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Uncle Jenkins posted:I've been building and tweaking my demo reel for some time now and I could use some feedback. Would you wanna hire this guy (me)? I know this is almost a month old, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents in case it helps anyhow. I think the reel looks really good! You use a lot of really strong work (and I'd totally hire you). The only thing I wanted to throw in was that I recently was talking to two people who worked in the industry, an animation director and a producer, and they went on this huge rant about how they hated getting reels that were long and that they wished everyone would just have a ~30 second or so reel. The producer was even saying how they sometimes just skip ones over a minute if they're in such a mood, which I've heard pretty often. To be on the safe side I'd maybe trim it to your absolute BEST work and have it at about 30-45 seconds, and then if a prospective employer is interested and contacts you and wishes to see more, you have more strong work they haven't seen you can show them. Just an idea! I hope it's not too annoying to post a video requiring a password, but I want to share my new student film I finished up a few weeks ago; right now I'm still waiting for at least another month for the school's sound guy to do the final audio before I post the final version publicly on Vimeo. I took the 6 month Digital Character Animation program at VFS where our final project was to do our own short (modeling, rigging, texturing, animating, storyboarding, everything) and I'm not too sure if I'm happy with how it all came together in the end, but I'm pretty happy I got it done at all I guess since I'd never touched Maya before this and it made me want to tear my face off. I'll probably still fix some small things that are driving me crazy, but this is more or less the final product and any thoughts would be nice! The password is: sprout http://vimeo.com/55910323
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Dec 24, 2012 06:16
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Oh wow I love the handpainted style you have there. Really well-realized. 
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Dec 24, 2012 20:27
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So I'm a graphic designer/print/sign person by trade but I have an associates degree in Graphic design and I'm working on my BA at UMBC. I had to take a "time based media" class as one of my prerequisites last semester and I really enjoyed learning about stop motion. I did these two short movies in i-movie and garage band. I think the format is a lot of fun but from a technical standpoint I have a lot to learn. Anyway I just though I'd share them and get a little feedback. It's definitely not my career goal or anything but I think stop motion is really cool and I'm interested in doing more projects with it My very first stop motion with lego's, I admit it's not great but I learned a lot doing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsR195GDr5k This one is about my battle with alcoholism and the horrible relapse cycle I've been going through for the past few years. I admit the execution is a tad crude but I enjoyed doing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M4PGhorNwc
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Dec 31, 2012 05:50
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Well, I got this year's Christmas cartoon done with my friend...about a week after Christmas. It's not really animated either, because we ran out of time (he got food poisoning the week before we were going to animate), but what we came up with turned out interesting at least. I'm not quite sure where it fits in but since it's kind of a cartoon I figured I'd post it here. Here it is, Monocle Ape's Christmas Special 2012!
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Dec 31, 2012 06:18
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I made a second version of my evolution animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCn4nELMPo
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Jan 24, 2013 04:50
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Mr. Frustration Man posted:I hope it's not too annoying to post a video requiring a password, but I want to share my new student film I finished up a few weeks ago; right now I'm still waiting for at least another month for the school's sound guy to do the final audio before I post the final version publicly on Vimeo. I took the 6 month Digital Character Animation program at VFS where our final project was to do our own short (modeling, rigging, texturing, animating, storyboarding, everything) and I'm not too sure if I'm happy with how it all came together in the end, but I'm pretty happy I got it done at all I guess since I'd never touched Maya before this and it made me want to tear my face off. I'll probably still fix some small things that are driving me crazy, but this is more or less the final product and any thoughts would be nice! Nice short! Well done. Love the 2d/3d crossover style, and simple, effective short storytelling. Lots of quite fun things in there like the mounted trees and such. As far as animation, I'd love for the character to be more consistent with the weight of the axe. It's a nice acting moment when they first grab the axe and it's unwieldy and too heavy for them. That acting should've continued on for the rest, but suddenly they're carrying it and moving it around as if it's second nature and they got 3x as strong. One scene that was a bit confusing for me (I had to rewind and watch it again), was the shot with the axe missing the tree. At first I thought the tree flew off into the air. That's about it, really.
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Jan 24, 2013 08:37
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HEY ANIMATORS! I'm making a 2D animation 101 tutorial series and I'd like to get a sense of what people want to know about. Please let me know.
