Parlo

Thanks Justin... After doing yet more tweaking late into the night last night I treated myself to a final quality render this evening (very basic light set up, nothing special yet). It's pretty much there. I'm very happy with almost all of it. Maybe, just maybe.. I might be just about to finish this. (Don't all faint at once) QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb

I've had very little time for this over the last week but have now adjusted all the poses/transitions for the new angle. I think it's much better. There is still some tweaking to do, and I've yet to really try and push the snappiness at the end. QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb (And yes, he still hasn't got any feet yet!)

I've reworked it for the new angle. Some stuff got "broke" in the transition, but nothing that will be too much of a pain to rebuild. The challenge is to know how much to adjust each pose so that the face is at a clearer angle to the camera. NEW ANGLE - QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb Oh, I guess I better model the feet now I suppose.....

I'm confused, scared and flattered - all in equal measure. I think he's got me confused with someone else. Atleast I hope he has. Great and deceptively simple model Dark. (I knew I should have copyrighted the word "Parlo")

Justin - Thanks for the crits. I've tried pushing the camera to the right and angling it back round about 30 degrees. It all looks much more dynamic and the walkup at the start far less "flat". There's a bit of cleaning up to do to get the new angle to work (especially for the last phrase), but yep, it's worth it. If it wasn't for that corrupt "Taylor Machine"....

Would the first Saturday of October be good for everyone - October 2nd?

I got another session in this evening and did some more fiddling. I decided to rebuild the transition in the last phrase ("Either I'm...") as I felt it had got somewhat lost. [http://www.sambuntrock.com/guy_like_me9_web.mov]QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb[/url] Think it's looking again. There are some things still to tweak as a result of replacing a number of keys, but nothing major. .... erm.... er... well.... er..... Really? There no complete tutorial out there yet - but the following links will help guide you in the right direction.... A tutorial in the works..... The thread that started it all

Another couple of hours spent - QT - sorenson3 - 1.2mb Justin - I gotcha. I think that my addiction to trying to get his head back to a vetical position comes from the video reference - Stewart's head maintains an almost super human perpendicular relationship to the floor. But that's about as useful here as a very un-useful thing. Whoops - Accidently posted the wrong file... The link has been updated now. If you saw it, I apologise... animation like that shouldn't be allowed out in public.

Wow - thanks again Justin for your mini-novel-crits... When someone posts something like that, it should be assigned it's own ISBN number. I spend a couple of hours trying to put the main jist of your notes into action (there are a number of them that haven't been addressed yet.. but the main ones, the ones I saw as the most crucial are there in some form) QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb I think it's got life again. The head angle note is the one that gained the most ground. I just didn't see it. I suppose that's one of the perils of working from video reference - you fear that you'll "break it" if you push the poses much further than what you see. Some areas still need work - The move on "I hate to stand here" currently looks like some long forgotten disco jive. It suffers from being a transition point between 2 fixes and I need to go in there and rework it entirely. It's past my 2am curfew.. so what ya gonna do? The important thing is that I can see what I need to do again. The blizzard has cleared. Lip sync still needs some touching up - I'll get it one day. I just feel that I'm flying blind with it the majority of the time. Now... If I'm right, I've got some comment catching up to do - Yves - Thanks for your positive comments. I relied alot on the video reference for the eye movements. Despite the problem stated above I think I'm going to use video reference alot more from now on. It shows me timings and combinations of timings that I would either never of thought of, or never would have thought would work. That's gotta be good. Ross - I addressed your podium crit. And you were right... that action needed a little more time and has also benefitted hugely from a little "air" before it. Ken - The brow work is still rough.. I need to address some rigging problems before I can take it further. But your right.. that is a moment that needs them. tobinjim - I'm always tempted to make these animation exercises into more than they are but I really try to make them as simple as possible... so that it's all about the character work, and not a exercise in camera work or edits. I did add the 20 frames at the begining though.. I'm currently only renderering 15 but it really serves the purpose. And yes, there is a bio-wet chip.. but mines busted.. it got smashed when I was attempting fusion with the aid of harmonics and now I'm living in that old abandoned church on the Hudson. You know the one. Luckbat - Great point about the eyecontact and the "chop" jesture. It's there now. Starwarsguy - For more info on the mouth model take a look elsewhere in this thread. It's hand splined with the help of an initial lathe then alot of extruding. Check out ARM for some tuts.. I'm sure there are a couple on there. Thanks for all your comments!

What say you we all help design the logo? This is great news indeed. I got concerned about meeting up without one because I think that it would only have served to frustrate us all... "And that thing you can do with CP weights.. well.. I can't really describe it.. I'd have to show it to you..." etc etc etc. I'll be speaking to Mr London Bridge tomorrow and see about date and time. If anyone has any preference.. speak now. If the main room is available there's even a video projector in there. So things could be very funky. And the burgers.. did I mention the burgers? This place does great burgers.

