Why did i do so bad?

A while back i entered the 11 second club, confident i had a decent animation, i ranked poorly. I wonder if blender animators can comment on the following animation.

You do have a decent animation. The rating could be several things. One is that the people that voted did not like your representation of the audio file. So some of those “bad ranking” may have absolutely nothing to do with your animation skills. As for the animation it seemed kind of un natural movements, and a little jerky. But I would not let the low ratings worry you.

i probably should have mention, if anyone is bothered to look at the top ten of my competitors, here is the link

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/october13

98 out of 158 isn’t that bad. To get in the top 100 is even something that is quite good.

Be aware that the Animation is the only thing that counts in that competition. Nothing more or less.
With other Words: You will be judged like a animation pro and you compeed with animation pros.
So you won’t get into the top 20 unless you change something.

  1. Work hard on the principles of animation, use videoreference, plan your shots and most important: practice!!!

  2. Don’t orientate yourself on the Blenderanimation Forum in the matter of animation. Go to the WIP Thread on the 11sec forum. Show them your stuff and you will be helped out more accurately then it would be possible in here.
    (I love the BA forum, but the focus in here is on the Blendersoftware and not on animation quality - thats a fact)

Lighting, Characters and all the rest are NOT important.

Here is a bit of a breakdown as to what i think you can improve upon

your characters (especially the guy in blue) are very pose to pose… you hit a pose, and hold… and then move to another pose, and then hold… you need to keep them alive in these holds…

did you do any video reference? as in filming yourself doing each of the actions so you have a real life reference of what it shoudl look like? if so can you upload that aswell.

You could have gone for a bit more interesting camera angle

also, to me, you are over acting a bit… gestures too big… facial expressions to big etc.etc.

all 3 of the characters hips feel like they are locked in space… get some weight shifts in there. also dont have them always rotated flat to camera

dont have the little kid looking straight at camera, infact the kid is doing not much the entire time. not very interesting at all.

if you want a bigger critique on your animation i would be more then happy to look at it once you have addressed these notes.

Thanks for the advice. I do realise that the animation is pose, im trying to improve add a bit detail, prehaps video referencing will do the trick. My confusion is that i believe that there were much worse video entries than mine. I guess animation to some extent is subjective.

Yes, yes it is subjective, but probably not as much as what you are expecting… people know good animation from bad animation… but still you have plenty to improve upon… plenty to work on in terms of both body mechanics, posing and acting. all need work.

Just aim for next month to get atleast 10 spots higher… and so on and so on until you make the top 20. top 20 is a good place to aim for…it definetly is feasible… just will take you a lot of work to improve yourself to get there.

Don’t feel so bad. My first entry came dead last, and I thought it was pretty good at the time :slight_smile: Keep observing, practising and having fun!

Looks to me like the winner did not even get his finished.

there are videos around the 60 mark, that in my perpective were not as good. Either way i do it for the love of it!