I just checked out your reels, nice work, I am in the computer animation at sheridan right now so it's cool to see what other people have done for their projects.
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jeff www.jeffmerritt.ca
The good: Your 3d work is fantastic. The ugly: The thin horizontal lines on the ripped paper bother me quite a bit. I think you should leave the paper border a clean white.
The bad: It's hard to pay attention to the story content when there's a shortage of life to the animation. Audiences can get distracted when single body parts move one at a time because it's unnatural. Also, in the Shrek impersonation, "AAAAHHH!" with the shaky hands is a good action, but those and others like it are hidden behind a really limited range of movement (or so it seems). Really try and go over the top. Not in the absolute sense - cartoon doesn't have to mean crazy - but relative to where you are now, because when reality sets in you'll find a good middle ground.
Also try punching up the volume (literally) on the mouth positions. It's one thing if the character is mumbling, then he wouldn't be enunciating and so tiny spaces between the lips works. But screaming and being desparate and such, one would expect far more dramatic (again, in comparison) shapes and magnitudes so the sounds seemed to be actually formed by that particular mouth. See about getting the cheeks into it as well.
I just checked out your reels, nice work, I am in the computer animation at sheridan right now so it's cool to see what other people have done for their projects.
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jeff
www.jeffmerritt.ca
The good: Your 3d work is fantastic. The ugly: The thin horizontal lines on the ripped paper bother me quite a bit. I think you should leave the paper border a clean white.
The bad: It's hard to pay attention to the story content when there's a shortage of life to the animation. Audiences can get distracted when single body parts move one at a time because it's unnatural. Also, in the Shrek impersonation, "AAAAHHH!" with the shaky hands is a good action, but those and others like it are hidden behind a really limited range of movement (or so it seems). Really try and go over the top. Not in the absolute sense - cartoon doesn't have to mean crazy - but relative to where you are now, because when reality sets in you'll find a good middle ground.
Also try punching up the volume (literally) on the mouth positions. It's one thing if the character is mumbling, then he wouldn't be enunciating and so tiny spaces between the lips works. But screaming and being desparate and such, one would expect far more dramatic (again, in comparison) shapes and magnitudes so the sounds seemed to be actually formed by that particular mouth. See about getting the cheeks into it as well.