New render - Can't see it anymore, but I'm pretty pleased with it. QT - Sorenson3 - 1.2mb I'll rest my eyes then write a bit more and address the comments later.

Really nice delicate work - this kind of stuff is really hard to get right, the line between subtlety and letting a characters "go dead" is a difficult one to achieve. The most obvious thing to me that needs work is his entrance. At the moment it looks like he is moving in on a bobbing track. The stiffness of the shoulders is a stark contrast to the detail in the movement of his head after he stops. I agree with you about his last head gesture - "to her". If anything it seems a tad too late. Can't wait to see more.

Sorry - I just don't see this part of the forum tucked all the way down the bottom here. My browsing habits are lackluster to say the least, so I easily forget that this section is here. The London Bridge venue is a definate. It is ours for the using. It has a great bar with good food (not too costly) and there are sarnie places nearby for the true shrapnel-counters amongst us. The laptop issue was our brick wall because there is only so much you can yak about this stuff without being able to get your hands dirty and actually see/do it. So... if we can overcome this hurdle and find a mutually agreeable date - we are good to go.

Thanks for all the brilliant comments guys. I took a whole day away from the computer yesterday - my first in a long long time - and I'm happy to report that no only is the sky still there... it's still blue. That's comforting to know. I'm going to polish this off this weekend. It's just a detail job now. I'm going to address alot of what you people have been writing about so I'll comment on it all when I've put the hours in, not before... Thanks again.. this thread has helped keep the motor running.

I woke up with some ideas this morning so indulged in a little am A:M - QT - Sorenson3 - 1.1mb I've started to tidy stuff up abit, and have tightened alot the transitions. I'm happy with how it all looks now... all that's left to do is a "straight ahead" pass on each element to keep it all "alive".. then sort out the sync problems and put in the rest of the facial animation. Headless - I see what you mean. I realised that I'd missed a beat on "dead right" and I think that having now addressed that, the move forward feels more natural. Before the move forward was heading inevitably into "CRAZY!" - it was one big sweeping change into the final gesture. Now I've put in a slight additional pose on "dead right" that helps make the last gesture bigger. See what you think. tobinjim - You're right. I've been trying to make that feel less obviously a repeated move even though I like the fact he looks back up to the same place. It's a fine line. Thanks for the comments guys. This should be polished off before too long. Then I can put some hair on him - Jimmy Stewart style of course.

Thanks guys, I got to spend another couple of hours on this tonight (I'm trying to shut my eyes by 2am at the latest these days...) QT - Sorenson3 - 1mb I've started to put in some detail, a bit of weight , and to try out some breakdown poses. Some stuff works, other stuff doesn't.. quite.... yet. I'm finding particular problems with the last section - "either I'm dead right, or I'm crazy". Looking at the reference footage, Stewart tenses his entire body and kinda internally erupts. There's a real sense of him controlling his outburst (helped by a great classic-cut suit I might add). I'm going for this but at the moment it feels underpowered in both the body and the lipsync ( I think that both Yves and Justin were pointing to this in their posts). Next session I get I'm going to try to push this further, perhaps give the "eruption" a bigger anticipation, and make him visibly reign himself in more. The very beginning too is not quite doing what I want it to do - I can't get the sense of him pushing himself away from his pedestal right. Leaving the hands there for longer gives it that "doing too much at once" feel... taking them away earlier makes him more floaty. I might try adding 20 frames at the top of the piece to better achieve this. But I kinda feel that's cheating. If I do, I trust that you'll all be discreet about it. xade - the lines in the lower lip at that point are a realtime render glitch, and don't show up in a final render. What's happening is that I'm pushing his jaw out to try to stress his clenched teeth. It's not quite working.... Justin - The sync feels chatty to me between "guy like ME" and "first PLACE"... In the clip the words are tripping off the tongue - keeping up with them without over doing it is a difficult balance to get right. "Hate" also feels a little rushed too. I need to push some more keys around. I'm really enjoying working on this piece, primary because using the performance reference frees me up to concentrate more on the mechanics than the acting. I know the acting works, it's just my job here to sell it as best I can. Anyhow - All comments more than welcome.

A truly beautiful piece of work Yves. It has so much subtle style to it - so many elements, features and curves are "heightened" just enough to lift it above the realms of the clinically accurate. Awesome. I can't wait to see her move, and especially how you are going to handle joint deformation. Catalogued together, all your work on this one model (from spinage to lighting techniques) could form a pretty substantial guide.

