JBarrett
-
Posts
267 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by JBarrett
-
-
Thanks for the kind words, Mark.
As for making more...well, that all hinges on (1) coming up with an idea, and (2) working with Anzovin Studio to put it all together. Right now (1) is the biggest challenge. Jot me a note if there's something you'd like to see. I'm open to suggestions!
-
I'll echo TurboKitty's comment. The technical part of the lip sync looks pretty good, but it could use some more snap and exaggeration to really match the tone of the vocal better. Also exaggerate the other facial expressions, too.
I like the interface you've set up for the facial rig. I've been using Osipa's rig on the project we're doing at work, and while I initially had some gripes about its operation, I gotta admit that it's really grown on me over time, and I'm losing my interest in sliders for facial work. I heard about Bill Young's test at implementing an Osipa-style rig in A:M, but never checked it out. Seeing your implementation here, though, has really piqued my interest. I think I'm going to take a whack at adding it to the Eggington model I used for the Animate a Face tutorial.
Oohhh...and this has suddenly given me an interesting idea for a new hand-control rig....hmmm.....
-
Very nice looking model. Why so many splines in the middle part of the legs though?
Look very closely at the rendered pic. Those lower segments aren't perfecly smooth. That's actual physical detail on the model, which adds to the realism. Those parts of the legs need some flexibility, and with that design, the slight bend that some of the legs have is believeable.
Very nice work, filipmun!
-
/me sings...
Happy Birthday to Vic,
Happy Birthday to C
Happy Birthday, dear Raf...
Happy Birthday you three!
-
Please Answer?
Please be more patient. Four hours is not nearly enough time for folks in any forum to respond to a request (same goes for mailing lists). Coming back twice within that period and asking why people haven't responded is just flat-out unrealistic, bordering on rude. After posting and asking for feedback, give it at least a week before following up if nobody responds. Forums are purely voluntary things, and people must be allowed to respond on their own time, not yours.
Regarding the clip, it looks like it's working at a basic level, but only a very basic level. There's a lot more potential for emotion and energy, even without having a traditional face to use for expression. For example, the brows hardly move, and the movements they do make don't always feel motivated by what the speaker is saying. Some of their moves are too quick, too. People don't generally cycle through a variety of brow shapes in quick succession. Brows are best used as broad accents to help sell major emotional moments.
The jaw movement works pretty well, but there are some moves that don't quite read very clearly from a contextual/emotional standpoint. For example, the lateral jaw movement before "what do you mean" doesn't feel motivated. Another jaw hitch is the fact that the upper teeth (and attached eyes) are also rotating with most of the character's jaw moves. Real people don't work that way. The jaw is on a hinge, while the upper teeth are attached to the skull. When we talk, all the movement is in the jaw...we don't tilt our head back when we open our jaw to speak. The only critters that do that are puppets, and that's due to the way we operate them with our hands. Because of the fairly realistic design of the teeth and eyes in your model, it doesn't feel appropriate to apply a puppet-style of operation to him.
There could also be more work done with the overall movement of the model. If he's got some power that allows him to levitate over the floor, then he must have power to do other movements. Right now he's locked in place facing the camera, with only minor lateral rotations here and there which don't really help much. As such, he feels pretty lifeless.
Some of the eye darts work all right, but with the eye rotation locked to the "head," it presents some problems. Generally we look at very specific targets, even if only for small stretches of time. It's rare when our eyes will stay locked to the movement of our head, especially during speech. In these scenarios, it's best to have the eyes locked to an external target, which you can then animate to represent the character's shifting gaze.
Even though you can still pull off a lot of stuff with this guy in his skinless state, one thing that's going to hamper the emotional potential to some degree is a lack of eyelids. The relationship between our lids and eyes contributes to a lot of emotion when we speak. Without lids, the character feels perpetually alarmed/surprised, even with brow movement to help sell certain emotions. Something to keep in mind...
-
There was a World Series recently?
Seriously, I had no idea. I heard some side talk today about some big thing involving rioting fans, but had no idea what instigated the chaos. Oh well...that's what I get for totally ignoring all sports, I guess.
It seems like I always find out about the World Series after it's over. Last year the revealing moment was even funnier because I was surrounded by others who didn't know much (if any) more than I did. My wife's parents were visiting, and we were playing a board game at our house, and suddenly there was a brief exchange that went something like this:
Wife's dad: "Does anybody know who won the world series?"
