Class 5 Progress reel

Here is my most updated reel, with most of the work I've done so far at AM except the very first tests of the first class. Those are probably the shots I'll be polishing in the last term to have my final animation demo reel ready.
Thank you for whoever's watching this :)

AM progress reel class5 from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

2 Characters acting shot

Here is the 2 characters acting shot that I did in class 5. Soooo much things that I've learned with this challenging exercise, most of the things have been mentioned in my earlier post. Any comments are always very welcome.
Thanks for watching.

AM 2 Characters shot from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Class 5 summary + Tips on animation

I think that my 5th class at Animation Mentor was the hardest of the programme.
I kept learning from the first day of the class and I realised even more how being an animator can be difficult.
To keep it a bit short, here is a small list of the things that I think I really learned during that term:

* The hands : they're super important and can give a lot of character to a piece of work. I think that I made a good choice trying to animate a woman character because it helped me see more details in they're hands. For those of you who may be reading these notes, next time you watch people, pay close attention to their hands, you may be surprised at how much detail they can give.
One of the best advices about animating woman's hands was to avoid to keep them wide open. As soon as you do they tend to lose their feminity. They work a lot better with closed shapes.

* The face : during my time at AM I started to become comfortable with body mechanics, but something that was still a big challenge for me was the face. Altough I think that I've learned a lot from my 1 character shot , when I looked back at it I couldn't help noticing this character that really feels lifeless whatever it was trying to do. Then I realised what was actually missing. The face is really complex and requires a lot of craft to have it look like one single piece instead of different parts moving at different times. A lip sync that's slightly off, eyes that are not expressing the mood of the character, eyebrows that are moving independently of everything else and the illusion is gone.
A few things that I've learned here :
     - Try to get some clean arcs in the corner of the lips when the character is talking
     - You can get a lot of fluidity into the lip sync by moving the entire mouth up and down when necessary
     - When the mouth goes up, thing about moving the cheeks and maybe squashing the eyes a little bit too
     -  Don't forget to shape your eyes to your eyebrows. This one really adds a lot to the character
     -  Think about offsetting the eyebrows and eyelids movements. For most of the time the eyebrows start the movement then are followed by the eyelids one of two frames later.

That's it I think , there is a lot more but these points were really important to me as I wasn't considering them before. Thanks for reading :)

Class 504 - One person dialogue final

Finaly!!! I was really staring to feel sick with listening to the same sound over and over and over and over..... for the last few weeks. I'm happy to say that it's finished :)

This was submitted to my mentor last week, and today I had my critique

There are even more things that need to be improved :(

My hand shapes are working nicely but could still look more feminine.

There are also a few weight shifts that could be refined and well as some of the facial shapes that are not strong enough.

I will probably have a extra refined version for my final reel.

Any thoughts are always welcome

Going to heaven Finalized from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Class 503

Here is a revision of my shot with most of the suggestions applied to it.
The lipsync is a bit better but still needs a lot of work.
The eyebrows don't really feel connected with the rest of the face.
I'm still being told that the gesture for "honest " feels late. This will be corrected in my next and final version of the shot.

Going to heaven - Lipsync refined from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Lipsync blocking

The serious stuff has finally started :)
Last week we were busy with the facial animation blocking of our shot.
I tried to have all of the basic shapes working, but haven't really started to animate the eyebrows.
Here are the main things that I still need to change :
- My hands still feel masculine. The character rig has big hands, so I was suggested to avoid to show them in a completely open position
- My hips could be moving a bit more, especially when she says
- The breathing at the beginning doesn't look natural at all. What I did was just scalling up the upper part of the spine, which isn't really what's happening when somebody is breathing.
- My mouth shapes are a bit exagerated, especially with the "o" sound. Toning them down by not rolling the lips so much will probably help.
- I think that changing my last pose so that it doesn't look like the first pose in the shot will work better too.

Those are the main things that I'll be refining for my next version.

Going to heaven - Lipsync Blocking from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Class 5 started

Last week I started my 5th class at Animation Mentor. This term we ll continue with our previous shot and add the facial animation to it, and we ll have to animated a two characters dialogue.
My mentor for this term is Michelle Meeker, and she is seriously awesome. I really hope that I ll be able to push my boundaries even more for the weeks to come.