 Welcome back. It is time for another Q&A. I've got lots of questions. Let's get straight to it. And as always, I want to sit there so I can blend these questions in, and I'm always going to read them out loud for those who are just listening to this clip. Joe, question number one, Paolo Man. Paolo Man, okay. Do you have any advice on breaking up body A body's movement? Okay, body movement and how to make characters move more organically and fluid? That's a good question. The first reaction right away is that obviously you have to look at the style. Does the style warrant fluid movement? Because sometimes people think that good animation is smooth, fluid, clean movement. It really depends on the style. But in terms of breaking up the body movement, well, A, I would act it out so you can feel how it works and what your body is doing for that specific action. Then I would also look at shoot reference, look at reference so you can see and study the breakup of the movement. Just in general, how does that work? How does the body change if you do a gesture, move a step, whatever it is? But also breaking up movement, it's not just the mechanical aspect of I've got to do this and do that with the hand and this with the chest. It's also what is leading the action. So if you have, you know, if you have a turn, it's not about, well, first I got to move the head and then that's going to take the chest with it and that's going to take the rest of the body. Well, maybe you don't want to lead with the head, maybe it's more of a and then that maybe it's an immediate head turn. It's just it also depends on the action and what the character is doing a reaction, whatever it is. But in terms of like one more thing, technically breaking up, also be aware of each body part influences another body part. So if if I do arm raise up, that's going to take the shoulder because of the shoulder is going to just my chest. But if I don't want to do this, I'm going to automatically compensate and move my head over there. I think all of that goes into breaking up body parts, but all comes down to what is the intention of the movement and then go from there, like that will define what moves first and then you look at how that body part will influence the rest and then that way that gives you a good step by step idea of okay, this is how I need to break up the body and in form of more like an animation taking point of view. Some people take the curves and adjust them all in the graph editor to get that breakup and that overlap. And some people, it's come more like me where I do the breakup in the pose, looking through the render view and I'm going to break up, I do overlap and and offsets and break up more through the posing then through the graph editor, if that makes sense, make sure to get in a position correctly here. And in terms of more fluid, I mean, the fluidness comes also down to tracking your arcs, making sure that you don't have any bumps or any crazy like one frame direction changes on on big flowy things where you track arms, you track nose tips, you track elbows, knees, and all that good stuff. I hope that answers the question. Question number two, Mr. Skinny Nerd 3 hygiene, it's JD hygiene. My animation, it's like hygiene. My hygiene is bad as weird hygiene. My animation is regarding spacing. Do you have any tips or tricks on paying attention to your spacing while animating? Absolutely. That's going to be actually one of the very soon upcoming FNAs, if that's English. But generally for spacing, a you can use built in tools where you have your actually the word escapes me now. There is the motion trail type of thing where I have so many scripts, of course, now I'm blanking, but there are scripts that make curves, nerves curves, and they have actual points of where the keys are. Sometimes the points on frames, you can manipulate those curves and that actually adjust the movement of your character as well. But the old school thing took a long time here. I use these to a multiple these multiple colors. So I, I track sometimes you have all those tools, but then they're in 3d space too. So depending on the arc stuff kind of changes, I'm going to use them as well. But one of the first things I use is this for this goes to the previous question for fluid movements and tracking and spacing. I put dots on every frame to see how things move. And then with a different color, I do what I really want to do. And then I can adjust like, oh, this is what's happening right now. Here's a pop or the spacing feels off. Oh, this is the curve that I really want to do. So then I have the actual, the new dots on this with the movement should be. And then I can manually do this is kind of the spacing that I want roughly. And then I put that in there. And then you still readjust depending on play blast and and you know, how the animation moves and feels, hopefully make sense. Tina Huang. Thanks for your channel. You're welcome. I learned so many things from you. That's awesome. I do have a question bothering me for a long while. How do keep how to keep the nice feeling of your blocking after spline polish? That's a great question. That's a common problem also on the step earlier when you go from from steps where you have a cool feeling and the movement is nice. Everything has good timing. And then you spline it for the first time and is what happened to the shot? So how do you keep the feeling after spline polish? I think there are multiple things. If you're alone, then it's a bit tricky. You I would then animate a different shot or take a break and come back and have fresh eyes. It all comes down to to me, at least fresh eyes. So a fresh eyes subjectively where I try to take breaks or I flip the shot 180. To it looks different like, oh, okay, that's that's not what I'm used to seeing. This fills off. So these are kind of the things that I do where I try to take a break, take a break through this, taking a break or work in a different shot. And then I come back and I have fresh eyes, changing 180 or fresh eyes in terms of you ask your coworkers and also helps at work that you have daily. So you have your leads and soups like everybody has comments. And of course, the client has has notes. So you will have enough eyes to not make it stale. Let's put it this way. But it is a common thing and I deal with this all the time where you're so focused on something and you kind of lose sight of the bigger picture. But again, frequent feedback will help you with that. James, James Gross. Hey, JD, what would you do if you had to introduce a new monster into a shot, given that this