I've been inspired to start one of these. I am attempting to do one sculpt everyday for 90 days. I haven't participated in sculpt January before so I grabbed the calendars from the last 2 years and will be doing those this month and next and then participating come January. I am hoping this will be a good place to post for feedback. I won't post all of them probably, but the ones I really want feedback on I will. Here is the male portrait sculpt. Feedback definitely appreciated. Anatomy isn't my strong suit, and I am really trying to push my learning there especially:
Hey Sando, nice work mate.
Here's a couple things I can spot.
-it looks the the front right leg pops more than the front left as it goes straight.
-the front feels a little weightless because I think the foot rolls too much onto the toe before the weight has landed on the other front leg. (it feels light as that foot goes backward.
-There's a similar weight issue as the back feet lift off too. It feels like it slowing floats up before lifting off (I hope you know what I mean)
-Also maybe the neck it too upright and the head is just a little too horizontal with the ground. In my limited experience in watching dogs, I notice a tendency for the head/neck to move forward when the walk forward and then when they stop, they become more upright like this. But your instructor will have more notes on this. (It's been a long time since I've animated a realistic quadruped)
But there's a lot of really nice overlap going on in your animation. I can see your skills improving at school :)
Keep it up!
Here is a tennis serve block out. This is the first exercise I'm doing for workshop 3. I feel pretty okay about it, but entirely dissatisfied with the pose at frame 33. Not real sure how to improve on it. Any feedback (for any of it) is helpful:
Hey Sando,
This looks like a really difficult assignment!
If the aim is to make the char look like a professional, then I think the racket should be nearly vertical (but slightly angled down). At the moment it is angled up so that serve would end up going about 10 metres above the other players head.
Also I'm pretty sure that the player hits the ball almost at the apex too. (slightly on the way down but very high.
Also you can probably take out a frame between 30-33, that is probably too slow for when you get to spline.
There's a point where the elbow leads as the racket goes backwards and swoops around. That part is missing.
You've probably looked for your own reference but here's a slow mo from YT
Ha. The second clip in that video is the exact one I used for reference :D So I have noticed that different instructors have different approaches. Some of them encourage you to "Follow the Reference!!!". This one is definitely on the "block out your reference, but then exaggerate all your poses for contrast and appeal" end of the spectrum. I initially blocked out the pose closer to the reference. He said I should get better "graphic shapes," though I'm not confident I know exactly what that looks like in practice. Frame 33 was my result. I will keep massaging poses, and definitely try to get the leading elbow in there. As always, I appreciate your eyes.
Awesome. It looks like he is only doing workshop 7 for now, but I will definitely keep him in mind when I get there, or if I see his name pop up sooner.
Here is the spline for the tennis serve. The arm movement at the end is pretty stiff, but I am moving on with a new assignment this week. May come back to it at the end of class. I feel like I learned a lot from this one, and while it still has lots of flaws, I was happy with what I accomplished.
Nice work Sando. Great improvement.
Yeah the 2 points of stiffness for me is how the whole upper torso and the arm are moving at the same rate from around f26-30.
Then in the settle the feet/body seem to drop down at the same speed from f54-56.
But good work. Move on, come back if you have time/energy.
workshop 3 exercise 2.
I struggled a lot with this one, I think mostly due to failures in the planning stage. But would still love some feedback on how to improve it. The focus for the exercise was on showing weight. Ignore the path of the axe after 85. Due to the constraint set up I will just bake it out and reanimate (appropriate use of reanimate?) it after I polish the body mechanics.
Also @waylow I am trying to do some rigging when I have spare time, and am wondering if you can point me toward a good solution for IK FK matching in Blender.
Sorry for the rambling. I'm not sure if I helped you much haha
Thanks for the notes Wayne, and for the pep talk. I did get a little discouraged with this one. I made a pass to try and make some improvements before submitting it. Never really got it to a place where I was satisfied, but we are moving on for now. I always appreciate your help and encouragement. Sorry about your mouse cursor :D
I figured out the mouse cursor! They added a setting and it is disabled on older files, which I started from your last review file and just updated the video.
Never forget that you can come back to it, or even start it again, or pick a new idea. All of the success and failures are part of your learning.
You can do it!
Blocking for a ballet sequence. Let me know what you think. Thanks!!
Here is the spline pass for the ballet animation. Would love some feedback.
It's coming along Sando.
The biggest thing I see is the floatyness at f13-28
His weight needs to accelerate to get the lift off - and there's a couple spacing pops.
If you are taking this from reference pay really close attention to the spacing on his cog. Also if the ref is a lighter dancer you will need to adjust the animation.
Keep going!
Blocked out my first acting shot this week. Pretty exciting! Will be working on it for the next 4-5 weeks, so still a long way to go. Let me know what you think.
It apperas abit laggy, maybe because the animation is not finished? I am sure it will be great when done:)