Thanks strohbehn - I'm glad you could decipher my notes on the rig. I hope to be able to write about it in more detail when I get time. I've done another pass - QT - Sorenson3 - 1mb I've started to put detail into some of the gestures, and have tried to push the poses further. It's looking better to my eye.

What with one thing and another poor Kevin has been neglected for a while. I've managed to spend a bit more time with him recently and have started work on a proper scene to fully test his rig. QT - Sorenson3 - 1mb Other than the lip sync (which I did first because I was feeling reckless), it's all just basic blocking... ie. rough-city! I've used video reference for the first time on this piece - at the moment the blocking is pretty slavish to it. Now I need to shift, push, tweak and pump those poses to make them pack a bit more punch. I don't know how fast this is going to progress, but as always, all comments more than welcome. CRToonMike - This new clip is animated using a set of finer controls than the last one. There are alot more of them, and they are alot harder to manage, but I think the results pay off. gazzamataz - He's actually called Kevin because a really early test with him was done to a clip of Kevin Spacey. Though there is more than a touch of Harry Enfield's character about him! dj_jonnyg - I'm probably a bit late with this now (sorry) but I edit the CP weights by selecting the CP(s), right clicking, then selecting "Edit CP weights". I find that this is much more powerful than using the "compute all cp weights" function.

sorry about that - I've made a sorenson3 version too. This shouldn't cause any probs - QT - Sorenson3 - 1.8mb

WOOO HOOO. I've address the size issue, and used a difference kinda compression - I've also tweaked the lighting and shifted a couple of keyframes. This makes it the final version period. No more. Put down the mouse and move away from the keyboard.... QT - MPEG4 - 1.8mb There'll be more from this guy at a later date. I think he might even have another go at that gap!

Final version (for now anyhow - I remember the concept of sleep and I wanna give it a try again). Thanks to everyone for their comments, crits, pokes and suggestions. They've really kept me going! A big big thank you. The compression isn't that great on this - and it's larger than I'd like - 2.4mb.. but my eyes are bleary. I might give it another go later. But for now... this is it. QT - Sorenson3 - 2.3mb I'll write more tomorrow... but for now.. where did I put that pillow?

I managed to spend a bit of time on him tonight and have tweaked further. I still want to revisit the final walk-off. It's not quite reading how I want it to, and there is still some hints of the robot in those darn arms.... QT - Sorenson3 - 1mb Justin - Awesome notes! I've tried to address all of them. I did a straight ahead pass on each arm, putting some subtle weight and flex in there. This is such an eye opener for arm animation - the need to keep breaking the joints broken etc. I might have gone too far in the other direction, but I broke the curse.. and that's the charm. Pequod - Thanks! I've tried to push the lean further, it might need some more. It's a hard line to draw. I'm going to revisit the walk away in my final pass/session.. adjust the rhythm slighty.. we'll see. Gazz - I've fallen over so many times, maybe I'm starting to get an idea of what this stuff is all about. These tests are a purely personal thing (but showreel fodder too so they do count as "work" in that respect). Where do I find the time? Sleep is overrated, it gets in the way of most fun pursuits and getting up afterwards sucks! I suppose you could say that I've got an addictive personality, and once I started getting results caffeine took a back seat to the pure rush that is "making things move". I act it all out. Catching myself unaware is hard, but I try to act it out on-the-fly without thinking about it. If you put too much thought into acting it out you can lead yourself to believe that almost any bad motion feels right. This has been a real sticking point for me in the past.. and still is. I use Keith Lango's "organised-keyframing" method - check out his website - and do alot of fine tuning in the channel view. The key to the channel view is getting used to what those lines mean in different situations, and lots of 'sampling' inbetweens and pushing them around. I'm flattered that you find this stuff inspirational - I get such a buzz out of seeing other people's stuff too. That's one of the many odd things about animation.. it's a very solitary thing, but it also ignites such a strong camaraderie.

Ok, spent some time on it today and gave it another push. It's got to the stage where I can't really "see it" anymore. That might be a good thing. QT - sorenson3 - 1mb All crits more than welcome.

Those 2 pages are confusing - and contraditory. Having walked around alot trying to work it out I've found it easiest to think in terms of the back foot, the pushing foot. It's clearer to think of that foot forcing the pelvis forward and *UP*, than it is focusing on the passing foot. The reverse only happens with a wide and stiff legged scoot - the push of the back foot being applied late and with such force that the pelvis moves up and forward and whips the back leg with it. People don't walk like this... unless they've had a little accident. This is great stuff - I'd become tied to a "method" that, though it works well as stylised motion, isn't accurate. Naughty Williams. Now all I need to do is find that deep heat.