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Exercise 3: Move it


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Episode 3 - Everyone's a Critic

E3___Everyone__s_a_Critic.jpg

 

Looks like someone in the chorus line said something he shouldn't have ...

 

Very amusing! I have one suggestion.... if you reversed the legs of the monster that would make a clearer pose.

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Run Shaggy Run! :blink:

 

There is a reason I like to call this my favorite exercise.

Perhaps it can be summed up thusly; 'A good pose will tell the story clearly and concisely while revealing a character's inner thoughts'.

 

(Use that as a guideline to measure Mark's image and see if it doesn't work)

 

 

When looking back through Exercise 3 posts its all the more clear just how insightful and entertaining (and important!) a good pose can be.

 

Fun stuff!

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  • 1 month later...

Here is Exrecise 3: Move It

 

I tried a couple different poses. I should have adjusted the fingers better on his foot but I was trying to use what we had been shown so far.

 

For some reason, I kinda' like the sore foot pose. I hadn't seen that tried anywhere yet.

 

So how am I doing?

 

post-10558-1231705745_thumb.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

Here's my picture for exercise 3. As I saw so many great examples, I tried to create a good one too!

 

One thing you may notice is that the rabbit lying down on the floor is actually flying! hehe I was having a hard time to put him lying on the floor, so that's what I got working!

 

Hope it makes people create even greater pictures!

 

See ya! :-)

post-12501-1233662190_thumb.jpg

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The poses posted here do raise the bar considerably each time a new one is posted.

Its a good think no one around here gets intimidated easily!

 

I keep thinking I've seen everything until the next person posts their images and then the cycle starts all over again.

 

 

As far as Rabbit and his levitating act...

One thing to note early on is how you can open multiple windows simulateously and adjust an object or character in one window while viewing it's relative location from a different angle.

 

To open a new window go to Window on the menu and select New Window (or use the shortcut keys Alt W together)

Then Right Click and change the windows view via View (you'll see the options there).

 

Apologies if this is well known already.

Someone might find the info useful and we are all in this crazy thing together.

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  • 1 month later...

Name: Heller Couch (GizmoMkI)

Exercise Completed: Exercise 3 - Move It

Date Completed: March 6, 2009

Instructor: TaoA:M Manual (PDF Version - too lazy to find my hard copy) & forums

Remarks: On the left is the attempt to do the exercise. The other two poses are improvised, inspired by the forum and Warner Bros.' model sheets. Even though I've had A:M since 2000, I'm deficient in many areas because I originally tried to jump in head first without thoroughly studying all the exercises-- and I don't think TaoA:M was around in those days. Now I'm trying to fill in the gaps of knowledge.

 

post-432-1236394976_thumb.jpg

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Nice Heller!

 

(I don't know why but I've always thought your name was Mike. Must be that MkI on the end of your username and I've gone dyslexic on you)

 

The other two poses are improvised, inspired by the forum and Warner Bros.' model sheets.

 

This is a very useful practice and I appreciate you revealing your inspiration here.

Finding expressive poses and getting characters to reenact then is a really big deal.

If we can do that with characters in 3D our animation will definitely read better.

 

Pose to Pose to Pose, we animate a little more each day.

 

By way of feedback I want to say that you're improvised character poses look more than a little off balance.

The whole subject of balance is something worth investigating here.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ok...so I thought I was spending too much time modelling stuff. Which is great, but I wanna be an animator. So I've gone back to basics and am doing a kind of animation bootcamp and working through some of the old excerises. Thought I'd post up some of the poses I've been working on.

 

But how did you paint your models?

 

One way to do this is to open up the groups of the model and change the diffuse colour. Hope that helps Marco.

post-12530-1238626510_thumb.jpg

post-12530-1238626523_thumb.jpg

post-12530-1238626535_thumb.jpg

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But how did you paint your models?

 

One way to do this is to open up the groups of the model and change the diffuse colour. Hope that helps Marco.

 

That's all I did for the different colored shirts on Rabbit. It was a simple click to change, then I just saved a version of the Rabbit model in that color.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had so much fun with this lesson that I stayed up waaaaaaaay too late. I hope no one is offended by my sense of humor with these. Just trying to enjoy myself.

 

Anyway, I liked it so much I did two. The first one is a drunk rabbit on the loose!

 

Lesson-3-drunkcomplete.jpg

 

Obviously I polished the image off in Photoshop. I've never considered myself to have great Photoshop Kung Fu but I'm still way better with it than I am with Animation Master. Don't bother reading the article. Other than the headline it's gibberish.

