Fascinating. That's all very promising! Are these characters your own? I couldn't stop watching in spite of the flaws, which is a very good sign: your characters are interesting.
OK, here's the feedback.
Overall the animation lacks a bit of dynamic. It's fluid, but it has this underwater feeling of automatic tweening. Try to incorporate more holds, and make the movements faster without changing the overall timing. Watch some video for reference. (The shot with the camera moving behind one girl's back: we don't need to watch her hair that long!)
Avoid elements to pop up and vanish - like the chin shadow in some scenes.
Work on your feet - you spent much time to design these sneakers, so you should take equal care on how they contact to the ground. Looks too much like cutout now, missing weight.
You have a good sense of anatomy, but work on your head turns. There's books about that, and tons of online advice.
Don't move pupils that slow. Use step interpolation instead, that's more natural. Only in very few cases the pupils are the only things that move - usually you will combine that wth a change of expression, or a small head movement.
I very much like how you incorporate body language. Improve on that, this can't ever be overdone. The arguing girls need to use their hands and upper body much more. It's a good idea to create a wide range of hands and arm positions. Because gestures usually are quite fast, you could use switch layers here - no need for interpolation. Also the women would profit from a 3/4 view, it shows off volume much better. I suggest to create a convincing upper body turn (only from 40° to -40°) complete with leaning forward and backwards, this will greatly improve any scene with the bitching to each other.
You 3/4 views are best. The front view should only be used in dialogue (and upper body only) or when showing a threatening group - you know what I mean. Try to indicate your camera's point of view - not always at face height, use knee or hip height for certain shots. (Of course background perspective will help here.)
The guy with the 'fro has great volume in head turns, but the two little strokes in the hair which indicate turns so nicely look a bit lost. This is a general design problem, maybe you should experiment with some textures and shadows (but I have a personal dislike on flat colours). This guy has the most convincing attitude, he really is acting - great achievment.
You might have noticed already that any facial expression is lost in full body view. Use close-up or mid range there.
Another design point: don't use saturated colours. Always de-saturate them. For a test, use a pic of a rainy day as BG and match the colours. You can still return to bright colours for a scene in full sunlight or at some emotional moment.
You use interpolated mouth movements the whole time. I suggest to use less movement there, and mostly switch interpopolation. As a test try to lipsync come aggressive fast rapper, once with, once without interpolation.
Also you could use some more exaggerated mouths - just for emphasis. It's possible to have more than one set of mouths attached to a character and switch where needed.
I don't mention simple technical stuff like broken outlines or wrong shape order, you'll take care on that in real production.
As I said, this is the most promising stuff I've seen here for a long time.
AS 9.5 MacPro Quadcore 3GHz 16GB OS 10.6.8 Quicktime 7.6.6
AS 11 MacPro 12core 3GHz 32GB OS 10.11 Quicktime 10.7.3
Moho 13.5 iMac Quadcore 2,9GHz 16GB OS 10.15
Moho 14.1 Mac Mini Plus OS 13.5
Thank you for your kind words slow tiger, that is the exact kind of feedback i been looking for. Yes I own and created all the characters for a comic i was creating. I found Anime studio while looking for a shorcut to creating my comic. This was 2 months ago, before this I had never animated anything before I didnt even know of any animation programs,I started with flash but after 2 weeks found Anime studio.
Last edited by Syncs on Thu Jan 14, 2016 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If you have Photoshop, just cmd-U and decrease saturation by 25 or even 50%.
I recommend to put all your characters into one image and do the colour design there, to make sure no one stands out too much, but also no one is too similar to any other. It's good practice to do this on a background, because you want your characters to stand out, but still blend in enough.
AS 9.5 MacPro Quadcore 3GHz 16GB OS 10.6.8 Quicktime 7.6.6
AS 11 MacPro 12core 3GHz 32GB OS 10.11 Quicktime 10.7.3
Moho 13.5 iMac Quadcore 2,9GHz 16GB OS 10.15
Moho 14.1 Mac Mini Plus OS 13.5
Ive had a look, I will have a play around and see what it lookslike, so you think mine are too bright, I thought that was part of the appeal and I havent decided if im going for an adult or a teen audience yet
could i do this in Premier pro or after effects maybe? as i dont get how I would edit satuaration on photoshop
I agree with everything slowtiger said. You've got an eye for facial expressions and little character movement details that is only going to get better and better as you get more of a handle on the program. That's exciting
In addition to the slow eye movement, in some scenes when two characters are talking to each other, I noticed their pupils never quite line up in a way where they are looking at each other. Instead, they seem like they are looking off camera at something far away. Lining up the pupils can be tricky, but just imagine the two characters' eyes are connected by an invisible straight line - or actually draw a line on a non-rendering layer if you want to be sure. It's helped me out in the past.
A really great start Sync ,welcome aboard. I'm really looking forward tom seeing more stuff. slowtiger's advice is right on the money, can't go wrong there.
PaperWaspNest wrote:I agree with everything slowtiger said. You've got an eye for facial expressions and little character movement details that is only going to get better and better as you get more of a handle on the program. That's exciting
In addition to the slow eye movement, in some scenes when two characters are talking to each other, I noticed their pupils never quite line up in a way where they are looking at each other. Instead, they seem like they are looking off camera at something far away. Lining up the pupils can be tricky, but just imagine the two characters' eyes are connected by an invisible straight line - or actually draw a line on a non-rendering layer if you want to be sure. It's helped me out in the past.
Looking forward to more!
Thanks I'm working everyday to try to improve, thanks for watching and taking the time to feedback
