Rodney

Yes. Only select users know where it is.

It is. Both the Timing Charts you'll see on the Extremes (Key Poses) as well as the breakdowns on the Exposure Sheets (xsheets). The same thing is accomplished in CG but generally the computer is doing all that stuff behind the scenes. The problem with this is that when we let the computer do the inbetweens (which it always will unless we use stepped/held keyframes or tell it to do otherwise) we get a very mechanical result in our animation. Unless we specifically are looking for a mechanical result this is rarely a good thing. There is a really simple exercise that will demonstrate Ease and that is to set up a ball (or other object) and set to key positions. (for demo purposes I like to create these on frames 1 and 2) Frame 1 is the initial Extreme and Frame 2 is the final Extreme. These two 'keyframes' are your storytelling poses/frames. With Frames 1 and 2 in place, then move frame 2 to frame 3... which then leaves an automatically generated (but unkeyed) inbetween on frame 2 in between. Keying frame 2 then gives you a mechanically generated Inbetween exactly between Frames 1 and 2 that can be altered/manipulated as a Breakdown. It is this Breakdown that will dictate the Favoring or Ease of the motion from frame 1 to frame 3. This Breakdown is the sequences primary performance Extreme. You can then spread this three frame sequence out to the desired time and create additional Breakdowns if/as necessary.

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. If not keeping him in that trajectory it would probably be better to leave him out of appearing again in front of the camera with the second fall entirely. As it was he was barely noticed. I had to go back and look again to see what had occurred in those last few frames. Since nothing else was moving in that general direction I assumed it had to be him. Added: The only crit for this last one (the pre-domestic with him falling twice that is) is that I personally wouldn't end the shot with a crotch shot.

That looks good! The part that stands out now is after the launch where the guy goes up and forward when the tree is going up and backward. It seems to me that he needs to go back up in the direction of the the top of the mountain again (as launched by the tree) before falling again in front of the camera. I hesitate to even mention this because you've got the earlier problem solved.

I hesitate to upload this because it's more of an exploration than it is an answer to your quesiton but... it might be useful? If there is a specific place of interest perhaps you can suggest that and we can narrow the focus. Note that this the video near the end I adjust the camera's focal point. I think this might be the secret to getting the character up close and personal. The trick would be to do that without too much distortion. My apologies for the size. It's about 20 minutes boiled down into a 4 minutes speed video. raw_exploration.mov

This is another animation that blurs the line between CG, stop motion and mixed media in general. Tore set out to create a style that demonstrated just that and it appears he was very successful in that endeavor.

In order to really see what is going on you might have to share a project file. Ease (Slow In/Slow Out) is mostly just a matter of increasing/decreasing the spacing of an object or character so that an effect of acceleration/deceleration is generated. I still think the easiest way to get that face up close to the camera is to cheat it but you can do it manually or through adjusted focal distance or a combination of all three approaches. But back to your question... concerning Ease in the Timeline. If you have seven keyframes then you would likely stagger them out. 12.3..4..5.67 (This would be a slow in/slow out) 1.2..3...4....5.....6......7 (This would be a slow out) 1......2.....3....4...5..6.7 (This would be a slow in) If you consider the entire motion of the tree moving down under weight and then launching upward that a reversal of the slow in/slow out: 1...2..3.4.5..6...7 (The center keyframes 3, 4 and 5 would be where the characters face delays just in front of the camera) Because of A:M's splinebased animation you might be able to accomplish this with only two keyframes and by stretching out the arc's tangent. Let me see if I can draft up a quick animation...

Congratulations! Can we expect to see any more sneak previews?

Happy birthday to the guy who made me believe in gif animation again. I'll credit his animation as part of the inspiration of the forum banner as well.

Here's a quick... and failed... attempt to show how close to the camera I think the character could be: Edit: This should work better: If you had the time and inclination you could have the characters eyes closed when he gets to the bottom of the arc and then one eye open as if he thinks he's come to a safe landing (delay a few frames... just enough for the audience to register the face) and then.... whoaaaa.... with both eyes wide open off he goes again. Interestingly, given the new perspective hinted at by the exaggerated movement of the character toward the camera the goat almost appears to be looking in the right place.

