Please critique my work and offer solution to problems you see.

Much appreciated

HI Dhar
I see you also started with the boot-camp, well i started yesterday maybe we can help each other.

About the bouncing balls, a view comments i hope it helps
the blue-ball looks good although you can't see that much with one bounce

i had some more problems with the red ball, i could not see the first two bounces because it leaves the screen, the reflection in the blue ball helps to see where it is and what it is doing butt i think it makes it more clear if u leave the ball in your screen.
with the first bounce the ball is like 5 frames on the ground. because of this it looks like the ball is powering up to make the next bounce, it has a bit of a ball filled with water fx, but if that was the case the second bounce should not get that high
So maybe try to do that in 3 key frames to make it more snappier.
Like stretch above the ground squash on the ground and back to normal from the ground again.

my last comment is that the ball comes to quickly to a stop and there is no more squash and stretch any more, witch makes it suddenly an other kind of ball.

Hope this helps, and good luck




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come give some comments to my bootcamp, I probably will give some on yours
Bertmac's bootcamp

Thank you Bert for your comments. Duly noted.

The problem I had with the red ball bounce was to try and include the squash at the contact point with the ground.. 4-5 frames, I thought, was needed to change from stretch to squash and back to stretch again (at first I had 10 frames).

I'll keep tweakin'.

Here's a second try.

A lot better than the first one
Although i would leave my cam still if i where u, frame 22 or 23 is a nice shot.
In this way it will be all about the balls and there will be no distraction from the cam
and maybe u should take a look to the frame after the first squash its the same as the one before the squash, Don't know look strange.
And are your balls keeping there volumes it sometime looks like it looses it
keep in mind that xyz always should be 3 when u squash or stretch (x0.9 y1.2 z0.9)
but maybe its me
have fun





Come give some comments to my bootcamp
Bertmac's bootcamp I probably will give some on yours

WELCOME DHAR

I agree with everything Bertmac has pointed out.

One thing about animation is that it's more important what the viewer feels than what they actually see. They don't necessarily have to see the squash and stretch but if it's there they'll feel it. If you frame by frame a lot of animation you'll see impossible things, people's faces stretching to feet wide, bowling balls squishing like baloons, but since it happens so fast you don't actually see it, but you do get the feeling of maleable flesh or a very tight ball. So don't be afraid to have a single frame of an extreme, it might put the extra punch into your work.

Also a lot of "Seeing" comes from how much you tell the viewer to expect to see something. If you stage it well so they have a clear idea of what's happening, anticipate so they have a good idea of what's going to happen, and follow through well so they can tell where you're coming from, then the actual happening can happen in no time at all.

Anyway, blue ball looks good. Red looks pretty good, you can still trim the squetch down in time a little more. Good job descending the energy of the bounces on both balls. The camera is distracting some, an easier way is just to move it so the balls land closer to the bottom of the frame so when they bounce they are still within the frame.

Good start

-Alonso

Thank you Alonso. Now do I need to keep tweaking this excercise until perfection or should I go on to the next one keeping in mind the lessons learned from this one?

Whichever you feel will make you a better animator. (Though you seem pretty close to having these "perfect" it might not take to long to finish them off.)

-Alonso

Hey Dhar,

Nice job. The camera shake is a little distracting. It looks like the red ball eases into it's impact with the ground. The ball is in free fall, accelerating into the ground. The distance traveled per frame (1/24th second) should increase as it nears the ground. A small tweak of the Y translate curve, increasing the slope at the impact key, should do the trick. Good start.

Bruce

Thanks for the encouragement Bruce. Here's another attempt at it. I'm no longer sure if I'm going for realistic or cartoon motion.

Dhar, the one on the right feels very heavy, and I've expect it to make a loud KLONK! when it hits the ground. The one on the right bounces a lot like a basketball, but it hangs a little too much at the peaks. Loosen them up and it'll look better. You don't need much, I think, just another frame or two of breathing room.

HI Dhar,

The general timing of the bounces feels good, however the 1 frame contact is working against you. I actually just wrote some comments on BDP's bounce that would apply to yours as well.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=146972


I also think the hang time is rather severe. The ball races up, the spends quite abit of time in about the same spot, then races down again. A cartoon ball might do that if we had established some story reason for it, but for these exercises... vanilla generic is the best way to show you know what you're doing.


