Arcs

Important too!

I am working on a heavy object lift for a character now. To get the sense of weight.

One thing looked wrong.. But I couldn't find out. Then I remembered shawn kelly's webinar. Arcs!

So I looked around then found something wrong with the lift. Then I looked at the butt.. ANd there it was!

The arc of it going up was messed up. Before I just went down then up. It was weird. Then I watched my reference that the butt gets a little bit lower and goes towards the box. That little thing changed a ton! Now I am going to have to look for different places and watch out for arcs now..

Having tons of fun blocking it out! It helps out a ton!

Rig problems?

Not sure if it is my rig or not. But when I rotate my rig past 90 degrees it gets messed up and like spazzes out...

I'm going to try out a proffesionally made rig to see if it is any better.

But I would be way to much tweaking if I had to fix all that.

Who said animation was easy? lol

Learning by trial and error

Siiinnccceee I am kind of learning by myself I am learning a ton from my mistakes.

First off it was with the planning. Second was with the video reference. And I figured out the new one. Its not really the animation part. More of the technical issue.

I blocked out the poses in Maya to get the timing right with no inbetweens. But when I added inbetweens. (flattening out the curves instead of stepped and clamped) A ton of deformation appears. Like the character was turning around and since I was rotating on the global control it was hard to get the rotation right and stuff. Just yea looks like a big mess now.

Anyways I am going to try to fix this and see what happens. If it doesn't turn out as good as I wanted. I am going toooo

Still block out the animation key poses. Then just go key to key on it.

When I make the key poses I am going to write them down on wordpad to see what parts I might need to fix late and which keys to keep.

After that I'll see what happens.

Blocking out animation

Is a HUUGE difference.

Before I thought that it wouldn't be a big difference but it is.

I got a way for Maya to not make any inbetweens so I can just go pose to pose.

I got around 300 frames worth of poses today! Well its like 15 poses but I got the timing and stuff for it right...hopefully.. Gonna take a look at it tomorrow.

But ya its a serious improvement I think and it saves a lot of time. Another thing that helped a lot is that I spent one whole day planning. (Well I played brawl too) But I knew what type of character I wanted and everything.

It was sooo worth doing that.

So tomorrow if I have time I am going to add more poses. More inbetween poses, and see if it is better. Then after that, gonna smooth it out and mess with the curves etc.

My planned out new animation!

After not planning out the animation. It inspired me to plan one out and see how helpful it is.

So this is what I wrote out on a word pad....

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Turn around

Someone is calling the name of the ball. He turns the other way to look and realizes the person isn't on that side. So then he goes to the other side to look. His left foot is planted on the ground and the right leg swings over for the last turn. The feet is stationary when he looked the wrong way.

This character is comfy and very "cool". He is just turning around because he heard someone calling his name and he is curious who is calling. Like you are waiting in line and then you hear your name.

Before he turns around he is patiently waiting in line looking around. After he turns around a ball is thrown at him and he stumbles back. After that he stares at a the ball and then he looks at the person that threw it at him all serious. He knows who throws it because the person that threw it was right there. So he doesn't look around. Now at this moment he is mad.

Then he is about to kick the ball. Anticipate it like he is gonna kick it hard. But then he lightly kicks it with his toe.

Then the ball roll of the scene.

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I tried to get everything that was needed to make this animation good into this description of it.

Now I know why the top animators don't go to the computer/drawing(except doodle key poses) until they know what they want.

More on anticipation and planning out animations

Ok well I am going to give up on my soccer kick animation because I realized I really screwed things up.

First of all... I didn't plan it out at ALL.. Which is a big mistake I won't make again... But hey you learn from your mistakes and I am ready to work on my new animation anyways. Second of all. I didn't work on my anticipation at all. I found a website a while ago (danimating.com) and I found a person hitting a tennis racket.

What I realized. This guy probably did a ton of studying references and took videos of himself before he made this animation. And furthermore you can tell what type of person it is. He is a pro because the ease of him serving and the power he had in it showed it. And after the action he landed with ease and shuffled his feet to get the return hit.

Another thing I realized was that. There are more frames for the anticipation instead of the actualy swing of the racket.

Actually when he swings the racket it goes in a few frames. To show how fast it is going, and to show power. What I made a mistake on was actually making the frames not skip when kicking the leg. I had it evenly spaced out as I can. But I realized it doesn't matter if you have the anticipation right.

And there was a slight breaking of the arm when he was serving but went by to fast that you cant tell.

Also another thing that I realized that there was a Double X. The crossing of the elbow.
(From the Animator's Survival Kit)

So rule of thumb. Work on anticipation a lot. Don't make the animation to slow (my problem) Fly by the movement. And prepare your animation!

Claps

After finding a snack to eat I sat down and decided to turn on the tv. This is when I saw the new Nickelodeon show called like "Dance on the sunset." This is the type of show that will only have on season *cough**cough*

Anyways one thing that I realized was the people clapping to the beat. I don't know how I came up to think of animation.. I guess its just getting into my head! Being very observant. Anyways...