will be the first introduction to the monster? Much appreciated, James. Good question. My usual useful answer is it depends. It depends. It depends what you want the intro to be, what the audience is supposed to feel, you know, should it be an intro, blam, coming through a door, like that's like, wow, what is this? This is huge. I'm scared. Or is it like, where's my hand? Can't do like creepy around the door, like an opening. And you want it to be slow and creepy. And maybe maybe the hand is tiny. I think, oh, that's creepy and small. And then ginormous head comes in. And that's the second surprise. Like, whoa, this is bigger than I thought. I think there are different steps of introducing a monster. It's a good question. It's also a broad question. It depends. It depends how you want to introduce it. It depends on what the client wants. It just depends on what you want the audience to feel. Should it be a surprise? Should it be something gross, something creepy? Do you want multiple introductions? So maybe a creature comes in and you think this is one thing, then it unfolds. There's a second head there or something. It makes it even creepier. So kind of depends. Again, useless answer, but kind of depends. But you have a lot of room of playing with the audience, like playing with their expectations and then surprising them, I guess. Alice Smith, what would you do for a character that's impossible to make or find reference for? Right now, I am animating Rayman and he has no arms or legs. So it's very difficult. Aha. Good luck, everyone. That's referring to those questions that were submitted during the Spider-Verse disk or code giveaway. Good question that comes up a lot as well. The advice is always act it out yourself or shoot reference and blah, blah, blah, blah. What if it's Rayman or a genomes creature or just something that doesn't exist and you can't shoot reference or you can't find reference? One thing would be looking at whatever it is that you have. Is there something that's similar? Right? So maybe it's a creature or human or something where it's kind of the same idea. Maybe it's a big, the classic example, a big ogre, big arms and maybe you look at gorilla. So it's not exactly gorilla movement, but maybe it's a creature that's more driven through arms and it's heavy, big, muscular arms and that kind of drives the stance and balance a bit more. That could be one thing, right? Or you have like lizards and extrapolate that into more dinosaur-y type of things, whatever you have, birds and dinosaurs. If it's something cartoony with Rayman, I think that's a lot trickier because it's also cartoony and especially with that character. A lot of times it also comes down to what is your experience? What is your experience with looking at previous reference and other styles of animation, just the general overview of your animation world and then it's going to make it up. It also comes down to that, are you able to make up a character, make up movement or an action just based on your experience and based on your ideas and you can still try I guess to act that as a bit different, but at least you can, if you can draw, you can do thumbnails, at least you can drive your animation through posing, you can still pose the character and maybe you have to find the timing through your animation, but especially with this character, obviously you also have previous material to look at. But if it's something brand new with no reference, you just have to come up with it and it's based on loosely other things that you know, but hopefully you can base it on something that other people are vaguely familiar with so they can identify or they can watch something go like, oh, this seems familiar, I notice, they might not say this, right, but they can feel it. If you do something that's completely out there, like a design that's completely alien and movement that's completely alien, alien as in like just completely unknown, a connection might be difficult to form with whatever you're seeing on screen. So hopefully whatever you're doing, whatever you're creating from scratch has somewhat of a connection to something. And this could be something super cartoony, like old classic cartoons, you know, kind of get that style and zippiness in there, but it is difficult. And yes, sometimes you just have to make it up and you got a reference. Femenino singular. Femenino singular. Okay. Again, I apologize if I put your any usernames here. Hi, JD. I'm finishing my animation studies and I'm quite scared but excited for the next step. Totally understand. It's also awesome and scary. Would you recommend sending your reel to a larger company through internship or whatever? Or is it better to start in a smaller studio? This is one of those depends answers. It depends on your situation, your location, and your your personal needs and wants and requests. It's hard for me to answer like a general thing would be I would say right away, send it anywhere. It just doesn't matter. Like you just you want a job. If you pick one company and you want you're going to wait until that company hires you, maybe you can maybe you got the financial security to pay all your bills and just wait. It's tricky. You can. I'm not telling anybody to do anything. But I will probably send it to every studio and see what the feedback is. And you might start at a smaller studio, even though you want to start at a bigger one. But then you might form connections and friendships at that smaller studio. And maybe someone in that small studio goes to the bigger studio that you want to go and now you have a connection there and they have referrals. So it doesn't have to be horrible if you started a small company and you want to be at the bigger company, there's always a trajectory or path to it. But then again, it also depends what you want. Larger company, you might have less say in your shots. You might just be part of a smaller wheel. That's part of a bigger wheeling machine. And a smaller studio, you might have more creative input and freedom. It might be also less organized and tricky to navigate. In a smaller studio, there's more chaos, whereas a bigger company is more corporate but has more security. And this depends how you feel like, do I want to be part of a larger company or do I want to be part of a smaller company or do I just want a job? Maybe you just have to send it up because you need the sponsorship of that company for a work visa. So then you don't really have a choice. You're just going to send it everywhere and then see who responds and go from there. So again, it's a bit of