The heavy ball falls the same distance for frames 6-9. Then slows down for frame 10. That is quite gravity defying. As BDP said above...



But real progress had been made. Don't stop!

I forgot, this excercise asks for one heavy ball and one rubbery ball to bounce right?

Well it says
"drop two balls of different materials/weight, let their bouncing come to a stop"
So i think you are free to do what you want.
I mean


Have fun


Come give some comments to my bootcamp
Bertmac's bootcamp I probably will give some on yours

Rob already nailed it, like usual. Just wanted to point out that now you know how to do really cartoony looking bounces also, watching your's makes me want to make a whole bunch of cartoony balls.

-Alonso

Here's the tailball excercise. You know what to do

Great job getting some personality into the spheres! Can really feel the laughing. Fun twist ending.

If you want the looking side to side to read better slow it down, and maybe stretch the ball some like it was on tiptoes carefully checking out the scene. Nice job keeping the axis of squetch in line with the arc of motion. I think the hops would look better if they had the regular loss of momentum at the top. Right now it's kind of like it's propelling through the whole hop, instead of jumping and planning on using gravity. So have the shape nuetral out at the top and then stretch back out as it falls. Also when it lands on the floor, you've got some follow up settle motion in there, but it's such a stretchy ball it would stretch more on impact, even if it came back to regular shape quickly. That rolling back and forth really sells the laughter, the little heh heh would sell better if it was smaller than the rest of the laughing (so taking it from stretched like it is, just don't come down as far.) The tail could use more smoothing as it flails about after impact, it's close but not quite there. One of the assignments for Animation Mentor is to do a 1 legged ball hop, google Animation Mentor Blog and find some examples. Try getting the ball closer to the foot before it gets up. When it takes off the ball should rock forward so that when it's propelled upwards it's aiming in the direction it wants to go instead of off backwards. The kick looks fine, try shortening the time between the end of the wind up and the impact for more punch to it. Looking really good so far, but still some to go.

-Alonso

Here's another attempt.

Very inventive use of the characters! I could sense what they were up to and what their intentions were. The laughing motion worked particularly well.


But lets consider arcs, spacing and balance.

On balance specifically, remember that the leg really only exerts force by pushing, it can't pull. Any force from the leg is going to be directed in a line from the foot thru the hip, so the hip needs to be posed inthe direction you are trying to go when that leg starts pushing.

Thank you Robert for pointing out in detail where more improvements are needed. I'm having a bit of a problem with the balance since the tail bones are children of the ball bone. I'd have to start from scratch and detach the tail from the ball in order to achieve the balance. I'll work on it next week since I got finals coming up.

Keep the critiques coming guys

An easy trick you could do is to add an IK joint onto the tail and just turn on it's emphasis when you're ready to use it as a foot.

So getting over it's foot, the easiest way is to get the foot right at the base and then hop onto it. The kick looks better. The checking the scene still isn't working, I think it's because they are all the same amount of time, and still pretty quick. I recomend taking out the first and last up of the ball (seems like there are 4) doubling or tripling the time that it's looking one direction and the other. And having a really small rotation during the look, as if it where scanning a little bit.

When yellow's going to hop, get the weight over and then leaning forward, so that pushing off, the energy will go up in the direction yellow wants.

Keep going!

-Alonso

OK, I'm back. I've taken into consideration most of the suggestions and here's the result.

Better. The squetch looks better, the take off is stronger. On the descending stretch the stretch is still not happening along the path of motion. Try having the yellow ball hop onto it's tail, so starting with the set up, squash and then hop on top of where the foot is. The take off looks good except that the foot slides way back, it's a foot now, gotta nail it to the ground, no sliding around. The landing will look stronger if it lands with it's heel instead of toe. Good improvements.

-Alonso

AHA! Thank you for telling me that. I wouldn't have caught that one.

I concur. And on the takeoff he stretches straight up but veers to the left after leaving the ground. He really should produce some sideways motion with his take off pose . (be slanted) That's a great solution to getting "on his feet". You could expand on that by having the "kick" happen during a jump rather than magically suspended in mid-air.

