Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This is a very well presented project with a high level of polish, especially given this being your first project in Maya, as your documentation notes. Animation wise, it has a good balance of fast and slow actions, though I would say a few things, especially the main attack, are slightly too fast and don't read quite so clearly. To sell fast actions over a small amount of frames, consider using smears to emphasise to the player where their eye should be drawn within that moment of time. The camera movement doesn't help in this regard. A couple of small notes, try off setting parts of the body from one another so when performing an action like looking around, the arms do not move all at the same time. If the body turns and settles on frame 10, try having the arms settle onf rame 11 and 13 to avoid stiffness. Very good effort.
• **Idle** - Interesting take on the character with the floating sword. Adds a new dynamic to the character that instantly stands out. - Pose is quite symetical, albeit the stance has been split somewhat. Perhaps turning the character more side on and swinging the back leg further behind could break this up even more. I would also look at creating more angles with the hips/shoulders, if you drew a line across them, they would both be flat. Same goes for the hands, even raising the back hand slightly will just offset the stance a little and break up the symetry. - Good use of reference footage for the look around fidget. The movement feels a little stiff, but it can be easily loosened up by offsetting the keys slightly. If you think of the upper half being a chain with the hips as it's root, as you get further up the chain to the head, arms and hands, the more delayed the keys will be from the hips. **Power Up** - Really like the concept of this animation, the whole battle mage vibe is a fresh take I've not seen with this rig all too much. - With the initial dip, the hips drop down but it's then the chest and head which leads the rise back up. Similar to the idle, think of the force being driven by the hips and the chain reacting to the force. So in this case as the hips reach the bottom and start rising back up, the top of the chain (head) is still reacting to the previous force of the hips dropping. Chest + Head rotate down in X axis after hips reach lowest point of Y axis - Watch the harsh rotation of the elbows at the top of this reach (before the spinning move) - Nice energy through the hands showing the build up of power - Really nice timing with the spinning move and expulshion of power. - Slight improvement could be a more dynamic pose for the release at the end, which would then give the character something to transition from back into the idle as the sword also returns to its idle position. **Attack** - Great anticipation and transition into the jump/spin. The additional time spent on the hair really pays off here. - Not sure about the harsh stop in the twist around frame 950. I see you're exploding out from that position later on, but I would continue the rotation for another turn and ease into the position at frame 970. - Bit difficult to read the settle at the end. I would have the left leg reaching down to the floor at frame 1012 . There is also a sudden rotation of the hips from 1012 - 1013 that doesn't quite match the rotation that the character was going through before. An overall pass to smooth this section out would help with the readability here. - Frame 1018 - 1019 the character comes down without much rotation, but then at frame 1020 the hips rotate by quite a large degree, again I would make this transition much smoother and incorporate the movement into the previous momentum of the character. - Another big transition between frame 1032 & 1033. As the character comes to the end of the rotation, the graph should be easing into the final pose. - More time and overshoot can be given to the recovery around 1052. They've been carrying a lot of momentum and the body needs to react to the stopping of that energy. - Root feels like it snaps back into idle position, gives a little overshoot for a more cleaner and more fluid settle. (Watch the snap between 1068 - 1069) Have to say though, this has been a really strong animation and with some minor adjustments, it will be a great piece for your showreel.