The Art of Animation:Master

[PF_Mark]

Ok I finished the door is stuck. I can see lots of room for improvement and may redo this but fist I really want to get to making keekat talk. If this passes let me know if not I will redo it NP. Also going to try to but a direct link so lest see if I get that right

 

The Door is stuck

[hypnomike]

Ok I finished the door is stuck.

Good effort Mark!

 

You've done a great job with shaggy's expression when he realises his mistake.

 

Congrats for getting it done in 5 seconds.

 

Of course there will always be room to improve but if you've learned from the exercise then I think that moving to the next exercise is the right thing to do. You can always go back at a later date if you are at a loose end.

 

Keep up the good work Mark!

 

Best Wishes

 

Mike

[hypnomike]

It's a pitch completed today.

 

I was much quicker this time, my last (lost on hard drive) version took ages.

 

Lesson learned-if a short anim is taking too long leave it and start again fresh at a later date!

Pitch.mov

[modernhorse]

Hey PFMark - great work on the last part of The Stuck Door. I really like how you gave him personality! He lifts his hands up like "okay okay you saw it". Very good.

 

Hypnomike - good pitch. I'd like to see it from another angle, i think you miss alot straight on. Nice timing.

 

 

Doug

[PF_Mark]

It's a pitch completed today.

 

I like it nice motion and balance!

[Rodney]

Whoa... it's gonna take a while to catch up here!!!

 

Mark,

If you every decide to really fine toon Exercise 6 to the point where you want to make it your own little story with a twist. That last bit where the movie stops looks like it could lead to a funny moment where he smacks into the door frame which reminds me of ZachBG's Indiana Shag hehe. For some reason your animation reminded me of Zach's even though the ending would be quite different. All that work for a lump on the head!

 

Regardless of where you choose to take it... nice work. With the suggestions of others here in the forum improvement in all aspects seems guaranteed.

 

Mike,

As Doug suggests another angle would really sell the action.

 

There are a lot of good leads on the subject of silhouetting a character to gain an important fundamental of animation; clarity. If the action isn't clear... the animator hasn't completed his task. Gonna compile some of that info one of these days....

 

Silhouetting kinda makes me have a justification for that Color Everything Purple plugin I was joking about with Aaver earlier today... doesn't it!!!

 

 

Keep up the great work everyone!

Edited October 15, 2004 by Rodney

[Rodney]

Mike Gibson sagely advised:

Lesson learned-if a short anim is taking too long leave it and start again fresh at a later date!

 

Very very good advice!

[hypnomike]

I'd like to see it from another angle

Thanks for the advice Doug.

 

I've re done it from another angle as you suggested, looks much better.

 

<PF>Mark Thanks for the kind remarks!

 

I did this exercise differently to my first attempt (about 3 weeks ago) and what made it easier was this:

 

I did the poses from the AOM book on the appropriate frames, as I did so I forced a keyframe for the whole model for each pose, including frame zero.. Playing through was reasonably accurate from square one, avoiding the both feet in the air scenario from the video. It then took only minor alterations to get the finished result. I also recommend viewing the video tutorial as the written version omits a couple of important points. Hope this helps someone else.

 

It's good to learn from your mistakes, but much better to learn from someone elses!

 

Anyway here's the exercise from another angle.

Pitch2.mov

[PF_Mark]

Mark,

If you every decide to really fine toon Exercise 6 to the point where you want to make it your own little story with a twist. That last bit where the movie stops looks like it could lead to a funny moment where he smacks into the door frame which reminds me of ZachBG's Indiana Shag hehe. For some reason your animation reminded me of Zach's even though the ending would be quite different. All that work for a lump on the head!

 

Regardless of where you choose to take it... nice work. With the suggestions of others here in the forum suggestions for improvement in all aspects seems guaranteed.

I was actually thinking of adding a walk through of the door and then up to the camers close up and waving bye. But It was getting late and I was getting tried so I stopped it were I did. But you have given me I much better idea! I have the project saved and will revisit it later.

