rhinthell
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Posts posted by rhinthell
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For any purchasers of the Animate! series or individual discs, we would love to hear your feedback. Please post here with any comments you might have.
I'd personally love to hear how useful the discs have been for people and, additionally, if there are any further requests.
In a few weeks I will start thinking about possible additional tutorials that I could offer for free on my website so both your comments on the series, and suggestions will help me fine tune what that might be.
Standalone reviews are great too, for listing as testimonials.
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If you are interested in seeing more information on the discs please check out the official website at http://www.cristinmckee.net
And again, feel free to contact us or post here with questions or comments.
Enjoy!
~Cristin
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What's up with Chapter 14: revisions?
On my CD, there are two folders, one called "Revisions," and one called "14 Revisions." Their contents are identical--three folders: "01 Ball Throw," "02 Chair Revisions" and "06 Duel Revision."
Isn't there supposed to be a Quicktime file called "14_Revisions.mov" in one of those folders? I think I'm missing a chapter.
The revisions section was a last minute addition that I always wanted to add if there was room on the disc for the extra movie files. It's basically just a series of all the stages of some shots that were animated on the disc (plus a shot from duel) and a detailed breakdown of the changes that each shot went through as they neared completion. I never intended to record a tutorial for this section because there's no way it could be small enough to fit on the disc. But I still thought it would be useful information to include for anyone who might be interested in seeing more behind the scenes of the process behind animating some of those shots.
So you shouldn't be missing anything. Instead, it sound as if you have an extra folder. I'll look into that and make sure there isn't an error with the master. Thanks for calling it to my attention.
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I'll bug Dave B to come up with a sample movie.
Hope you guys like the disc. Please feel free to post any comments and questions here. I'd love to hear any and all feedback.
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Very nice job. I like that you've managed to loop something with a bit of creativity and character to it.
I agree that it needs more weight. Try exaggerating the up and down on the body and see how that works. I picture having him hold the down part of the up and down so he looks a little crouchy. Which would go well with the sneaky type of walk you have here.
The feet seem to come off the ground a little slow. They don't look like they're pushing the body forward at all. Consider having them come up faster and maybe make the kick back rotation on the feet a little faster. You might want to speed up the rotation when the feet hit the ground too. After the heel hits, the rest of the foot seems a little slow/floaty as it rotates down to a flat foot position.
I'm not sure if it's the angle but he looks a little heavy on his left side. Like he leans farther in that direction. Might want to look into that.
~Cristin
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That's really adorable. I'd love to see some more control in the tail so it isn't bending so much in the one joint at the end. I think that would really help. Right now it's sort of distracting.
Overall it looks really nice. Great sense of weight and personality in that guy. If anything I'd suggest a little more rotation in the hips to lead the legs a bit but honestly I think it works fine with a more cartoony style if you don't want to add that.
Love the floppy hands.
~Cristin
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Nice start, Larry.
Consider not having the guy coming directly at the screen at the end. Maybe rotate him slightly so he's not directly facing the camera and have him move a bit more to the right as he's moving towards the camera. It looks a little strange having him hop forward and get larger in view in the completely front on shot.
I think your jumps are a little too fast. There isn't enough time to make the height of the jump look smooth. Experiment with having much more ease at the height of the jump and giving each jump a couple more frames so there's more room for the ease, and it looks less like it's hitting something as it reaches it's full height in the air. The 'hits' on the ground look nice but they'll look nicer if you get rid of the 'hits' when the ball is in the air.
~Cristin
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That looks really nice. You really captured the attitude of the voice there.
You have some pass through going on with the right hand going through the overalls.
You might want to delay one of the arms a frame or two so the arm action isn't happening at exactly the same time.
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Fyi, when you blink, your lower lid hardly moves. It mostly just twitches. There's actually no muscle in the lower lid to raise it. The upper lid should do most of the blinking.
Otherwise, looks nice.
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Thanks strohbehn!
The second disc is being edited as we speak. It should be done in the next week or two. We're trying to keep things down to 3 discs total, while at the same time not leaving any material out. But it all comes down to how much will fit when the editing is done. We're also trying to get a few last minute additions in due to customer comments and requests.
As of now the second disc looks like: Arcs * IK vs. FK * Timing * Silhouette * Pose * Holds * Exaggeration *
Hopefully that will all fit. I would hate to split any of this off onto the third disc. I think it all really belongs together. And of course, as with the first disc, these are simply headings for material that goes much more in depth than the headers let on.
~Cristin
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Looking good.
Nice anticipation and weight shift there, though not much follow through. Good acting choices overall. There is some twinning in the arms. They occasionaly do the same motion at the exact same time as each other. You might want to change the timing so one arm hits the pose before the other arm does. Or vary the arm poses a bit so they aren't exactly the same as eachother so often.
Consider moving the feet a bit more. You have sticky feet syndrome for most of the shot. A guy that's this upset is gonna be moving about a little bit. For instance, he moves steadily down and forward throughout the shot. At the very least, you can pop his left foot forward to make it look more like he's aggressive towards whoever he's speaking to, and also to help maintain balance as his body moves forward.
There are some places where the lower body sticks and stops moving completely. If this isn't a stylistic decision, consider putting in some moving holds there.
The body and head seem a little stiff. You could have the upper body and head follow through on the motion of the body a bit. Ie, the body goes down, the upper body dips down a frame or two later, the head dips down a frame or two after that. (and the same idea when the body goes up, upper body dips up, etc...) That'll create some nice overlap throughout the body and really loosen up that character.
The last pose look a little off balance. What if he throws his left foot forward as he comes down into "suspect"?