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Jan 25, 2013 14:24
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Don't know if you wanna go into a lot of detail about this, but timing is always something I want to hear more about. Like how to better make sure every moving piece in your animation is settling/moving/switching direction at the right times so it all looks natural. If that makes sense!
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Jan 25, 2013 22:00
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Somebody released the rules animators had to follow when working on King of the Hill. Pretty interesting read http://imgur.com/a/PiJLk.. Also, I think something about how to animate facial expressions would be interesting.
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Jan 25, 2013 23:08
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Also, I think something about how to animate facial expressions would be interesting. Do you mean going from one facial expression to the other? redjenova posted:Don't know if you wanna go into a lot of detail about this, but timing is always something I want to hear more about. Like how to better make sure every moving piece in your animation is settling/moving/switching direction at the right times so it all looks natural. If that makes sense! Yes this makes sense! It sounds like you're talking about overlapping action and I'd love to make a video about that. Is there an example of a situation you have in mind?
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Jan 26, 2013 01:19
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neonnoodle posted:Do you mean going from one facial expression to the other? Yeah, like how to make an expression change more dynamic and fluid.
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Jan 26, 2013 02:27
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neonnoodle posted:Do you mean going from one facial expression to the other? I'm not even sure what's going on in this picture since I just hastily google searched it, but I saw stuff like this:  All over the place in books like the Animator's Survival Guide. It makes sense, but just visually it got a little overwhelming for me and I couldn't imagine trying to keep track of different bits of cloth and hair and whatnot flying around on a jumping character so they all move and behave realistically.
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Jan 26, 2013 02:35
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLONpSrLiYk
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Jan 26, 2013 22:38
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https://vimeo.com/58421234 Hi, this is my current demo reel, so please shoot some holes in it. I would consider this a character animation reel with a bit of modeling and VFX. I am a student for a few more months and I suffer from the problem of having done a lot of varied work and not having much time to polish my turds. I have more material in the pipe and reading through the 3dCG thread I have
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Feb 4, 2013 08:56
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I'm going to shoot it straight, don't take any of this personally. -Make the intro faster. Try to simplify all those words (more on this later), and most importantly, add your contact information. -It is too long. For someone who is just coming out of school you shouldn't have more than a minute, most people won't even stick for that long so you need to make it short and make it count. -It feels very scattered and lacks cohesion. Too much variety, as you mention. IMO you should pick just one of those things you want to do and get really good at it. Animation, vfx, rigging or modeling. -The overall quality is pretty bad. The animation, the models, the drawings. I don't mean to discourage you or to be mean, but rather, to bring you to reality. If you really want this then you are going to have to work very hard on it. It can be done but it is not going to be easy. Work on whatever you chose several hours a day. Post your stuff online and get critique. Look at what other people are making. Doing these things should get you there. If you want more specific critiques on animation I can help you with that since it's what I do.
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Feb 4, 2013 09:29
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DiHK posted:https://vimeo.com/58421234 I was a student not so long ago as well, so take my advice as you will. Don't feel like you need to include everything. Better to have a short reel with a few awesome things than a long one full of weekly homework assignments. I agree that it could be a lot shorter and you should have your contact info available from the start. As far as organization, you show clips of the animated egg mech three separate times, those should be consolidated. For an animation generalist reel I'd suggest organizing it by project and showing the animated parts first with maybe a second or two of the technical stuff before moving on to show the next project. Also, the split screen with the multiple samples is awkward trying to see all of those things at once in different contexts. Better to keep them separate (what would be even better is a guy hefting a bag of things, walking with it and then having it tear open so bits fall out/bounce around).
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Feb 4, 2013 15:11
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Chernabog posted:I'm going to shoot it straight, don't take any of this personally. Thanks Chern, Cocoa. School can be a bit of an echo chamber and while i've felt that the much of that stuff is sub par that's not the sort of thing you hear from peers (or most instructors... which is stupid). So, i think the best work in there is the VFX stuff, however i only have the final comp and the models now so i cannot make breakdowns for it. Should i throw out that stuff all together or just use it as b-roll to any new work? Should i bother doing a turntable or 3 for the models in those shots for the sake of cutting a VFX only reel? On animation... please be specific. I had to cut a 10 second piece at the beginning of this reel because the actors i sourced for it might as well have been wooden planks so the whole thing came off like poo. I think the sneaky walk bit is ok (35 seconds in on the first reel) but the lighting/comp is terrible and i wish i had a playblast of it because there's no going back to re-render it. As far as Egg Mech goes I've read elsewhere that i should stick to real life things and put the fancy/fun stuff away. I have a updated model of that mech and it's ready to texture but i wounder if i should even bother (i have the mocap data too but i think i would key any new work using the mocap piece as reference. I've also thought about comping the second pass of that in to some plate footage... ?).
