Head Lifting

[GraphicAnime]

Hello,

I've animated this character (held prisoner) lifting his head up. I used actions to achieve the effect. Let me know what you think.

http://designertek.com/VC_animation/jasta_crux-02.mov

Thanks,

[neeters_guy]

Animating a head raise in 3/4 view is difficult to do well without frame-by-frame (heck, it's hard even with fbf) particularly a head that is this detailed. As it stands, the clip is too short to the read the action. It looks more like an anticipation squash, or a "take", before he opens his eyes. (If you repeatedly click on play and say Homer's "d'oh", this becomes more obvious. )

I'm not saying it's impossible or undesirable to do so, but it's a lot of work. For example, to do it right, the eyepiece would need to rotate since a head raise is not a linear up and down movement, but a rotation.

To illustrate, an example from Iron Giant (actually a head drop in the movie):


For this particular action, I'd recommend showing it as a side view, which would be easy to do in AS. You could even to do it in silhouette to simplify it further. Then cut to the 3/4 view, showing all the rich detail of the characters face.

Hope this helps.

[sinclair]

I agree with Neeters, it's somewhat of a tough move to pull off. I think you've got a good base here but are a little bit off from nailing it-

I've actually tried something like this before (not exactly successfully) except it was the full head from straight to up. I used two layers in a switch folder. The only thing I didn't like about it was having to bounce back and fourth to a reference layer before the action took place and that I couldn't do multiple expressions without bogging the whole rig down.

I found that the cool thing with interpolating is that if I doubled one of the layers I could reproduce multiple partial moves by selecting the verticies while they were interpolating. Doing that could achieve the 3/4s but it would still take a little tweaking-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbxDb5FcCas

[neeters_guy]

Heh, that's pretty good.

[GraphicAnime]

I tried just tilting and adjusting the 3/4 view towards the side and downwards.



http://designertek.com/VC_animation/jasta_crux-03.mov

He's being suspended and tied up in the cave, so I wanted to pull off the head tilting up without doing much because of the multiple layers and detail I created for the head.
http://graphicanime.deviantart.com/art/ ... -145006126

[DarthFurby]

Hey Rebecca, like everyone says that's a very difficult shot, especially for a complex character design. I'll be attempting that angle soon myself, but have no clue yet how to pull it off. I'm sure there's a way, just needs a bit more thought.

[DK]

Hi.
Can I suggest usng a 3D proxy? If you have a copy of poser or any other 3D app you could recreate the shot in 3D using a model and then use the movie file as a background reference for your 2D character.

Cheers
D.K

[neeters_guy]

The point motion is a little disconcerting as it looks like he's morphing into someone else (eg., his eyes seem to be moving apart). It occurs to me that since the head lift is actually very slight, you can probably just rotate the head up without much point motion at all.

One more suggestion: You might want to stagger the eye-opening action with head-lifting action. That is, rather than starting and stopping the actions at the same time, which looks mechanical, try opening the eye a few frames after his head moves, then let it finish after the head stops moving.

I like your realistic style. It's a rarity here. Keep it up.

[slowtiger]

I'd suggest to change the whole shot. Let the character look more into the camera's direction (but not into it, to avoid making it symmetrical). And maybe the movement is much too subtle to be "read" correctly. It's always easier with two extremes which are much more different from each other.

You could have it much easier if the motion weren't so slow. A fast movement would have the same impact. Imagine the character mumbling down to the table first and then sharply looking up with the last word - much more impact.

I've found that many Anime aid this kind of movement with their use of shadows. In the head down position, the face will be entirely dark. Then, in the lifting, parts get into light at different moments. This not only very nicely defines the volumes and shapes of the face, but also add a sense of drama to the scene. Your lighting is a bit undecided: no real direction.

Think of what you really want to tell with this shot. Think of why this character would look this way.

There's some helpful advice about staging such a scene in this article by Mark Kennedy
http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2009/11 ... art-1.html.

[GraphicAnime]

I made the movement less complicated.

Here is the whole scene...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7PXx2yQ2oE

[slowtiger]

It does the job. Keep it simple!

[petel]

I agree with the other guys, keep it simple. It was interesting to watch your first effort and then listening to the advice offered develop your animation. Nice to see my old friends character from the Iron Giant used as an example as well.

[xothermik]

saw this thread a while ago and decided to mess around with the pic by neeters

typically brought it into anime studio and drew it up then created an action in which i then moved the vector points to match the second as closely possible and in a manner that will produce a believable interpolation.

then came back to the main timeline and inserted a copy of the action and topped the whole thing with some vector point animation to clean out frames where the interpolation was undesirable. finally used an animated white masked layer set to overlay to create the light on the characters left. here's the result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2RUA031YBs

extended version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BYlvI-Cec