a vague answer. Andrea Camperese. Andrea Camperese, I hope I pronounced this correctly. Hi, I'm working on a short shot and every time I watch it, I see new things to adjust. How do you know when a shot is definitely complete? That's a great question. And I don't think you ever know. To me, when I work on something at home, which has been a long time, but last time I did, I had a deadline. I want to do something over the weekend. So that is my deadline. After two days, that's it. I got tired of this on then and that's it. And at work, you get the same thing at least for me. I got deadlines. I got target dates. So it's more like, I'm not done with the shot. It's like, you're just giving up your shot. Someone tells you you're done and that's it. And also the client will might tell you, Hey, this is done. You're good. You might have some more thoughts and I want to do this, but someone will tell you you're done. And that someone can be your client, right? It can be a defined budget based schedule where you just can't go over that deadline anyway. And for you personally, maybe you just also, you're tired. Look, sometimes, sometimes you want to adjust things, but also know that you might, you might get into this noodling thing where you just, you just make the shot worse. Or you just kind of start, you get some good timing and you keep adjusting and the timing gets just a bit swimmy and soft. And it's kind of like, eh, sometimes you just have to also let go. And you know that if I keep adjusting, it's going to water the whole thing down. I think I would just always look at feedback. Maybe that's a better answer that you want to just, but you can't see the difference anymore, show it to people and then I go, no, this looks great. You're done. And then you go, then you just got to trust them like, yeah, you're done. Or or another answer could be you work on it and you stop. And then after a month, if you have that time or a week or two, you come back and then the first thing that stands out, like, ooh, that was a weird fix that. And maybe you have a list of three things to fix. So maybe take a break and come back. And if there's anything standing out, fix that. And then, you know, the rest didn't bother me. So maybe I'm done, but you can work forever. That's all longer one digital flower animation. I'm going to read the whole, well, I think in chunks, there's a multiple things here. How do you handle complex action scenes with multiple characters running, jumping and doing broad actions? It depends on who the lead character in that scene is. If I have one character, depends if you have one character reacting to like five other people attacking that character, you have to look at the rhythm and the order of the attacks. And it might just be a lot of back and forth of I'm blocking out all of them and really roughly when that choreography you know, when what happens and what I want to do things and then you can go maybe on a character which I paired based like I'm gonna do this and then this guy and this guy. Sometimes you have things where you might have to pair characters. So maybe they're only two fighting, but it's so intertwined with, you know, punches or rolling or grabbing that I do both at the same time. Or sometimes it's multiple characters, but there's a foreground and there's a background thing. So I just focus on do the foreground first. It's more important the rest is blurry, then I do the rest for kind of like balance and composition. So it kind of depends on the actions who's driving the action. Is there something where a character fights and someone, you know, defending itself and then there's a switch with some of the power of change and now this character is fighting this guy is defending. So then it just kind of depends on who's driving. It's a complicated thing. It really depends on the content, how long it is. Also don't forget there's also a main story point in the shot. You want to make sure that that specific story point, even if it's an action or clear read or a character trait, I want to address that first because that's the most important thing in the shot. This needs to be clear. And then you work, you know, left and right of that and then kind of make the rest work. It's a bit of a broad thing, especially how do you handle the part where you have to keep it interesting and lose the cycled feeling at acting on top or might blend and then transition into an out of existing walk or run cycles. That's super tricky. I remember a transformer shot like that. It is tricky and it's, I don't, when you have cycles, it's really tricky to to, I wouldn't stay with the cycle because it feels cycled. I would just be kind of the basic action of the cycle. And then, especially when the cycles are straight, look at different curves and path changes. And that will already break up the balance and the weight transfer and legs or whatever you have. That's immediately helping me with getting rid of the cycle feeling and then depending on the actions, just contrast. So you might have something where then you want to break up into something bigger that could be part of a roar of a creature or an evading thing of a human. It really depends on the actions, but it's a lot of, it's a lot of putting multiple things in, combining them, baking out the animation if I have constraints and whatever. Sometimes I have multiple assets and I have one and then I make one disappear. I didn't want to pop up because like one is keyframe, one is mocap and I combine multiple rigs into one action. It looks somewhat fluid in the, in the play blast because it's just all one, you know, it looks like it's one, but it's multiple things that turn on and off. And then when I'm kind of done with that rough thing, I bring in one new one and put all the animation of all the different assets onto one and bake it out. And then that's my main construct and then go from there. It just depends on the action. It can be a lot of work. I struggle a lot with those kind of shots and almost all the time find myself ending up baking everything down exactly pretty early, ending up with a lot of keys on every frame and it can get pretty messy pretty quickly, especially with potential foot sliding and foot placement and gates you need to take care of. Absolutely told you understand, but that is my process as well. I do a lot of baking out. I'm not super, I've got, I've gotten pretty used to using having things baked out in every frame. So then I can just delete chunks and then fix them and then fix the transitions. I'm not, I'm okay with that. With quarter pets, it's even