Me: "There was a world series recently?"
Wife: "Who was playing?"
At that point, we all realized the hopelessness of the conversation and broke into laughter.
-
Fun logo treatment! I'm also having audio problems w/ this clip, though. All other audio on my system is working fine.
-
There's no real secret to lipsync, the trick is just to be lazy. Seriously! The mouth is lazy; it moves as little as it has to between sounds.
It's true that the mouth is lazy in some respects, but that doesn't mean that we should be lazy with our lip sync, nor does it make lip sync super easy. Learning exactly how the mouth moves in its specific form of laziness takes time and practice. "Just being lazy" isn't as easy as it sounds.
Re: your clip, you did all right for a first-timer. The body poses are okay, but could still use some added strength and clarification in places. One big issue is the very floaty movement between those poses, particularly at the beginning before she speaks. There are also some isolation issues in a few places, esp. at the end when she points but only moves her head and hand. Her major facial expressions are pretty static. Granted, she's keeping a pretty even tone across the whole clip from a vocal sense, but the eyes and brows could still use some extra punch.
Lip sync is pretty darn good for a first shot, but there are still some things that could make it more accurate. Laziness aside, you can't skip the shapes for compressive sounds like M, B P, etc., and the lips don't come together for the "b" in "about" or the "m" in "my." The jaw is moving a bit too much in some places, like the double hit during "all the" near the beginning, but you did a nice job of keeping it toned down during "something or other."
All in all, for a first attempt, it's not bad! Keep at it!
-
Wonderful news! Congratulations, Yves!
-
I believe he used A:M's particles, which was part of the point behind the project...to showcase what A:M can do.
On a side note, I hope William even makes it in here to see this. With a subject line as generic as "Curious," he might not peek in to see what you're so curious about. Something like "Curious about the Balrog" or "Question for William Sutton" would be more likely to get his attention.
Cheers!
-
Dang...that's pretty cool! I like the creature design...familiar, yet unique, and definitely on the creepy side. I can't wait to see how this turns out!
-
History Channel.....History Channel....
My guess is that AProd did some contract work for the show. A lot of the shows on networks like The History Channel are contracted out to other production companies, and they get to choose who does any necessary graphics/effects stuff.
-
sorry about the last post, it kinda messed up. The web address is
Simple fix: don't put spaces in your filenames. They make it very troublesome to share URLs. (note: I fixed it for the quote above)
-
Sorry to read about the corrupted file(s), Ernesto. I hope things go better with your future projects.
-
Looking better!
One thing you might want to work on is the stride length for that run cycle. It doesn't work for the actual distance he's covering on the ground (watch the feet slip on the ground during each stride).
The leap over the wall works *much* better. Very fun, cartoony take on it.
The camera has a bit of a hitch at the end. You'll probably have to re-do the camera movement anyway once the stride length is fixed because he'll be covering more ground, so you might want to peek at it then. Camera keys should really be kept to a minimum. While CG gives us the freedom to do whatever we want with the camera, the vast majority of the time it looks better to treat the camera the same way you would its real-world counterpart. Keep the moves simple, and try to replicate basic trucks, dollies, pans, zooms, etc. Some cinematography reference would be good to review when planning camara positions and moves.
Overall, it's looking pretty sweet. Keep at it!
-
Rock on, Sam! It's continuing to look better and better with each revision. Keep at it!
-
You sure, Rodney? I could've sworn it was...
B. Don't kiss your sister.
-
-
copying from another forum...
We lost one of the greats yesterday. Disney animator Frank Thomas died peacefully in his home last night, having celebrated his 92nd birthday on Sunday.Frank animated many of the truly great characters and scenes: Bambi, Pinocchio, Cap'n Hook, the wicked Stepmother in Cinderella, the sequence where the dwarves mourn for Snow White, and of course the famous spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp, to name just a few.
Frank and Ollie Johnston created "The Illusion of Life," a veritable bible for many of us growing up; and in doing so he directly influenced the drawings, the technique, and thought process of generations of animators after him.
-
Here's what this project screams to me: the artist gets her music out - free music videos. Good publicity. The animators get used. They don't get cent one from her CD sales.