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Feb 4, 2013 19:52
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Well, you are (in theory) always updating your reel, so you can keep whatever you want right now and phase it out as you make new and better stuff. At this point I think you are better off focusing on new stuff. I wouldn't bother with turntables unless you want to be a modeler. Or unless you have a really awesome model that you want to show anyway, but that should be an extra, not the main focus if you want a vfx reel. Is all the animation Mo-Cap? I have never worked with that so I can't help you there, but just from an animation standpoint everything looks rigid and computer-generated. On the sneak, the sneak itself is really fast so its hard to see. It's ok, but it could have more overlapping action in the torso and the arms. When he does the sidestep he doesn't have any weight to him. Then the moving hold feels like you didn't touch the graph/curve editor and the computer is doing all the work. The throw is a bit better. It has more force and overlapping action. The poses could still be exaggerated a lot more, especially the anticipation and the throw. When he is winding back there is no easing. Speaking of that pose, it feels out of balance, in part because he floats to it and in part because it is not pushed far enough. He should get to that pose really quick and then hold it. And it should be more dynamic. Like he is reaaally going to throw the ball very hard. On the egg mech, first of all, the sound fxs are very distracting in a bad way. It also doesn't even feel like it is synched, so I would get rid of the sound altogether. The whole thing feels very robotic. And you may say "well, he is a robot!". And you are right. But the rules of animation still apply. All the motions are even and jerky. Robots in real life move in very swift, calculated, precise movements. Point A to point B. Point B to point C. You can take this route, or you can make it more human like, in which case you don't want it to look robotic (aka computer-generated) The feet are sliding a bit. They should be stuck to the ground unless you have a good reason to slide them (i.e. they are actually meant to slide because the particular action calls for it) I like the way he falls, but when he lands there is no weight to him. You could make him bounce a bit. Or shake the camera. Again, there is no easing either. The spider mech walk isn't bad but you could stand to loop it a bit longer and give it a bit more up and down movement. I'm not gonna go over the whole thing in extreme detail but you get the idea. There are some nice poses on the 2D part but the art is unappealing and there really isn't much animation. The bouncy ball is nice but it isn't reel material, it is like a first year student assignment. In general, your 2D stuff feels stronger animation-wise but the drawings aren't helping you. Hope this helps you, and again, I don't mean to make you feel terrible but to send you in the right direction. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 06:14
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I'm taking a flash animation course at my community college and I'm glad I took the chance because I'm really enjoying it - and for almost no other reason. The professor is completely, utterly awful and I kind of feel bad for him because so many of the students really don't do any listening so it's sad to watch him get really frustrated with them but on the other hand he's just such a bumbling fool and so hard to follow (it reminds me of when Slate diagrammed a bunch of Sarah Palin sentences) that I usually just resort to looking up how-tos and trial by error (I'm not even saying that just to dump on him, either, he's not very well-regarded). Anyways, I guess I'll post my stuff in here! I took a couple animation classes in high school and between that and all the post-it flipbooks I did as a kid something must've stuck because my linework is really rough but visualizing it comes really easy and I'm glad I have my own copy of Flash now because I could do this for hours (and have been, now that I have a tablet). Something quick and dirty, just for fun:  Question: when I have motion in symbols and I try to export a video (or gif) file of my animation, the motion in the symbols doesn't translate so I have a bunch of still objects. What am I doing wrong?
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Feb 14, 2013 08:50
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So here's a cartoon my friend and I made that sums up working in the retail sector in about 15 seconds. On the technical side, I think doing short, one-punchline cartoons like this has been great to fine tune our animation. It's more detailed than any of our past endeavours and we haven't caught any major screwups after putting it out (like what is usually the case). Plus we were able to get it out ahead of when we planned, rather than grossly behind. Looking back from a creator's perspective I see things we could have cleaned up on but all in all I'm happy with it.