harder. Absolutely. It's just, yeah, just a lot of back and forth, a lot of back and forth of, of what, what's the intention of the shot? How can you have more contrast? And sometimes I know it's really messy and it's put everything in there and I know I see all the pops and something I would never present. But it gives me a kind of like squint and like, that's kind of the rough thing I like. Okay, this is kind of it. So now how do I clean this up? And then again, I put multiple things together, then I take one new asset and put everything on one asset, bake it out, and then you can easily fix the pops and changes to that. Trying to nail down the timing and spacing with a simple, simple cube and planning helps a lot. That's a great point. Absolutely. But still I always end up struggling a lot with those types of shots and all the technical challenges. Sure. Animation layers also help sometimes, but still I find those broad action shots really hard. Yeah, we have multiple controllers, cons on our rakes, it's kind of like layers built in. I definitely use those a lot, where you have like a main mode cap take or a main keyframe thing that I did. Now I want to make changes on them. I go on a higher or lower node and then I add like a bigger overriding animation. And I like all this bake it all down back to one controller. I do that a lot. I have definitely a lot of additional controllers or layers if that's what that's what you prefer. Since you work in visual effects, those kind of shots are pretty common, I guess. So any tips are much appreciated. I hope that was helpful. Thanks so much for all your great content. You're very welcome. And frequent updates on this channel is a treasure trove of animation wisdom. You're too kind. Thank you so much. So yeah, I hope that was somewhat helpful. I mean, you answered a lot of your own questions. I mean, I kind of do the same thing as you. I probably should do more with just cubes and spheres and placeholders. I don't do that enough. Sometimes you can also hide just one side of a character or one leg or both legs or you can go to really just see the root or maybe just root and chest. And you can also hide multiple body parts. If the rig allows that for that, sometimes you have to kind of do your own thing to hide certain things. But that can help to make things more, you know, there's a better overview and it's complicated. But yeah, it's a very tricky question. It's a lot of work. It's very complicated work. But I do what you do. And so yeah, hope that was somewhat helpful to rambling. Shalom, lose and lose. Sorry, I don't know. I don't know that. Sorry, that name. Do you have a checklist for when you do your animation shots? Yes. Actually, I did a finale checklist. That helps for sure. For me, it's usually, I hate to say it depends. It depends on the type of shot, but you might have something where it's like a vehicle and a camera move. So kind of look at, if it's something where I animate the camera, I'm doing this right now, there's a lot of camera movement. I do kind of the rough, but it's something new. I do kind of a rough spaceship, tie fire x-wing type of thing, spaceship movements. So kind of this is roughly where I want it to be in screen space in relationship to the set or other set pieces. And then I look at the camera, but I want the camera to look and feel right and heavy and real. So later on, what I've been doing is rough, blocking, staging or where the ships are, and then actually polish the camera. I want this feeling. And again, it's not like you can do big moves and then the ship's not there. You want to know where things are, but I do then go into like, these are the kind of the, this is the weight of the camera, and then I bring in the ships. Well, sometimes you have cool ship action and whatever you're gonna do, and then you do the framing of it. And then you realize, my man, that camera is out of control. It's just too fast and it's too light and it's just, it doesn't work. The animation might look cool, but it's so broad, the camera can keep up with it and it just looks real. So I do a lot of back and forth, but lately I've been spending almost more time on the camera after a rough pass on the ship action. So when I know where everything it kind of is, then I do the camera, then I really want to lock down the weight and everything. And if I, and if doesn't mean that's going to be a lot of pan and tilt changes, but that might be a little bit, then I can always kind of adjust the animation. But it's kind of, that's my checklist in terms of vehicles and cameras. I want to, that my list is things have to be blocked out correctly with enough weight, but also the camera movement has to work in relationship with that, that action and has to feel real. But it comes to human or creature stuff. Again, it comes down to, can I fit all the actions into the shot length? So my checklist is, I got to put everything in, don't really care about timing, but all the story points and poses have to be in there very roughly. And then I check the timing, okay, let's make the timing work. And then I do the correct timing, but maybe the animation ends up being too long for the shot. It's like, hmm, this is the right way in timing, but the shot's shorter. How can I compress and take some things out? So then I go through that, that's kind of a back and forth of, it has to work story-wise, shot lengthwise, and then how to make the animation work within that. Like these are all like raw or things depending on the shot type. In terms of checklist, in terms of animation, I go, you know, like from a technical point of view, it's root first, the root drives a lot, and then chest and head and smaller limbs. I want to make sure that the momentum of the root and how a character moves and jumps or whatever it is, works weight-wise. Because this matter of having beautiful finger poses and a nice arm arc, if the root is super light or has like a sudden stop or it just, the weight is gone, it doesn't feel really unbelievable. So for me, that's the main thing. This has to work. Then everything else kind of falls into place once that main construct is there. It's kind of it. Not that it's a checklist, but to me, this is all part of my checklist, not that it's answers, maybe not in the best way. But again, it just depends on the shot. My checklist is technical things, making sure that the decline notes are addressed, obviously, is the story clear. But at the same time, I have a checklist of what can I make, what can I add in the shot to make it cool? Because ultimately it's also about entertainment