   Wannabe Animator
  Hi guys,I'm a soon to be graduate, and through the course that i have taken gained a keen interest in animation.I currently only have one animation of any worth to show and another 'sting' which only really shows that i know how to do a smashing glass effect. Really what i wanted to ask is if anyone would take a look at that animation and tell me if its any good. There are some timing and movement issues but it was my first effort so any feedback would be appreciated.Furthermore i'm not much of an artist (hand-drawn on paper stuff), is this a major handicap if i want to be an animator?For my university project i developed a cricket character using inverse kinematics and animated it in 3ds Max, but the character rigging was very basic and consistsed of polygons linked together using spheres (if you want to see these give me a shout). Does anyone have any advice on how to create a single skin for a character.Cheers everyone.Neil   
  perhaps you could upload a video somewhere and post a link?   ;  Hi, i don't own any webspace, and i don't know anywhere else to put it so i've created a myspace account and am going to try and upload it there and then i'll put the url up and instructions etc...EDIT: But unless your a meber of myspace you can't view the video, so any suggestions as to where i could put it would be much appreciated.EDIT 2: I could be wrong again. Try this urlhttp://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=843284290&n=2CheersNeil[Edited by - neilski_2003 on June 18, 2006 7:04:43 PM];Quote:Original post by neilski_2003Hi, i don't own any webspace, and i don't know anywhere else to put it so i've created a myspace account and am going to try and upload it there and then i'll put the url up and instructions etc...EDIT: But unless your a meber of myspace you can't view the video, so any suggestions as to where i could put it would be much appreciated.EDIT 2: I could be wrong again. Try this urlhttp://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=843284290&n=2CheersNeiljust send the video and others files you want to me and i'll upload them to my server if ou truly want to.;  that video is ok, it shows you have a simple understanding of animation for characters... although the animations are a bit stiff but because he is a robot i guess you should be able to get away with it. and i am not sure if you did this on purpose but the balls movement seems to go against known physics at a few points ;)is this animation done with a custom bone rig with ik or biped (with predone ik)?eitherway you do have some potential.as far as your lack of "classic-art" skills (hand drawing, i don't think that should be a problem, but when animating it really helps to know the creatures'/humans anatomy since the bone structure generally should reflect this.also, how long did that video take you to do?   ;  What did you major in in university?If you are serious about becoming an animator, and your major had nothing to do with art or animation, then I can only suggest the following:-Take as many traditional art (and then traditional animation) courses as you can handle.  Especially learn figure and general drawing, they are invaluable for any artist, even a computer artist... this fact is often overlooked by pre-professionals.-Learn the ins and outs of the technical aspect of animating in whatever program you're using (3ds).  This will never make good animation, but will make your life easier.-Learn how to rig properly.-Practice, practice, practice.  You have a long way to go to achieving a satisfactory level of animation... it is definately one of the harder things to do, and like all art, takes alot of work.   ;Quote:Original post by Professor420Especially learn figure and general drawing, they are invaluable for any artist, even a computer artist... this fact is often overlooked by pre-professionals.i am good in general art (not exactly drawing the but concepts), and also animate and model in 3d and still have never found too much of a use for it. so far i have found that it would be slightly helpful at times for getting the concept for a character down on paper (and then can help as a reference when modeling), however other than that i never found it to be of much use... i am not doubting your experience or what you say, i just haven't foun d it to be of much use to me. but it is true that you do use the "concepts" of general art within computer art, but neilski is talking about pencil ahdn paper art... which as i said is not of much use other than for conceptual art, which i have never found to be too useful since i usually carry a very detailed concept within my mind as i work.however, perhaps i am just missing somthing :)   ;  In response to as many of the above questions as i can remember.I took a course entitled Games Computing(Software development) and foccused my dissertation work upon character animation using inverse kinematics. 2 Units covered animation specifically, and another two with a more general approach.That animation probably took me about 16-24 hours (maybe slightly more, but no more than 36) from concept to completion including post-production (i.e all the sounds). As i said it was my first attempt at any sort of animation in 3ds Max so i had to learn all the skills used from scratch - e.g glow effect on the lights.I didn't realise the ball went against physics - the action is pretty poor - and i believe that at one point the robot is supposed to kick the ball and misses completely but the ball still goes where its supposed too - but as i said it was rough around the edges due to the time constraints and the fact that i was learning it all from new.The robot is rigged using IK bones set up from a basic abstract skeleton that i created.I think thats all of them if not i'll edit this post again in a minute.But on the whole do you think it was a fair effort for my first time out? And further to that and perhaps more importantly do you think it is worth pursuing and thus creating more animations?Cheers for your time and help.Neil;  Did the course specify that you custom build the skelaton? I've knowen them require that, it's utterly pointless of course because a character studio biped can fit just about any creature/human requirement you have and would make your work look about 10 times better in half the time. Oh well.The actual animation is a prety good start I guess, if you had used a biped it would look so much better though. Thats mad.   ;  It wasn't a requirement at an initial level, but it was if i wanted to achieve the top grade possible.I am currently working on creating a 'human' skin for the character but its quite time consuming particulalry when it comes to the weightings for each bone.As your a GDNet+ member could i ask if you think its worth the sign up. It'd probably helpful for the discount on books - as i suppose a good collection of reference material can be as helpful as anything else. Apart from that is there any other good reason for me making the purchase.Cheers for your feedback.Neil   