March 11 Second Club - WIP

Yes, I’ve decided to enter this month’s 11 Second club competition. I’ve been learning character animation by working on entries for this competition in the past. Last 2 times I decided to enter, I worked on the animation a lot, but ultimately didn’t enter my work, judging it not good enough and needing more polish before submitting it.

Anyway, I still want to learn character animation and this month’s audio clip inspired an idea. So here I go again…

https://vimeo.com/88417731

Please feel free to give harsh comments & critiques.

Thanks,
Randy

Why is the frame per second so low? I can not tell if it will look good or not. Do you have the face rigged? Basic body placement looks fine to me.

FPS is low because we’re only looking at the keys so far. Breakdown/tweening hasn’t happened yet. This is a good way to work as it lets you concentrate on the keys and timing before committing to any detail. You can make significant changes at this stage without having to re-work a lot of stuff.

Good start. A small suggestion would be to shift the characters further to the edges to clarify the relationship. Especially right now as the characters are so similar, it almost looks like it’s one person talking to himself. Even if you end up making them very different, it’s still a good idea to stage the characters clearly.

Next up I’d look at the movement, right now it all looks the same. There is no variation between the two characters, they are pretty much mirroring each other. Try making the guy on the left more expressive, going by the dialogue he’s clearly the more agitated of the two, so maybe try a few broad gestures.

The other thing is that there’s a lot of repetition. As well as copying each other, the movement is the same for both characters after each cut. They start looking down, then they look up. Try to decide how the scene plays out, and where each character is looking. Is this an off the cuff remark by the guy on the right? Does he look up at all? The guy on the left is concerned/agitated, I would expect him to maintain eye contact for the duration of the conversation.

You’re off to a good start, keep at it.

It was rhetorical. My critique is , get more done faster. I do not remember you getting out of this stage before or you spent alot of time on it. I watched and wanted to commit the same before. How long will it take to render 30 fps’s? You/we will be able to see it much better.
I can see it does look like he is in a mirror for a few reasons. The poses are fine. It is the in between that will make it come to life.

It seems to me like Egon should be gesturing more with his hands. He’s trying to get a message across. “Something very important” - finger in the air, “don’t cross the streams” - hands up in the “stop” position, that sort of thing.

Also, as Bender has already said, it’s weird to have a conversation where the speaker breaks eye contact the second he’s finished speaking.

Hi all, thanks for the responses!!!

First, a couple of things:

The last video, and the one I’ll post here, are both rendered at 24 fps, the frame counter in the lower left will show you that. Indeed, it does appear to be lagging, or choppy. It is supposed to look that way at this point. The reason why it looks like it does is because all the animation curves are set to constant interpolation, so it abruptly snaps from one pose to the next. I’m working this way because at this early stage, I’m just concerned about the poses looking good and being in sync with the audio. ATM, I am actually just focusing on the body poses, the face is rigged, but once I get to feeling good about the body poses, I’ll work on facial expressions. Which is the next thing I will work on. The lip sync part will actually be one of the last things I add in, as someone once told me to ‘sell the story based on body language & gestures first’. Anyhow, after I get the poses and facial expressions down with constant curves, I’ll switch to linear curves and add in holds and in between poses. Then I’ll switch to bezier curves and make adjustments as needed.

I admit, the first video is repetitive. I think I was just looking to see if my idea was working, the quick camera switches and the close ups. I guess I was also thinking with the extreme close up, I wouldn’t have to animate as much of the body. But I see that ain’t so, now. I’ve animated more of the body now.

https://vimeo.com/88738015

Please feel free to be harsh with the feedback.

Thanks,
Randy