value. So there might be, you might have a main vehicle or main character, but then you got to populate the shot with other things, vehicles or characters. And maybe during a certain move, you want to add something bigger in the background that's not upstaging the foreground character, the main character, but it adds a very impressive sense of scale, contrast difference. It really depends on your content, but I kind of look at that too. And then I think of sound, like if I add this, would that be an extra layer of cool sound design on top of the shot to emphasize the action, to make it more, you know, whatever dramatic or crazy or chaotic or whatever it is. So I kind of think in all those terms of content to flow, but then also sound and not music, I wouldn't know. But for me, the sound, you know, if it's a presence, if it's an X-Wing shooting, like the cadence of when the vehicle is shooting, there's a rhythmic nature to this. You don't want it to be a concept boring and like overload for the audience. You want to think about rhythm in terms of actions and be it shots, shooting, blasts, laser blasts, explosions, you might have something flying and exploding. Do I want it to be just a or do I need to be a something where a shit might get hit in an engine? And then because of that, it starts twisting and then then explosions have to and then that explosion. So I think, I think in those kind of terms, and that's my inner checklist. All this answers your question. It's very vague, very, very out there. But yeah, that's kind of, it's kind of my list for everything. Samuel Kouf, Kouf, Samuel Kouf, I don't know. Hey, Jolani, I am a 3D animator and I had the chance to start working in industry a few months ago. Congratulations. Awesome. Actually, this is like three months past when he posted this. So that means it's almost it's over half a year. Any congratulations. At the beginning, I was so motivated by the ideas of working hard, meeting new people, getting better and being proud of myself and proud of me. That's what it wrote. Everything was going fine. But I'm not going to lie. All of a sudden, something bad happened in my personal life and affected my mood, my animations and my self confidence a lot. Sorry to hear that. I totally understand. A piece of art is shaped by its artist environment. And I think this is a part of the job that not everybody realizes. All of that makes me wonder. You know, life is a roller coaster. And with all the different experiences you had, the different people you met, do you have any kind of advice or thought about relation between life and work in the industry? Yes, I do. About how to deal when sometimes life just makes it harder. I know it's a complicated question. There's no magic trick. And I told you understand, if you don't want to answer it, however, I'd still want to thank you for all your great work. You're welcome and the such good content. Awesome. You provide for all the animators around the world. I know it's great. I appreciate it. Thank you for writing this. I appreciate that comment. Yes, life is a roller coaster and your private life can affect the mood and your work. Now, I have two kids. One is older, gone through teenagehood. One is on the younger side. So I've gone through ups and downs. I've actually just recently celebrated my 13th year of marriage. Is it 13? Yes, it is 13. So I've gone through kid stuff and marriage ups and downs. Nothing drastic in terms of that's it. You know, divorce and that's it. No, it's all been good. But definitely ups and downs, especially with a kid going through teenagehood. There are some struggles. And yes, all I can say is yes. Yes, too. It has affected my mood. It has affected my animation. And it's sometimes tricky to be at work and focus on your work when you know that there's more important stuff going on in your life and your loved ones. And how do you deal with this? That's a tough question. For me, it was just I didn't want it to be so bad that obviously work would suffer. Obviously it was then work suffers and you might get laid off and can't pay your bills and so on. But I definitely go through shows and I remember, oh, yeah, during this shot, this happened. Or sometimes I thankfully hasn't happened too much, but I had an incident not at work, it's something outside animation where I was supposed to do a lecture write up type of thing. And at the end, I couldn't. And it was because of that. It was just too much going on at home with my older one. And I had to, I think, far enough in the process tell the person, hey, I can't do this. I can't work on this. I don't have time. I hope it wasn't too far. I'm not going to name names, but I hope it wasn't too bad. But it has affected me. And it's tricky and it's hard. You just got to find someone to talk to. Obviously with my wife, I can talk to her a lot. I mean, that's kind of, she's my balance. She's kind of my pillar. So there's a lot of back and forth with her. And I kind of try to find people to talk to so that I'm not going crazy with what's going on and work. And just, I'm enough in a rhythm at work where I can make it work so it looks okay. But again, I definitely know this shot. It's not so good. And I remember struggling and I remember taking much longer on this shot than I usually do because of this. Has it affected my work? I'm sure there are some internal comments like, hey, it took too long on this or what happened there. Not that I would tell my soup about my personal problems like people's business or I don't want to know the person has enough problems on their own. I don't want to add my baggage to that. So I'm sure there were some ups and downs at work because of it. In terms of advice, how do you deal with it? Again, I just try to talk to people. I try to have some sort of, you know, balance and support so that you can vent. You can just say things. Sometimes you don't want to say things without hearing advice. You just want to vent and rant. So that's kind of what I've been doing. But it is hard. I mean, it's not that much I can tell you here because it really depends on your situation and your support, the support that you have through family or friends. What helps me generally is to have a good balance in terms of work when work is done and then family life and then family life is done and then back to work where just I have very clean lines of like weekends, I don't work. So I can, I can refocus and take care of things. But I also go to, I go home quickly, like when work is done, I don't linger at work. I don't chit chat and stuff. I just cut and I go home. Again, because