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Feb 17, 2013 17:52
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Hey animators, I have a question. What do you call this kind of animation: You have a single image and animate that by distorting it, moving its' layers etc. From what I read, it's done by using the puppet tool in after effects. But are there other (maybe free?) programs that can do this, too?
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Feb 18, 2013 13:24
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Crossposting this from the CGI thread because this thread gets like no people posting in it and I'm not sure where to post this anyways. Just finished off my first, big, group project. Lots of heartbreak and effort was involved. ROCKS.  I did all the animation past 27 seconds, plus all the previs stuff, bit of preproduction, bits and bobs. The director didn't really like deviating much from his ideas. Really I should've done all the animation, but I've been depressed recently because of reasons and I needed to reduce as much stress as possible.
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Feb 21, 2013 02:37
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This came out a few days ago. It was an entire solo animation by 'Mike Inel' which originally started as a finals project due in month and a half. Though he didn't have it all done by then (I think maybe 2 minutes?), he ended up finishing it up finally. I don't really follow the animation scene and never heard of this guy at all until now, but what I've read now makes him sound like a solid animator judging from various comments/blogs I could dig up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1xicOvYd3Q
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Feb 27, 2013 08:53
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I'm learning how to use AE and I have a bunch of traditional animations I made for a game I'm working on. So I put together this intro thing from the assets I had. I'm hoping to put together a bunch of footage for a kickstarter eventually.  https://vimeo.com/60699110
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Feb 28, 2013 01:36
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this is exactly the extent to which hertzfeldt should be discussed
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Mar 3, 2013 11:47
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Finally have a new showreel. Had to pad it a bit with old work, but I think it's looking good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIiZZwLk88I I am going to create a temporary portfolio site tomorrow. Just a simple div design so I can apply for internships. When I finish this year of my course, I'll be able to do it justice.
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Mar 5, 2013 02:18
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Thought I'd finally weigh in here. I've been looking into animation for as long as I can remember, but for whatever reason I only just recently sat down and actually worked on something practical, so here's my first ever animation. It was great fun and a lot of things seemed to come naturally, are there any good exercises for simple animations that would make for good practice, working up to perhaps a larger project? What are the best resources for animation theory and technical info?
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Mar 18, 2013 11:46
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Get The Animator's Survival Kit. It is the best resource on walks/runs and animation in general. You should do the "bouncing ball" exercise, it is one of the classics that will teach you about timing and squash/stretch. http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/01b/bball.shtml Animating a flour sack walk cycle is good too. Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHAsoVDLR9c Here you can learn a bit about personality and motion and because you are using a simple shape you don't need to worry about lots of details, just about the kinetics. Later you can make little acting pieces with a flour sack as well. Like him lifting a rock, jumping and whatnot. Once you get the hang of the principles of animation you can do the same with a humanoid character. And so on.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:42
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Chernabog posted:Get The Animator's Survival Kit. It is the best resource on walks/runs and animation in general. I'm not trying to be a contrarian but I think this book is really bad for beginners. I tried working from it when I was first starting out and I couldn't make any sense of it, and I have seen the same thing happen to a lot of other beginning animators. I think everyone needs to own it and use it eventually, but it has a lot of less-constructive qualities: - it's dogmatic - it's confusing, particularly when the drawings are all piled up on top of each other - it meanders around Williams' personal history, making it hard to find specific things. I think the Preston Blair book is a better place to start. There is also a ton of material to download at animationmeat.com
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Mar 18, 2013 18:53
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Hm... you might have a point there. I got it like 8 years ago so my memory is hazy. I actually can't remember if it was useful before I knew the basics or not, I just know that it has been very useful overall.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:22
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Hi everyone, I'm just wrapping up a somewhat unfulfilling university course, and I thought a nice way to unwind would be to learn animation. I've started by refreshing/learning proper anatomy as I haven't drawn in like a decade, while slowly easing myself into Maya/3DS/Mudbox and Houdini, though not all at once. I was thinking of setting myself some goals, having gotten the principles of proportion and perspective nailed down within a year, as well as the basics of each program. My question is though, is it a realistic goal to be able to rig, animate, texture, et cetera a short 1-5 minute 3D animation after 3 years of a few hours "study" a day? Obviously I'm not talking anything Dreamworks quality, but not Microsoft 3D Movie Maker either.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:40
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I'd say it is more than realistic. If you really push yourself you can easily learn the software (you don't need to learn all of them) in 6 months. Once you learn all the basics you can definitely make something in another 6 months or so. Your first attempt is probably going to be slow and not great but that's where you will learn the most. You should also start with something very simple. 5 minutes is A LOT. I wouldn't go any further than 20 seconds for your very first project. And not longer than a minute for your second.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:53
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Had a few spare minutes this afternoon so I sloppily threw this together following one of the tutorials linked earlier I think one of the most difficult things that keeps popping up is frame timing - Are there any concrete rules on frame pacing? Right now I'm working mostly by feel and putting faster frames where I think they should do instinctively, and slower ones respectively etc. Also god drat animation is a lot more difficult than I ever gave it credit for.
