Sunday, February 28, 2010

Dog - Aditi Bhandari



Alright, here my 2 cents:

Guy first:

The walk feels a bit cycle-y and the last little turn before he exits frame feels too robotic, it's around the x148 area. I like that you have him not following a straight walking line to add some complexity to it though. Try to drag the arms a bit more during the turn. Right now you can feel how the body and arms and bags all turn at the same time.
The bags also don't feel heavy enough, given the visual thing of how you packed them to the top. If you track your up and down of the bag, it's too much, plus the bag rise too quickly, which kills the weight as well.


So reduce the up/down to a bare minimum.
A detail note: since you have sausages dangling, animate them dangling as well, would be a nice touch. :)
Something about the feet feels a bit mushy. Track the feet after they plant. I see a little slipping in his left foot from x121 to 123. Bigger slip on the other foot from x133 to 134. That foot also seems to be going through the ground, looking at x138 to 139. Careful when you go from foot roll to regular flat foot, from x145 to x146. The angle of the rotation is suddenly different over one frame. On x145 to the ball of the foot is higher and if you'd separately rotate the toes down, the whole foot would point down in a much steeper angle than you have on x146. You could argue that the foot rotation starts to flatten out as he moves it forward, but that's not reflected in x147 to 151, the angle stays pretty much the same. The left foot slides forward on the ground from x156 to x157 and even more. It might not, but visually, you don't raise the foot high enough for the step forward, so it looks like it's sliding forward (and it doesn't help that the toes are bent up during that section).

Now the dog:

He looks fantastic! Great detail work and complexity in his movement and path! The little bounces during the beginning sniffing/walking are cute.
At x126, I would have him turn his head already towards the guy and the bags. The smell is so fresh and new, he'd react to it immediately. Visually it would be almost like this: the guy/bag goes in front of the dog, covering it up, then as the head gets revealed, he's finishing up the turn to looks towards the guy, kinda like a funny reveal. So, have him turn the head earlier, then hold that (with a bit of a drift and head follow) until x144, where you have him go down.
The part where he gets up and pulls the lid down, x61 to x147, is a bit rough. The back paws feel very locked until his back right one takes a little step back (during which the left one is still locked though). The body raise to get to the lid feels good, but the drop after that is a tiny bit even. The right paw/leg that goes up with it is also even in it's timing going up/down, plus it could need a bigger arc, the up/down is very straight.
Once he goes up to x110, his body feels like you got about 2 keys on them. :) It freezes almost, especially the right hanging leg. There's a tiny drift in the body, but that's not quite enough, plus the head goes forward and visibly stretches the neck forward a la Go Go Gadget! From x121 on to about x136 the body is pretty much frozen, the right leg is in a straight line frozen as well. Add more keep alive and a nicer pose to the leg/paw until x143. Even though head turn, the rest is still too frozen.
Once he's down, I feel like he's too careful. He moves very carefully between the lid and the grassy patch. A bit too clean for a street dog. It would add a nice bit of complexity to have him step over the lid, so you can see the interaction between the dog and the wobbly object.
The jump towards the guy is cute but seems to slow down after around x177. One tip off for that is his right leg. The spacing is very big from x176 to x177, then to 178 very small, there's no more up in Y. The body spacing is also getting smaller, adding to the slow feel. The back paws don't really land on x184, the paws don't plant, they just stick in the air.

Now this would be more of a change, but my wife just watched the clip after having been on a walk with our dog and she said this:

The dog would sniff the ground all the way up until the head reaches the trash can. It's a bit too human to look up beforehand. They sniff everything and follow a trail. So from x45 to maybe 55 he's head would be down until he touches the can, then sniff up, look up into x64. Again, quite a change and maybe a little bit of an extension to the shot length, but I thought it was an interesting comment.

Alright! Despite all that, it looks very very cool, well done!

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