Wednesday, August 25 2010

[madanimator]

We are starting this thread early to give members a chance to upload any video or images they want critiqued in Aug 18th seminar. The best format for video clips is .MOV files (MPEG-4 Quicktime videos).
Throughout the week, Dave will try to incorporate as many images and video clips as possible into the live seminar.

The deadline for clips and images to be critiqued in the live seminar is Tuesday Aug 17th, 2010 @ 5:00 PM sharp AZ time.

Thanks


Here is the New Link to watch the live Seminar.
http://donbluthanimation.com/_Don_Bluth_Animation_live_seminar.html
You must be logged into your Don's Club account to see the stream.

Please post ALL questions in this thread.

[madanimator]

Hi Don!
I'm still working on my short film. This is an update of the next sequence, where Chuck asks whom he shall play, as he was hired as an actor, but he doesn't know yet, what he has to play. The violine scene is the hardest, I'm still trying out how to do it the right way.....
Thanks for your critic :)

http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=465

[madanimator]

I did this drawing to do something different than animation. What do you think of it?

http://i756.photobucket.com/albums/xx208/madanimator/Hase2.jpg

[samuelvictorjones]

http://donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=466

Here's the progress I've made this week on my Jake video. I added a lot of inbetweens to the extreme poses that Don approved last week. I found some of them very difficult as he spins in 3d space, hopefully I did ok & the animation looks smooth.

I took Don's advice & improved the timing of the flap up to the hat, as well as him spending more time on the floor composing himself after falling.

1. Does Don feel I've captured what he asked me to do, or are there further changes I should make before animating the hat bouncing up & landing on his head?

2. For the planning the flight from the far right branch via the path shown by the picture last week, can Don please demonstrate some thumbnails for Jake jumping up from the branch before swooping down in flight, similar to how he demonstrated Robin Hood jumping from the tower?

Any general comments also very welcome, many thanks for all input.

[Rodney]

This is a follow up to a question I posed last week about Don's layout methods. I've yet to see anyone that execute layout with as much power, control and confidence as Don Bluth.

Don,
This is the image I promised to share but unfortunately it's only a very small representation of Don Graham's examples of thought, theory and practice on layout. You seem to visualize and execute these projections automatically as you put pencil to paper... and you do it quickly!!!

As the subject is a fairly extensive one I'll understand if you prefer to set this aside for another week or even as a subject for a future video tutorial. I'd buy that one in a heartbeat!

The questions I am trying to formulate revolve around how might use the Plan View (Top View) and Elevation (Side View) in your layout for animaiton. The original question last week focused on how you might use this methodology to plan your work in the theater.

How do you approach this type of visual planning in your layouts?
Do you ever resort to breaking it all down using Plan and Elevation views or is that ever necessary for you?

Thanks!

Best,
Rodney

http://blog.5pointpatch.com/wp-content/uploads/blog.5pointpatch.com/2010/08/Non-Conventional-Prospective.jpg

The text of the image is insightful but there just for completion's sake.
I apologize for the small figures in the image and the typos that crept in. The images are representative of the quick style of visual thumbnailing in layout I'm interested in.


I'll try to keep future queries shorter!

[NateHorsfall]

Questions seem to be light today, so I'll throw in a few :)

1.
I've been incorporating the beats principle into as much of my CG animation as possible, and so far I'm liking the results! one of my bosses even asked for a "Rhythm" in some movement, to which i grinned at him and broke out the metronome.
But, even after I get a rhythm down, I find as i start to bring things to final completion with offset and secondary action and so on, sometimes I'll move things like the arms, off that initial rhythm. I do this just by eyeballing it, mostly. . It looks better to me, more natural, but is there a better way to approach offset and secondary besides simply eyeballing it? And, furthermore to that: when you animate secondary, do you give that it's own offset beat, if you can? Same thing with facial animation, does that also get it's own rhythm? Thinking about the music analogy, I would expect so, since songs have solo sections and vocal sections and so on, but it's harder to put into practice.

2.
I watched every video on the site as well as your DVDs over the weekend, and the one thing I noticed was that singe seemed to be the most complex character out of everything, usually by far. What would you say has been your most complicated and difficult character to animate? and when you approached dealing with that character, how did you go about it? For example, Singe I saw had at least 30 different underbelly lines. I can imagine this was a huge headache to keep track of.

3.
Today after work I'm attending a 3 hour- mostly short gesture life drawing class. Besides line of action, what would you recommended I really try to focus on? Either based on advice for any artist, or my own work which you feel is lacking is some areas. Usually I try to simple get the pose as fast as possible. But i feel like things such as working on shapes, or trying to capture emotion somehow, would be a new and better thing to try focusing on this time.