Hehe.... I like it Simon. Excellent physically based humor. Some minor observations: That goat (he's still being subborn even though he looks great)... He's looking too far down too fast. Suggestion: Constrain his head to Aim At the character and then adjust the enforncement percentage of that constraint to taste. Perhaps better yet, Aim it at a Null and constrain the Null to the character. Then you can just move the Null if the goat doesn't appear to be looking at the right place. The rebound from the tree quite read correctly. It seems to me that his movement should be: Impact with tree. Tree goes down Tree goes down Tree goes down Rebound and launch the character. There should be a noticeable buildup (of at least three beats/seconds) before the rebound. I could be wrong about this... I'll look again. For what it's worth, you made me laugh. Edit: In looking again it appears that the tree stops on the way up for a few frames rather than move all the way up in one fluid motion. Fix that and I think the motion will work okay. To plus it up even more though I think you need to have the treetop lower just a little bit more. Not only is this a matter of gravity... that tree needs to store up some serious energy in order to launch our hero (that far) up into the air. Well done! One more edit: Okay, I can't leave well enough alone on this one. New suggestion: In order to exaggerate to the nth degree AND to see the characters reaction to his situation I hope you'll consider bring the characters face full up into the camera (cheat and move his face up to the camera (or render out a separate set of images of his face and composite those over the character if necessary). This would solve the issue of the tree having enough energy and really let us experience the character's dilemma. Draw overs are available upon request if you need them.

I hardly ever 'like' anything.... but you've got me looking for the 'like' button. Nice. Suggestion: As you move forward consider building him modularly. It might be something of a challenge but having Franky in separate parts might pay off. (You might be able to bind the parts to a standard rig like the process used to connect to BVH motion files)

Saw this and thought it might be of interest to game creators. If nothing else you might be able to port/update an older game over to win some prizes etc. Other than that I don't know much about it: https://www.scirra.com/ You can play a very basic HTML5 shoot-em-up game here: https://www.scirra.com/demos/ghosttutorial/ The tutorials walk you through making this and other games.

"I hope we never forget that this all started with a goat." - Dart Wisney Nice update Mark!

Hehe. I like it. It's like watching celebrity battles.

He looks considerably more geeky than I was moving toward. Here's what I came up with when the word 'hulk' was mentioned. The image isn't what is important here... it's the spine that I was most interested in. I started modding your current Franky but the head splineage was a bit too dense to move everything to the places I wanted them. I do think the spine is the key here regardless of the final look of Franky. Interestingly, you used Eddie's legs as a starting point... I grabbed Rabbit's. Hehe

Mark, I'm going to post a few observations. Make what you will out of them... One thing that I hope my image doesn't subtract from is the nice sense of blurring of light that you have in your current image. Example: The girls legs and the horses body almost seem to blend together. In the time tested and true fashion of Frazetta/Boris this is a good thing in my opinion. What I have suggested in the attached image may seem to contradict this but there is no contradiction, in my effort to show you what I'm thinking I'm just working the same thing from different angles. The important thing to note about the 'Frazetta effect' is that he's using that mostly as a matter of light and shade. For the girl's leg next to the horse's body this works very well (you might consider giving her an ankle bracelet if you want to add some contrast there... and at the same time suggest to the viewer that you fully understand what is going on with regard to light and shade in that area). Conversely, the slightly confusing color/tint of the horse's front legs are mostly a matter of positioning. This leads me to my second observation; that of the position of the horses legs. There is something that seems off in the horse's leg positions, particularly the hind legs. and I've been meaning to google up some reference imagery to research this to satisfy my curiousity. In the meantime I'll speculate and point you to that as an area to consider. The other observation, that of the horse's head orientation, could be attacked in several ways. The first thing I note is that its head isn't oriented in the same direction as the girl... while that is okay in and of itself the attitude (that is to say motivated direction) is definitely not with her same motivation. In wondering where these two are going I cannot help but wonder if the horse is sufficiently motivated (particularly by the girl who we presume has prompted the horse to "Go there... now!") The head certainly can be down... that might actually work quite well... but if down then I think you'll need to work out some additional detail in the horse's face to suggest it's motivation/concentration. Added: By raising the horse's head just above the horizon line it seems to me that it also makes the horse (and therefore the horse and girl) pop out a bit more from the background. When they overlap they are cemented together onto the image's 2D plane. All this for what it's worth. And I hope it makes sense. Added: I really wanted to spotlight some of the cool stuff (flow primarily) you have going on in your image. One is how from the horse's head going down the horse's mane to the girl's loin cloth the viewer's attention whips up her arm and then over to her face. It creates a feeling of space at the most important part of the image... traps the viewer there for awhile even... I really like that!.

I thought I recognized your balrog in there. I agree, it constitutes a very nice modification. Very appropriate for the story as well. This is the first animation in some time that I have genuinely been 'creeped out' by a character in an animation. Having that beast go after the main character with the timing as it was (and with time artificially manipulated via slow motion to prolong the event) must have struck a cord from many years ago for me.

Tan realista! Realmente impresionante! No puedo esperar a la proxima actualizacion!