Great job Dahr! You have some great comedic timing in this. I don't really get what the yellow ball is doing at the very end though. Also really watch the archs with the yellow one, they look a bit off when he jumps. I agree with Alonso and Robert about the direction of the red ball when he jumps. Looking good! Very nice job.

Thank you for your input Pixar, I really appreciate it.

What I tried to portray with the yellow ball at the end, after it kicked the red one, is looking at the red one while it's in the air and then hit the ground. I guess it wasn't as clear as I had hoped.

I'll keep tweakin'

LOL I love it. The red ball laughing is great, I love that he still gives a little chuckle even after the yellow ball is towering over him. Thats genius.

Everyone else has pretty much told you everything. Anything thing I tell you at this point is just nitpicking. In between the yellow ball getting hit and the ball getting up onto its tail, all of the tail movement inbetween those two actions is a little stiff. The yellow balls jump needs a little work. Robcat illustration shows this. It needs one continous arc. Right now the ball jumps forward and it starts out looking like it'll have a smooth jump, but it jumps forward, than up, than backwards than it goes down. You may have too many key frames. You really only need three points: It's starting point, the peak of the jump and it's landing point. If you want it to look like the yellow ball is following the red balls decent. You may want to slow down the yellow balls movement. I think it's too fast, thats why it's hard to tell what the yellow ball is doing. Right now it just looks like it's spazing out. Or make the yellow ball look up really high than slowly move it down and do a slight jerk at the end so we can feel the red balls impact.

Here I am trying to act like I know what i'm talking about. Take my advice with a grain of salt, cause I can't animate to save my life.

Thank you, forevernameless, for your comments. Your input is much appreciated. To nitpick my work is to make me that much better

New Year's over - rolled up my sleeves and redid this thing - whew

I gotta say, Dhar, you're getting this whole bouncy thing down pat. My only real critique (since Ken and all have just about said what there is to say) is about paying attention to the balancing of your tail ball guy. I've checked out each version you did (great animation and idea, by the way ) but it seems like there is still room for improvement in that area. All in all, mighty fine animating!

Let's consider just one small part of the new ABC2 animation.... around 0:17 where the yellow ball jumps.

He pushes off VERY slowly (9 frames!) and then in one frame pops an entire body length into the air.

Not possible. Try it yourself. Can't be done.

Because of momentum and inertia his body can't move any farther in the frame that his feet leave the ground than it did in the frame immediately before that. Probably less.

That's because his leg can no longer apply force. Once he pushes off, he's basically coasting and gravity is immediately slowing his rise.

We'll never get perfect physics by hand animation, but we can get very plausible motion. It helps your audience buy into what you are presenting.

Tnanks Robcat, I've considered that small part, I think this is more like it - I hope

I love weekends cuz that's the time that I get to animate and have fun

Here's #3 also, the "fall guy". I wasn't sure if the criteria was for a humanoid or any other character, but I did this to break away from bouncing balls, I'll improve it tomorrow.

Don't be shy... just lay it on me... lemme have it ... I think

Ahhhh! Shaggy's Linda Blair! That's the first thing I noticed Dhar; Shaggy's head went all 'exorcist' on him. You might want to fix that! It seems a bit unnatural.

But very nice! You've got some great poses in it, and I love the little head shake he gives after the fall. Some things to consider:

-He seems to be slowing down as he falls, watch your spacing there.

-The hands fingers aren't animated, I'm sure you'll get to that though.

-Right after he uses the table to get up he's unbalanced. Either have him keep one hand on the table or put his foot out underneath him before he lets go.

-I don't really get the story, was he going for the phone when he tripped?

I think those are the main things. Great Job, keep going, you've got it!!

Thank you for the crit Josh. I need to remember the falling arcs.

Here's an update.

OK, for my 4th exercise I chose the juice box.

I apologize for the large file, even when zipped. I had to try it 4 times to reduce the file size. I'll be careful next time to keep things simple

Your critique is appreciated.

That's a cute scene. Tell me if I read it right...

He's sad, but then he sees himself inthe mirror and sees he's not as overweight as he thought. He decides he's pretty hot (for a juicebox), and prances off to find his significant other juicebox.