You might want one more pose at the end. I notice a lot of dialogue clips just end with a held pose expressing the last word of dialogue. But since you hold so long, the character just looks like he suddenly stopped being angry. So I'd cut sooner, or put in some heavy breathing or some further small indication that he's still upset.
On the facial animation, pay attention to how often your jaw opens when you speak. It's actually not very often. Your lip synch is very stuttery. For instance, on "Everybody" my jaw only opens once on "every" and once again on "body". You don't need to make up for the lack of lips by overanimating the jaw. The dialogue will still read. What you have here matches very very well to the dialogue, it's just a bit too much.
Overall, it's really nice. If I critique too much, it's because I think there's a lot of potential to make it even better. Keep up the good work.
~Cristin
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Looking good! I like that you're being creative with the walk and making a lively character here.
You might want to consider showing other angles, or at least a side view to go with this view, to make the animation read a bit more clearly.
It's hard to tell but it doesn't look like you have much weight in the upper body and head reacting to the up and down of the hips. You might want to work on that a bit, with those parts all bobbing in reaction to the body. With overlap so the weight flows up through the body one part after the other.
~Cristin
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So if I got the books why am I bothering you? I am the proud owner of every tutorial disk the Anzovin's have produced. There is just sometimes when you need to be shown something not just have it read to you. Also as I mentioned above I also teach this stuff it is always good to sit in on another teacher and see how they are doing it. When a teacher forgets that they have a lot to learn they are finished.
Thanks for asking for suggestions...I look forward to the fruits of your labors,
Oops, sorry I missed your post there.
Thanks very much for the list! Just some notes on some of those...
Most of these techniques/topics are covered in the series. Some things, such as "how to animate inanimate objects...solids....liquids" etc... are not discussed explicitly because I think having a solid understanding of how to bring believable life and personality to a character can be applied to any type of character or object once you understand it. Although I do discuss how to bring life and personality to a lamp and a solid sphere, so I suppose inanimate objects are actually covered.
The same goes for sneaks and skips. I don't want to pack too much extra material onto these discs that might make them needlessly expensive, if they allready cover walks, runs, and jumps, which are stepping stones to other similar cycles.
If people ARE interested in such extra materials and express such interest, I'm sure we could create later discs to meet that request.
I'm very curious what you mean by "The Side to Side Vibration Formula." I haven't heard this phrase. What are you referring to?
No animal animation yet. Though one of my co-workers is very interested in doing this, so if I don't continue the series with such a disc, I'm sure he will.
Again, thanks for the list. I'll definitely use it as a reference for finalizing what's on there. For the most part, it's almost all there, aside from the topics I've allready mentioned.
I'm glad that you intend to check it out, as a fellow instructor, and I look forward to hearing any feedback.
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Sorry about the delay on this guys. Been having some server issues. For those who are interested, we've uploaded a reel of some of my work. It contains animation created for GI Joe: Valor vs. Venom, Action Man, Duel, and Halo 2.
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Thanks lafnjack.
I've certainly made every effort to live up to the standards of the other Anzovin tutorials.luckbat, I do talk about moving holds but you make me wonder if I might want to cover them in even more detail. I'll add it to my list of updates to consider.
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Hi, Cristin! Thanks for making these.
I have an advanced one for you: something along the lines of "Solving Problems," or "Putting It All Together." I know that sounds a bit broad, but what I'm getting at is this: even if a person can properly understand arcs, exaggeration, moving holds, timing, and all the rest of it--that doesn't automatically make that person a good animator. How do you use those building blocks to express yourself? If an animation ends up looking dead and mechanical, how do you bring it to life?
Okay, I guess that's still a bit broad. How about a section called "Avoiding Common Pitfalls?"
Hi luckbat. Thanks for replying. That's a great question, and one that I tried to keep in mind as I made the CD.
Well... I'm pretty sure I managed to cover what you're talking about. Let me explain and you can tell me if you agree.
For starters, though each section has a fairly technical term like "squash & stretch," "anticipation," and "follow through," as the title, I spend a lot of time talking about the theory of WHY I use these techniques and how to use them well to bring life to your character. I basically crammed in as much information as I could. And of course there are "good" and "bad" versions of everything. There is also a lot of overlap between the sections to point out how these principles work together to create quality animation.
One of the advanced sections on a later disc is an 8 second acting shot that I take step by step through acting, planning, rough animation, good animation, and final detail animation, explaining along the way what techniques I use to make the character seem alive.
Also, the final section of the final disc will include revisions. It will have step by step movie files showing many of the shots I animated on all of the cds, as well as a shot from Duel, from the first rough mechanical version to the final detailed "alive" version. Each of these shots will have an accompanying description of what changed in each shot and why.
I like your "avoiding common pitfalls" idea. I don't have any one area covering this although it's a concept that is scattered throughout many sections. I'll definitely think about bringing it more to the forefront with its own section. Thanks for the idea.
Yikes, I'm rambling. I hope this answers your question.
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Hi all. This is Cristin, the creator of these discs.
If anyone has any questions, concerns, or comments about the content of this cd or future cds, please feel free to ask here and I'll answer as quickly as I can. I wanted to make this collection as helpful and as chock full of information as possible so I'd love to hear feedback on how successful it is.
In fact, it's not too late to add additional content to the later CDs so if there's something you'd like to see addressed that you don't think is included, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Thanks for your interest. I hope you enjoy the discs!
~Cristin
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Your animation is very floaty. You might want to read up on some animation principles like anticipation and creating a sense of weight, particularly in the woman's jump off the mountain. If she anticipates the jump by crouching down before jumping up off the mountain it will look much better. Right now it looks like she flies off the mountain.
Looks like a very ambitious project. Kudos to you for taking it on.
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Thanks guys! I really appreciate it.