Atle Hillmann - Car crash - Critique

Hey,

alrighty, what I would do now, is hide the eye controller box and put it geometry for the floor, so we can look at intersections. As he's looking around, you want the root to be involved as well, so as the hips are moving around, we need to check it against the floor.

Overall, you're on the right track. What stood out were the IK arms and some fast timing here and there, but you're doing good!

- main area to work on for the next pass (for the same section and beyond) are his arms. The tricky thing about IK arms is that they move independently from the body and in some cases (depending on the rig) also independently from the hands. Looking at your arm/hand that holds the car, the wrist is locked in the same orientation throughout the whole shot, as well as during major body movements, like from x29 to x40. Same goes for the other hand, albeit in a less pronounced way, except from x118 to 123, where the hand goes down and screen left in a very linear way, with no arc and not chest nor shoulder movement is visible, which makes it stand out even more as IK
- that last section with the hand is also too fast; you'd think that he'd be more careful, now that he's found the piece and has the hand so close to the car
- the head turn from x60 to 66 is also a bit too fast; this feels more like he caught some burglar :)
- as mentioned at the beginning, during all those turns with the upper body, you will have to involve the lower body and hips; they are locked right now are not reacting to the body. The legs will move and shift as well, when he turns around (which in turn will have an effect on the feet, otherwise you end up with the locked wrist IK look again)
- his left knee will move when he takes his hand off, since there is a weight change as the hand is not resting on the knee anymore
- lastly, watch out for pops like on x41 to 42 (his left leg)

One more tip for IK arms. You want to emulate FK arms as much as possible. When the body rotates, the arm rotates with it. Of course you don't want it all to happen as one unit and at the same time, so you offset the arms a bit, depending on the action. But even then, it will still feel like the body is influencing the arms, which is more believable, than IK arms, where they are completely detached.

Hope that makes sense!
Cheers
JD

Atle Hillmann - Car crash - Feedback

So here, I took a few frames out of your clip and adjusted the hand and arm. First, you don't want the hand or anything else covering your character's face, unless it's an important story point. In your case, we want to see his face so we can read his thought process. The actions that he's going through with fixing the car can all be restaged so that the hand is lower and not covering his face. The story point is still coming across, but now the silhouette is clear.

For the above one, I also lowered the car-holding-arm, since that hand pose is about putting the last piece on the car, so you'll have to adjust more than just his left arm.

Atle Hillmann - Car Crash - Critique

About which character you should work on, I would figure out the dog at the same time. The kid is leading the shot until the dog comes in, and you'll have to make it all work with the kid. Yes, you can mostly work on the kid first, just always double check with the dog. And the dog will be off screen until he comes in, right?

I like the way you end it now, it's a nice strong pose and build up to it too, great work!!

Silhouette wise, you're still in the same boat as before. On x138 the hand is in front of the kid's face and even on x146 it's still overlapping and forming a tangent between the hand line and the head line (on x193 the lines don't barely touch or overlap, so there are no tangents anymore). x205 has a muddy silhouette again.

In his pose around x225 after the dog runs through, I would open up his legs and not stay in the same pose. His right leg could be more stretched out. If you scrub through your scene now, the legs are always stuck in the same pose. It would be good for contrast to break them up after the dog attack, so you visually show through the pose using the whole body that there was a change and that the dog messed something up.

About the transition from blocking to spline, I would make sure that you have enough breakdowns before splining and in your case you will need more. Take for instance x83, 93 and x119. If you spline this you probably wont' have a nice arc going through that move and the timing will be pretty even. So by doing another pass with more breakdowns you want to solidify the timing of your actions. The spline conversion shouldn't really affect the anim too much.

Hope that makes sense!

Cheers
JD

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