Tuesday 27 November 2007

New Acting Piece - Steve Carell

Right folks, thanks for all the comments. Used a lot of weighting on the tangents in graph editor this time round. I've also decided to switch to Youtube as quite frankly so many people are having issues with Vimeo playback right now. Really tried to texture this (cheers Tim), so that the intro is slow, the blah blah's are harsh movement wise, and the what are you talking about is somewhere in between, trying to show changes in pace and power, and to Mariano for helping out with Lip Synch pointers et al.

11 comments:

messytimbo said...

wicked! i laughed, lydia laugh. i think all the acting is really great, and there's good strong posses.

my only critque would be it's lacking a bit of punch when he's turns into a second person, i think if you was to make the points whens he turns a bit snappy, it would give more "texture" over all to the animation.

i've been reading alot recently on texture in animation.

victor navone talks a lot about it.

check out these two links

http://www.navone.org/blogger/2007/09/3-speeds.html

http://www.animationmentor.com/11secondclub/mentorcritique.html

the second one is an amazing crit, on a already great piece of animation. it goes to show there's always something you can improve.

they've help me a lot and started to get me thinking about texture.

Nick said...

Cheers Tim, I took note of comments from DMCA, David and in particular Paul about how to improve my animation on this. Usually my stuff is so laid back I wanted to go over the top on it.

Will try and make the transformations more obvious then!

How's things, we were up at LAS the week before last checking out this years talent, only 3Ders showed up, which was a shame as it'd be good to see you guys again.

messytimbo said...

yeah i'm kinda sorry i didn't go now, it would been a good chance to catch up.

and i would wait to here what other people say before you start changing things.

i think this is really really good! it's just lacking a little something. i'm really interested in other peoples opinion on this one.

i can't wait to see what it's gonna be like after a bit of refining!

Daniel M.C. Alvite said...

hey nick, good stuff, like the timing and the poses, just a bit concerned about his back, lower back.
you could use same movment on the legs as well when he shift his weight.
but the poses are great, the blablabla part is great.

Nick said...

OK Tim, I've quickened up the transfer between changing poses, and your right it does look better.

Dan I'm not sure about what you mean about the lower back, but looking at the rig, it seemed strange the lower back and mid section controls were only movable by translation rather than rotation on this, I thought this may have been a script error transferring into Maya 6.5. But you know my scripting knowledge is limited so couldn't fix it!

Doctor Cerebro said...

hey man this is a great improvement indeed! congrats. the thing about the spine is that it is an IK spine, so you can squash and strech it.
the only thing i can say is that sometimes it is lacking some snappiness, it goes from one pose to the next one with the same speed. you could fiddle a bit with the easying in and out of the poses...

David Beer said...

Hi there

on the max rig, theres an attribute on the root control to change the spine to FK, then you can rotate instead of translate, helps to get overlapping action.

Very good idea, I like it. The performance poses and the dialog definitly entertains.

OK, now heres the next BIG thing. (Thank You Keith Lango) The computer is the stupidest inbetweener in the world. Dont allow the computer to decide how to get from one place to another. Think 2d. May the force be with you.

Nick said...

OK cheers guys for all your input. The victor navone one was really good Tim. I used to use a few slow uptakes and movements but then got accused of floating (know there's a difference!), so it's good to hear about the timing of certain movement's.

Trouble with this scene is that the pace is very much set by the dialogue so there's a limited amount you can do really. I'll try though!

Doctor Cerebro said...

another thing: the mouth looks like it just opens and closes, with no shapes. sometimes you can get away with little work there, but maybe you could add some "o" and "oo" shapes?

Nick said...

Yeah, I've changed the mouth shapes now, it's a lot more pronounced, trouble is when you look at it on a tiny screen seems quite samey, but on a large MPEG over the top. Will leave it the same for the showreel DVD's.

libra bear said...

This is a great improvement. I'm really impressed by your progress. On the crit side I ahve nothing to say that hasn't been said by our class mates. Keep em comin bro...