Rough Animation DUE Thurs Oct 28th

Worth 20 points

Rough Animation: strong posing, acting/performance/pathos, timing, overall narrative

Posing: (5pts) Your characters should have clear poses that communicate emotion, personality, character etc.  Strong silhouettes!  Characters have weight and clearly belong in this world.

Performance/Acting: (5pts) Is your animation making an emotional connection (PATHOS)  with the audience? Are your characters convincing in their performance and able to carry the narrative forward in a compelling manner and with conviction?

Staging: (5pts) The scenes should have clear staging and remain true to the story reel.  Characters and elements are well integrated into the cinematic visual frame.

Timing: (5pts) Characters are given life and move and act within a convincing and believable manner.  Poses are held at the right time and inbetweens connect the poses into a solid performance.  Anticipation, Action, and Reaction are clearly executed and timed out to right to convey a solid and clear narrative.

Naming Convention: Title_RoughAnimation_reel.mov

Quicktime, compressed to under 100 mgs.  Audio components should be incorporated to help convey your overall narrative.

Put in your production folder…make sure you give us permission to open and download.

Spider video crit

This is part 1 of 2 for the Spider film. The other to follow.

Things are rolling along nicely and I think the project is in great shape for the refinement stage.

Light Feeder Video Crit

Since this was an unusually long visual crit, I broke up the video into several parts.  I know you love to hear my voice drone on so now you can indulge with segments!

I think the project is at a great jumping off point and we can start to dive into rough animation/performance.

Cat feedback

Just some thoughts…I like the roundness of the original design, but we need to think about silhouette and how the cut out style would lend itself to the cat.

I trimmed somethings and at the same time try to give it some sharper edges.

Paper feedback

The overall story is in place, but I would encourage to put more emphasis on the pets and their relationships between each other.  I think cutting to tighter shots will allow the audience to get closer and allow the character to act out a little more their affections for each other.  This will allow us to empathize more with the situation.

I would also put more energy into the poses of the dog to get him more active in the scenes.  I would invite you to revisit the earlier acts and see what you can do to make the dog, cat and woman a little more active in what they are experiencing and feeling.

Having the dog up and attentive helps showcase his protective and paternalistic behavior.  Plus a little lick on the chick adds a nice comedic touch.

I thought it would be great to have the cat protect the chick from getting hit by the door opening and delivering it to the woman.

In the parting shot, I think a stronger more emotional shot would to be closer and allow the dog to say his good bye first as he was her first find.  then the cat comes in and finally in a little lighter moment the rooster flies in on top of her head and we zoom out a little bit to show that they are one unit.

Here I wanted to show how sad the pets were and did not have much of an appetite. Then we should see the letter and the message..then the pets really perk up and we can even have fun with imagery with hearts fluttering or something visual to play up the decorative style.  Then a cross dissolve or transition to show them sleeping happily.  Remember to play with the relationships in a strong visual way.

Silhouette Animation

This film has some real nice qualities and still manages to remain 2D.  Strong art direction fuses the design elements with real nice performance.

visit link…http://www.pixelnitrate.com/the_windmill_farmer

Spider Feedback

Scn3…remember to avoid robotic and stiff movements to have your character move in arcs…also have the body move up and down and lean into the movement as well.

Scn 5…Shot needs to be tighter on the face…like story board….also may need a little more time on the shot…it seems a little rush.

Scn 6: Mary flies in and out a little too fast.

Scn 21: Stage Larry closer to right and lean his body into the pose.

Scn 24: Make sure the face is more towards the camera like storyboard so we can read the expression with more clarity.  Also, don’t animate the character too much if there’s no poses in the boards…it can distract from the expression and leave less time for the audience to read it.

Scn25: Make sure you follow your boards in your layout…the bee needs to match the same position of boards as it reads better.  Also Mary needs to be tighter in the shot.

Scn 43: Have an upshot to create a more ominous shot…also the force perspective helps lead the eye into the dramatic shot

Scn 46: I know this is just the layout stage, but make sure you put some force or line of action into Mary’s action.  This will add life and vitality into limited animation.

Scn 68: Finally have the 2nd frog closer into the foreground and push the 1st frog back…you’ll get both their expressions and at the same time preserve spatial relationships.