I do want to spend time at home. I do want to like have kids, like why not spend time with your kids if you have kids. So I want to go home and have dinner and read to my little one when he goes to bed. And I just want to, I want that balance between work is awesome and I focus on work, but then when work is done, I go home and have this so I can, I can make sure that neither one of them is suffering. There's always one that will suffer. There's obviously a bigger pull and push in terms of what needs more attention. But for me, thoughts about relation between life and work, I mean, that's kind of it. I mean, that's, I mean, that's my priority. Some people might focus even less on work and just, it's all about the family and the work is there to pay the bills or some people maybe, I don't, I don't know, maybe have their problems at work at home and then they spend more time at work because they want to forget, you know, that and that's their balance. Like there's, they can kind of make the family work, but they need some escape and then work is their escape. I don't know. It might be long term, not a good idea. I don't know. But that's me. It's a very long wishy-washy answer. But yes, I can, I understand what you mean. And it has happened to me and I've gone through it. And it's, I think in hindsight, it was just mainly being able to, to talk to friends and family for support. Did I ever say, I don't think I said, I think at work where, hey, man, I know this is, this shot's taking too long, got some personal issues at work. I mean, sometimes with some people at work, I do have personal conversations and sometimes that comes up and but yeah, I don't remember saying, hey, I need more time for this shot because of blah, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't that. But I mean, why not? If you have that relationship with people at work, do that. I mean, I know I have with some, but again, my hesitation is I don't want to bring my baggage to, to the work and to a shot because the whoever is in charge of that show has enough problems with that show. And then to have other things going on might not be the best idea. But again, depends. Maybe it is, maybe you have that at work. I don't know. It's my answer for this is, I don't know. It's a long, long rambly answer. But anyway, let's move on. PLG 3030. What's the benefit and disadvantage of using IK arms for everything? Good question. That's definitely going to be an FNA about IK, FK. Tough one. I'm very biased because when I started that ILM, it was kind of IK. It was IK brick stuff for arms and legs and heads and shoulders and ankles was great. And I got very used to using IK. At school, it was all FK. And then you do IK arms for something where you're, you're hold on to something, right? You're on a table or something that's fixed. And now I'm pretty used to doing IK arms all the time. Now the problem is that with IK arms, the arcs are always a problem because, you know, if you drag something, it's going to be a straight line. And with FK, you have this beautiful arc automatically. I think that is for me the main thing. My main advantage for IK arms is quick posing. I can pose things very quickly with legs and arms and like pull this out. The disadvantage is just the depending on the action, IK is going to be a massive pain because of you lose the free thing of arcs. Whereas FK is depending on the rig, depends how they're built. You might have a great pose, but then you move something and it moves the whole character versus just the chest and you lose certain poses. You lose actually an arc. So it's that to be those are the biggest things, arcs and quick posing. I'm a big fan of IK, what's it called, ankles. So when you do like a step and the legs kind of pushing this way, I can do a quick move out on the foot and a compression down like stuff like that. For me, IK stuff is like IK shoulders. I love IK for its quick posing possibilities in ways and then it just makes my workflow faster. And if I need something with a better arc again, I use that to draw out this is my arc or sometimes nowadays you have IK FK switching where you can switch to FK and do your thing and then switch back and maybe pick it up, whatever it is. Rigs nowadays are much better in terms of switching. It kind of depends on your rig and what you prefer. And again, sometimes some actions just dictate IK. So if I hold on to something and I move my body, I don't want this to be FK and frame by frame. Make sure it tracks on the contact point. So yeah, hope that makes sense. Nicholas S, what tips can you provide for keeping a body alive during a moving hold? Can you do a video on this topic in the future? Yes, I will, but I wanted to include this question as Q&A because again, it will be broader in the FNA. But just quick, for me, the moving hold, the important thing is you have to look at what the focus is of where do you want the audience to focus. If you do, I think I've even said this before in a previous Q&A, but if you're like whenever that's your move and you want it to be here, I wouldn't do and move that arm for like, you know, a stronger moving hold with a bit of a looser one where it's not locked right there. It's like, oh, you might draw the attention to this hand. So for me, it's like, and then maybe it's all in the face. So a moving hold might have a hold, but with still some detail. So that maybe some, some looks are like quick live arts or head darts. So I want to, I want the audience to always look there. That to me is one thing of where you want the focus to be. So you also want to hold the focus or have the moving hold in a pose that also draws the eye of the audience to a certain point. Again, it's the point of interest. You also have to look at the direction of a moving hold. So if I go this way and I go and I go the other way, that's a weird bump where that to me doesn't work. So if I do, you have to look at the momentum, the inertia and the direction of movement and then finish your moving holder, you know, have that moving hold in that direction that you came from. And also think in terms of when you're done with your moving hold, what's the next step? So what if I do this and then the next thing is this arm, I might have and that and then that leads into the next thing. So you have to look at maybe that's a good pose and the moving hold is good. But what's the next action after that? And especially if the action is obviously in the same shot. So you have to look at is everything ready. So imagine your your hold is like this, but then your next move has to be big with