 

I am all ready working on a story board and getting my Squad mates to make wave files for me. After the tutorials I am trying my hand at a approximately one minute short skit. I think it's going to be really funny I want to have my squadron rolling on the ground laughing. And don't worry guys you will be the first to see it as I am sure with everyones input I can really make a fine animation

[hypnomike]

Hi folks!

 

Here's my ex 5 Take a walk.(completed today)

 

Sorry it's so small, no website so I have to keep the file size down.

Take_a_walk160x120.mov

[Rodney]

Mike said:

Here's my ex 5 Take a walk.(completed today)

Sorry it's so small

 

You aren't akiddin'!

 

One definite advantage of a smaller size... I don't see any foot slippage!

 

Looks good. Anything you thought was difficult in Exercise 5?

[hypnomike]

One definite advantage of a smaller size... I don't see any foot slippage!

 

Looks good. Anything you thought was difficult in Exercise 5?

That's because there was no slippage! HaHa!

 

The only prob I found was that when I placed the step distance by the book slippage occurred. Trial and error solved the problem. I added the blinks (if you can see them!) in the choreography.

 

Here's ex 6, sorry it's smaller still! so get the magnifying glass ready!

Door_stuck_120x90.mov

[Rodney]

Here's ex 6, sorry it's smaller still!  so get the magnifying glass ready!

 

Ha Ha Ha Ha! He He HA HA!

 

You sir get my second ever rating!

 

Hehehehe... that was great! ...and small!

[hypnomike]

Hehehehe... that was great! ...and small!

Thanks Rodney!

 

I'm starting "Can you say that" on Sunday.

 

The question is will it be smaller still, or will I post separate animations for each word keycat utters??

 

Microscopes at the ready methinks!

 

Bye for now, bedtime in the UK!

[Rodney]

Mike,

I had a thought to try to post your Exercise 6 for all to see in its tiny glory.

I apologize for any liberties I've taken and especially for the slight distortion in height... also the cropping but I thought it might keep more detail at the even smaller size.

 

This one is avatar size... 64x64 pixels. Tiny but still delivers the story!

[Pengy]

Ex 5

rabbitwalk.mov

[Rodney]

Pengy!

If there was an award for full presentation of Exercise 5 I think you'd get it! Great job and a great way to bring the subject fully into a scene.

 

You are well on your way to winning one of the monthly animation contests.

 

And here I thought you were going to go for the ice skater concept you mentioned before!

We are going to have to track down and find the absolute best tutorial for anti-slipping feet/walk cycles aren't we?

[hypnomike]

Hey Pengy, nice one!

 

Putting Rabbit in a proper set and adding music really brings it to life, well done!

 

I had a thought to try to post your Exercise 6 for all to see in its tiny glory.

 

Thanks for that Rodney.

 

Is it an animated gif? Nothing happens when I click on it, do I need a particular program to view it?

[Pengy]

Thanks guys..just trying to keep up with the level already established here. The feet slipping is really a pain and definately if anyone has any suggestions please share them. The compression really saved this one

[Rodney]

Mike asked:

Is it an animated gif? Nothing happens when I click on it, do I need a particular program to view it?

 

Yes... it is an animated gif... I was under the impression everyone on the planet could view animated gifs... Am I wrong and you cannot see it?

Any browser showing the forum pages should show it in action although it may run slowly the first time through until the image is loaded.

 

Since it is so small I don't think clicking is an option.

For saving just right click and select SAVE TARGET AS...

[hypnomike]

I was under the impression everyone on the planet could view animated gifs... Am I wrong and you cannot see it?

Still no joy with animated gifs. Save as saves as a bmp.

 

 

I am using windows98 with IE v6 and as my machine is permanently online I have a firewall.

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

The feet slipping is really a pain and definately if anyone has any suggestions please share them.

 

When you have set the stride length as per the manual use a bird's eye view to check the result, this gives better feedback than the side view.

 

Then increase the stride length and see if this improves things. By making a few adjustments to the stride length either way and constantly looking for feedback in bird's eye view you will soon find the correct length.

 

In my case this was very different from the first attempt.

 

Hope this helps.