 

This one I took a bit more seriously. I was going to do exactly what the lesson called for and post it... then I came in here and took a look at all the great stuff. The color changes and all the poses. I was inspired. So I did this.

 

GO TEAM ANIMATION MASTER!

 

Lesson-3-cheerfinal.jpg

 

This one is almost completely Animation Master. The only thing I did was add the "AM's" to the rabbit's shirts in Photoshop because for the life of me I could not figure out how to apply a GIF or JPEG as a decal. I played around with it a bit but I've been jumping a bit ahead here and there on lessons so I figured that might be one thing I should probably wait for the lesson and learn right. The dude made it look so easy in the demo though I had to give it a try. I couldn't even figure out how to import it. LOL.

 

Anyway. Hope you like them. ;)

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  • 2 months later...
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I find that to be a painful pose but maybe rabbits are flexible.

 

Here in TaoA:M you can always expect useful feedback.

Robert has an excellent eye. :)

 

If you do go back in and tweak this one I'll suggest a little change to one or the other arm to break up the symmetry.

Its good to get into good habits early and twinning should generally be avoided.

I believe it was Richard Williams (in his Animator's Survival Kit) that outlined useful times when twinning should be used; primarily for preachers and politicians who are gesturing to (intentionally and perhaps overdramatically) place an artificial emphasize on their point.

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What "Painful Pose" ? did I do something seemingly unnatural in the pose I gave him?

Can you please explain what you meant here - cuz I thought the pose looked particularly natural and relaxed.

But maybe I'm missing something.

 

Also, what was meant by the "twinning" comment - never heard of that particular term before?

 

Thanks for the feedback though - I'm not trying to be difficult and am open to all productive criticisms - I just need a few more details and a definition for "twinning" so I can understand what was meant here.

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Also, what was meant by the "twinning" comment - never heard of that particular term before?

 

There's a description of "twinning" here:

 

7) Twinning (unnatural motion symmetry)

 

Cause: Twinning is when opposite body parts move as exact mirrors of one another. When the left arm motion starts and stops on exactly the same frames as the right arm. This is usually not desired for natural looking animation (although there are certainly times when it is appropriate) This happens when the animator gets lazy and animates multiple body parts simultaneously, or simply copies/mirrors motion from one limb to another & then leaving the resulting twinned motion as is.

 

Solution: To avoid twinning, after simultaneously animating multiple body parts or copying/mirroring motion, be sure to go in and add keyframe offsets or other naturalistic variations to the movement.

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Hi Timothy. I gotta agree with Robcat. To feel how comfortable it would be, try to stand like that. I just tried to and it kinda hurts :) With the wrists twisted that far around to lay flat against the body the elbows would be sticking out to the front. Also the feet are splayed quite a lot. Just my humble opinion. I don't know nearly as much as Rodney or Robcat...or a lot of people here!!! :)

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Oh I see what you all mean now - yes, that hurts to bend the wrists that much and feels/looks unnatural, now that you mention it. Though I did pose each arm separately, and the Dynamic Pose that comes with Rabbit does the wrists similarly; plus the way that Rabbit is pictured in the tutorial (we are told to try and duplicate that pose) also has the same posing flaw.

But that's no excuse for bad practices - I should have been thinking more for myself here.

 

Thanks.

 

I'll do another one, and will post it in here when I'm done - probably not till tomorrow though.

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Then again - a grinning rabbit in a shirt, standing on two feet, is unnatural to begin with. The cartoons I enjoy most have unnatural poses; that's part of the humor. Look at any classic cartoon - for example, when Donald or especially Daffy get mad, they hunch their shoulders and lean forward far enough they should be tipping over. Watch their stomping, angry walk - start and stop, start and stop. Nobody walks that way. But it's funny.

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What "Painful Pose" ? did I do something seemingly unnatural in the pose I gave him?

Can you please explain what you meant here - cuz I thought the pose looked particularly natural and relaxed.

But maybe I'm missing something.

 

It's a minor point here. Your pose looks fine on Rabbit. If you actually tried to turn your wrists exactly like that it would be hard but for the Rabbit it's fine.

 

 

Also, what was meant by the "twinning" comment - never heard of that particular term before?

 

Shamus Culhane put this Popeye model sheet in his book as an example of how NOT to pose a character.

 

popeyemodelsheet.png

Everything is the same left and right. It's like a Robot. The sameness makes for flatness and lifelessness. There's almost always a better way to pose a character not twinned.

 

In real life we twin quite a bit. I've noticed out President twinning often when he gestures in his Youtube messages.

Someone needs to coach him out of that. But real people have a complex life to them that animated characters do not so twinning is not as bad on real people.