I just read through this topic again and enjoyed it immensely. Thanks for linking to it again David! For those that like to read ahead... check this out: EHBsn1fzUog This video covers a lot of territory but also discusses some common errors in animating arcs. Note: This and many other resources have been made available by Alejandro Garcia who is something of the defacto Physics Professor of the Bouncing Ball and various other animation physics. (REF: http://animationphysics.org/)

Nicely plussed Up Mark! I opened your model and saw a missing spline on a rear leg/hip which I must have missed in my earlier attempt. I added that back in and then checked the position of the bones and was a bit surprised to see it perfectly aligned. So... I Right Clicked and did the 'ol Auto Assign. While there are obvious places where work needs to be done I was impressed by how the Auto Assign did a pretty good job. Back at you (or the next contender in this battle)! Edit: As I was posting I saw what still seems to be some odd spline continuity at the back of the thighs (it can be seen in the attached image): Update: I replaced the goat with one that has an updated Library icon image. Goat_WIP002a.mdl

Outstanding!

Thanks for posting this... I hadn't seen it before! (I hope Sean will drop in and tell us more about this film!) I might nitpick at a few aspects of the short but over all this was very impressive. I say this as someone who rarely enjoys 'scary movies' and cares for Halloween tales even less. This story held my attention all the way through from start to finish. The two areas I think would have really polished the film and taken it to the next level would be pacing and a color check to maintain the lighting/style continuity throughout the tale. What impresses me most? That Sean has demonstrated his multifaceted talent (modeling, animation, special effects, lighting, cinematography, voice work, music... everything needed to pull this film together makes any piddly criticisms of the short pale in comparison. Now, having said that if I were Sean I would go back into this short and attack it with an eye for improving the over all style and pacing. For instance, one could go into the imagery and convert it to black and white... one pass with high contrast. Use this pass to spot out the focal area where the audiences attention should be directed. Then, go back into the original imagery again and extract a color sequence similar to the black and white pass. Run through this sequence with an eye for continuity of colors from scene to scene. Check to make sure colors aren't just randomly popping in and out of the scenes but (just as in cinematography) are motivated and have a continuity by matching the cuts from scene to scene. This was done rather well in the final credits*. An additional pass should probably be ran for general style and texture. By this I mean to say that skin should be consistently like skin (or at least a style for skin throughout the film) and other surfaces should maintain that level of continuity as well. The key here is to consider the element of depth in detail. Things that are closer to the viewer/audience generally are perceived as having more detail. This consideration and consistency will pay off big dividends. An audio pass should be ran to make sure all dialogue is crisp, clear and understandable. If purposefully obscured (as was the voice of the demon in this story) then the audience should be able to understand it more fully on subsequent viewings. Dialogue that isn't specifically intelligible and which will never be for artistic reasons should be clarified/augmented through imagery. In this way even if the dialogue is audibly undecipherable the audience can still make a full determination on what has been said. Finally, a terminal editing pass should be made to tighten up the pacing and in this case to fully sync with the music of the film (which was pretty spot on throughout this short film) One could argue that a separate pass/check should be carried out for each important element of the film and since there are so many important elements... there'd be a lot of them! Why bother to run through these suggestions? Because I think this short film is that impressive already. I can only imagine what it would be if it were taken to the next level. Perhaps best of all... this film doesn't have to be revisited... but it can be plussed up in effect via the next story told with this character. And this is perhaps the most important advice I can give Shaun. You've got the bait in the water and we are hungrily circling around it. We can almost taste the next adventure. Tell us more stories with this character! *There is a thought I would like to explore with regard to short films created by one (or very few people) with regard to credits and that involves the use of the same persons name over and over again. While Sean's effort in the credits is one of the better executed with regard to this repetition I've seen to date, in general this should be avoided. So what to do in a situation where one person has performed all duties on a film? I would suggest that it might be better to revisit scenes from the story and then have one screen where all the credits are attributed to the creator. Multiple repetitions of the same name tend to serve an approach that suggests multiple people have worked on a project and if going to the effort of listing these credits separately, in my estimation, it would be better to find someone which would critique that area of interest and then credit them as a consultant in the credits (one approach for instance might be to begin by stating "with special thanks to" and then start listing those names, "music" then list the name of the important person(s) instrumental in formulating the success of the creators effort (it could be a highschool teacher for instance... if it was Mom... then perhaps consider using only first names in all the credits). Then similarly run through the other credits for other elements of the film. Impressive piece of work Sean. Keep up the good work.

I agree with Sebastian... The difference between the hunchback look and what might be ideal will be Franky's spine. What I think you might be going for more is a giant character who is leaning forward which from the front might make him/her look hunchbacked but from the sides you'll be able to see a smooth flow from the head to the hips via the spine. The difference being that the spine will be noticeably more curved than an average human. This is different than the hunchback look in that the look you have appears to have a growth going out and up -in addition- to the spine. I'm getting set to come out of my workweekend shedule so I should have some time to devote to drawing a possible side view. It probably should be noted that... spoilers on...

Awesomely awesome. Any time we can break the typical CG look the better I say.