[PF_Mark]

Exercise 7

 

I have already redone this. It is rendering now but I thought I would share my 1st Ver. with you guys. I will post the 2nd Ver. tomorrow hopefully I am going to attempt some multi tasking while rendering

 

http://home.cogeco.ca/~sarahallan/movies/c...0say%20that.avi

 

I ran out of web space so I am borrowing another accounts space Owell I pay for it so she shouldn't mind

 

On to exercise 8 and seeing 9 is already done and posted I am getting closer to half way

[PF_Mark]

Ok Ver. 2

 

http://home.cogeco.ca/~robinallan/Movies/c...saythatplus.avi

 

I wanted to have his foot move allitle but when or is there such a thing as too much secondary motion?

 

I also want him to look over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening but I didn't pause the motion and I do not get the feel that I wanted. Should I pause the glancing and by how much 2 or 4 fps?

[hypnomike]

I wanted to have his foot move allitle but when or is there such a thing as too much secondary motion?

 

I also want him to look over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening but I didn't pause the motion and I do not get the feel that I wanted.  Should I pause the glancing and by how much 2 or 4 fps?

Hey Mark!

 

That's looking good.

 

The furniture really helps bring the scene to life and the tail movement is great.

 

I don't know how much to pause (or should I say PAWS ), I'd experiment and just render the few frames concerned until I got the result I wanted.

 

It may help if you tilt the head down a little as KeeKat looks from side to side, maybe reducing the distance rotated. If I look over my shoulder the eyes move further than the head.

 

Hope that makes sense.

 

BTW my (postage stamp size) anim is almost ready but pales before your effort.

 

Keep it up Mark!

 

PS Great idea about the foot. Subtle movements will help make it seem more real.

[PF_Mark]

I'd experiment and just render the few frames concerned until I got the result I wanted.

 

That never crossed my mind Just to a test render of the frames of a action. I know I can scroll through the action but I always find more faults after I render. Just like you can read and reread a doc on screen and find nothing wrong. As soon as you print it off you see mistakes

[hypnomike]

Here's my exercise 7 completed today.

 

I've had to zip it to get it posted.

Secret_160_x_120.zip

[hypnomike]

And Ex 8

 

If only car customization was as easy in real life!

[Pengy]

Great works guys..the bar for theses exercises seems to be always rising.

[PF_Mark]

Ok having trouble uploading # 8 will try on next post to see if forum is down

[PF_Mark]

GRRR

[hypnomike]

<PF>Mark I was meaning to ask if you did your keekat lipsync in the action window, as in the book, or did you do it directly in choriography?

 

If you can do that I don't see the point in using the action window for dialogue.

 

How often would keekat say "I've got a secret......." in an animation?

 

If anyone knows why AOM tutorial does it in action window please post.

 

Thanks.

[PF_Mark]

Mark I was meaning to ask if you did your keekat lipsync in the action window, as in the book, or did you do it directly in choriography?

 

If you can do that I don't see the point in using the action window for dialogue.

 

How often would keekat say "I've got a secret......." in an animation?

 

If anyone knows why AOM tutorial does it in action window please post.

 

Thanks.

 

I used the action method

 

Ok I just thought of the answear while editing I used action for lip sink then thought of something to happen before the L.S. with a action I can create a Anime and drop the action whenever I want. If I started in Chor. I would not be able to add stuff to front? so action give you much greater Flexibility

 

Actions can be used again and if you had been using our own voice instead of the wave file provided you can always build on an action to create another one from it. We could shorten it or add on to it. I think they are trying to get us into the proper habits? I guess over time if you create allot of action there is a chance of using it agian. Well anyways have you started the plane modile yet? I will be starting mine soon. With me being in a V.R. Squadron currently flying WWII time line the FW will come in handy. I thought a shaw Gif for a Spitfire? If there is how about one of us doing the FW and the other doing the Spit? We could then E-mail the finished modiles to each other and we would have both? Just a thought I will look for the Gif ASAP.

[hypnomike]

Thanks for the info Mark.

 

I've done a quick search of spitfire sites but have only come across line drawings in profile and to the side.

