YOU GUYS READY FOR AN MBR AFTER LIKE, 3 MONTHS!? Due date: 1 week Theme: OHKO (One Hit Knock Out) Shulkle's animation Spoiler Shulkle's MBR Profile http://maplemation.com/threads/shulkle-mbr-profile.32593/ Shulkle's Notes: Cramming is bad guys. Don't accept MBRs with a tight schedule. Grace's Animation Spoiler Grace's MBR profile http://maplemation.com/threads/gracelings-mbr-profile.34810/ Grace's Notes: In the video description.
Nice to see an MBR after so long! Super short speedy CnC: Both of you did great, and I especially notice the improvement in Grace's animation. Though I think it would've been beneficial for Grace's part to include a bit less dialogue and more fighting.
I'm for voting for Grace for this one. Spoiler: Shulkle Comment: Your animation was close to being flawless. Pain point: 1. Why are the text shaking left and right? 2. Compared to Grace you lacked elements that's why I didn't vote for you. 3. Shulkle dropping upon teleported looks difficult to understand. 4. So much still frames 5. Actors interactions good but can be done better 6. Lacked sound effects, etc.. 7. [Listing them all is going to be troublesome, and quite common sense to figure them out] Compliment: 1. Enjoy watching the text being easy to read Pretty sure you know how to correct your mistakes. Summary: You are a really good animator, but you just limit yourself to what you can potentially do. Spoiler: Grace Comment: Can see you are improving steadily. Pain point: 1. I understand watching shows with subtitles always places the text at the bottom but if you were to approrpriately place it to your actor it would be a lot easier for us viewers to watch and read (Centralised text is easier on the eyes) 2. The text should be made bigger 3. Text effects are great but you can still improve it (You probably can figure this urself) 4. Transition can be done better (See how you'll adjust it) 5. When Grace was shifting left to right you can actually blur the actor to show more realism (Camera get's blurred on moving targets and in this example, blurness on Grace will better indicate the farness of Grace from the camera) 6. [There's more pain points I can put in but this should be enough till your next animation] You still have a lot more potential that you have to make even better animations, just keep doing what you do Compliment: 1. I really enjoy watching you implementing sound effects at appropriate timings, not often I see that 2. Can really feel that demonic side of Grace with that darkened effect, and glowing red eye really shows she is half human, half demon Spoiler: My 2 cents This is just a very general advise anyone can use. Make animations that are actually realistic (if that meets your needs), if you can't do that then just improve slowly. Realism is everything you encounter in your daily life so use it to your advantage.
Spoiler: Shulkle I was hoping you would have added sounds to your part. Damn. The only real problem I have with the intro is this part here. When he's falling it seems like he's about to fall on his back, yet he lands on his stomach and from what I can tell, there isn't a pose of him flipping over before he lands. Just somethin' I wasn't too fond of when I noticed it. Everything else in the intro was mostly fine, there's nothing you can really do about those swords looking like paper so I can't really fault you for that. Moving on to the fight though...one thing I've noticed about your animations is your lack of inbetweens like here for example, even if you only had one frame of him crouching while his hand was on the sword (think of SwingOF_3) that would have been fine, but he just suddenly gets up and the sword is in his hand. Here's another example of what I'm talking about. What happened here? Why was Grace just swinging at thin air? Maybe you had your character closer to her in the original version...? I'm not too sure. So uh... We got teleporting swords now? For real though, it just straight up pops into frame. One frame it's not there, one frame it is. It would have been much easier to just have it slowly come into the frame rather than it just suddenly appearing. And uh, wow that sword swing doesn't look like it has much power behind it. Other than those things, I kinda liked your part, the fight was a bit short though. Spoiler: Grace Not really much I can say about the intro. The fight, on the other hand, had some weird issues, like the weapon over hands. It's easy to fix this though since someone else had this problem before so take a look at this whenever you get the chance. So this first attack makes no sense, you made Shulkle jump in a pose where he would have no power in his swing, then he defied gravity to swing his arms up (which still doesn't help that swing, it'd still be weak if it somehow made sense), and then swing down. Not only that but why was he able to jump that with barely any preparation for the jump in the first place, sure he squatted down for about 3 frames, but that doesn't justify him not only jumping that high in the air, it doesn't justify the distance either. I get what you were going for, but I think you went about it the wrong way. See, when most people want to set up the illusion of a second plane for them to be fighting on they do something like maybe duplicate the tiles behind the original (something like this) not saying you have to copy this exactly, but this is just to give you an idea of how to go about doing this next time. Also a minor complaint, I didn't exactly see it at first, but after rewatching it a few times it started to bug me that I could see part of the canvas while the map was moving. I...uh. I don't get it. I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to get here. Why were those random effects there? Why did you defy gravity again and have them drop like rocks out of nowhere? How was that huge ass crater made from a punch that didn't even look like it had that much power behind it? What's up with all those rocks that shoot up out of the ground and then vanish 1 second later? There are just so many questions. I genuinely cannot make sense of this. Gonna vote for Shulkle.