Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I think you’ve done a great job with your piece. You got a lot of emotion across with your character, and it’s nice to see you using the extra appendages to add extra impact. The idle is looking great, the small head looks and changes of eye direction bring them to life. You could consider adding in a blink if you were to make an alternate idle, although you might not have the controls for this. I think it would be a nice tough to break up the movement on the tentacles a little bit more also. You’ve given good thought to the timing between the movements, and it’s got a nice flow to it. As they return to their idle it might be nice to build in an overlapping action to that pose so they settle into it. As the hands come together you could spread/stretch out the fingers first so they clasp together. I think it would be worth taking a look at the shoulder movements, and make sure they don’t move too independently from the body. Again, I feel like some blinks would add to the nice facial animation you’ve got in there.
• A lot of animation and research has been done in one week! So I just want to say great job on that aspect and working with a small time frame, would have been amazing to see what you could have done in the allotted time! The research is good, looking into other games that have similar characters to your rig and what you wanted to portray in the animation; and I love that you looked into films such as Apocalypse Now to get some ideas for the lighting! I love that you also characterised different parts of the character such as the head feeling more like a falcon and the antennas working similar to snakes rattle, incredible references to bring the character alive! I do find that there is a lack of testing out and doing some quick prototypes, it seems you instantly had the idea when it comes to reading the documentation. It would have been great to see you wrestle with different initial ideas and testing out different rigs to see what would work best! The descriptive words in the emotions maps are great though since having detailed descriptions like this will help hugely when animating the character. You also went to get some feedback from your peers which will help hugely when moving into a professional environment and seeking constructive feedback, it would have been good to see the feedback from your peers though as we don’t see many issues you ran into noted in the documentation. Amazing work with creating the atmosphere for the animation, the audio was a great addition to the animation and really fits the scene, it feels very cinematic! From your research, you said you liked the movement of the falcon, I would say you could push more of the snappiness of the birds movement into the animation. This could be done by some stronger head turning in the idle and making that transition feel a bit more snappier when looking from one side to another, you have it at the beginning of the idle but the rest of the idle loses that falcon watching-over feeling. I love the feeling of the transition as the character walks up in this slimy and evil tone, really selling this character's role and personality in the animation; with the head dipping down and slowly lurching forward, into the hand coming up to quiet the troops! I would just watch out for the transition between Idle and Transition, there is a slight shoulder pop where they don’t match up. I would recommend using the Maya Tool called Studio Library, you can download this online for free and will allow you to save poses so you can match the idle easily! Alternatively you could just copy paste the keyframes from the first Idle frame. The lead up to the cut throat signal is great, we really feel a tension before the decision is made and the movement overall is very natural, weighted and grounded. To emphasise this a bit more, I think you could keep the antennas down until the cut throat action is complete, this will keep the audience feeling more tense and when the hand goes across the throat to reach that final pose, then you could stretch out the antennas so we feel the character hyped from their aggressive decision! Then a small improvement would just be to work on some blinking for the character (if the rig supports it) since it will help sell the face to feel more natural, we tend to blink when taking in new information or changing where we are looking. So you could add a couple of blinks to when the head turns in idle, when the hand goes from silencing to cut throat and then a couple of blinks when transitions to each roar! Amazing work on this piece Maja, I really love the atmosphere you have set here and the personality coming across in the animation! You are on the right track and have an incredible knowledge and sight on how to present and make animations, I really look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!
• First of all I want to congratulate you on making your project, in my opinion self-discipline and willpower are important for this:). I am an animator by speciality, so I will mostly comment on the body mechanics of your character, taking into account the peculiarities of gameplay animation. About the idles - in my opinion you made too much amplitude on the chest and head. It feels like he's floating. The timing would be more natural if you phased the acceleration and deceleration to the keyframes. Right now the timing is too even. I would suggest enlarging the idle to break up the moving of his fingers, because a certain cycle is being read now. About the transition into the threatening pose - I really like the animaliness of his movements. It feels aggressive and threatening. But in the phasing, his shoulders move too separate from his body. Overall you have a good sense of composition and line of movement. And you've also made a very interesting character in terms of personality. Thank you for a great job!
• Really cool piece and shows a lot of character and looks well polished. Not sure if the shoulder pop during the transition is intentional and is meant to be read as kind of a 'twitch' but it doesn't read very well and feels like an unintentional pop. The rendering and environment look ace, though I'd also like to see raw renders from maya without textures and all of the post processing. The piece overall has a lot of character and nice motions on the arms and body, great work!
