Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I've actually tried creating a number of Avatar inspired animations myself. It's a great series to reference, particularly because the animators of the actual show reference real world martial artists to creating the four different "bending styles"; Ba Gua, Hung Gar, Shaolin, and Tai Chi. I'm not personally an expert when it comes to motion capture unfortunately, but hopefully I can still give some good feedback. I appreciate the subtle nods to Aang's particular style of airbending, and you've made good use of arcs in the arms. There's a term in dancing called "armography" which refers to the shape a dancer makes with their arms, which is actually a good point of reference when doing things like this. Do be wary of the characters limbs clipping through one another though. Earthbending in particular benefits from being hand animated, it's ALL about strong and stable poses, you essentially want the character to hold on poses quite stiffly, which I imagine is particular difficult to do with motion capture. You also want a little bit more anticipation and a lot more raw power coming from each key pose. Punchy, stompy, really "snap" into those key poses. With the firebending in particular, it's meant to be very fast and energetic, I feel like you could have been more expressive in your movements here, lots of spin kicks, and almost break dance like movements, would have been good to see, and very appealing to look at in motion capture. I noticed with these animations in particular, a lot of attention was paid to the legs, there doesn't seem to be any clipping when they cross over. Good stuff! Tai Chi, slow methodical movements are very difficult to animate, theres a very nice fluid settle at the very end that I enjoyed.
• Some nice performance ideas. Less clips may have helped, focusing on a smaller amount of performances. Making sure the body mechanics are solid and clean-up is precise, which is fundamental when working with capture data. Study movement and animation frame by frame, paying attention to posing, timing, spacing and body mechanics. Any animation work is a lifetime of steady improvement, so keep learning and moving forward!