4.
I really want to attend the next online workshop, but I definitely need better supplies before I can do that. What set ups can you recommend or, what set ups do you know of the other students, using? And far buying supplies, are their any websites or places you can suggest to purchase from?

[AJartist]

Hello, Don. These are a compilation of what I think to be the best hand sketches I've done all summer. In what direction do you think I need to go with my hands?

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=254&pictureid=1166

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=254&pictureid=1168

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=254&pictureid=1169

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=254&pictureid=1168

[AJartist]

http://donbluthanimation.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=221&pictureid=1170

[feliceworkshop]

Hi Don! how are you today? I hope you're doing great.
Today I was watching Peter Pan and among many, many things that I was particularly impressed with, was the dancing sequence after Tiger Lily is rescued by Peter Pan. There is a lot of reverse curve action in the spine when she bends backward and forward but everything is very subtle. Goes without saying it that the final result looks just beautiful. Currently, one of my biggest problems when I animate is keeping the spine of my character under control. Usually I start by putting way to much motion into the spine. The animation ends up looking like a straw in the midst of a wind storm. I then go back fixing it, but I end up with having the spine of the character now looking too stiff. Usually by the third attempt I manage get it to look right. My question here is: do you have any advice you can give me to bypass this tedious 3 step procedure that I usually go through..... I know that practice makes perfect; but I was just wondering, perhaps something that I should look for or avoid to do?....

[caseyturbos]

I was wondering if you had any suggestions on how to make your drawings look more loose and free while still maintaining the integrity and sharpness of the lines.

Right now I use a 2h pencil and rough all my drawings out, I really like how loose they are at that stage, but they definitely need some cleanup. So I then repencil everything using a mechanical 2B. I like the clarity that the repenciling gives, but I find I'm spending upwards of 30 to 45 minutes on one drawing where the rough takes maybe 10 minutes. Often times I end up scoring the paper as well, and I've heard you can hurt your hand and wrist being so controlling too.

I was watching your videos and you seem to do everything and make it really crisp in one single perfect looking pass.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I'm so excited to finally be in the Don's Club!

~ Casey

[Richard Willimot]

Hello Don and Dave: Don, I know that in theatre you project your voice to the "cheap" seats" so everyone can hear. And also your moves are broad so all can see. Does the same hold true for character's acting performances? And should a broad action be followed by subtleness in order to get that texture?

[feliceworkshop]

Don, I have a fan question for you....
browsing thought an on-line animation Art Gallery, I bumped into a cel of Kimberly from Space Ace. In this cel she looks much younger, she is sporting a ponytail, a sweatband around her forehead, white spandex under a definitely more chaste outfit. Now granted that I love both designs...I was just wondering what happened there? perhaps in the early development stages of the game she was going to be affected by the Infanto-Ray as well?

[Richard Willimot]

Don, when doing inbetweens do you think it's best for us to teach ourselves how to work without the lightbox first?

[samuelvictorjones]

I've another 2 questions about my video above if we have time please.

1. I initially imagined Jake's tail staying entirely still throughout most of the animation, with the 2 points at the end staying still, whilst the point where the tail meets the body changing the angles.

When Jake strains when trying to get back up, & when scrunching for the anticipation of the take, I naturally drew the tail bending for a frame or two to accentuate this. Although I know the tail doesn't have a bone in it, is it acceptable to move it in these ways to add expression to the movement?

2. When Jake falls, I added a swoosh to the tip of the tail where it moves in a circular motion. I like the look of this when watching it back. Do you think when he is flat on the ground after falling, the swoop should continue, & the tail should flop towards his head? At the moment it is stiff pointing upwards at this point, I feel the animation may flow better if it continued to move as a secondary action whilst he was still, but would loose the contrast of the straight line with the rounded body?

Many thanks

[Richard Willimot]

Don, You were speaking of emotions in the character, when working with a character on a film did you find yourself taking on the feelings of the character? Working at your board with a scowl on your face etc.?

[AJartist]

Its shouted from the rooftops to always push the poses when looking at live action reference.....however, should we push the poses while were first tracing over the photostats, or should we push them later.

[zanekohler]

Hi Don,
You brought up at the beginning about studying at least one hour a day. I know you have touched upon it before but would it be possible to create a study list that sort of breaks down what you would like to see us work on?
Say like 5 minutes warm up, 10 minutes study live video. 10 minutes character study etc.

Thanks
-z-

[tk421]

Don can you explain the similarities and differences between a Director and a lead animator.
Thanks,

2K