Ricky Gervais animation

[julian82]

Hi,

I've seen the animations by HBO of the Ricky Gervais podcasts and didn't think the characters were very well drawn, so I decided to give it a shot myself..

I've uploaded a video of an extract from one of the audiobooks which hasn't been animated by HBO. Please keep in mind everything was done in 1 day.

It's on the front page of our YouTube site:

http://www.youtube.com/smallpoppy

[LeeHasPencil]

Nice one!

[DanFromFaction]

Very nice!

I dig the style very much.

[2ner]

That was good!

[PARKER]

I liked it, nice work.

[lwaxana]

Very nice!

[crsP]

I've seen the animations by HBO of the Ricky Gervais podcasts and didn't think the characters were very well drawn, so I decided to give it a shot myself..

Be that as it may, yours aren't any better. Both you and HBO fail on the Steve Merchant caricature, for example. Also if you're going to do long lines of dialogue, you need to make the visuals interesting. You keep your characters static with occasional random 'bobs' and hand raises, but if you listened to the track you could have put quite a few interesting sequences in there. The point is, why would someone force themselves to sit still and watch your version, when the original is audio only and the audience doesn't have to concentrate on a screen? Especially if you don't provide anything for the visual aspects.

[Uolter]

Be that as it may, yours aren't any better. Both you and HBO fail on the Steve Merchant caricature, for example. Also if you're going to do long lines of dialogue, you need to make the visuals interesting. You keep your characters static with occasional random 'bobs' and hand raises, but if you listened to the track you could have put quite a few interesting sequences in there. The point is, why would someone force themselves to sit still and watch your version, when the original is audio only and the audience doesn't have to concentrate on a screen? Especially if you don't provide anything for the visual aspects.

That's the same thing I think...don't take it as personal, the character design is great, but when I see videos like this I quit after a minute or less

[julian82]

Be that as it may, yours aren't any better. Both you and HBO fail on the Steve Merchant caricature, for example.

That's not helpful in any way. If you're going to say mine aren't any better and that the caricature "fails", how about a suggestion on where you think it could be improved?

why would someone force themselves to sit still and watch your version, when the original is audio only and the audience doesn't have to concentrate on a screen? Especially if you don't provide anything for the visual aspects.

If people don't want to concentrate on a screen, they wouldn't click the version with the word "animated" in the title. If people are searching YouTube for extracts of the Ricky Gervais podcasts, the majority of what they find will just be still images of Ricky/Steve/Karl to accompany the audio. This was just an attempt to brighten it up a bit. I'm not wanting to force anyone to watch anything.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, but if you're going to say things could be improved, some actual suggestions would be appreciated. If you're going to say things fail and aren't interesting, don't bother next time.

[jahnocli]

I think you set yourself up a bit. It can be difficult to quantify something like "drawing quality", but you criticised the drawing for the original cartoon without supplying anything that looked substantially better, and the lip-sync was not as good as it could be.

If you're serious, you won't let a few negative comments put you off. Produce another one, make it better, and almost everyone here will want to congratulate you. Prove 'em wrong, don't rise to the bait! Just about everyone wants you to succeed...

[Uolter]

I'm not trying to bother you, what I and probably crsp would say is that it's a pity to see such a nice design poorly animated. It's obviuos that things could be improved and you have surely the potential to do that, but no one can say- this character have to move from x to y -or- make more emphasis here- if currently there's not animation, just heads or arms moving. YOU have to do that!...later you'll read suggestion to improve. Now this is quite the same as watching still images. You have a good script, but your characters are not acting, they are reading. you want to make things awesome make your characters really feel what they're saying, that's what force a potential audience to stop, watch your video entirely and say...oh my...it's greaat!

[julian82]

I think you set yourself up a bit. It can be difficult to quantify something like "drawing quality", but you criticised the drawing for the original cartoon without supplying anything that looked substantially better, and the lip-sync was not as good as it could be.

If you're serious, you won't let a few negative comments put you off. Produce another one, make it better, and almost everyone here will want to congratulate you. Prove 'em wrong, don't rise to the bait! Just about everyone wants you to succeed...

