Hey friendly folks, thought I'd show you these and see what you think of them, they're some very small and simple animations I made for an indie production a while back that never really got anywhere.
[url]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~cmcmurr/anims/glock_attack_small.av…]
[url]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~cmcmurr/anims/glock_reload_small.av…]
[url]http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~cmcmurr/anims/hands_attack_small.av…]
cheers.
Hey, I'm an amateur/student animator, I don't see much animation on here so I thought I'd have a look. They all looked quite good to my eye, but the wrists seemed a bit stiff to me, could loosen them up a bit more. I would expect the recoil of the handgun fire to make your wrist rotate back as well as how you've made it push back the arm. The hands attack was much looser, and i liked the tension making the hands vibrate. It actually reminded me of dragon ball z for some reason, like he's doing a ka-ma-ha-maha. But the motion was much looser and more natural on this animation, which i liked.
They dont look to bad, but none of them really have any secondary motion, it makes them look really stiff
For example, in your gun attack the only thing really happening is the gun raising then lowering. You must be able to rig it up to have finger and slide control so you can get the slide kicking back, and the fingers gripping when the gun kicks and his index finger pulling the trigger. Also the kickback needs a little more snap to it right at the beginning so that it appears that he uses his arm to decellerate the kick of the gun and bring it back down.
The reload also really needs some secondary motion, or acctually its probably more primary motion since we all associate the slide locking back after a clip has been expended. The clip needs to be modelled and dropped out from the bottom of the gun as he brings it up, but before that a little flick of the thumb to release the clip, aswell as a little lossening on his fingers. And dont forget depending on the if the slide is back or not to either flick the thumb to click the slide back down, or pull it back to load the first bullet.
The hand attack looks alot nicer, but whats going on at the end?
Hmm acctually now that i mention the hand attack you must already have the hands rigged to do that, so adding the extra motion should be easy. Basically its not really your primary motion that makes an animation look good and life like, its everything else you do that nobody really looks at. Like for characters little twitches, breathing, swaying... or more so little imperfections. Keep working at it, its sort off a bit of trial and error and stuff, if you get stuck somewhere try acting it out yourself. Sure depedning on what your doing you could look like a complete tool, but whos going to see you :) and it really helps, just make sure you pay attention to your every move while your doing it. And in general try to watch other people and things in everyday life and all the motions that you never acctually notice until you paying enough attention, youll be amazed how much people and things move when you think that there doing little to nothing at all.
Hope that helps
Cool, thanks for the feedback guys, guess I should explain a few more things.
Hand animation- the brief was to create a 'mana drain' attack where basically the character sucks the lifeforce out of his opponent, leaving them unconscious, so the snap away at the end would be when all of the opponents energy is drained.
Gun- I would have loved to put in an animated clip and slide on the glock but the lead artist told me not to do it at the time cause he wasn't sure how the engine handled moving parts on weapons. Bit of a bummer. Guess I could go back now and do it anyway but I've moved on to other things.
Avalanchex- thanks for the tips on the gun firing such as tensing up his fingers when he shoots, I'll keep that in mind if there's a next time.
But for now I guess you need to imagine the clip falling out :(
Forgot to add, you'll need DivX and the models aren't mine.