Sangfroid
04-14-2006, 05:52 AM
These are just recommendations, so you don't have to follow them but it is based on issues I’ve noticed so far.
Well, I’ve decided that I probably won’t be entering this one this time around except maybe off the record. A few quick pointers for ye who have been going at the exercises thus far. Some of you are progressing nicely some of you are still bogged down. but don't let that discourage you, seriously keep working at it, this exercise is hard the first time around but when it clicks and you have a real "ah ha" moment you will not regret it,
If I’m truly honest none of you have had this moment yet but some of you are getting half way closer to it. First I would recommend starting and completing the ball bounce at its finest stage before heading into the realm of the flag, if you try to do both at once you will overload your brain and (unless you're taking performance enhancing drugs or some ****) not understand fully the exercises at hand. I have personally found the idea of tackling one basic thing at a time very useful, it enables you to see the big general essence of what you want and need, rather than disappearing off into a technical realm of Ball is here at point x bla bla bla which will inevitably end with a very mechanical and unconvincing (as well as unintended) piece of animation, as in when you step back and look at what you've have produced you suddenly realise (whoa that's not what I wanted at all). Essentially what you are trying to do here is connect your mind to what you want on the screen. The reason why people start with the ball bounce is you do not have to worry about multiple objects or complex forms.
So more importantly try to see the thing as a whole Get the essence of what it is you are trying to say and decide before hand what the message is. If the ball is heavy Know in your mind that it is heavy. Play it through in your head first. Once you know what you want you can then start finding out how to put that down keeping it loose and general to begin with. So where does the ball start and end? Where is it in the middle? Break it down into steps but always keep everything related to the big general picture you have layed out first. And also rather importantly don't just rely on onion skinning to get you through Onion skinning is only really used for finite inbetweening you can get to that later when you're plotting you’re key positions and even when using onion skinning you should scrub your animation. By this I don't mean go through the 1 frame to your left and the 1 frame to your right. Get a feel for what is going on around the frame you are drawing so scrub as much to the left and as much to the right as you feel you can manage. See the animation as a whole not just 1 frame at a time all the time remembering what it is you wanted to begin with.
Don’t copy the diagram frame by frame for your final output
Diagrams are breakdowns of a suggested method, once you know the diagram you can move onto really understanding the exercise. I think a lot of people misinterpret this stage and suddenly make balls flying to the moon meeting there g/f and killing a villain in ultra fishbowl perspective at 50 fps. This is not what is meant by taking it further; you are still doing a simple ball bounce from the side. The difference now is that you are grasping a real understanding for what the ball is doing as a whole rather than looking at the diagram to make sure the ball is on the right position on the ark or you’re arks are too high etc.
Make no mistake these exercises are a lot harder to do well than they first appear. But the more you get them the more they will feed into the rest of your animation. And when you REALY get them you suddenly find yourself seeing them in everything animation.
The flag wave is a particularly difficult exercise to start with. A lot of people struggle with this one at first. But some day you will have to go back and conquer it one way or another, so why not now! By now most of you have shown you can do a piece of fabric being perpetually smothered with a noisy fart. This is the first step and a lot of you have understood that aswell as how to make a loop
key1: n_n_n key2: _n_n_ key 3: n_n_n
But now you have to do the really hard bit. You are no longer following a nice little diagram telling you where to put marks. Suddenly you're out in the open and you're ****ed! "What the hell? My Flag looks like it's .........its OH GOD IT'S HORRIBLE WHAT The HELL HAPPEND"?
A good way to start is to go outside find/or make a flag wait for a gust and see what happens to it, make some notes in yer sketchbook and bring them back inside. Now you have something far more interesting than your fart in the wind. The flag starts as a piece of drapery hanging from a pole. A brief gust of wind eases by blowing the drapery a bit then it rests back to a static position. A stronger gust kicks in and Knocks the flag right out into blowing along in the wind. It eases back a bit before an even stronger gust goes in the opposite direction knocking it back and forth till it blows steadily again then the suddenly the wind stops, and the flag falls back down swinging like a rag until it remains static again. You're building up and releasing tension whilst doing this. Now Very quickly I scribbled out some keys in flash to just give you some kind of basic idea of what I was saying. But I missed out quite a lot as I’m short for time. But in this example you see a piece of drapery then a gust heads in straight away blow the flag steady, knock it about then release it. Obviously this is not a very ambitious attempt. I would hope you would take it further than I have here.
Ok well I hope that helps in some way. I'll be happy to answer any questions about the exercises. Either in this thread or pm away. I know there's plenty of stuff I may have forgotten to add but I’m kind of in a rush >_<.