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I'm not letting any negative comments put me off - far from it. But the thing that annoys me are absolutely useless comments like from "crsP": "yours aren't any better. Both you and HBO fail on the Steve Merchant caricature"

If somebody's going to be critical, at least make it constructive. Isn't that what this place is for? For example, I would've expected something like "I didn't think the characters eyes were bulbous enough. His mouth didn't look right. His hair was the wrong colour". That kind of comment is useful. Simply saying "yours aren't any better" is pointless and I'd rather not get a reply. So, what would your suggestion be for improving the lip sync?

It's hard to make something better if people don't actually make suggestions on HOW to make it better... whenever I give feedback to somebody for anything (ie at work), if it's constructive criticism, it's common sense to give an example of how to improve it like "instead of having the characters on the phone the whole time, you could've cut to a scene of one of them shoveling snow"... anything like that.

[jahnocli]

OK. I hear what you're saying. Here's something I saw on an Animation Mentor feedback clip -- put your elbow on the desk, make a fist of your hand, and rest your chin on your fingers. Now speak a little dialogue. When you feel your skull is being pushed up by your jaw, that is a point where you need to have an open mouth in your dialogue. Think of dialogue as a stream of sounds. Next work out where the Oohs and Os are, where you are pursing your mouth. Other phonemes, like EE and AI, can be fitted round these keys. And when in doubt, leave it out -- trying to match every sound produces a kind of chattering chipmunk effect.

And "yours aren't any better" *is* a vague comment, but art, drawing, animation, whatever you want to call it, is not an exact science. People can recognise quality, but can't always articulate their views coherently. If you ask for comments, you will have to learn to accept this and not be so thin-skinned about it. IMHO.

[neeters_guy]

Well put, jahnocli. Personally, I thought the negative comments were within bounds (specific and non-personal) and I'd encourage such comments.

julian82, this is pretty good, but it's really your job to figure what's wrong, not your audience. You qualified your work by saying you did it in one day, but the reality is the work stands on its own. Your loose style works well with some material, but the talking-heads type of animation needs more variety.

Either you keep it short and sweet like DanFromFaction,
New episode, made with AS 5

or you vary the visuals with scenes changes and more expressions as in these examples,
Hamish and Andy - Episode 1
NCN News Channel

Don't ask for better comments, strive to be a better artist.

[crsP]

That's not helpful in any way. If you're going to say mine aren't any better and that the caricature "fails", how about a suggestion on where you think it could be improved?

1) you start off your post criticising the drawing quality of another's, therefore there was an expectation that you were to improve on what they had done. You did not. Yours was not drawn well. And that is the critique I gave. Maybe planning the character designs will help you, but I can't suggest too much if I don't know how you came to this final product. It looks like you just sketched some characters roughly, to me, so suggesting you plan it out would probably not get a good reaction from you, judging by your response now.

2) A caricature is an exaggeration of the image of a person. Yours and HBO's are not recognisable as who they were supposed to represent. Now, me pointing out what the purpose of a caricature is would have came out as patronising, as I assumed it was known to you. But that is why your character design failed.

Also if you're going to do long lines of dialogue, you need to make the visuals interesting.

3) This is constructive criticism from my previous post. I also then go on to point out the parts of your animation which are boring and will put off an audience - the static nature, random bobs and hand raises. Following that I include another suggestion, which was:

... if you listened to the track you could have put quite a few interesting sequences in there.

As Uolter points out, the ideas are up to you - you are working with 'proven' material, and as even you say, the stuff is out there and people are listening to it without any visuals. The question I asked was not posed from me to you, but a question you should ask yourself. No one is forced to click on youtube, as you rightly said, but also no one is forced to watch a specific tv show, see any plays, listen to any music, read any book, etc. Does that mean everything is beyond criticism [ except when you want to criticise, of course..]. I think you confuse 'constructive criticism' with 'positive critique'. Constructive means that you are supplying information that could aid improvement. Which I did.