the head and the hand. Do you have room for this? Is it going to be awkward? So I have a look at multiple things of overall pose has to be clear. The direction that's the biggest thing to me is where where did the character come from? So move that do that hold in that direction again. And then what it's going to continue like what's going to be the next action and flow so that your your pose has room to get into that next thing. So to me it's not just the hold, but it's what's before and after the hold. Hope that makes sense. Super JYLS. Do professional animators have a list of steps when animating? It's very similar to the previous question, but I do want to include it just because it depends on the enemy. I just wanted to say that. This is a stupid answer. But yes, I would assume so. I know I do. And again, the steps all are all dictated by the shot. And this is why I put that in there because I wanted to emphasize that that whatever workflow I have, whatever steps I have, this is not like a piece of paper. And then that's it. These are my steps. Those steps are dictated by the shot. So if it's a shot with humans different than a shot, well, it's a keyframe humans versus mocap and humans or creatures or vehicles or camera or even like an actual shot or previous like all those different types. Tell me I got approached to shot in a different way. And then then my list is different. So this is why I wanted to kind of bring that up again. So whatever I say goes out the window if it's a totally different shot. So my approach to a human shot, to a creature shot, to our mocap or camera vehicle shot is totally different. And sometimes also depending on the length of the shot. You know, but anyway. Hello, I have been loving your video. Thank you. And learning a lot from them. That's awesome. They are very inspiring. Thank you again. I seem to run into a roadblock where I start the project and the rough blocking goes great. But I get paralyzed when it comes to actually locking down my animation or making big decisions. So my question is how do I know I'm doing it right or making the correct decision? That's a tough question, because I don't know, meaning I don't know when I make the right decisions. It's all based on the context of the shot. If it's at work, it's a shot and you got the whole sequence. I look at the sequence like is is the shot fitting within the tone and the character actions? You know, like if I do something is that exactly what the character did before terms of it's in character, it's consistent with their thought process and movements. You know, I can't make something super live in before that it was all heavy. So I look at context, then it's also based on experience. I think that's right. I don't know if it's right, but to me it feels right. And that feeling might be based on reference in acting it out just all whatever supporting material that you have. But the big thing is at work for me is feedback. Go back I mentioned it before, but feedback is huge. So I might think it's right. And you show it in daily, if not, it doesn't feel right. So it's, it's, you got to show it to other people around you, you got to show it in daily, your leads or soups. So I think you're always going to have at least in a work environment, you're going to have enough feedback that will tell you if you made the right or wrong decision. And again, right or wrong also depends on what does the client need? What does the shot need? Maybe you did the right animation technically, but the feel and tone or the character choice is not fitting within that shot and sequence. So there are many rights and wrongs. But that's what I do. I look at surrounding stuff, previous shots, sequence, what's, what's the history of the character and then material reference and acting it out so that I have everything in terms of context and content and look and feel and all that technical stuff. And then it's feedback, feedback in the LEDs and asking people what do you think? And sometimes I don't, I don't know what's right. And then if I have time and then everything is lining up, I can do multiple versions. It's like, Hey, I don't know, here are three versions. What do you prefer? I wasn't quite sure. And then the person whoever's in charge can pick and so on. That's kind of, it's kind of my process. Kutu, that's the name Kutu. How to animate detailed movement or on fingers, interacting with uneven surface without making them look like squiggly worms or tip heavy. Oh man, that is, yes, flashback. That is very tricky. And my mean answer is you cheat. Like you might have something where it's uneven and your fingers go over that uneven thing. But if you really go frame by frame on this, you get the bumpiness and the squiggly stuff. I just go back to how does it feel? So if this is uneven, I want a general unevenness. If it's soft as to a general softness, so that it feels right, it doesn't have to be 100% accurate give and take, you know, if there are shadows and there's interaction and the effects work around it, you can't cheat too much. But yeah, sometimes if you go too exact, it's like with like lip sync and do jaw and you want your jaw every time. Like that might be something where, you know, in real life, the jaw would do it. But if you do it too much, it is also close to chattery. So that's just want to get the essence right and then kind of cheat the rest. Paul, again, I'm sorry, I don't know the process. Why did you choose animation as a career? I didn't choose animation. Animation chose me. I didn't actually, I chose VFX first. And then I stopped because the class was, I think I just did, I just talked about that. Ah, with Harvey, Harvey's interview, which should be coming up before, after when I post this. I did VFX first for like half an hour and then the class was all about math and physics and stuff like that. That was my thing. I wanted it to be more hands-on. So my career was first VFX because I'm a child from the 80s, all the effects of stars back to the future, Ghostbusters, like that was my thing. Then I realized, nah, it's not my thing. And then I switched to animation. And then I didn't know if I'm gonna like it, if I'm gonna be good at it. And thankfully I liked it and I was okay at it. And that's it. And then the rest is history. I'm still working on animation. I'm still trying to figure it out. I would say it's a career. I can say it's a long-lasting steady job. And I think that's, that's, for me, successful. That's my career. Oh, le polygon, le polygon. That's a longer one here. What time is it? I gotta check. My battery doesn't