I like the overlapping motion on the straw during the walk in, the top of the box seems to be dropping too soon. It's almost right in synch with the feet rather than lagging them. It's like it's being pushed down rather than falling down.

The "Hip" area seems to be moving in a straight horizontal line during the walk. If you do more Juiceboxes inthe future you might investigate ways to loosen that up.

The jumps seem floaty. I'd have to analyze them more to pin down why. Not enough anticipation squash? Is he flying faster than he pushed off? too long inthe air? those are possibilities.

But that's a fun scene, and I know a lot of effort goes into getting all that to come together. I enjoyed watching it.

Wow Dhar, that's awesome!

Great job getting the emotions across with what is basically a rectangle. I love the double take!

A couple things:

-Maybe move the camera closer to the action instead of just using the default view?

-Work on the jumps, I think there isn't enough anticipation.

Do you think you could give us some tips on constructing a scene of such length? Did you break it up into 'scenes', use stride length?

Nice work!

Thank you Robert, thank you Josh for your valuable critiques.

Robert,

- You pretty much read the scene right. I did not specify what he's sad about (the exercise didn't say to specify), so I left it to the viewer to interpret why he's sad (or why he becomes happy), but the fact that you knew he was sad and then he was happy means I got the job done.

- I don't know what an "overlapping motion" is, but I think it's the same as "follow thru"?

- The reason the hip area moves in a straight line is because...well...there is no hip bone. The top bone pretty much controls the hip too. I actually had to move the root bone like I would a hip bone. All I added were two bones that control either side of the bottom CPs to simulate feet. I should've spend more time rigging.

Josh,

If I have a weakness it is composition. I'm not sophisticated at camera angles. I stick to the basics that I learned from the Disney animators which is to make the animation clear in silhoutte, beyond that, I'm pretty lame.

I did not do this scene the way I should (story board, scene break up etc..). I'm too impatient for that. When I get an idea I pretty much have a clear vision of how it looks and I just start animating it in a linear fashion. One thing though, I do feel my heart pumping when I get the idea and while I'm animating. It is that exciting for me

Yeah, I think so. When two things are moving in the same direction, and one stops and another one conncted to it keeps going for a bit.

My understanding of overlapping motion is when not all body parts move at the same time. Some lead while others follow. For example, the shoulder moves, then the upper arm, followed by lower, and lastly the hand and fingers drag behind (also called successive breaking of joints). The body parts are not all starting their movement at the same time.

By the way. Nice work on the juice box animation. I enjoyed it!

Thanks Paula for your feed back. If anybody understands the overlapping motion it is you - I like what you did to the antenae on your side step exercise (sorry I didn't post in your thread, by the time I got to it many already said all that there is to be said. Next time I'll leave you my comments).

OK, I've implemented some of the changes that were suggested. I had to get rid of the decals to reduce the file size. Keep the critiques coming.

In the meantime I'm off to finish exercise 5

That's very nice Dhar. I can not find anything to improve on so lets see exe. #5

Well Mark; ask and ye shall receive

This is only half of the exercise since the file got too large, but this should fullfill the criteria.

See if you can tell what this guy's doing.

A very nice animation I feel the emotion of him watching a playoff/kickoff moment. The main thing and I find myself having problems with this also is his legs are going into the chair too much.

Yeah, and I only noticed that during final render

Going back to tweaking

Thanks for your crit Mark

Football2- A few things I noticed. He's way too good at balancing. He's standing perfectly still when he's in the squat position. You need to add a little more movement. He's anticipating a touchdown or fieldgoal, so he should be anxious. Clench his fist, shake his arms or anything, loosen him up a bit.

You also have twinning going on. When he falls back into his chair, both his arms are in the exact same place, even just having one arm delay a little bit behind the other will help that. His feet as well, there moving forward at exactly the same time. To help that you could have one foot planted and have the other kick out. They don't have to be on the ground.

This is a great start. The idea comes across perfectly, now you just need to tweak it to make feel alive.

I appreciate your observations forevernameless. What's twinning?

Here's an update.

twinning isn't an official term, I don't think. But it's basically where you have two things and there perfectly symetrical to each other.

In your animation, when he raises his hands to his head. They both move at exactly the same time, and there both doing the exact same thing, like there connected to eachother. That Twinning