a quicktime version, contact me at roblescg@yahoo.com and I’ll email it to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CJTPs5lRVc
I think there’s a lot of room for improvement, but it’s in the ball park of what the final version will look like. The arms are proving to be very difficult. Anyway, the time for harsh criticism has come. So let me know ANY problems that you see, and how I can make it better. Thanks!
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