die. Okay, must be the last one here. Hey, JD. First of all, congrats to whoever got the code. Long time ago, but yes, congrats. I have a question about feedback. As somebody that studied film and is now perusing a career and something he fell in love with, animation that is, I found that I would learn a lot, not just by getting, but also by giving feedback. Absolutely. Now as somebody that has been into animation one just a year, animation one just a year, and has way more theoretical knowledge in the field than practical. And my allowed collision mark, he says, to give feedback to somebody that just got into animation. I'm really concerned about that. I'm afraid that I give some bad information, not in the way that it is wrong information, but because I myself am new to the field and can't really prove that something is the right way to do it. And also I don't want to be seen as a swear word or I know it all. Speaking of it, I've started to watch your feedback videos really for me to be helpful. You're welcome. Awesome. I find the way you give feedback very constructive, informative and motivational. That's fantastic to hear. Any chance that you'll do some kind of video with tips on how to give good feedback? Yes. By the way, have you seen Love, Death and Robots on Netflix? It's pretty awesome. Again, it's a long time ago. There, I admit, I still haven't finished Love, Death and Robots. Time management. Time management is another FNA. So any chance that you'll do some video with tips? Yes, I, when I first read this, I think this should be also a separate FNA, just in terms of my experience after what is like 12, 13 years, if I can remember, of giving feedback, because I have different approaches and different ways and thoughts about it. So yes. And in terms of, are you allowed to give feedback? I mean, I won't say this, like someone has to give you permission. I mean, you definitely have to feel a certain sense of, what's the word? Confidence. So that when you give feedback that you're like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it could be better here. What do you think? I mean, that is not, that's tricky when you teach and you have no idea. But then again, I remember my class, my first class, again, 12-ish something years ago. I just chose a class that was simple. I tried, but then it was the academy. It was a bit different and it became much more complicated. And that did feel exact like that. Wow, I'm not, am I confident? Do I have enough knowledge to tell those people? But thankfully, still the content was simple. I'm not saying, you know, simple as in bad, but it was beginner enough where I thought, okay, well, I can talk about bouncing balls. I can talk about a weight shift. I can talk about those things, but I've done this enough to know I know this. But 12 years ago, I wouldn't have taught a class about creature stuff or more heavier advanced acting where, again, my experience was so limited. Like, no, I can't talk about this. I'm still learning. So I know what you feel. I think you're allowed either way. And it comes down to your confidence and just kind of be honest with yourself. Like, do you feel that you can stand 100% behind that feedback? And is that helpful? And will that move the student forward? Like that to me is my way of looking at it. But also, sometimes I get questions in class, or there's a technical thing where I look at is I want to give feedback on and I tell them, like, I don't know, and it sucks, it sucks, they're paying for a class. But I would say, you know, I don't know how to answer this right now, does any more more work or more research. But then I go home and research and I study and specifically that point, and then I come back, oh, this is what I looked at, blah, blah, blah. Now that research based on my experience, this is what I would do. Not that it happens all the time. It's rare on an animation side. But sometimes I get questions where, you know, they might ask me something about like feature animation and company really like, I don't know, I haven't worked at a feature companies, I can't answer that question. So these are mostly the questions where I say no, like, I don't know, I have zero experience. Or when it comes to technical things, so far I'm okay. The more frequent stuff is if someone shows me something like an ostrich animation, like here, I go, okay, well, here's my general impression of the weight and blah, blah, blah. But I'm not an ostrich expert, right? Or it could even be like an elephant, like, I kind of generally know elephants, but I'm not an expert. So that it's mostly, well, let me just study this board to give you better feedback. Here's my general impression. Or, hey, can you bring me reference because that's what I would do at home anyway. When you show me your shot, can you show me reference that you're basing this on and then I can study the reference and tell you blah, blah, blah. So again, it depends on the topic. So so yeah, I understand what you what you're going through. And it's tricky, it gets better with time. And I will definitely do a an FNA about feedback. There's something about what to say, how much to say, you need to know when to give someone, you know, only three points versus 10 concern students actually, you know, process 10 or three or 50 notes. You know, when you want to kind of be more broad and be more detailed, that's definitely something that could be interesting to talk about. So yes, I will do a clip of just that. All right, let's see. Okay, time's up. This is the longer ones by almost an hour. So this is question 17. I do have three more, but I'm going to keep that for part seven. I think this is part six of the Q&A. So that's it. It's a long one. So as always, if you're into all of this, and you watch it at the very end, you're massively patient. I will say thank you very much. Now, if you watch all of this and you feel like, hmm, that triggered another question, comments are open, ask me more questions. I'm going to add that to my list of things to answer. So if that triggered a question, ask the question in the comments. If you're one of them that posed the question, and you feel like I did not answer your question enough or correctly, I apologize. You can post again and clarify and then I can help you again. So what? Enough rambling. It's a long, long, long clip. I'm going to stop it right there. Thanks for watching, and I will see you next week with more of my stuff. Stuff. Yes, this is how important the content is with my channel. It is just stuff. But anyway, I will see you next week and thanks for watching.