Snehal Chaudhari - Balls - Critique

Hey,

alright, let's look at the medium Ball_02 first:

- The beginning until it hits the wall looks generally good! There are some little tweaks I would do. Make sure the screen right translation at the beginning doesn't have too many keys on it. There's a little slow down around the x14 area and then a speed up around the x22 area. It just should nice and even with a little gradual acceleration before it falls off the first object. The rest looks good!
- after the ball bounces off, around x70, it suddenly speeds up! The momentum is suddenly really strong again, so keep it down, so it fits more with the timing at the beginning. The bounces will be smaller and it will travel less over time, it can't just accelerate. Then watch your spacing after x79. From x79 to 80 it pretty much stops moving screen left and after that it continues the translation (after a few bounces the ball would also continue to rotate counter clockwise, especially at the end when it rolls).

Now the bouncinb balls_02:

- the only one I would tweak a bit is the balloon on the right. It's a bit too even. I would add a little bit of acceleration towards the end before it hits the ground. Nothing huge, but just a little bit.

Cheers
JD

Akem Singh - Sneak - Critique

Animation wise it's better than you think! There are three big-ish issues that stood out, but that's all fixable, I don't think you have to start from scratch.

First, the body feels a bit like it's underwater. The up and down feels too spliney and you don't feel any gravity. When the body goes up and the legs push the body up for that, it will move slow at the beginning and the gradually accelerate until the highest point, then the body will have some hang time and then gradually fall down until the foot is firmly planted and the leg stops the fall. That's in essence what happens to the body during a walk. In your case the body up and down timing feels the same, there is no acceleration in the up nor in the down, so just work on the timing for that first. The weight of the body has work and since you're tweaking the body, it will mess up your legs, so worry about them later.

2nd thing, speaking of body, it looks like the feet are moving forward too much and leaving the body behind. Watch x114 and x143 for instance. The body would fall backwards during those moments since it's off balance.

3rd thing, in the front view, your feet are pretty wide apart and there are no arcs during the steps. The feet are pointed straight towards us and move in just that axis and up, but not sideways. You can rotate the feet out a bit, bring them closer together and introduce an arced path for each step. The feet can arc in or out during the passing, that's up to you.

I would work on the body first, then address the bigger arc issues with the feet and then go from there. Let's not worry about detail stuff yet.

Hope that helps!
Cheers
JD

Krys Wada - Car Parking - Critique

The scale works much better! And the shots look good!

Let's look at them individually:

shot1:
- the indifferent guy is good, nice pose, it's all very clear. Animation wise I would do another pass on the eyes, they seem to move independently. For instance around x77, the screen right eye goes to the right and the screen left one goes to the left. The area after x95 is also a bit funky. Make sure that they move together.
When he looks to the right after x60 I think you could have his headturn be more active. It's a bit too subtle, you could push it a bit more.
- the driver has some eye issues as well. Watch after x48, they get a bit too active. When you have eye darts going left and right and left and right, it doesn't feel natural. Act it out, move your eyes left and right and you'll feel that it is a bit awkward. Just dart to one side, pause a bit, little dart more to the left or down, then pause, then to the right. Give it a beat between each direction.

shot3:
- the blocking reads clearly as well. Timing wise I would have one of the two turn towards us a bit sooner. Right now they are doing it at the same time and you could offset that. The passenger brings up his book a bit slowly and then his head slowly drifts down.
- the driver's expression stays the same and I'm sure he's going through different emotions in that shot, so try to add more variety to his acting.

I would continue with the rest of the sequence so that you have all the shots in place and then focus on the detail work.

Cheers
JD

Alex Ferreira Simoes - Cards - Feedback

Cool, that gives us a good idea of what's going on!

What is the kid doing with his cards at the beginning? He takes a big swing at something? If he's picking up a card then I would change that gesture. Something that big and fast could make the cards fall and you'd think that the kid is very careful about his creation and doesn't want anything to break.
I would put the cards more screen left so that they are clearly visible.


With the cards on the left the kid should pick them up very delicately and since the cards are screen left the silhouette of the kid's arm/hand/fingers will be nice and clear.

