 Alrighty as always, let's play this in full. There's no sound. Let's play this again and Oh, all right You have some notes here as well. So this is your it's a facial expression exercise It needs more work especially on the body And it's a test. All right, that all makes sense. Let me see here. You got some questions and one of your questions is Video reference. All right Yeah, I see. So one of your questions is here. If you don't shoot reference you have problems with body mechanics If you do it on your own out of your memory you make mistakes, so yeah I mean the thing is it comes down to You know, I experience in how many times you do things over and over So there's some aspects that won't require reference from you anymore after a while Maybe I mean I still use reference. I mean now then I do stuff without reference depending on the style In this case, I mean, I'm not sure if I would need reference What is it it's stiff to me just this angle here is a weird flat color there In terms of there's so much movement in the body a happy careful with With sticking a wrist there where it's just it feels very I came it's right at the edge of the screen I would either bring that arm down. So it's cut off maybe here Or bring the whole thing higher so you can see the hand We check me I wouldn't do just because then you have to animate the hand the fingers and the contact and everything But for something that's such a such a big look to me it would almost be you want to rotate I Guess a little bit the hips depending if he's on a on the on the stool or something that can rotate But see how that leg is always kind of pointing this way Even through all of this to me, then it would bring out that leg a bit more which can bring the hand But I'll probably bring that elbow in a bit more. It seems like he wants to look this way, but then This is still pointing that way with that arm So I would kind of rotate things over a bit more to to have a bigger Change and loosen up those arms and loosen up that lower part If I just go like this Let's pretend it's just that I'm putting my hand in front of it here It works a bit better Yeah now That would be you're also talking about finding the right poses in reference, especially when it gets cartoony It's a tricky thing either you have to act it out really cartoony to give you reference Or you just act out your base animation and then you have to emphasize it on your own So if you have anything where that reaction is this you mean like you might have done this in the reference I don't know your reference. I only see the animation here You might want to think about a bigger Inicipation you also want to look at do I want to scrunch my mouth together a bit more? Like press those lips to almost get a bit of a squash effect in the face as you go back And maybe even go lower with the eyebrows Do you then want to bring up the shoulders and the head a bit forward so that the head height is maybe here? So you have an overall feeling of squash as you go back But then I would also look at if you got your spacing how you're I want to turn this on here How your head goes back I'm exaggerating. I'm not sorry. I'm not very clean here, but You can see if you track the nose The path that you have and I know you say it's still rough, but I would watch out for BAM like a sudden linear key You can do that, of course depending on the style force Snappiness, but sometimes if we do like this then I would drag the head a bit more So maybe you're leading with the body and you have a bigger curve and the head is still like the nose might still be back There for a moment. That's more like that and then you snap forward And that was a look at the arcs like your head goes back and like this You might want to do something like that with a bigger settle on an arc And again, these are things that you can act it out And then you can you can act out again really exaggerated almost overacting and then you can look at well What are the differences there? What can I pick? I mean you mentioned that you want to find poses in your reference That's kind of what I would do I would really act it out as crazily as you can and then maybe a more naturalistic taken and see the differences and see war where you can pick something bigger in Terms of animation too before I get to the other question Like that I don't mind that even though it's a bit like pose wise you have a nice curve here But then you got that the stiffness of those arms that to me It feels like you want to even then Almost relax your pose and then here when he goes, huh This feels like a slight concern and then you can maybe raise the shoulders a little bit That would stiffen the arms a bit to give you an overall feeling of nervousness and stiffness and less relaxed And then when you go ah that would then be potentially You know even ah now I mean not that we want to do this and it gets it gets into your W pose but you want to maybe lift up that arm and and I depends what you want to do I know what the point is but maybe it's it's something where like oh, no, what's over there Maybe you want to even bring out that arm with with more like a tense hand pose again to bring up the craziness the tension and kind of give you a different sense of maybe sharper angles and Versus the beginning that's more round and relaxed and soft so I would look at What what is the state of mind? What are the feelings of the character throughout the whole shot and also have posing either through the body or through the fingers potential if you want to see them To kind of reflect the tension or or the softness of the character If you don't want to bring up that arm again bringing out elbows like this How again bringing that elbow probably in a bit more so you have things pointing this way The body points this way even that arm bends with that forearm Visually feels like everything's kind of pointing this way. This just feels a bit broken with this going here and this going here Well, let me see other question Your other question is that let's see in the last exercise has been figuring out that I struggle a lot when I have to animate a motion That is slow my animation always feels floating lifeless, but I don't know that the how to solve it That's a tricky thing. I totally get what you mean when you have something like this and you have a very slow I don't mind actually your your holds and your ease and To me, it's more like this transition How you can kind of push that the take and the cartooniness potentially and the arcs and all that stuff But I think how you go from Into this how you have that that moment of huh and then with that little Moving hold I think that's just the right amount of moving hold. It doesn't feel like it drifts But it is tricky because you it's a fine line between floatiness or moving holds Sometimes just less is more when you feel like stuff gets floaty, of course, there is other style if it's if it's more the realistic side You can't really Not move things. It's a very you know start having breathing potentially or you look at depending on the pose if it's sitting