Monday, August 9, 2010

3rd pass of the Swing

Swing exercise, 3rd pass from Ryan D on Vimeo.



More tweaking, mostly with the first jump, the jump-down to swing and the landing. Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Diego, I see what you mean about the action being difficult and I agree but it's too far done to change it now; I'm going to have to accept a little bit of superheroics on Monkey Norman's part here.

It's close to the point now where I'll have to accept that this isn't the piece that's going to get me into Pixar :P I'm going to take a few days off from it but please, if you see any remaining, easy fixes, please let me know.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Very nice to see where this is going! This blog was a great idea...

    We will be judged for the worst piece on our reel... so keep going.

    For now, I remembered a thought from Fred saying that we can't create something we don't understand. Of course this is a hard action to try out. The whole shot is great, I like the poses, there is a mini 3 act structure to it that is working really well, specially the end.

    Feels that the polishing you need to make it flawless is related to tithing all the actions and choices to one single personality, one idea. For example, if I were this guy, I wouldn't lift my hand too far from the bar in the first jump.. I would keep it really close for safety - before performance.

    So what is your character thinking at each action? Does it change during the shot?

    Something else that might help is to think which actions are voluntary and which are involuntary. For example: the involuntary actions like re-balancing himself after standing in the bar causes his body to overlap, but there is a little delay on it, that makes it feel voluntary.

    I hope this helps somehow! It's just philosophy that I'm making up as I try to help.


    Keep on swinging!

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  3. I agree with you Rodri, here. I see two characters here. But I actually like this lack of fear at the beginning - it makes him more monkeylike, more swingy (if we see the videos of monkeys, on a lot of them a monkey even flies through the air without any contact with the tree, which is quite superheroic :). I think it is a cool animation from Ryan, and all three parts work, but there are not consistent entirely in the type of movement /like I wrote on facebook/. What I ment by push-ups there is that it doesnt feel like he is swinging on the arm but actually pulling himself up on it. In the actual monkey swinging I imagine it more like - the arm stays straight a little longer after the low point and it is the body/legs that throw him up in the air, so he can let go and grab with the other arm. I mean, this movement here is also very believable, just less monkeylike than the beginning and the end of this animation.

    If the next Pixar movie is with monkeys, then who knows :)

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  4. Hi Ryan!
    I think you definitely hit a lot of notes and this piece is looking a lot better.
    So for polishing i would agree about making him a little off balanced at the first jump.
    As he is going for the second jump i think the screen left hand is going down too fast like its done by him on purpose,but i think it should drag behind and be like the way you have it when the body comes up.
    For the part that he hooks i like that he rotates his torso while he is in contact with the bar that makes a lot more seance.
    To add to the scene i think would be to lift his feet a little more up as he makes the second jump and maybe straighten the base of the torso a little in z it feels a bit broken because its to much to the right but i might be wrong just my view on this.
    Finally i totally agree with Anna on what she said about the monkey movement and all that try leading just a bit with the legs more so we see that its not the hand that makes the pull up but mostly the legs and hips that drive the action,you already have it but now in polish you can make it more obvious.
    Thats all bro!
    And yeeea i am totally lazy lately not good time for animating in Greece, hehe:)
    Take care.

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  5. Thanks for the input guys.

    One minor nitpick: He's not a monkey :P He's a Norman raised by monkeys; more like Tarzan than a monkey. Not being built like a monkey is obviously going to affect how monkeylike he can move.

    I see what you guys are saying about hanging on his arms more and I agree; I am making his movement more pendlulum-like, which was the original point of this exercise and got buried under all the extra crap.

    The legs are also going to be reworked during the swing and I've moved the arms around at the beginning for better staging too.

    But the objective isn't to make a convincing monkey performance; he's acting like a monkey but he doesn't have the anatomy of one.

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