Video Training: How to Make a Head Turn with Actions PART 1

[DarthFurby]

Hi Slice, I made this video in response to your question about actions, but by the time I posted the video you'd already figured out the important parts. Nevertheless I did my best to anticipate your questions on some of the finer points and hope you found something of interest for future animations. Thanks for the comments, and I hope to see more of your work. Someone discussed making an Anime Studio podcast at one point. I'd like to see that happen too.

AmigaMan - Wow I'm really flattered that you made a DVD out of that clip. There is one more subtle but important trick about Actions that I will cover in either Part 2 or 3, but most of the interesting stuff is in Part 1. Thanks a lot for the comments. The feedback and response has really made it all worthwhile.

I'll try to have Part 2 ready soon. I'm not sure how long the video will be, but I'm going to record myself building the girl character from scratch. Warning: Potentially boring and tedious. Be prepared. I should probably title it "Part Two: 1 hour torture session."

[slice11217]

By the way Darth, did you find animation work after your Animation Collective test?

[DarthFurby]

Hi Slice, unfortunately I didn't have much luck. It's weird but I sent my reel to a whole bunch of places and didn't hear back from anybody. I'm still learning a lot about character animation so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. In a few months I'll have enough material to put together a second demo reel packed with a lot more character animation. At that point I'll begin my second annual "DarthFurby looks for a studio animation job," including another shot at Animation Collective, if they'll let me. For now I've been doing independent client work while slaving away at my day job doing billing/bookkeeping.

[funksmaname]

DarthFurby, thanks for taking the time to make these videos. I've only seen this part 1 so far but it has really cleared up a lot of confusions for me regarding creating and using actions (and you're right, seeing your mistakes helped a lot coz i was making those mistakes and not knowing they WERE mistakes, i just thought it wasnt working)

Anyway - thanks again and keep up the good work

[DarthFurby]

I didn't start using actions until this year. Last year I was obsessing over switch layers. This year it's actions. Thanks for the nice comments!

[Phatthumb]

Hey I tried to see the video but all it says when I click on it is "Downloading from site" then nothing happens. I really want to learn this, but I can't get to it.

[dlangdev]

I got some time working on the tutorials and did some work on it.

anme file:
http://www.begonza.com/animation/aspro/ ... 33.02.anme

[Phatthumb]

Cool that was easy to get on my PC. I wonder if you can make the actual turtoial easy to download that that. Dunno, I'll work with what I got.

[DarthFurby]

Phatthumb try this link(20mb):
http://darthfurby.com/tutorials/as/headturn1.mp4

Dlangdev thanks for sharing your file. It looks like you used pure point motion to get that subtle turn which is excellent for traditional style animation. Actions will help you build a library of subtle turns, winks, mouth phonemes, etc. so all that work you put into point motion can be easily re-used. The first complex animation I did in ASPro was a frontview to 3/4 headturn using switch layers. Building everything into switch layers was my failed attempt to catalogue point motion into a re-usable library, but Actions is perfect for this stuff. If point motion is your thing, you'll benefit from capturing as much as you can into actions.

Also, I think your head turn looks pretty cool.

[dlangdev]

Yup, I'm still working on point animation and will step-up to add actions in the next piece. I'll keep watching your tutorials and do more exercises. Eventually, I'll be able to incorporate them into my toolbox.

Anyway, I did more tests in point animation trying to get a feel how actions will fit next.

I have not uploaded the anme file because it needs some cleanup. I found animating the hair wasn't easy as I thought it would be. Hair animation could turn out to be much harder than headturns, though.

movie: (467kb)

http://www.begonza.com/animation/aspro/ ... 034.05.mov

[Phatthumb]

Okay, there it is. I'm trackin' now. Thank you very much for the help. I'll work hard on it and show you what I come up with.

Mac


PS. I loved the demo reel. It was halarious, and the song was awsome too. Who does that song I want it.

[superanimatrix]

Your tutorial links do not work for me at all, just a black white page. I have a PC! Do I need a codec or something?

[fiziwig]

As an absolute newbie I'd LOVE to watch your videos. Unfortunately, all three version crash my browser. In fact, they crash both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I'm on Win XP and I think I have the latest version of Quicktime. Any clues what might be wrong? (I seem to be able to watch other video without any problems.)

--gary

[DarthFurby]

I'm not sure why your browser keeps crashing, although it sounds like Quicktime is the culprit, but here is a guaranteed way to watch these videos and nearly any other video on the net:

1) Download the video directly to your hard drive(right click "Save As"). Do not play it in a browser.
2) Download and install VLC media player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
3) Watch video with VLC media player.

Hope you enjoy the tutorials!

[heyvern]

VLC is my "fail safe". It plays anything... almost anything. Any time I can't view something with QT due to codec issues or version problems VLC works 99% of the time.

-vern