- Guy Zinger
- Airguitar

Hi Guy, thanks for posting your animation test .

- The first suggestion we always give, is to shoot video references of yourself doing the same exact shot, than study whats appening in your body parts while you are doing that.

- Also, improving the initial pose of this shot, will help and improve the all idea , (air-guitar-world-championships) just by looking at some image from google, you can see how real guitarist/air guitarist would hold their guitars.

The first pose of this shot is also the MAIN pose, the one that tells the story, try to GET the nice "giutar player" feeling in it.

- Feets seems to be stuck on the ground, going from one pose to the other, you should take more in consideration the weight shifting and what happen to the upper body.
A suggestion is to try to get away from the pose to pose feeling for a more refined polishing.

- In general, it lacks of weight, try the same movements yourself expecially for the arms, it you pay attention carefully you will notice how the overlaps between body and arms works, and what your body mass is doing while moving your arms around .

- We always suggest to do some research before starting any kind of shots, i know sometimes is difficult and you want to " jump into it ", but try to force yourself on doing a nice planning and research before beginning of any shot, usually is always better to know what you want to achieve, before starting.

There are lots of video on youtube to have a look at :



Hope you will keep going with it, the shot is looking good, you need to refine a little bit more the posing, and working on the phisicality of your character.
Thank you for your submission .

-AnimDailies

Valérie Sollie - Demoreel

- Valérie Sollie

- Demoreel



 Hi Valerie

Thanks for posting your reel. Its nice to hear you attended the Bring your own Animation event. I've been a few times myself, and its sad to hear that there wont be any more of these after this months event.

1) Looking at your reel i would say that a lot of the actions look like the right sort of actions but executed with less developed physics.

2) For example, i love the girl pushing the chair up the stairs. The action feels solid and i can imagine doing it that way myself. I would just look at making the animation more fluid, organic and smooth in this shot. At the moment it feels a little blocky and sharp but with good actions and weight.

3) The ballerina needs some good live action reference to bring it into the real world. She feels quite blocky and unnatural, a little bit like stop motion. Look at some ballerina reference or try to act out the shot yourself. Ballerinas are usually very fluid in their movement. Try to capture this in your animation.

4) For the horse you can really look at some good horse reference. Horses rarely just step with thier front legs as yours does at 00:06. Get some horse reference from you tube or some other site and follow it closely. Horses really need to move exactly like real horse to work as an animation. Reference is the key.

5) The girl sliding in the run looks like the slide is a bit unnatural. The run seems quite slow, then the slide is rapidly accelerated. I would try to keep the run speed and the slide speed more or less the same.

6) The end of the slide feels like it accelerates again then comes to a sharp stop. I would try and get the running forward to blend in with the end of that slide, so we feel the change from side ways sliding movement to running forward movement happening because of the legs, and not just because shes stopped sliding. It will be a smoother transition than slide-stop-run. I love the jump at the end

7) Look at the general animation in the last two shots. Its very blocky and needs to be carefully managed. Make it fluid and film reference of yourself acting out all of these actions. Notice how your body moves frame by frame and copy the timing and spacing. This will add realism to the actions.

Thanks for posting. I do love the solid action on the chair lift. This is your strongest piece for me.

Thankyou

-Anim Dailies

Iestyn Roberts - Cartoony Baseball Swing

-http://vimeo.com/26918115
-Iestyn Roberts
-Cartoony Baseball Swing

Review:

Hi Iestyn,

Thanks for sending this, it has the makings of a solid piece. Here's a list of a few things to look at to get you started.

- Have him roll on his front heel a bit at 1 sec. Stretchy legs are fine to use when there is reason too, but I think you should 'feel' the stretch and have it recoil, rather than see the stretch as clearly as you do here.

- His action when stepping forward could potentially work and be a funny motion, but at the moment it feels quite stiff and clunky. Try and add more of a bounce and arc to his hips to stop them from moving so erratically, and follow this motion through the rest of his body. You may need to add a few more frames to this section too. Make sure to offset the bounce of the hands by a couple of frames to give them some overlapping motion.

- When he raises up high at 7 secs he takes his eyes completely off the ball and loses believability in his actions, which in turn makes him feel less alive. Be aware of what the character is thinking at all times.

- Make sure to track the arcs of the hands as there are some linear moves and sharp angles in their paths of action.

- Lastly, bring the piece to a conclusion. It seems to end prematurely, if he is to twist himself up make sure to finish the action so the audience sees a resolution to the shot.

If you haven't already seen it, have a look at this Goofy short. It has some great baseball pitches in it, and although they are massively exaggerated they retain their believability as the exaggerations make sense within the context of the game.



-Anim Dailies

Juan Carlos Flores - Reel

- Juan Carlos Flores

- Reel



Hi Carlos

Thanks for posting your reel.

Looking at the first and last shot as requested, it seems that the same issues occur in both and i feel it would be better to issue a general set of comments that cover both shots.

1) Feels very pose to pose throughout. Its blocky, and has a spliney CG feel to it. I would look at making the actions more organic and natural. Make them feel like they exist in the real world.

2) Act out the shot in front of a camera and see how your body moves frame by frame, using the same timings. This will add realism to your animation, which in turn sells the idea.

3) Theres no follow through on many of the moves. Imagine the body moving quickly from one point to another. The arms and head wouldn't stop at the same time as the body, they would continue for a few frames and then settle.

4) The arcs in your animation are in most cases quite angular (you dont want to feel a straight line between two points in your animation). Look at producing clean arcs that feel fluid and natural.

5) Look at the bounces and impacts in your animation. Sometimes they lack weight. Look at animating a bouncing ball with a rag attached to it and you will begin to understand the physics necessary for any sort of animation. The ball (or person) if bouncing up would slow down at the apex and then accelerate toward the bounce. The rag would follow on after the ball like a tail swinging down on impact.



These comments obviously are quite general, but i think addressing points like this in your animation would really improve it. Then we can address other elements.

Hope you found that helpful.
Thankyou

-Anim Dailies

Some News!

In reply to some of the questions/feedback we have received in the last few days :


- Yes! We are still alive, we do apologise if sometimes we seems to not post reviews, but we are in between deadlines and crunch times, and managing also our lives is not easy!! So, please bear with us if you don't see your work being posted soon, this means that we are working on it and it is on its way!

-We want to clarify that the reviews are done by all of us, it can happen that some of us are busy here and there so the rest of the crew is taking care of it, but generally all of us look at your work.
The name under each post is the person who published it to the blog, this doesn't mean it was only them who reviewed your work.

- Please!!! Be aware that if you submit a Demoreel it will take much longer to review than a single shot, since a Demoreel could also be a 2 minute collection of 10 or more animations. It is not an easy thing to review and takes us more time to do so. Having said that, you can submit your demoreel if you want, but we would really much prefer for you to post on a shot by shot basis to make things easier for us and faster for you. Or single out a specific shot from your reel that you would like reviewed.

- The problem with the Autoplay of vimeo Videos should be fixed now. Also, when you submit your work to us, in the vimeo embed link, you can turn this option OFF than copy and paste the link. This will help us a lot. Thanks!

- We do not have a twitter, but we do have a Facebook group! Feel free to join. We are more likely to post news and discuss about the blog/forum as it's much more easy for us to manage it.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/animdailies/


- We now have a new animation section in our forum , it is called " Let's Animate! ".
Here you can post your animation materials if you are looking for feedback from any user. Keep in mind that if you want feedback from the Anim Dailies Team, you will still have to submit your work using the normal form. (link is up left on the forum or up right on the blog, the section " How to!? ").


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