Ball Jump Revisited

After sending my ball jump test to Aaron Hartline of Pixar animation, I was once again put in my place.
Frankly, I love it.

He kindly responded and gave me his thoughts on my "simple" test.

Looks good.

It took me a few times to understand what was going on exactly. Instead try having the ball come bouncing in and

without stopping, bounce up high to get over the block. Instead he doesnt get to the top, but rather bounces off the top part of the block.

Upset, he looks at it for a beat - backs up then does the bounce up to the top, and falls off. Then showing the anger and frustration, backs up really far - add that shake for the anticipation (like the rubberband example i give in the lecture) and have him it it a full force. Much Much harder then you have now and traveling more across the screen to hit it.

Once the block slowly starts to fall, then comes crashing down - then have his attitude change to being happy, joyful. Celebrating by jumping up and down - lightly! - then bouncing off screen.

You have alot of the beats - but im not feeling the emotion of the ball yet. Really play with your timing. How can you make this ball have feeling?

I'm going to go back through the shot and address the points Mr. Hartline mentioned.
The one re-occurring critique I get is always that my shot isn't clear. No one but myself understands what's going on.
That's something I really need to hone in on.

Ball Jump

Well here's my more basic animation of a ball with character.


And if your interested, here's a progress video as I go through the shot.


Overall I'm fairly happy. I always end up liking it more during the blocking stage then final though.
The only major complaint I can think of is that back track it does. It just seems off to me. I think it has to do with the jumps occurring over such a small a time frame.

Minor update

My "Man vs Machine" shot will be on a minor hiatus.
Awesome Dreamworks animator Steve Meyer has ever so graciously decided to critique it for me when he gets the opportunity.

In the mean time I've been working on the basics once again. I always seem to try something complex - fail - then move to something basic. Rinse and repeat.

So yeah, I'm at the basic part of the two step cycle.
Update on both shots soon!

Larger update - no one reads my blog!

Progress

Here's where I'm at with the shot I'm working on.
So far I'm not hating it. Although I know I will once I get to the Splining phase.

Random Model Sheet

Some inconsistencies, but who cares.

Flash Ninja

I wanted to try and get back into Flash, so I churned out this happy Ninja walk.