Something I breezed over in previous answers was what kind of mistakes do 'newbie' animators make. This is one of them that I can address.
Lots of CG animation that you see (in my opinion) lacks that 'finesse pass'. That means not letting the computer do inbetweens for you. It's important to frame through you whole shot, searching for anyplace you can drag a hand, or the head, or make a foot hit the ground harder. For instance, let's say your character is doing a take. Your anticipation is on frame 9, and the stretch of the character coming up into the 'surprised' pose is two frames later, at frame 11. Great, so you have an anticipation and a stretch! Done, right? Wrong! Go to frame 10. Is it a direct inbetween? Yes? Then you should be very ashamed. You have failed the Animation Gods. They look down upon you with sorrow and disappointment. What you must do is make frame 10 a close favour of frame 9, your anticipation. NOW you're done, right? NO!! Now you must study how each body part is moving through the frames leading up to frame 9, and make sure they are following through on frame 10, and don't come to an abrubt stop because of the way you keyframed your favour.
The point is, you need to touch every frame. You need to frame through your entire scene, watching every part of your character as you do, and adjust as necessary.
The same principal applies to moving holds. Make sure everything is not drifting at the same rate, in the same direction or rotation, at the same time.
Hey Doug, speaking of moving holds, could you offer any advice on animating really good moving holds? What to look for, what to avoid doing. Anything would be awesome
Hey how come the time on the posts is an hour slow?
That is a daylight savings thing. It should be fixed now.
If anyone sees posts that are an hour out- you can go to "My Controls" up at the top of the screen and then choose "Board Settings" along the left. Now you either need to check or uncheck the daylight savings button.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2004, 01:49:18 PM by Rick May »
I have a few questions that hopefully isn't supposed to be secret information...
1) How many character animators are currently working on Chicken Little? 2) How many supervising animators on the show? 3) Can you tell us a little bit about the hierachy on the show? i.e... You have animators, then supervising animators, and then who is above that, and so on and so on? 4) How does Mark like directing CG projects? Do you know if he has a preference to traditional or CG? 5) Is an animator tackling the whole shot, or just a character within that shot (I think you might of answered this earlier while answering a similar question...) 6) When an animator receives a shot, do they have only basic layout in their scene file? Or is the animation roughed out by someone else beforehand?
« Last Edit: August 26, 2004, 01:57:15 PM by Rick May »
As I wrote before, don't have everything moving or rotating at the same rate, in the same direction, and at the same time. Make sure that if your hold is say, from frame 50 to frame 100, that you don't just have two keys: 50 and 100. Here's one possible example. Have the chest slow out of fr50 faster than it slows into fr100, so the halfway point would be around. 65. Do the opposite for the head, so its halfway breakdown would be maybe 80. Maybe one hand could have a key around 70 or so, where you get an arc or even a subtle back and forth movement. Do something else for the other hand. Keep it all very subtle. And maybe put a couple of eye blinks in there. The important thing is to keep the chracater from looking like he's underwater or in some mechanical drift.
Rick, thanks for fixing the time preference for me. I'm just stupid that way. No really, I am.
In answer to your questions:
1) There are about 35 animators on the show. It's about split right down the middle between folks that have a traditional or CG background.
2) There are six supervisors who are resposible for the main characters, and one overall animation supervisor, Eamonn Butler, who is sort of the head of the department.
3) As far as showing your work, the animator shows to the supervisor of the character he/she is animating, and then to the director. It's a mercifully short list of people to get through (one) before you can show to the director, who approves all scenes.
4) I know that Mark is really enjoying working in CG. There's so much that is possible. As far as his preference, I can't speak for him.
5) In most cases an animator handles all the characters in a shot. Occasionally shots will be partialled out, but that is not the norm.
6) The animator is responsible for setting up the shot, but it's pretty much a one-click process. There is layout, or workbook, animation applied to the characters when it is brought in, but except for the general position on the set we usually blow that away and start fresh.
No horror stories really, it was only one summer after first year college that I worked on that show. Interestingly though, my supervisor was none other than Eric Armstrong, who went on to become a big shot and directed the Chub-Chubbs. From what I hear, he's one of the best-loved personalities in the industry. Heh heh.
And Josh, sorry no Care Bear tattoos, but I do have a brand of My Little Pony on my left nipple. That was a very painful procedure, but well worth it in terms of 'street cred'.
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