Moho Forum

Oooowee! It's been a while since I've posted anything on the forum. I've been working on this dance video for a little while and it's no where near being done but it's got a decent amount of frames to it so I thought I'd share anyway! It's going to be a music video version of a girl group from Korea called "Girls Generation." I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a fan of Kpop and I really like this group but the real reason I wanted to to a cartoon music video because I wanted to see if I could animate dancing. Basically because it requires a lot of movement and I want to see if I could even do it. Of course and I went over board and chose a group that has nine members in it. (*derp*)but my plan is to animate one character completely all the way through the song and duplicate it and change each one accordingly. I also wanted to post here so anybody who's interested could see my progress (or just me) as I haven't done anything like this before. I'd love any critiques or ideas but keep in mind it's a work in progress so I'll be constantly tweaking it until it's finished. Basically, if something looks wonky or off like bad hand positions, floating appendages or weird lip syncing, I'm still probably working on it! Anywho enough babbling! Check it!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gla0n0wcl9m5y33/GGGee2.mov

Nice character design! It looks like maybe you don't have enough points bound to her abdomen bone. that area should move all together (but with some flex to it) from sort of the bottom of the rib cage area (higher than you have it now) to the where the abdomen meets the legs (lower than you have it now). And the bottom of her shirt is moving too extremely right now. I think adjusting the abdomen bone binding will fix that issue. Looking forward to seeing more on this project!

It looks good. There's a Shakira-like hip shake going on. Not a complaint or anything, just something I noticed.

I'm certainly in no position to judge anything, but I felt like the feet didn;t match the body. They struck as being too flat... Otherwise, great work. Very fluid and smooth.

Welcome back to the forum. Nine dancers is a big job but I think it's the kind of project that should get a lot of views.

Just another update… I've cloned one of the character and have all of the lip sync work done but there is a ton of other stuff I have to fix, design and alter before it's done. It's been much harder than I imagined to do but I've learned SOOOO much more about anime studio than I did before which was part of the reason and goal for doing this in the first place. Thank you for the couple of people who made suggestions, I'm trying to work on making it overall just better but I'm still getting basic movements and transitions down first. I didn't think about how hard it would be to create movement when the characters were changing positions. Right now they are just floating back and forth! LOL! Anyway, to the few people that will see this, here's a new version with all nine members.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vco9cm3qrqkmj ... itions.mov

This is the actual video if anyone is interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjmV7ZrA3hc

Hello guyver93

I think it looks really good, Very well done.

I think I may have a solution to the sliding feet you mentioned. Just add ice skates to all of their feet.
Problem solved. You know, just make it an ice skating version of the dance. I wont tell anyone you cheated.

Im just kidding, but you have to admit, it is a good idea. Simple too.

On a side note I just did a music video of my own with some dancing. Your dance makes mine look very amateurish. Thats ok, I'm not going to hold it against you. Good job. Very well done.

If your interested, here is the link to my video. By the way the song is mine too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW3prRe4 ... 4-overview

HammerJammer

Nice work. It must have taken you a long time to finish this. I did notice when they characters switch places in the z axis, there was clipping with the characters sometimes. The dancing is great too. Keep it up.

Thanks hammer! Your video with the skeletons it's awesome! I love the arm wave they did and all of the dancing and emotion that was put into it! I know exactly how you feel when it comes to the technical problems that come up! There's still a lot I have to fix on my animation but it's fun and frustrating at the same time to figure those things out!

Hello guyver1223

Your video with the skeletons it's awesome! I love the arm wave they did and all of the dancing and emotion that was put into it!

Thanks a lot, I was making it all up as I went. No script or story board.
I don't recommend this method, as it causes you a lot of headaches, having to go back and add things you just made up on the spot. Blah blah, blahhhh.
I sure you know what I mean.

Anyway thanks. I had a lot of fun making it. Even though it was just for myself and maybe a few people on the forum I can scam into watching it. LOL!

I'd be interested in seeing the finished Dance.

Good job and good luck.

HammerJammer

I think it looks great, you can see how much work you put into this. I hope you can post it on the group's fb page and get a ton of views. The main suggestion I would make is that you stager some of the movements of the different girls so it doesn't look like a reflection/duplicate of just one character. By having some of the other dancers slightly out of sync, it will ad more independence to the other dancers and look more "real" . Just a thought. (to deal with the possibly unwanted "sliding" look, perhaps you can just manipulate the shoes and not the whole leg, to get the appearance of very skilled "moonwalker" dancers).

Great work, fun song.

LY

That's definitely one of the things I'm going to do little Yamori! I'm going to try and put them all slightly off sync as well as add in different head movements to make them look more individual but creating and completing one entire dance cycle really save me a lot of time. I might hide some of the sliding feet with some clever camera movements and close-ups to save some more time as well. As for the advice!

guyver93 wrote:This is the actual video if anyone is interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjmV7ZrA3hc

When I clicked on this I thought "wow, now THAT is really good animation! Then I realized it was live action and the dropbox file was actually yours. Whoops

Choreographed animation; you have to include it as one of your tutorials. This has potential to be huge. Complexion, Hair color and hair style might help to differentiate too.
I know how much work this stuff takes. I've worked for weeks on just a hand! I finally decided to rotoscope my own hand which purists might call cheating but the result is much better. I 'will' use that same hand for different characters!
I'll be watching to see your progress.

Well I've been updating this animation and here is part of the newest version. Still a lot of errors,a lot of clipping and general fixes to do but at least the girls look like different people this time! I'm learning as I go but as I said before, it's giving me a lot of knowledge and techniques I've never used before. I've done some of the suggestions you guys stated and it has helped a lot. The movements are more staggered making it look more realistic and the character designs have changed to look more like the actual girls (although I'm horrible at caricatures) It will be interesting to put side by side comparisons together when the final one is done! Anywho, here's the newest version. I only posted half as it's pretty long the the second half hasn't been worked on yet!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfh2mwm8ayu8q2z/GeeToon.mov