Atle Hillmann - Car Crash - Critique

Hey,

thanks for the clip! Good start! Let's get to your questions:

1. usually you do facial and finger stuff at the end. I usually block out major emotion changes into the blocking, only because I like to have everything ready in rough form. A lot of people don't touch the face until the very end and that's usually the norm. Same with fingers. I don't want default flat finger poses throughout the shot, so I just block out simple pose changes that will support the main poses, but nothing crazy.

2. About the camera. What you want to do is place the camera so that each action by the character is clearly captured. What you have works. You don't want to have the camera looking down from the ceiling for instance, unless it's a specific story point. So kinda low to the ground is a good default position.

One thing though, which would help me, is for you to include a frame counter in your render. I'm going to use the quicktime frame counter, which starts at 0 (which might not be the frame range in your shot, so you will have to do the math). I would also hide the nurbs controllers and the grid, so we just have geometry in the playblast. Thanks!!

Animation wise you're on the right track, there are few areas I would tweak though.

You want to make sure that the silhouette is clear and that each pose reads clearly. The kid on x110 looks like he's picking his nose. :)

You are also covering his face with the hand, which you'd want to avoid, so that the audience is able to read the kid's face and expression (unless it's a needed story point in your shot to cover his face of course).

The dog seems a bit big, is there a way to scale him down? I thought there was a node that allows you to do so. Just proportion and design wise, he looks like he'd be smaller compared to the kid.

You mention that the dog will jump over his lap. What is the exact action going to be? Is he just running/jumping past the kid, is he trying to snatch the toy out of his hands?

For the kid at the end, you might want to bring his face back to us, so we can clearly see the emotional changes. If you keep it all in profile, it won't read as clearly.

Hope that helps!
Cheers

JD