But good luck to everyone!
Well, I’ve decided that I probably won’t be entering this one this time around except maybe off the record. A few quick pointers for ye who have been going at the exercises thus far. Some of you are progressing nicely some of you are still bogged down. but don't let that discourage you, seriously keep working at it, this exercise is hard the first time around but when it clicks and you have a real "ah ha" moment you will not regret it,
If I’m truly honest none of you have had this moment yet but some of you are getting half way closer to it. First I would recommend starting and completing the ball bounce at its finest stage before heading into the realm of the flag, if you try to do both at once you will overload your brain and (unless you're taking performance enhancing drugs or some ****) not understand fully the exercises at hand. I have personally found the idea of tackling one basic thing at a time very useful, it enables you to see the big general essence of what you want and need, rather than disappearing off into a technical realm of Ball is here at point x bla bla bla which will inevitably end with a very mechanical and unconvincing (as well as unintended) piece of animation, as in when you step back and look at what you've have produced you suddenly realise (whoa that's not what I wanted at all). Essentially what you are trying to do here is connect your mind to what you want on the screen. The reason why people start with the ball bounce is you do not have to worry about multiple objects or complex forms.
So more importantly try to see the thing as a whole Get the essence of what it is you are trying to say and decide before hand what the message is. If the ball is heavy Know in your mind that it is heavy. Play it through in your head first. Once you know what you want you can then start finding out how to put that down keeping it loose and general to begin with. So where does the ball start and end? Where is it in the middle? Break it down into steps but always keep everything related to the big general picture you have layed out first. And also rather importantly don't just rely on onion skinning to get you through Onion skinning is only really used for finite inbetweening you can get to that later when you're plotting you’re key positions and even when using onion skinning you should scrub your animation. By this I don't mean go through the 1 frame to your left and the 1 frame to your right. Get a feel for what is going on around the frame you are drawing so scrub as much to the left and as much to the right as you feel you can manage. See the animation as a whole not just 1 frame at a time all the time remembering what it is you wanted to begin with.
Don’t copy the diagram frame by frame for your final output
Diagrams are breakdowns of a suggested method, once you know the diagram you can move onto really understanding the exercise. I think a lot of people misinterpret this stage and suddenly make balls flying to the moon meeting there g/f and killing a villain in ultra fishbowl perspective at 50 fps. This is not what is meant by taking it further; you are still doing a simple ball bounce from the side. The difference now is that you are grasping a real understanding for what the ball is doing as a whole rather than looking at the diagram to make sure the ball is on the right position on the ark or you’re arks are too high etc.
Make no mistake these exercises are a lot harder to do well than they first appear. But the more you get them the more they will feed into the rest of your animation. And when you REALY get them you suddenly find yourself seeing them in everything animation.
The flag wave is a particularly difficult exercise to start with. A lot of people struggle with this one at first. But some day you will have to go back and conquer it one way or another, so why not now! By now most of you have shown you can do a piece of fabric being perpetually smothered with a noisy fart. This is the first step and a lot of you have understood that aswell as how to make a loop
key1: n_n_n key2: _n_n_ key 3: n_n_n
But now you have to do the really hard bit. You are no longer following a nice little diagram telling you where to put marks. Suddenly you're out in the open and you're ****ed! "What the hell? My Flag looks like it's .........its OH GOD IT'S HORRIBLE WHAT The HELL HAPPEND"?
A good way to start is to go outside find/or make a flag wait for a gust and see what happens to it, make some notes in yer sketchbook and bring them back inside. Now you have something far more interesting than your fart in the wind. The flag starts as a piece of drapery hanging from a pole. A brief gust of wind eases by blowing the drapery a bit then it rests back to a static position. A stronger gust kicks in and Knocks the flag right out into blowing along in the wind. It eases back a bit before an even stronger gust goes in the opposite direction knocking it back and forth till it blows steadily again then the suddenly the wind stops, and the flag falls back down swinging like a rag until it remains static again. You're building up and releasing tension whilst doing this. Now Very quickly I scribbled out some keys in flash to just give you some kind of basic idea of what I was saying. But I missed out quite a lot as I’m short for time. But in this example you see a piece of drapery then a gust heads in straight away blow the flag steady, knock it about then release it. Obviously this is not a very ambitious attempt. I would hope you would take it further than I have here.
Ok well I hope that helps in some way. I'll be happy to answer any questions about the exercises. Either in this thread or pm away. I know there's plenty of stuff I may have forgotten to add but I’m kind of in a rush >_<.
But good luck to everyone!