Overall this is a great way to present cycles. Side and front, plus a perspective view, all in one move plus frame counter.
Let's look at the sad one:
Very nice blocking, there's already a lot of nice detail work in it and the overall attitude is there, he is definitely not happy. :)
Let's look at the technical part. Always check the root first, since fixing the root will change the animation of your legs. The root's movement looks good, there's nice little side to side movement in the front view and the up/down movement has a nice rhythm to it.
Looking at the feet, you always need to make sure that the backwards translation moves in a linear way. The moment the heel touches the ground and the toe lifts in order to take the next step, there can only be two keys. Beginning and end. If you have any other keys and that movement has uneven timing in it, then you will have a foot-sliding problem once the character moves from A to B and not in a cycle anymore. The spacing on his left foot at the start until the lift off shows uneven spacing, so do another pass on that so that it is fully linear.
One area with the suitcase will need some slowing down. From x11 to 12 is a pretty big move over one frame and given the medium weighted suitcase, it's too fast and kills the feel of weight.
There's another one frame hiccup (looking at the front view) in the screen right hand. It goes towards the left on x16, then a bit more to the left to x20, then a much bigger move to the right on x24. You still have a few frames inbetween to make that work once you spline everything, but keep an eye on that section.
Another potentially troublesome section happens right when the clip loops. The suitcase and the screen right hand (looking at the front view) move quite a bit over one frame during that loop section. You will have to adjust it.
Last one could be in the head, from x11 to 12, (front view) how the moves to the right.
Those are the only spots that jump out to me right now. The important thing is that you move on to spline mode. Stepped mode can be very deceiving in terms of timing. It can look cool when it snaps from pose to pose, but when it's all splined, it's a whole other problem to make it look as cool and retain the timing (the more keys you set in stepped mode the better).
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Let's move on to the happy walk.
Great blocking again, all the attitude is in it. That's how blocking is supposed to be, you don't leave anybody guessing in terms of ideas. It's all there.
Same issue here though with the spacing of the feet. Let's do another pass on those in order to eliminate the slipping.
The finger pose could be a tad more relaxed, given his happiness. Take x14 for instance, front view, left hand, fingers: they are pretty straight down, curl in the pinky and ring finger a bit more, in oder to get something like this:
One detail thing though on the finger. I'd tone down the drag on the little finger (pinkie) on x7 (sideview). Keep drag and overlap on fingers on a super minimum in general. Otherwise it's starting to feel too loose and swimmy. Kinda like the rubber hose animation style. :)
But all in all, it looks great. So big step now, put it all in spline and see how that looks like and adjust from there.
Nice work!
JD
Great stuff, I dig both walks (and the crits were good, too). The head overlap on the sad walk is nice from an animation perspective, but it feels like too much motion for the emotion. The less his head moves around, the more I think it will feel as if he's more internal and more sad.
ReplyDeletethanks for critiq :). About presentation: I've made it in After Effect 720 x 405 resolution. You can add framecounter at the top of AE > Effect > Text > Timecode
ReplyDeleteThanks for the "how-to"!
ReplyDeletei really like them too lukasz, everything seems to be working fine. my only comment would be to maybe not make the pants that black so it's a bit clearer to see the root movement. I was trying to see the Z(left right) rotation of the root but it was kind of hard to figure out because of the color.
ReplyDeletealso I agree on the note that jim wrote, that the head movement is a bit too much for someone walking sad. it's as if he doesn't have much control over his head.
But maybe he's so sad that he doesn't care anymore? So that head flopping is a manifestation of that?
ReplyDeleteyeah I changed colors, they are not so dark now, so you will see on update. I think that possibilties are infinite in any kind of walk. And you right guys and finally I'll try to make his head movement a little subtler. He will could walk slower like someone who is totaly in depression, he don't want live anymore and he will could walk with his head rotated down without any movement :)... but this is another kind of sadness. I almost finished happy walk and angry walk, Sad walk is next and I'm doing short walking shot, you will see :). And I have idea for next cycle (I have to learn how to modify Norman and make a child especially how to scale his legs :/), the last maybe (or not ? :D) hehe
ReplyDelete