CD sales are irrelevant. Artists are being asked to contribute to the DVD, and all proceeds from the DVD sales go to the charity. When the end result is charity, is it really that uncommon for folks to be asked to donate their time/products/services?
Call me crazy, but it doesn't sound all that dodgy to me. I agree that an artist shouldn't set aside a paying gig to work on such a project, but if someone is between projects, or there's some time to spare on the side, it might be fun to give it a go.
-
MyFault hit the Balrog...er...the nail on the head with the motion comments. A large part of what sells the scale of a character is its speed, and this guy's movements are too fast to make his size and mass believeable.
Even though you've positioned the camera at the 6-foot level looking at a 20-foot character, it doesn't feel that way, and in the end, it's the feeling that counts, regardless of what the figures say.
For starters, try using a different focal length. The default 35mm perspective is okay, but doesn't work very well for drama. A wider lens would help punch up the presentation a bit more. Try something around 20mm and see how it feels. Combine that with a lower angle and a closer position, and he'll start to feel even bigger.If you can get the camera tweaked and the walk working better, this could be a really sweet clip. (I'd offer to help in a more direct manner, but I've been a bad boy and still haven't purchased the v11 upgrade disc.)
-
Looking ever-better, Sam. Those legs are looking better, but something still feels odd about them. It might have something to do with their shape, and the fact that he's walking straight at the camera. I see that there's more bend to them as he steps, but it's hard to read that bend. Changing his overall movement vector would probably solve the readability issue, but it might mean a lot of work. It's one of those tough choices...do you fix it, or just learn from it and move on? Tough call.
You've just about nailed the lip sync. I really like the attention you've paid to some of the "s" shapes in particular. It sounds like he's almost doing a "sh" sound in words like "stand," and you recreated that very well. It really helps to sell the impression that he's saying the line when you see the same shapes that you hear. (Hear shapes? You betcha...
)I like what you've done with the new approach before "Either I'm...", and the extra snap in some of the moves after that helps. You could probably push the snap even farther, though. Don't be afraid to go too far. A comment I've often heard says that when it feels like it's going too far, it's almost there. I still tend to go a little tame in some of my stuff, and Keith Lango was trying to stretch me out of that safety zone in a recent animation exercise at work, so this has been on my mind recently.
The more I think about his overall presentation, the more I think it could use some global tweaking. He's practically dead-center in the frame the entire time, and it doesn't really help sell his inner turmoil. What might work to help sell the subtext of the spoken line is to keep him on either side of center during his opening remarks, and then have him move dead-center for the final line. That would allow the his initial uncertainty to match with a shifting, uncentered screen position, and then match dead-center with his "dead right" ultimatum.
Now if I could just think about this stuff earlier rather than point it out when you're nearly done...
-
Welcome back, Marcel! Glad to hear you made it through the swamp all right, and you're back in a happy patch of life.
-
Pretty cool! Fun little scenario there. A few notes...
- A lot of the poses for the small ball hit and stick. While he should be appropriately snappy, there should still be some ease as he hits each new pose.
- Some of the motions feel a tad robotic/mechanical. One example is the way the two balls are "yelling" at each other toward the end (I guess that's what they're doing). For the yelling action they're just oscillating between two poses, making it feel kinda stiff. Consider adding some other element of movement in there to break it up, like very subtly rocking backward or forward during the yell, or varying the strength of the "hits" so it feels more organic.
- Another part that feels a tad stiff is near the beginning, when the small ball leaps high into the air, then does some squash-n-stretch mid-air. It feels like he stops in the air during that segment. Depending on the way you've got him rigged, you may need to cheat some of the movement to keep him alive during that leap.
- I agree w/ the comment on the small ball's rebound off the cube. That whole section could be more snappy, and it would really add some fun punch.
Overall, though, you've got a great start on a fun test piece. Keep at it!
- A lot of the poses for the small ball hit and stick. While he should be appropriately snappy, there should still be some ease as he hits each new pose.
Opinions on the training videos
in Anzovin Products
Posted
Thanks for all the kind words on Animate a Face. I'm flattered that people like it so much.
As for making more, I'm totally open to it, but I'll admit that I'm stumped when it comes to a concept. I'm open to suggestions, though. Jot me a line if you have an idea!