Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Oh wow! A little bit of everything in there huh? Ok a lot to unpack so lets go by order. Rigging and skinning: Solid enough, joints look good on the dog as does the spine. Tail looks a bit janky with the large blend in the skinning around the base. Big heavy character looks like he has a decent rig overall, adding some directional markers to the elbows and knees would help with the minor popping issues I saw. Animation loops: From what I could see in your top down view... well, I couldn't. I'd suggest polishing them and making a turntable of each to show them off if you want to add a nice piece to an "Animation" showreel. Cinematics/mocap: Decently clean mocap is always a plus. the extra bit that companies will look for is the polish and cleaning. Right now I can spot a number of clipping hand movements that will buff right out with a little time and effort. Seeing these animations in a scene or context would also help show them off. Facial: OK, so this is what I do for a living. I'm a facial animator for AAA games. This needs a LOT of polish if you want it to look good or read in any way, shape or form. Look into Phonemes and Visemes, their relations and then grab a new scene. To this scene add your character and a flat plane next you the face. To the plane add a Mov video of your reference and a Wav of your audio to the timeline (literally drag it in there and you'll see a wave appear in the timeline). Begin animating. Watch for any and all movements. Start with the Jaw, then the mouth shapes, then the eyes, then everything else. Overall a nice bit of showreel for a student animator.
• Rigging was mostly good, I did notice a bit of a clipping issue on the the dog as his head is lifted up, it seems like the model for his tongue isn't following the head fully, make sure every part of the model is skinned properly, including parts of the model that are "inside" other parts. Be sure to rig the human characters hands/fingers, they're quite large, so it seems unnatural that they don't have any movement to them. I would have liked to have seen the animations you made for the game presented a little better, it's difficult to really see them from a top down perspective. Be wary of the motion captured characters hands, they clip through her thighs quite a number of times. Lip sync is notoriously difficult, I recommend starting with just opening the jaw at the right times, then going back, adding a "lip sync" layer to the mouth controls, and really nailing the key shapes for the lips for each sound. Then go back again, and add detail to things like the tongue, and the subtlety's of the lips, try recording yourself saying the line, and see if you can isolate the shapes you're making by going through the footage frame by frame.
• Some nice engine work. Keeping the reel shorter would help, particularly in the end section. Would have been nice to see less clips, that blend nicely together in Maya. Which is fundamental skill for games work. For skinning and rigging,study anatomy a lot and watch creature VFX breakdowns. This helps understand the attention to detail needed for this work. Any animation work is a lifetime of steady improvement, so keep learning and moving forward!