• Hi Maja! Hope you are doing well, Thank you for participating in the Rising Star Competition! Feedback: Well done with your project research. You did a good work of studying character personalities from movie references and video games. You have clear poses and good timing. Good storytelling and character personality. An interesting idea: What if the character would have an evil laugh at the end or a roar? Keep up the great work! Recommended links to boost your animation skills: Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL0_ccwcqFA&ab_channel=Jean-DenisHaas Breaking Down Attack Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LewXWM7HDd8&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Too Much is Just Right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNBKzLzDKtM&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Assigning Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV8xIP480qk&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames How to Push Your Animation Poses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVD7pwDpJA&t=1s&ab_channel=AnimSchool Weight in Animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3oIxjzdMqY&ab_channel=AlessandroCamporota The Perils of Interpolation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFwamE6Hy04&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Knockback https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVktK4a9Yfo&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Damage Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xHE3ypX96U&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Follow-Throughs Make the Impact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIB0BUe6Ihk&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Attack Poses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99gdMDF7V2E&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames
• This is a great and charming project – awesome job! I love that you put your animations in a contextual environment with appropriate lighting and added sound to it as well – it really sells your idea. It can be quite challenging to create subtle, stationary animations such as these, as they typically require more detail and small movements to look compelling in comparison to bigger and flashier moves. I think you have done a great job at that. I love the timing of your animations, the overlap and the small animalistic head movements at the end of the release. I see that you have offset the tendrils in most cases but I feel like that overlap is a bit too subtle at the moment, I only noticed it when I was going frame by frame. I would exaggerate that overlap, especially during the end of the release and the recovery. I think it would be nice if the tendril ends overlapped with the roots and curved upwards when they are on their way back from their straightened position into relaxed stance as if they were a snake’s tail. There are also a few times (such as during that release end/recovery state) where they don’t seem to animate much - I would make sure to put the extra effort into that detail to completely polish this project. During the release state at the final ‘roar’ location before the creature goes back to being relaxed (I am uncertain how else to describe it), it would also be nice to add a very subtle movement in the fingers as they are currently completely still. I think the recovery state would also benefit from an extended settle at the end as it currently goes straight into idle. When we do settle, it is often a good idea to overshoot the idle pose a bit so that the character goes past it in the opposite direction before they move back to idle. I am only taking a point off documentation as there is not much explanation about the development stage and there is no conclusion present. All of my feedback points are mostly minor polishing details, so again, congratulations on doing such a good job!
• Really nice overall. I've been picky as I can see the potential behind this, soplease take the notes as a way to improve your already pretty nice work. I liked how the whole lighting and environment helped with your mood. In terms of animation, It has a nice organic feeling although there are some areas to improve, for example, when you get to the attack pose it hits a wall pretty hard and when it goes back as well. I like how snappy it is but with the size of that head, there should be a bit more follow through animation when getting into a different pose, not a lot, but enough so it doesn't look like it hit a wall. I would have loved to see some pupils in there, it always helps to see where the character is looking at. Eye darts feel a bit slow but is hard to see without the pupils in there. In my experience over all the years, I realized everyone has a different opinion of what looks good, in my case and after checking references for a long time and worked with some of the best animators I know to date, I feel eyes move in one frame from one point to the other, they never slide around. They fix in something and track it, then move to the next spot and track it and so on... On a weird occasion, I would add more than one frame as translation for them. For expressions, I would have loved to see a bit more deformation on the frown, that would really helped you with the anger pose and maybe feel a bit the nose rising up when doing it. I can see the arms being animated in Ik, I would work a bit more there to, again, add a bit more follow through motion. For these kinds of poses, I would have tried to get away with fk but I get why you used Ik when he grabs his hands together during the idle. For idle I would have liked to maybe see him with his hands in one pose and once in a while go into rubbing his fingers as you have it. For the transitions between poses, I feel they need a bit more work, for example I feel like you wanted to add a bit of anticipation when he goes from idle forward, but it looks weird that the shoulder goes back while his body starts moving forward. I would have gone back a bit with the whole torso and do some offset in the shoulder if you wanted and then forward as you have it.
• A good attempt, but let down by the rig and some body mechanic and timing issues. - the shoudlers need linking to a V shaped sternum rather than directly into the spine, to shorten the motion of the clavicle .. The length of the clavicle bone is making all of the shoulder motion over exaggerated. - The Idle loops well but the breaker is too subtle and can easily be missed .. Also needed to be a little faster as the speed seems a little slow. - The body mechanics on the step forward seem off with the balance and motion not working correctly. The right arm is moving forward at the same time as the right leg. - The roar has nice posing, but more facial expression is needed. - The step back has shoulder issues when transitioning back to the idle pose and needs to blend smoother and more naturally.
• Contains some nice elements. Not specifically 'in-game' animations, but nicely rendered in engine