The first pass of the dialouge shot went well, I recieved some constructive criticism from different people which helped me to push some of the elements my shot was lacking. I mainly looked at tightening up the timing in various section of the shot and hitting the right accents at the right time. The lip sync, however it’s not quite there yet and needs more work.
Check in again for some more updates soon.
great!
getting better and better…..
could last a little longer though.
Roy.
Hey Avner. Ok, I’ll bite. Remember any opinions, mine or anyone else’s are from the ‘for what its worth’ category…
You have some basic concepts working in your staging. You develop the mounting tension of two ideas regarding what to do about the central character’s dilemma with your cuts effectively. If you don’t know the name Serge Eisenstein, he is the one who gave us this kind of oscillating cut sequence to build tension. Among other things I’m a history geek.
You start off (first 80 frames) with some basic movement (feet of characters aren’t nailed to the floor… a good thing) that works over all.
Unfortunately, you quickly shift from animating the whole character to animating primarily the just hands. This tendency to rely on the hands for your acting pops up a lot.
Hands are important and powerful tools, but they must first hang on, or extend from the line of action for emphasis and appeal. You need to work more reversals into your acting choices. Reverse the line of action. Bend to the left, bend to the right, bend to the left, on the accents and story beats in your work. It can be quite subtle or quite broad depending in the needs of the performance.
Here are a plethora of links that relate to basic acting choices, poses, line of action, flow lines, competing angles, and the list goes on. First, Keith Lango (of course):
List of all of Keith Lango tutorials found here:
http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?page_id=226
KL on posing (some are video tuts, big downloads):
http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/march05/marchFreeVTS.zip
http://www.klangoanimation.com/store/samples/VTS01_free.mov
http://www.klangoanimation.com/store/samples/VTS02_free.mov
http://www.keithlango.com/tutorials/old/powerCenter/powerCenter.htm
Be sure to peruse the entire list of tutorials on Keith’s site if you haven’t already.
Here is one that many people don’t seem to know much about; Kyle Dunlevy:
Check out his work…
http://www.kyledunlevy.com/Animation.html
Then check out his notes on animation for two campaigns he animated for:
robin hood flour:
http://www.kyledunlevy.com/givingMORE.html
walmart electronics department:
http://www.kyledunlevy.com/wallmartnotes.html
If this is a rehash for you I apologize. I’ve been aware of this stuff for a while and still find it useful to go back and review. There are a lot of core concepts laid out in the various links above. And lots of good terms/vocabulary to help with talking about animation in critiques…
Ok, back to critique. You appear to be trying to match the intensity of your animation to the audio. Working the line of action with some more variety in your arms and hands following along will probably help. One thing you currently haven’t addressed at all is the “click” sound (frame 30-ish). Perhaps your central character can be holding a cup of coffee and drop it when he realizes his “angel self” is standing in front of him and talking. “Holy S@&#, what’s going on?! OMG! I’m loosing it!” (drop cup)
Another inconsistency is the fact that the wanted poster shows a mean and determined villain, but your central character is anything but. Perhaps the Wanted poster should look and hapless and helpless as your central character… might actually be funny.
As for your acting choices, you have some nice initial things going on with the ‘devil’ character. “Oh yeah, great.” is handled with the right amount of intensity although your transitions could use a little more arc. After that on “Now that we are accessories to espionage and murder!” falls very flat because only the left hand is doing the acting. Read through the accents you are hitting with the hand gestures and seek to find a way to move the line of action with reversals on the same notes. You could probably hit a bigger accent on “…murder!” with a little overshoot followed by a settle into the final pose on that phrase. This use of shifting the line of action to hit your accents is a general concern that I believe you can use through out this sequence.
When you focus on the angel character you have him start with his left hand and end with his right. This is avoiding twinning but is not exactly how people gesture. Decide for yourself whether this character is right-handed or left-handed and then build gestures with that implied dominance. Both hands can be used in a gesture even if one only rises slightly while the other gives the gesture its form. I like the accusatory finger point (182-208) but it needs a little overshoot and settle. I’m not as happy with the gesture on “…cut a deal” only because he crosses his body with the gesture, closing him off from the camera.
Finally, the two gestures at the end (307-315 and 331-358) are not working well together. The first pose (307-315) is good but could maybe be pushed a little with some competing angles between the hands and head/eye-line. The second gesture (your out) is not working for me at all. He isn’t deciding something, he is reacting to the futility of the situation. He should look frustrated and at his wits end.. not like he gets to decide what happens. Also, its too much like the last pose (monotonous) and is a bit of a crutch compared to other possible acting choices.
There is obviously a lot to talk about in animation, (friggin’ long comment) but then that’s why I like this art form. One area to start looking into is the subject of contrast. The line-of-action for all three characters in the beginning is way too monotonous and/or similar. Avoid putting multiple ‘fence posts’ into your shots. You manage to break this up later on with your staging but its something to avoid throughout.
Ok. That’s it for now. Hope this is useful. There are better opinions to see than mine but I think this reply can give you something to chew on.
Good luck with your entry.