 

You may be interested in this site http://www.compass.dircon.co.uk/cap.htm which has info on many WW11 aircraft. In the spitfire section they compare performance of various marks against captured FW190s and ME109s.

 

I'm currently on the flower so it could be a few days before I start on the FW190. I've got an exam coming up so not as much free time as usual!

 

Good luck with the spitfire gifs.

 

If you find them can you email them to me please?

 

I'll send to you if I come across one first.

 

I've got a great book with the pics in it but it's less than ideal because all the pics span two pages and will not scan well.

 

Good luck.

[PF_Mark]

My daughter is getting this software tonight so after that I will not have to animate in secret. But I know I will have to fight to get time on MY system

[hypnomike]

My daughter is getting this software tonight so after that I will not have to animate in secret. But I know I will have to fight to get time on MY system

I wondered when that was going to happen.

 

The way you're bombing ahead I half expected you to buy her something else!

 

Anyway I'm sure she'll make good progress now that she has your experience to draw on.

 

Good luck to both of you and keep posting.

[Rodney]

Mark,

If you want to do the A:M Educational department a really big favor...

Keep track of the questions your daughter comes up with as she learns A:M especially where it might apply to completing the exercises in TAOA:M.

 

While it will be interesting to know for your own reasons (as such questions will expedite even your advancement) it would be nice to get perspective from the younger generation of A:M users too. Where do they run into roadblocks? Where are their points of frustration?

 

With answers to those questions we can smooth out the rough spots for everyone.

 

Thanks!

-Rodney

[Reikster]

Okay, this will be a doozy.

WARNING, this file is 5.8MB

 

Exercise 2, I am the Director

 

Okay...somewhere along the lines, I got messed up that Exercise ONE is actually titled, I am the director, but I think you'll get the joke.

 

I might re-render part of this, although the whole thing took (2) P4 2.4Ghz and (1) Athlon XP1800 about 12 hours as it is. I need to fix that brick ripple background behind keekat. If anyone knows what's up with that, let me know. I composited the targas and sound with Ulead, but I just checked the source targas and that nastiness is there.

Other things I want to add are some armor clanking for the knight, and I want to see if I can capture a real bunny foot thump to go with Rabbits foot tapping. The little critters are snoozing right now so maybe I'll be able to get that later. Oh, and it should fade out at the end....why have 'real' video rendering software if you're not gonna use its features?

Oh..and if someone knows a nice codec that uses a fair amount less space, let me know. This is Sorenson 3 at 60% quality. I'd like to stay cross platform, that's why I used that.

 

I'm sure there's alot of little things that could be better. I didn't make rabbit blink cause I was wanting to be done and his foot step timing could use a little tweaking. Also, Keekat looks a bit flat, except for his tail twitching...which is easy to do

 

Oh, I guess one more thing to mention is that I had to take the stock 'cancan' and fix it myself since it wasn't working right with Rabbit in v11.0. Therefore if you notice it looks a little odd, thats me. I think it looks okay on rabbit and shaggy, but the knight is a bit off. Has anyone had the stock cancan work fine with Rabbit in v11.0a or later?

 

I've got another fun Idea for exercise 3, but it shouldn't take quite as long as this one took....this one was mostly getting around to it....maybe 6-8 hours total time, including fighting with....*ahem*..."features"

 

eric

[robcat2075]

Hey Reikster, that's clever. I was following your thread on the cancan action not working.

 

There is definitely is a problem about how different versions of A:M interpret that action on differently scaled characters. Even my v10.5 doesn't get it correct.

 

If I put all three characters in a chor (v10.5r) and drop cancan.act on all three, i find that at 00:22 the right leg target is supposed to reach y=37.59cm on all three characters. Knight isn't kicking his leg out very far but at least he can reach that height comfortably. Rabbit can not.

 

However, the same action, dropped on the same characters (all from the same CD intended to work with both 10.5 and 11) in v11.0t produces different results. Now the foot targets are all reaching different heights. Probably appropriate heights for the cancan action, but the distance in front of the body is so small that the pose is still wildly distorted. It's certainly not the cancan action I remember from years past.

 

Still, you probably learned more about A:M by working around the trouble than if it had worked the first time.