What I realized was the the claps seem to be all anticipation! Because you never see the hands make contact. (well depends on the type of clap and timing you want.) But you never really see the hands touching each other completely. Probably just for one frame then they are apart. But the clap isn't all that fast. Just the anticipation for it lasts a long time.

The wrists leads when your hands are moving apart to prepare the clap. And your wrist usually leads when your hands are going together! So overlapping action!

But ofcourse anything can change. Break the rules!

Planning out Animations!

Crucial!

Plan out your animations! It will make things go by faster!

I am making a character kicking a ball and I was undecided of how I wanted him to kick the ball. So I started animating (bad idea to start off with) and realized...wow...I should film this. So I filmed it and then I went back to animating...Then after that I was like wow...it has no character..its just..a kick..nothing interesting!

So finally I filmed something and made sure I finished it off well..To show personality. To show life! Since I am just beginning animating it isn't as good. I don't know how the character is or anything. I guess it is just myself.

Just remember to plan out every little thing before you start animating! It saves a lot of time and it makes your character come more to life!

Thought Process and Timing

Finally something I realized that I knew and seen it applied!

While watching monsters inc (one of my fav movies) I was paying a lot of attention to Mike. He was just an interesting character to follow and tried to figure out his character. I loved it when he jumped from the steps after watching the commercial and kinda skipped.. Anyways..

When Sully and Mike was in the locker room (Mike was putting in his contact lense) I also liked it when Mike was like "She is the one!" I loved how he jumped and shook the other hand. ANYWAYS... When Randal came and said "there is a change in wind" I was looking at Mike's face and realized how he was thinking and it was only through the eyes! At first I was looking what was making that change in his thought. To start off with he was kind of scared of Randal and was kinda uneasy. But when Randal said his line, "change in wind" Mike seemed kinda confused and a tiny bit more confident.

So I was trying to figure out what was triggering this type of change in emotion. I looked at the mouth first (I love the way they make Mike's mouth shapes...sorry I just realized a ton of stuff) and there was no change. Then I took a look at the eyes. And there it was! First off he was kinda looking scared, looking straight I believe. Then the line came in (wind...whoosh!) and then Mike blinked and his eye direction changed. And that made the right mood! Amazing! And another thing they kinda added was a sway in his body so he is facing Randal more to show he wasn't that scared and he was in kinda in disbelief. Try it, imagine he hears something surprising out of nowhere and kinda funny he kinda face towards the person that said that line.

Next thing I realized is that most of the times they don't really follow the "rules of gravity" when they try to put out a feeling. Its kind of hard to explain. But like when Randal became lead scarer, then Sully won after that. Mike was collecting the scream canisters real fast. (because of the slumber party) I if I recall...The can was heavy before and took his back muscles and leaning back to carry that thing.

But when he was switching canisters he did it real fast so he can fill as much as he can. Even though in "real life" he can't do that, the way he did it made it seem more "heroic" for me atleast. (BTW I loved the way he finished that spree! the can rolling around and Mike walking slowly back just amazing!)

So rule of thumb(haha read to many blogs with professional animators and books) really think about what the character is thinking about, and don't forget the blinks! And you can break the "rules of gravity" if you want to set a certain emotion.

Anticipation and Breakdown?

Now I am working on an animation with a soccer ball kick. And I realized how important anticipation is for animation.

Because not all frames are going to be seen because they need to be shown like they are fast. So while watching the old AM student demo reel I saw a person animate a character throwing a ball and it was amazing. I loved how he did everything.

I realized that the throw wasn't like evenly spaced (ofcourse) to show speed. But if he didn't anticipate it correctly it will look wrong. Before the character threw the ball he held that position for a while. And then he also held out the ending position. Probably skipping through the throw in a few frames. Also he exaggerated a lot (what I learned you need to do for my animations) to make it look like there is effort.

Also another thing that made that animation even better was the way he finished it. He just didn't stand still. He was still walking for his balance but did it such a certain way so it seemed like he was saying "yea look at my throw it was so good" and kept looking at it.

It was amazing!

Then while taking a break from my animation I decided to go youtubing for AM students. And then I saw another throw... But was pretty dissapointed...

The character didn't seem like they have a character. It was just a rig that was throwing.

So after that I checked my animation and I had that too! Lifeless!

So then I got out of my seat to find out a way to finish off the kick like the one I was on the student showcase.

I really want to record something but it is to late to go outside and won't be able to get a full body shot recording inside.

Anyways the thing I realized for myself is. Finish off the action to show character (thats what usually define a character)! and exaggerate movements, even from the reference! And anticipate the movement so you can swing through it without it looking choppy!

But what I read you don't always wanna build up anticipation for the whole animation. Animate in 3 speeds!