Video Critique, Basic Ball Bounce

By Jacob | September 29, 2008

With Mike’s permission, I am posting the video critique of his ball bounce.
My previous post explained this exercise and the reasoning for it.  Maybe this video will shed some more light on what you can learn from a ball bounce and how nit-picky I can be about something so simple.


<– Direct Link to Video–>
(to download: right click and ’save as’)
~162mb

Disclaimers:

  • I still have a lot to learn, too.  Take everything I say with a grain of salt.  I am no expert!
  • I have no affiliation with Animation Mentor.  Just one friend trying to help out another… 2000 miles away.

If anyone would like any sort of follow-up clarification on anything mentioned, or if anyone has any questions, further advice, or thoughts of disgust and hatred, feel free to comment below.

Posted in Animation, Video Crit | 1 Comment

The Ball Bounce

By Jacob | September 13, 2008

I have some friends who are learning animation. And so am I.
But the point is that I came up with a simple assignment to emphasize the importance of several main aspects of animation: A ball bounce. Now, here is the inevitable conversation I just had with you, the reader:

me: — a ball bounce.
you: Wait. You arrogant jerk. I read The Illusion of Life. They were doing ball bounces back in the old days… like the 20’s or something.
me: I know. It’s an excellent learning tool because it has all sorts of major elements you need to grasp if you want to become a good animator - timing, spacing, arcs, squash and stretch, weight, etc.
you: …
me: ok so I didn’t come up with it. I modified the assignment for my friends who are learning CG animation.
you: Well I do CG animation too. And I did a ball bounce in school. Once. For that intro class. It was easy.
me: In stepped keys only?
you: … blast.

Heres the problem: it’s too easy to let the computer do your work for you. And then you don’t learn anything. If you want to learn spacing then don’t let the computer inbetween your keys. Don’t even look at the graph editor. Use stepped keys and make sure YOU are creating the motion.
Every. Single. Frame.

The only way to get good spacing is to know what kind of spacing you need. The only way to know what kind of spacing you need is to learn how spacing works. The only way to learn how spacing works is by doing it.

Sure, any fool can do a CG ball bounce. You will find hundreds of them all over the internet. Yes, I did a crappy CG ball bounce in school, too. And I can tell you right now I didn’t learn much. I used the graph editor to make sure that the Y translation looked like a series of diminishing parabolas. Screw that. Create every frame. It wasn’t until I did a 2D ball bounce that I actually learned something about spacing and arcs. That was because I was doing it on a frame-by-frame basis. Drawing out every in-between in the exact spot I wanted it. THAT is when you start learning things.

This is a great way to start because it DOES bring back a lot of the importance of the old 2D ball tests; something that was lost when we started learning animation using splines. Once you have a better grasp of timing, spacing, change of shape, arcs, and anything else a ball-bounce can teach you, then you can start learning how to achieve what you want WITH splines.

The computer is good at inbetweening. But you have to tell it HOW to in between. Otherwise you’re not getting what you want, you’re getting what it gives you.

The assignment: Do a ball bounce from the side view using only stepped keys.

This was stated to some friends a few weeks back. They sent me some first passes, we talked about them, they sent more passes, and we talked some more and I did some video critiques for them. It was suggested that I post those video crits on my blog because others might learn from them. I think a lot of things that are mentioned are fairly universal issues that many people struggle with (like me!). So maybe I’ll post them soon…

Posted in Animation | 4 Comments

Good work, Brandon

By Jacob | September 5, 2008

Congrats to a good friend and my office-mate, Brandon Beckstead, for coming in 3rd place in August’s 11secondClub. Personally, I think he was robbed. 1st place fits much better, and he certainly would have deserved it.

It seems everyone knocked his score down because the actual words spoken (in spanish) didn’t really connect with his animation. But that was the point. He purposely did not read the translation, and just used the inflection, rhythm, and pacing to come up with his own idea about what was going on. Well done, sir.

Check out his blog. He has yet to post the 11secClub piece (for that click on the link above), but he did post an awesome little test shot with his Termite characters that you should check out.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments

I think I got it…

By Jacob | August 20, 2008

I’m trying out a whole new look to the blog. And I think I may have solved the commenting problem (fingers crossed).

In theory, you should be able to comment at will, AND the enormous amounts of spam will still be caught. Also, I’m thinking I like this design much more. Very simple.

Anyway, the above image was too great to not include.

And you should ignore everything below this line
_____________________________________________________________

Since its a new format, Ill need to test a link and a blockquote:

“Something something something else and so on”
-me

Oh and probably a bold, bold italic, and a couple several different headers:

nuts and boltsthat was h5

stuff and junk

that was h4

more junk and stuff

that was h3

lots of sunk and juff

that was h2

Posted in Random | Leave a comment

SIGGRAPH, link to Tom, oh and word press sucks

By Jacob | August 18, 2008

First, I’d like to apologize for leaving this blog so empty for so long.

Hopefully I’ll be back in to it soon (or now?), but some major overhauls must be completed. (described at the end)

But I’ll start with SIGGRAPH, featuring FJORG! 2008 (obviously my favorite event. hey - I’m partial to it, alright?). There was tons of talent, and a LOT of amazing entries. All teams completed on time, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. Plus, I got to see my best friends again :D Me, Jim, and Tom helped out behind the scenes for the competition this year.

We stayed at FJORG! for a large majority of the event, even staying up with the competitors! I slept about 2 hours, just like last year. It was strange to be on the opposite side of the whole thing, and see people struggling to stay awake while staring into their monitors but not actually focusing on anything.

We also had the pleasure of hearing some story pitches early in the competition from many of the teams that were willing to share their ideas. We bounced some things around with them. A LOT of the stories we heard were really very inspiring. Lots of them caused a spark in our brains that sent us on tangents to all sorts of places, and riffing new story ideas off each other. Very inspiring indeed. (of course - this caused some of my friends and I to wish we had computers and could make a short too! since we had so many launching points of great ideas… and many many hours to sit around and watch talented people working).

Congrats to EVERYONE who competed. You made outstanding work which will set the bar for next year’s event. Hats off all around.

NEXT UP - Tom’s excellent post(s) on Subtext.

Want a little insight into subtext? Want to know how body language works with/against text with/against emotion? Check out Tom’s Blog Post on Subtext

Followed up with a great one on Being Original. (Who could have pointed him toward that excellent clip from Moliere? It might have been Yours Truly :P )

Lastly, Word Press sucks.

Why? It lets in RIDICULOUS amounts of spam comments. I thought I finally found a plugin to filter it out, unfortunately this plug-in apparently doesn’t work with the theme I have, so its broken… kind of. It doesn’t allow any humans to post comments, because the spam-word verification image errors out (thanks, James, for pointing that out!). Anything you type for the verification will be void. HOWEVER, this spam filter still catches nearly 20 spam comments a day. Proof that spam comments don’t even care about (or can easily bypass) spam-word verification images anyway. Luckily, this filter is smart enough to know which ones are spam (all of them) once they get through (the impassable-by-any-human error problem).

Long story short: I need to find a new theme for my blog - OR - I need to find a new spam filter that actually works and is compatible with my current theme - OR - I need to give up on word-press and join the BLOGGER crew. I hear they have excellent spam blockage.

In the meantime I’m going to keep things the way they are. If I disable the spam blocker, I don’t want to deal with marking ’spam it’ for nearly 20 comments every day. If you have any suggestions for where I should go from here, please feel free to email me (since you’ll never be able to comment): wJacobGardner@gmail.com

peace.

Posted in Random | 1 Comment
-->