What's tricky with a walk/run cycle is that the speed is constant when you have him move around. If you'd have him slow at the beginning and speed up towards the end the feet would slide. But that's what I would suggest for the background guy. If possible, try to add rhythm and contrast to his movements, so that he isn't just running by with even timing step wise. Hope that makes sense.

Cheers
JD

Michael Baran - Snowman - Feedback

Cool! I like that camera angle much more!

I think the general idea is there and you have all the main poses in there. Now, before you start adding breakdowns and extremes I would think about his character and his emotions. Right now he's just going through the steps and mechanics of rolling the ball. What's missing is the state of mind. Character wise I would have to read him as robotic. There is no indication if he's enjoying himself, or if he's tired, cold, frustrated, in a hurry, etc. etc. What if he's tried to roll that thing up onto the body for the past two days? He could be really tired. And when the head falls on him, he could smash his fist into the ground because he's just so fed up with it.
Or he's really patient and after the head smash he's just tapping his fingers as in "Hmm... really? That shouldn't have happened.".

I hope that makes sense. The timing of how he pushes the ball, how he repositions himself will tell us something about his character and mood. Give the audience something to connect with.

Cheers
JD

Erik Lee - Fight - Critique

1st shot:
- I should have mentioned that earlier, sorry... The girl, when she moves her arms up and her torso a bit to the left, watch her root and hips, they are totally locked. So have them follow that rotation and adjust her posing so it doesn't feel so separate.

2nd shot:
- nitpicky detail: when she moves her eyes screen right, you could adjust the brows a bit. Maybe the screen right brow goes up a bit more and the left just a tiny bit up. Same with the mouth, maybe a little clench or the mouth is a bit open at the beginning (just a bit), then as she darts to her left, the mouth closes.
And I would move her even more to the right as she exits the frame. On x57 she's still really close to the camera. Then x58 the ear is massive! :)

3rd shot:
- her screen right hand on x66 is good but then on x67, after such a big move down, how about the wrist is rotated up, so the hand really drags. It might get too flowy, but it could also make her a bit more graceful. Same with the screen left hand on x67, it could drag a bit more towards the point where the hand just was.
I would have to see a ground plane in order to judge if her hand is planted correctly around the x76 area.
There's something weird with the far right creature falling. For instance the foot at x86 just goes straight down until x89. It doesn't look like you're finishing the arc. Same with the root. Look at his screen right butt cheek on x77, then 78 and 79, it's moving in a horizontal line, then on x80 and on it moves pretty straight down. So finish the arc there as well.

5th shot:
- the girl landing is still a bit off spacing wise. Watch x158 to 160. The spacing is pretty big, then from x160 to 161 it's a bit smaller, which is okay, but on x162 she goes suddenly up and even less to the right, then on x163 almost nothing to the right, still up, then on x164 suddenly down. Those changes could get softened.
Watch her root from x173 to 174, it feels like she's slowing down the downward move, but the foot hasn't planted yet to push so that she would actually slow down. So delay that slowing down by 2 frames at least. In the same vein, I would also delay how she brings up her body around the x196 area, so that it's more in line with her right leg stabilizing herself and allowing her to move her body up.

Sorry for the wait, 4th of July craziness delayed the critique!

Hope it helps though!

Cheers
JD

Barry Nardone - Creature Fight - Feedback

Definitely on the right track, especially the second shot. The first shot feels spatially a bit crammed. I think you could move the camera a bit further back, and separate the two so that there is a bigger gap between them.
I like how the bipedal guy sticks his spikes out, but the crab is kinda looking at the guy but not really, and then in the second shot he turns around to face the spikey guy.
It could be more interesting to have the first shot be in the middle of the fight. So imagine they were already fighting and either the spike guy or crab tried to kill the other one and we cut to your first shot where one of them is just finishing that attack or recovers from it. Right now the crab guy doesn't really do much at the beginning of the first shot. So it feels a bit like: "Aaaand action crab guy! Move!"
I would try to add something more dynamic in terms of relation ship. And you can go further with that in the 2nd shot. When the crab guy attacks, the spikey guy just walks backwards. What if they would interact more. Maybe the spike guy charges the crab at the same but then gets pushed back. He then recovers and takes a swing at him. Maybe when he gets pushed back, he's holding on to the two horns below the jaw of the crab.

What do you guys think?