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My animation reel

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My animation reel

Hi guys,

I'm a newbie to this great forum. I just finished my 2d flash reel. Here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6hvv0aRoE0

Comments and crits welcome.

Thanks,

David

I think perhaps you should move your sumo piece closer to the beginning of your reel. It's better than some of the pieces before it, and you should always put your best stuff in the beginning. I wouldn't use that headphones guy in your reel at all, or perhaps move him to the end. He doesn't really move that much, so he doesn't show off your animation well.

As far as the individual pieces go, you know, I think you can really push your extremes in a lot of them. I can see some really tiny side-to-side movements of the dragon's head for example, but it's so small a movement that it's hard to see. You could probably triple the amount of side-to side of that dragon's head to make him more dynamic. On the same token, I think the gorilla could stretch his arm farther in his reaching pose and bend at the elbow more (as it looks now, it almost appears that the arm is only one symbol piece, and hard to tell it's actually two independent pieces. Use them to your advantage.)

If I'm being honest, I think I prefer your b/w frame-by-frame animation of the fighter better than any of the cutout things on your reel, simply because it looks the least like flash. I'm just not so sure on that backbend, it's a little fast and I can't tell why he does it.

Hi David and welcome to the AWN Forums.

I agree with Komori in that you can push your poses a lot more. I would lead with the Sumo guy, then the dragon, the gorilla, and then the kid walking. The rest you can leave out. These are your best pieces and the rest of them, are just not up to the same level.

You still need to work a lot on your animation. Especially your timing and solidity of your characters. Animation involves thinking, not just moving things to make them move.

The head phones guy. Don't just pop his foot up and down in one frame. Think about it. You usually tap your toes on the down beat. So the foot should take longer on the way up, then speed up as it head back to the ground. So you ease-in to the up pose, and ease-out into the down pose. And these are traditional ease-in and outs not the Flash ease-in and outs. The Flash ones are backwards.

Same with the dragon, think about it's timing and spacing. When it flaps, it's wings come up first. Then when the wings come down, they spread out to gather as much air under it's wings as possible. Because of all the air under the wings and since they are moving from and up movement to a downward movement, they will start slow. Then as the wings build momentum, they move faster to the final downward pose.

Also work on the solidity of your characters. The old guy playing the guitar is a great example of this. His pants move back and forth, but his shirt doesn't move. This looks especially strange since his guitar covers hit butt. It looks like his hips shrink and lose volume.

Work on these things and your animation will improve quite a bit.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Hey Dave,

Komori and Ape are right, you should work out your movements a lot better. Observe the way things move in real life, once you are able to immitate that then you will be able to go wherever you want with it. As for the majority of your work in this reel, the flat, cut out, motion tween, animation, I would leave it all out. Someone once said, "You're only as good as your worst work of art" and Your animation reel is no place for filler animation. Although the timing was a little off kilter I believe that the one frame by frame segment is above all your strongest. Although it may be difficult, I would advise you to continue on in this more traditional style.

Wow. I first want to say thanks for all of your great advice and comments. Its nice to get useful feedback. I understand all of the specific points you all have made.

As you know, your demo is a constant work in progress as you produce newer and hopefully better animation. I'm sure its obvious by the animation in my demo that I don't have much experience in the industry. My career goal is to work for an animation studio as an animator. My goal with this demo was to demonstrate an understanding for the basics( walkcycle, run, jump, flying, etc.), which I'm still working on. I really wanted to just get something out there so that I could get feedback on what to work on, which you have helped with.

I will tweak those things here and there, but I don't want to get caught up in constantly tweaking the same animation over and over. I'd rather continue to learn and get better by doing new things.

Its really great to get help from fellow artists and animators. I feel no matter what my skill level reaches, I will always be a student of animation.

Thanks Komori, Animated Ape and SpaceFighter2000. Your words are greatly appreciated.

btw, I have more animation at aniboom.

http://www.aniboom.com/boomzones/dsalinas2000

Have a great weekend,

Dave

it doesnt look like you are really challenging yourself there

being able to put together a few loops just means you know how to copy from a book.

choose some emotions, then choose some situations and try and animate those feeling to those situations. that should provide you with ample challenge to allow you to stretch your animation wings.

eg.

fear/happiness/lonelyness

putting the hoover in the basement/answering the phone/getting a book from a box

anything really

but answering the phone with any of the above emotions will provide unique challenges.

the key is to thoroughly understand who your character is and what had gone before to bring us to the point where we see the phone ring. why are they happy, afraid, lonely

challenge yourself

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