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Mar 19, 2013 09:44
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Timing and spacing are pretty much THE challenge of animation. It's like, all there is. It's the only thing. I suspect you're working straight ahead right now (drawing one frame at a time, in a forward-progressing manner). It also looks like you're working "on ones," that is, you've got your framerate set to 24fps and you're just wading right in. Have you tried starting out on twos, setting the fps to 12 (on twos) and doing a first pass, and then bumping it up to 24 to put in more drawings and decide which ones should be exposed on twos and which drawings should be exposed for ones? It's looking really good so far, but it's still a little fast - it probably means you just need to add some more drawings to slow down some parts of the cycle. Faster = fewer drawings Slower = more drawings
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Mar 19, 2013 12:51
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Chernabog posted:I'd say it is more than realistic. If you really push yourself you can easily learn the software (you don't need to learn all of them) in 6 months. Once you learn all the basics you can definitely make something in another 6 months or so. Your first attempt is probably going to be slow and not great but that's where you will learn the most. You should also start with something very simple. 5 minutes is A LOT. I wouldn't go any further than 20 seconds for your very first project. And not longer than a minute for your second. Cool, appreciate the advice.
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Mar 19, 2013 14:41
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neonnoodle posted:I'm not trying to be a contrarian but I think this book is really bad for beginners. I tried working from it when I was first starting out and I couldn't make any sense of it, and I have seen the same thing happen to a lot of other beginning animators. I didn't find it to be confusing but dogmatic is certainly the best word to describe the rigidity with which he lays down his rules.
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Mar 20, 2013 05:05
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Here's a silly thing I made as a lipsync project for animation class: Ham Call This is a weird class, the teacher's kind of a lame duck so it's more like vaguely guided self-teaching and I'm trying to push myself really hard in lieu of in-class challenge. Picked up Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit, which was eye-opening if a little kinda way ahead of me. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Mar 21, 2013 |
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Mar 20, 2013 09:20
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Anyone have any experience with rendering stuff out of Photoshop? I'm doing some really simple frame by frame animations and the renders are coming out all wonk. I did one and everything turned out fine, it plays back fine, but no matter how many times I remake this second one Photoshop adds black bars on either side, and the .mp4 comes out really blown out. No idea what I'm doing  e: uhhh I managed to fix it... sort of? At least it's functional for what I want it for. But if anyone knows anything about why h.264 sometimes results in blown out files I'm all ears, I've never been able to figure that one out besides rerendering it a bunch of ways until it comes out right. mareep fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Mar 24, 2013 |
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Mar 24, 2013 05:12
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redjenova posted:Anyone have any experience with rendering stuff out of Photoshop? I'm doing some really simple frame by frame animations and the renders are coming out all wonk. I did one and everything turned out fine, it plays back fine, but no matter how many times I remake this second one Photoshop adds black bars on either side, and the .mp4 comes out really blown out. No idea what I'm doing Is there a difference of image size between the first and second file? If you have access to AE or Premiere I would recommend exporting individual frames from PS. Premiere is easier if you want to hack and slash at the timing, otherwise AE is less obtuse when it comes to rendering. But if you must render from PS .mov may give better results. DiHK fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 25, 2013 |
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Mar 25, 2013 18:53
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No, they were the same file. I considered using AE but the timing was laid out in Photoshop (and I don't know what I'm doing on that front really, I'm a lot more used to animating in After Effects) and it was so convenient to render it out through there. But yeah, I tried rendering it out a different file type and it worked. The two images were the exact same size so it was a real head-scratcher but a lot of rendering problems are. Thanks!
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Mar 26, 2013 19:35
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