You're not gonna have a lot of movement in the root But it might just be more looseness in here and probably in the head I would look at you know if someone is is Standing you might have more side to side and keep alive in the roots If someone is leaning over this way it has that arm pointing this way and that's a moving hold And it's more realistic then you're gonna have potential potentially more movement in here because that's a that's a less stable part of the body But if it's cartoony you might Go in here, maybe the focus is on the face So then to me I would hold this fairly Steadily with this having the most subtle movement because so that it's the only thing that moves and then the audience's eye goes There if a character does this and points this way and the point is important or maybe the character holds something important And to me I would stiffen up everything up until this area where that has a the biggest moving hold and ambient movement So again, it's the only thing with movement so that the audience's eye goes there if that is the focus I hope that makes sense And your next question is fairly similar He you say here another concept that I circle with a lot on the bottom mechanics is the main character stop Slow and fast stops I understand that the main concept behind it is that when it comes with slow stops It's more like a slow in while the fast up. It's more a fast overshoot and settle But when you try it action doesn't look correct with slow stops feeling floaty Totally understand that and we fast stops feels like a pop. Yeah, the fast stops I mean, it's also depending on on the style I don't mind this was the thing is you have a fast stop But it does overshoot and set a little bit and you do have the focus on the head And I like that the head continues this way up with the jaw opening and the body going this way. I Think that's fairly successful Again, it will it also depends on the style if you get something like Boku yo when you have extremely one frame Popson's and an expression changes and movements. It's so cute, but it's so stylized It can totally get away with it. It all kind of depends on how naturalistic you want your mission to be But I understand I understand your your problem And again, it just comes down to what is the intent? Where do you want it to be? focus-wise is it, you know, like hotel tea or cloudy with a chance to meet balls where you can really Get into a crazy pop But then the whole animation is always that style is also about consistency And I mean like if you have the beginning of your animation that is fairly softer in nature than then this It's gonna break You mean like when you have something a bit more real and a bit more complex in terms of keep alive and movement Which you don't have here I'm just I'm exaggerating to my point here when if you have ambient movement and it's a lot more There's all more noise almost mocap style Then something like this would feel out of place because you're establishing at the beginning of the shot And you're telling the audience This is the style of my animation when you suddenly go into a crazy pop hold That's going to be weird and and change the style and confuse the audience But again, I think in your case you're fairly successful But I understand the the concerns and in terms of improving it My thing is always you have to look at overall style What is the style of my animation? What do I want to tell the audience in terms of this is this is this is the world that this character lives in and This is the style in terms of movement and then you just have to be consistent That's the biggest thing you don't want to suddenly change things and then to me all the movements and the pops and Settles and everything to me is always in service of a the story if you have one or just the emotion and Making it clear what you're showing So sometimes a really snappy pop with a hand or in your case like that Serves the style and you want to make it like really awesome when it's freaking out and I think Going the faster will make more sense to to make that emotion clear versus showing it slowly and maybe adding too much Overshoot and settle will give this too much. It's always overanimated and it will take away from the sudden Panic potentially so to me. It's always what's Is it helping the story or is it helping showing the right emotional beat of the character and Then your last question here is about spacing. So you have a lot of poses. You start noticing noise and some issues and breakdowns, etc Let's go down here. I'm gonna check the spacing any process of working on this actually. Yeah, I'm gonna have to do a Later on I'm still the middle of of What's the word so my in my FNA's explaining blocking and mistakes and things But I will get to my workflow series as well But one thing is motion trail you want to you want to track an object and see that you have onion skinning You put on depending on the new Maya features. You have interesting onion skinning with with coloring I personally do something and I can show you this in the critique because it's recorded like that but I use a dry erase marker and and just put dots here to Show what's actually happening which again you can show like this in this program keyframe pro has onions getting like this But I would do this physically and put dots on this on my screen in one color and then I would take another color So basically I would pick whatever whatever colors you have and then you can see what's happening here And I feel like maybe actually I want it to be a bit more like this And then I will go frame by frame and adjust and you know again the nose will go lower Nose will go lower maybe a bit more to the side down here And then on this will be more here and maybe one here one here here and here This is very even in terms of spacing and that arc might be way too soft But all the timing I mean too soft But it to me illustrates what I want to do one color shows what it's actually doing and then with the other color I'm drawing what I want it to be and then I go back in there And double-check and that's within my hour again with this program You can again you can do all kinds of things and it gives you it gives you on and skinning as well as you can see here Anyway, that's kind of that It's more of a lecture critique then then a critique But I think you're fairly successful with what you have my question to you is going to be you want to just go through that With what you have Or do you want to do another pass and then change things because it's only fine Just do what exercise and leave it and take what you learn and put that into the next which you've been doing every now and then so Let me know in the email how you want to proceed with this and let me know if you have any questions if my ramblings Made sense if they've been if they've been helpful. All right, I'm gonna leave it at that no more rambling. Thank you All right There's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want you get 16 submissions either way The like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you