[PF_Mark]

Reikster

 

That looks great I see the brick flicker/wave action? Strange

[Reikster]

Hey Reikster, that's clever.

Thanks! My intent is to exercise my imagination muscle while I'm going through the TAOAM exercises.

 

There is definitely is a problem about how different versions of A:M interpret that action on differently scaled characters.

.

.

  It's certainly not the cancan action I remember from years past.

I've emailed about it....and two other 'things'. Hopefully it'll either uncover something or maybe they'll update the models.

 

Still, you probably learned more about A:M by working around the trouble than if it had worked the first time. 

That's definitely true!!!

[Reikster]

Reikster

 

That looks great  I see the brick flicker/wave action?  Strange

Thanks!

 

I went back into the project and I can't see anything that is intentionally animated about the brick texture. There's only one stamp. There is a bone named 'COG' which I guess came from the fact that I put in the "Grid 4x4" model from the primitives folder of the library. The only other thing that's of interest is that I picked seamless and put in a repeat of 10 for the texture. Obviously you can tell it's repeated from the scene, but I just wanted a background other than open space.

 

eric

[Rodney]

Eric,

I can't view the files at this time... I'm on the road. I just wanted say "Welcome"!

Glad to have you with us.

 

It's great for everyone involved to be able to compare exercises and exchange notes as they work their way through the manual.

 

Anyone else out there up to the challenge?

-Rodney

[Reikster]

Eric,

I can't view the files at this time... I'm on the road.  I just wanted say "Welcome"!

Glad to have you with us. 

 

-Rodney

yeah, don't think you'd wanna download that over a modem. Maybe I'll get the time to get things added/fixed by the time you get back

 

I've been here for a while, just finally got around to getting Ex 2 done....with all that can can action fiddling :-/

 

 

eric

 

p.s. Actually I've had A:M since 2000 and NetRender since 2003, just finally getting off my butt and doing something with it

[Rodney]

I've been here for a while, just finally got around to getting Ex 2 done

 

Eric,

Didn't mean to imply you were new to A:M... just new to public posting of the exercises from the Art of Animation:Master.

 

There are people that have owned A:M a lot longer than you that haven't stepped forward yet either. They are always welcome too!

 

It's amazine what we can learn from each other.

[hypnomike]

Top man Eric!

 

That's a great animation.

 

The brick problem you mention is interesting.

 

Did you zoom in or move the camera towards keecat?

 

Either way it would be interesting to reverse your choice and see if this makes any difference.

 

Best of luck.

[Pengy]

Reikster, it looks like your wall layer was either moved or resized, if you look closely frame by frame in the render you can see the texture changes which is causing the flicker(I think ) Here's my interpretation of ex 6

redstuck.mov

[hypnomike]

Heh...heh..nice one pengy!

 

I love the kick at the end. Great work!

[modernhorse]

Very good stuck door Pengy! Nice how you made even more of a story out of it. The bar is steadily being raised on these exercises. Uh oh!!!!!!

 

Doug

[Reikster]

Reikster, it looks like your wall layer was either moved or resized, if you look closely frame by frame in the render you can see the texture changes which is causing the flicker(I think )

I know what you're saying. It looks the same in the targa files. I went back and checked, though, and there's only the chor action for the wall, and all of they keys are only translates and scales that are at frame 0, there are no keys on any other frame.

 

I did have 16 multi-pass and Motion Blur on, so I may turn off motion blur and see if that affects it. It might be some weird interaction. I'll just try some experiments

 

eric

[Rodney]

Mark and Pengy! Those were awesome!

 

Mark,

As Doug Horning said, the bar keeps getting raised! You've established a great addition to the Chorus Line theme and answered that eternal question of "Why in the heck they are doing the can can in the first place!?" Now we know.

 

Pengy,

For a minute there I thought you were going to loop him into continuously discovering one door after another to infinity.

 

Again... you get the Fred (or is that Oscar?) for best soundtrack!

 

You guys continue to amaze me with your innovative additions.

There was a time where I thought the results were always going to be mostly the same regardless on the artist behind the effort. Thanks for proving me wrong.

-Rodney