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Graceme x'D -- The three random impact effects that appeared behind Shulk look like an aftereffect force from the punch, to emphasize how strong it is. I've seen it a lot in anime where it goes through the body (which generally means the body is pierced) like here and then where it goes around the body like here. At least, that's how I interpreted it. I think this could've been emphasized more with some dust around the impact, camera shake and a more linear effect than small circle effects. And then I think Grace is dragging Shulk to the ground with her punch and the rocks flying up were from the ground being broken, sort of like here. I do agree that the rocks just appearing is a little off-putting -- an idea to hide it could be bigger camera shake (with motion blur :3c) or just show the rocks moving up from the ground. -- I commend you, Graceme, for the ground crater idea (similarly to what was shown in the last YouTube link) because it really emphasized the one-hit-KO theme, but I think it could've been executed better. For example, the direction of the punch in relation to its power/force was very off. Your character punched a very strong punch to the left, but immediately turned a corner downward, supposedly strong enough to create a crater in the ground. The physics seem off, because the punch should've sent the two of you flying to the left more before reaching the ground. UNLESS you emphasized the idea of you actually throwing him to the ground, which might involve some rigging or close-up camera movements that emphasizes that direction (with motion blur :3c). I think with the CnC that Neil mentioned, a bigger variety of camera movements/framing, and better idea of physics, your next animation will be improved! :3c
You having to explain what Grace was animating for her instead of it being clearly shown in her animation only emphasizes that she failed to portray what she was trying to animate correctly. Grace, try thinking out what you're doing more and ask for opinions about it from more people. Every little detail counts.
I don't think she completely failed to portray it, because at least I was able to make sense of what she was trying to do. I understand not everyone will make sense of it, so I gave my interpretation. With it, we can give CnC on how to improve.
That's very well put. You're right. However, what I said still stands. You're giving an interpretation of her animation. Not to attack you or anything, but how do I or anyone else know if your interpretation of what she's animating is even what Grace intended for anyone to get from the animation. Unless, Grace herself says it. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm saying is that with the cnc being given she should be using it to make sure her animations don't have to be interpreted. Whatever she wants to animate should be conveyed clearly enough that no one should have to interpret it.
Everyone above me gave some excellent criticisms so I'll just put out one point that applies to both of you that need some severe tuning which is that you guys have wayyyyyyyy too much build up for something with so little pay off. The dialogue was so superfluous since it didn't really add... anything? It was more so me waiting for things to get going and when they do - it's done. This is due to the nature of the theme being "One Hit KO". I would've focused more on that rather than adding some filler intro next time. This is a point that applies to Shulkle and it's one that Neil made but I'm gonna build off on it to explain what you're doing wrong here. He mentioned that your sword doesn't have much power behind it here. This is because you have way too much overshoot that eases out pretty slow and weak. For example, pay attention to how the sword moves here. The issue is the distance and amount it is moving and the number of frames to finish that movement. If the frame numbers to produce the overshoot were reduced and the distance it is moved is minimal, I'm sure you would have a much better result. Here's a demo I whipped up to explain my point.
You're not attacking, you're playing like devil's advocate and that's a fair thing to consider. In this situation though, the CnC I gave still stands. If you read what I said in my first post in relation to the animation, I made an interpretation based on my observation of the animation and provided evidence as to how I came up with that. From that, appropriate and helpful CnC can be given, and this is CnC that she should use so that (and you're right) her future animations are "conveyed clearly enough that no one should have to interpret it." In the end, we all want that. I'm not saying she portrayed that last move in her animation very effectively, that's why I CnC'd it. I agree with everything Neil said in his post, so when I saw that there was something he couldn't CnC on, I felt the need to elaborate a little for others to understand and learn from it, in addition to possibly further CnC-ing it, because other people may be in his position as well. Had I also not know at all what was going on there, I would've said nothing (in hopes of a possible explanation from someone else or the animator herself). I think, at the end of the day, we should wanna help each other out to the best of our ability and properly CnC, so we can improve moving forward.
