Fox Jump progress / Professional contact

I posted up that I had submitted my fox jumping animation to the 11 second club for scrutiny and feedback which has been going pretty well. There's a lot of worry surrounding putting work up for feedback on forums as often there are people who will criticize without offering suggestions on how to improve. My experience so far has been a good one. I've received quite a few helpful observations and suggestions and have recently uploaded a second iteration seen below:

Main Feedback followed from these two users

User: J.K Riki - 2D animation but always applicable 
"I think you've got some really nice aspects of the jump so far. Some poses, like the compressed one at the height of the jump, really work well. One of the trouble spots is the it's feeling a bit stiff, which might be because of the model you're using, I don't know. 

Did you plan out the animation in thumbnails? I find that that helps a lot (though full disclosure, I do 2D animation) and it might assist in keeping things a little more fluid here. I did some visual brainstorming of some of the keys on paper:



I'd ignore the final landing pose, it's not very good and I'd need to go back and redo it, but again this is just "visual thinking" and thumbnails are great because you can do them in 20 seconds and don't feel bad if you have to throw one out. Or all of them out, ha ha.

Anyway, what I noticed in the thumbnails I did is that getting the fox's legs extended in the places it needs to be (as he's pushing into the air, and as he's prepping to land) really adds a good flow for the audience's eyes so they can be ready for what's coming. I also think a bit more squash/weight is going to help a lot on the landing, because it feels too floaty at the moment.

You may also want to watch the arc on the fox's head. Something to try would be to isolate JUST his head and see where it moves in the cycle, because I think you'll find it kind of jumps/jiggles all over the place. If you can get that smoother, and then have the body follow, it should all even out nicely. 

Hope that helps! It's a great start you've got going on, just a few tweaks will really polish it up. "

User: Waseqazi 

"Great start! Watch the big pop in the first few frames on the front half of his body. Adding some more drag to the head as he rears back and then shoots up would also help to show the lead of the hips. His tail could use a lot more overlap as he reaches the apex of the jump, right now it stays the same until he starts coming down.

Watch for right at the end when his paws hit the ground, his root stays stuck in the same position for two frames. Try to squash that down a lot more. The more you have him reach with the front paws on the downward part, like in J.K. Riki's drawings, the more organic it will feel, same with dragging the head back a bit more on the down.

Finally, I'd add a few more frames at the end of the loop to allow his head and head to overlap downwards before it starts over. Right now he pops back into going up without having the momentum from the head and tail to end."

I've also had my first reply from an Industry professional. I sent off a request to Media Molecule creators of little big planet and tearaway to see if any of their animators would mind talking to me and answering a few of my questions, they got back to me quickly with an animator named Mike Pang who was nice enough to take time to answer some questions.

My email:

"Hi Mike!

First of all thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me, I know you must be busy so I really appreciate it, I've tried to narrow down what I'm asking because I'm not wanting to overwhelm you with questions but I have so many it's been difficult to choose!

Firstly a bit of a general background of where you came from would be useful, how and why you got into making games?

What do you do day to day?

How involved in other aspects of development are you?

Could you give me an example of the pipeline you use?

Any interesting plugins or tools that are particularly handy?

How do you keep up to date with cutting edge techniques?

What do you like to do to help practice your skills? Any exercises you'd recommend?

I'm currently trying to get my work out there a little more, posting it on the 11 second club to gain feedback and refine my existing skills, are there any other ways of gaining feedback and getting my work more visible?

And a slightly more personal question, how do you know you're good enough to apply? I keep feeling like if I apply with work that isn't good enough it will harm my efforts to find work later on when I've improved.

I look forward to hearing from you and if there's anything else you think would be good to add as general advice that would be great, maybe things that are common mistakes to avoid? As I said I have plenty more questions but I don't want to overwhelm you.

Thank you again!

Robin"

His response:

"Hi Robin,

 

Good to hear from you. I always try to make time for students as I remember how valuable it is to speak to someone from the industry when I was studying. So hope I can help in some way.

