stretch and squash

It is about the stretch and squash principle.Even though everybody know about it, i just wanted to post it as i found it interesting and thought it might help some animators solve their jumps. Don't forget to fully extend the legs (or whatever the character uses... arms?) during the lift off and to extend the limbs before the touchdown as well (unless there is a specific reason for NOT doing it).

Squash

Stretch and full leg extension

Another leg extension before the touchdown

And squash again

Lines on Polishing!!!

"If the blocking is correct and your breakdowns are in place, the polish phase should only enhance the animation, .... It's not there to change the [overall] timing."

• Polishing your shot should not change the overall timing and idea of your acting choice, body movement, etc.

• One of the things I spoke about then was the need to treat the body as a connected whole — when the head moves, for example, the chest and shoulders are going to move, too. Without this nuanced connectedness, almost any movement looks unnatural.

• polish rule number one: Polish simply takes time.

• Rule number two: polish is subtle. If it made a huge difference, then it wouldn’t be polish, it would be animation.

• The key to efficient polish comes BEFORE the polish phase. So first, do good animation.

• Polishing takes forever when you’ve animated without really making a commitment to what you’re animating. It takes forever when you’re not completely clear in your mind what you want for that scene. You need to start with good, clear ideas.

Got these tips and notes on polishing from Kevin Koch.


More notes by Andrew Gordon. I hope I'm allowed to re post those tips. If not, I'll take this post down immediately.

General Polish Tips…

1) Plot your arcs on body parks such as the wrist.
2) Pay attention to your patterns
3) work on your physicality - re reference a move if needed...
4) Get your contact points working well (for ex: foot squashing when it
contacts ground)
5) Make sure you are starting and stopping your character properly
6) break up twinned poses
7) Fingers? are they animated?
8) so on and so on..

Facial polish stuff....

1) Avoid even timing on the jaw
2) Slow in and Out
3) Watch the corners of mouth
4) Arc corners and jaw in dialouge
5) Compress closed mouth shapes
6) Overlapp fleshy parts of mouth
7) Don’t forget to animate the cheeks where needed.
8) Layer in Squash and Stretch
9) Do close-up records for detail
10) anticipate shapes
11) Don’t over complicate brows
12) Remember how the eye works
13) Get those eye blinks looking good.
14) Don’t have those lids hit a wall
15) Change shapes on eye direction changes
16) Use the brow in conjunction with the eyes

Lot much happening in mah life these days...

Arun trying hard to push something into my brain!!!

Hurrayyyyyy!!! i started taking master classes from Arun Anirudhan [APK] on pre-production. Arun is the pre-production supervisor here and i thought i'll take advantage of him as much as i can. I' am having fun with the pencil , giving myself some stress which i' am enjoying to the core along with my modeling supervisor Chitralal as my classmate. It's been fun with chitra, we have fantastic compitition between us though he is leading the way giving me tough time as i' am damn bad in drawing.But no worries , i know I'll pick up.



fun time with chitralal


I know i should have taken these classes long back which would have helped me a lot finishing my shots more fast and easy. I was looking for this kinda training from past few year, when ever i was struck with some thumbnailing problems struggling hard for some strong poses ,which pose to block, what energy should my pose have and all those stuff. But now i got the right guy to learn from. we are discussing about everything about animation ,but this time in a traditional way. Hearing a lot about strokes,anatomy, thumbnails, posing, line of actions , shilloutes , angles ,contrast what not.

And finally....