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I'm rejoining the conversation a little late and it looks like everyone has covered twinning really well.

 

Shawn Kelly of Animation Mentor has a really good write up on Twinning in his Tips and Tricks column. In case this isn't the link note that the article is Tip#17. Its a good read because he hits on the subject of twinning in animation (too much symmetry in timing) as well.

 

Regarding the offsetting of keyframes to eradicate twinned timing:

One place to watch out for (in my opinion) is where Shawn suggests jumping in and offsetting keyframes.

That can make a real mess of everything if you don't have some experience adjusting your keys. (Luckily you can easily gain this experience by messing up those keyframes!) ;)

 

Bottom Line: If you adjust too early in the process those keyframes will be a lot harder to edit/read.

Symmetry and cyclic patterns may be boring but they sure can be a lot easier to read.

 

What I'd suggest here is to save the project at the point where you've got readable keyframes then work in another copy of the project where you offset the keys. If something gets messed up you can revert to your earlier keys.

 

The other article on Contrast that Shawn refers to that deals with avoiding symmetry is here.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

all righty! Messed around with lesson 3 this evening. Got some decent takes.

 

The only issue I had wasn't actually with the posing, it was the fact that you have to physically change the title of each new pose or it overwrites the previous render file. I had to do a couple over because I lost them. Took about 3 hours to do all of the ones I did, but that includes do-overs.

 

So, hopefully these will load. If not, I'll link them.

 

I did only one as a toon render, just to mix it up:

 

post-12824-1251782328_thumb.jpg

 

the other two I did straight, but they're much better looking in their original form than the shrunk versions here:

 

post-12824-1251782347_thumb.jpg post-12824-1251782370_thumb.jpg

 

And this is actually the first one I did, after doing the demo version straight, I tweaked him a little:

 

post-12824-1251782395_thumb.jpg

 

and then I thought maybe I should find someone happier to experiment on. So I'm working with Keykat. Next up: two shots and reaction poses! Then on to lesson 4.

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  • Hash Fellow

Good looking poses!

 

it was the fact that you have to physically change the title of each new pose or it overwrites the previous render file.

 

If you mean you have to change the name of the file your render is going to , yes.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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I remember checking these forums day after day looking for new tutorials and user created content.

I always wanted to create my own movie or a semi-realistic still render. Now that i'm older I thought that I might give A:M another try. So what better way to start and learn the basics by creating a pose.

 

I made mine with the character 'Kee-Kat' as I didnt want to complete the tutorial exactly the same again.

 

What do you think?? Its supposed to be a 'point nd laugh' kinda pose.

 

post-10417-1267221822_thumb.jpg

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I remember checking these forums day after day looking for new tutorials and user created content.

I always wanted to create my own movie or a semi-realistic still render. Now that i'm older I thought that I might give A:M another try. So what better way to start and learn the basics by creating a pose.

 

I made mine with the character 'Kee-Kat' as I didnt want to complete the tutorial exactly the same again.

 

What do you think?? Its supposed to be a 'point nd laugh' kinda pose.

 

pose1.JPG

 

 

Welcome back!

 

I got one suggestion... turn him (or the camera) a bit more to the side so we see the arm extending past the silhouette of his body. Right now we can't quite catch that his arm is pointing.

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That pose reads much stronger!

Keekat can be a tough character to wrangle a good silhouette from but you've done just that.

When thinking of poses it can be useful to think in terms of negative space.

If you were to remove the silhouette from the background (leaving an empty space) would the pose still read as well to the audience?

 

It's great to see you again Elliot.

Welcome back!

Keekat_Silhouette.png

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A must read blog these days is 'The Art Center'.

If it doesn't implode on itself due to its own success it could well become the artist/animators blog to watch.

Interestingly enough a post on the importance of Silhouette has been posted today.

 

http://theartcenter.blogspot.com/2010/02/i...silhouette.html

 

Read it and see if it doesn't enhance the clarity of your poses and in communicating the story behind those poses to your audience.

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  • 2 years later...
  • Hash Fellow

Here are a few notes made for one of our users regarding the task of posing Rabbit's arms in "Move it".

 

The posing method described in the TAoA:M book and video does work, however a more typical "CG animator" manner is described in this video and you may find this more predictable:

 

TAoAM_Tutorial03_ArmPosingNotesH350.mov (H.264 version)

 

TAoAM_Tutorial03_ArmPosingNotesMP4_450.mov(MPEG-4 version)

 

(YouTube version)
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Can't get the vid to play.

 

hmmm... what QuickTime do you have? Look in the QuickTime Player Help>About QuickTime Player.

 

Of course , you are downloading it first, not trying to play it in the browser.

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