Animatuc to Final Animation Comparison

[spoooze!]

For those of you wanting to know a bit more about how I create my animation, this little scene from my upcoming feature-length film should enlighten you a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooS0qcm8pAU

I start off usually with really rough crappy looking "thumbnail" storyboards on paper (not shown here) then I take those and then create an animatic using the animate-able models I put together in Anime Studio.

All of the poses, "acting", and rough timing is put in so the other animators (and me!) have a starting point instead of just working with a blank scene. It's a very similar process to what a show like The Simpsons or Futurama does only this is done in Anime Studio instead of drawn by hand.

It's a great way to control the consistency when you are working with multiple animators.

If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them.

[funksmaname]

nice work spoooze, i think you really injected life into the 'acting'... I'd like to see more hand articulation to go with the emotive body animation during the monologue though? maybe this is something you add later...

Just curious:
Regarding animatic in AS, if you're using the same models, why use 'step' keys to lay out the first pass rather than just leave it interpolating? maybe it makes it 'clearer' to see the overall motion, i dunno, but when the inbetweening of the first pass can be done automatically I fail to see the advantage of using step motion over animated...?

[spoooze!]

Just curious:
Regarding animatic in AS, if you're using the same models, why use 'step' keys to lay out the first pass rather than just leave it interpolating? maybe it makes it 'clearer' to see the overall motion, i dunno, but when the inbetweening of the first pass can be done automatically I fail to see the advantage of using step motion over animated...?

Actually, I'm not even using stepped mode. It's in smooth. I find working with stepped in AS difficult because the characters are not always constantly in movement.
What I do is place two poses one frame apart then, when I'm ready to actually animate the shot, I drag those keys apart so it adds inbetweens.

After that I also "plus" the animation by adding in extra head bobs, drag on the arms, stretch on the body, and extra little hand gestures.

The reason I set it up this way is because I'm working with two other animators on this. It makes it easy on them to animate without starting with a blank scene and it keeps the animation fairly consistent since they are working with my poses.

Also, I find that when I animate straight ahead, because all the body parts are on separate bone levels, the animation tends to feel a bit disconnected because the body is doing one thing, the arms another, etc. instead of all the body parts working together to support a strong pose.

[funksmaname]

i understand you want to give the key poses to the other animators you're working with, but what's the advantage to the 'step' effect, however it's achieved, when you could just start with them appart and 'basic' inbetweened ready for 'plus'ing by the other animators? Maybe its related to the fact you have different body parts on seperate bone levels and it's hard to put all your parts' key poses in the same frame if they're all constantlyshifting...

which brings us to another issue - why are different body parts on different bone levels?

(don't take this as criticism, just interested in your logic)

[spoooze!]

i understand you want to give the key poses to the other animators you're working with, but what's the advantage to the 'step' effect, however it's achieved, when you could just start with them appart and 'basic' inbetweened ready for 'plus'ing by the other animators?

I like them to add as much as possible to their scenes. I like to give them control over how quick everything moves. I want them to actually animate instead of just assisting or finishing up the animation.

I give them a lot of freedom over the timing and the "extras".

which brings us to another issue - why are different body parts on different bone levels?

I like to have control over the timing on the different parts so that not everything falls into place at the same time (otherwise it just looks robotic). For instance, say I have two arms going up then going down. If they go up and down at the same time, it looks boring and robotic.
If they are offset slightly by having one arm fall two or three frames ahead of the other one, it looks less robotic.

I find that hard to achieve if everything is on one bone layer.

[funksmaname]

you know that the red paths area always only for selected points/bones... i understand that when you work on one layer the black path gets very populated with keys, but the red path is essentially your 'single bone track' - personally i think the inconvenience of having to group skip constantly to move individual limbs far outweighs the cluttered black track... each to their own

good luck with the movie!