 

I originally studied traditional animation back in 2001-2004 at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth (I think it's called something else now) back then there weren't many CG courses and if there were they were technical and I didn't have the maths brain to do it. 

 

I graduated in 2004, 2D animation was dying out and not many jobs were out there, I kind of fell into games as EA at the time were doing a graduate scheme. I was one of the lucky hand picked few that managed to get a position. Starting as a concept artist but then I moved over to the animation side after 3 months where they taught me how to use Maya, from then on that's where I met a lot of talented animators and learnt from them as well. So i've been in the games industry for about 10 years now, working at a few companies and tried my hands in feature film as well. But Media Molecule is where I am now and really enjoying it. 

 

Day to day job varies at different companies. Time at EA, once moved over to animation I was solely doing animation, MPC (Moving Picture Company) was the same. At Mm as they're a creative bunch they like there staff to be versatile so as we're in the infancy of the project i'm on currently my job currently evolves around pre-visualation on the animation side and playing around with all aspects of animation with environments to particles. 

 

My involvement in other aspects of development is dependent on how much you like to contribute everyone at Mm has a voice which is great. A lot of the big companies from my experience tends to prefer you to stick with your specialism. You can e-mail out suggestions but not sure how much is taken on board. 

 

The pipeline is pretty much the same in most places. You get a technical guy who'll rig up and set up scripts for you to run the rig. Once you've finished with your animation there's easy tools for you to export your animation into the game. In film it's the same instead you export your animation curves and it's off to the lighting/rendering guys. 

 

A lot of the tools and plugins are in house so can't really share them. Don't worry though you're not missing out it's to help the exporting. A lot of the tools tend to be rig dependent anyway and the free rigs you get online are pretty much similar to the ones in games, but less complicated like the facial rigs for instance. 

 

I tend to keep an eye on most feature animations, the odd indie animations and I love the stuff that comes out of the French animation school Gobelin. The 11 second club is good and I like the critiques that they attach to the winners that's always useful to watch. 

 

At the time when I was looking for a job in film I suppose you practice and cater your reel towards more performance and creature animations trying to create them as realistic as possible. For games it's good to practice your walks and run cycles. The classic box lifting and maybe an acting piece. These all demonstrate your skill as an animator, your understanding of timing, weight and creative ideas. The other animator at Mm is currently doing an online course in the evenings as it's based in US time http://ianimate.net doing the workshop 4 concentrating on close up Facial acting and lip sync. So it can vary. 

 

As for getting your work out there what you're doing is great, I personally haven't done that before but from others I see them posting on Vimeo it has a nice stats page of who's been watching you. Blogs and forums maybe? If you like you can always send me a link to your work. 

 

As for knowing whether you're good enough, you should look online check out other peoples reels and compare yours to them. Hopefully your tutors and people around you are honest enough to give you an opinion as well. Applying to job can never harm your efforts. If you didn't get a chance for an interview maybe ask for some feedback. It's good to get a blog and keep it updated with new animation tests. It shows that you're passionate and that you're continually improving. Keep the reel at under 2 minutes and have your good stuff first and end on a high!

 

I'll try and round this e-mail off now. If you're applying for games it's good to have all those animation test as mentioned before, walks and run cycles etc. It seems like a lot of companies are asking for mo-cap knowledge but if you know the principals of animations this won't be difficult to learn. Spend time on your reel and polish you animation. If you're doing a performance piece get lots of reference act it out and plan your shot. It's so important to get these early stages right as it'll save you a lot of time in the long run and you don't stray off with different ideas. 

 

Sorry this e-mail is quite lengthy, but I hope I've managed to help out in some way. Here's my blog, unfortunately I haven't had the time to update it for some time but it gives a general example.

 

http://mikepangshowreel.blogspot.co.uk

 

As mentioned before feel free to send in your examples of work or upload it to somewhere on youtube or Vimeo so I can see.

 

All the best, 

 

Mike"

I intend to take him up on the opportunity to email him for feedback but as he's busy I don't want to make it too regular.