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 :)

End of the 5th class

This blog has been inactive for some time, the reason being that the work at AM has been extremely intense. I can breath a bit now that the 5th class is finished, and will try to resume what has happened in the past few weeks, not right now but on my next post :)

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.

Small update

I've worked a bit more on my last shot, and here are the main things that I've updated
- I've refined the fingers a bit more to make them feel more alive
- Reworked the timing in some parts, especially where she says "....because you're honest ?... ". I had many comments about the gesture happening a bit late, so I had to review that.
- The hips part have also been refined to feel more natural.
- The most difficult has been to have the left arm a bit more 'present' in the shot but without distracting the main acting. Hope this works better.

I'm sure that there's still a lot that can be done but I'll keep it as it is until I start working on the face.

Going to heaven - Extra polish, no facial from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

End of Class 4

Woooow.
This is becoming very alarming!!! Where is all the time going? A few posts earlier I had just started my 4th class and now it's finished. This class has been the hardest so far.
What I learned before was like a small warm up session compared to the acting class. All of the animation principles have become a lot harder as well.
Depending on the mood of the character for example, the arcs, overlaps, settles and everything else have to be used in a certain way. Too much of a gesture or not enough of it makes the animation feel unnatural. That is where most of the great animators advice are to look at the world around you and observe all the time.
I've posted below the final submission of my acting shot, without the facial animation.
Right now I'll be relaxing a bit and in one week from now we'll start our next class where we'll be continuing with the present shot and add the facial animation to it.

Going to heaven - Polished from Krzysztof Boyoko on Vimeo.

Still a few things to fix here and there. Not particularly happy the the "... because you're HONEST ? " hand gesture. I'll probably post another update before I start the facial on this one.