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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A couple of thoughts


I've spent a chunk of time over the last 6 weeks looking and commenting on peoples animation. It's been a TON of fun and I'm enjoying it greatly. I wanted to share a couple of thoughts I hope can help you out in your work.

1. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of people seem to end their shots in a superman type pose. It's either one hand on hip, both hands on hips, chest puffed out, or some derivative of this. There are SO many options people have and I see a lot of people defaulting to this cliche.

2. The next one is a continuation of #1. Many people have their characters stop by the end of their shots. In production we're always asked to animate "handles." Generally you animate 10ish frames before and after your shot. This does a few things:
a. It keeps the motion blur working up past the shot so that it doesn't magically stop by frame 123; i.e. end of the shot
b. It also helps make it feel like the character is alive and not perfectly animated within a box of time If a song ends when it's over, an animation needs to cut out at a place where the song is not quite finished.

Just some things to think about as you approach your new shot.

14 comments:

  1. Hey Bobby, it´s so nice to see you checking out and talking about your point of view of students shots! That´s really nice to heard what you are observing on those shots! See you and keep sharing, bye

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  2. Thanks, Bobby! It's really awesome knowing that you're looking at our work. I've never heard of the handles thing, so that was also cool to learn about!

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  3. Great advice Bobby! My mentor in class 3, Drew Adams suggested the same thing about handles because you can often inadvertently start a shot in a contact position of a walk for example where it looks like someone has said "action" offscreen.

    Been adding 10 frames ever since and it really helps to make it feel like the action is more natural and less staged to the camera.

    Might have to go back and check for superman poses now though!

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  5. Great post Bobby! I'd like to add something to #2 -- in games (at least in my personal experience), a shot needs to reach a "settle" by the end, because it typically needs to come to a stop. I'm doing some hit reacts at the moment, where a player character responds to getting smacked in the face. By the end of each, the character needs to believably settle into his default "idle" (stationary) pose without feeling like he's hitting a wall. Something I've noticed is that many animators don't have experience with letting motion die out, having a residual settle. I would recommend that animators learn a bit of both worlds, and gear their reel pieces to reflect either an approach that favors their preferred field (games/film) or, even better, a combination of the two.
    Just my two cents :) Hope you and your ladies are well!
    Trav

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  6. Travis,

    Great point! Yes, if your reel is geared towards games I also think the style of animation should reflect something you might see in a game.

    For acting stuffs, I really do feel you want it to feel more organic.

    In a nutshell, YES, have the style you are animating reflect the type of style you want your reel to reflect. Is it cool to do Acting AND Game style animation in one reel. It can be done, however I think Travis nails it when he says, "gear your reel to the studio you are applying for." This way you can experiment and have fun without thinking EVERY piece needs to be a Demo Reel piece.

    Don't forget to have fun when you're animating. That's when GREAT stuff comes out. :)

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  7. thanks for the advice! am currently working on the Feb 11secs competition... and your advice came in the nick of time!

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  8. Hey bobby,
    I was definitely one of those students who was ending with a superman pose. I didn't have time during the term to fix it, but have changed it up now.

    https://vimeo.com/39806033

    thanks for honest feedback.

    Jake

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