 It is Friday and yet another FNA Friday for your earholes and today we're going to talk about the seven essential tips when shooting reference First off after preface that this is about human reference There's a whole other thing about looking for reference when it comes to creatures and animals and the science behind it and the tensions behind it So today we're going to cover mostly human reference So why would you film reference you might be good enough to not shoot reference to thumbnails make it up in your head Go straight for the animation. That's totally fine But a lot of times reference is super helpful when it comes to looking at body mechanics and how things move We're just figuring out the complications of a shot But as a whole it's great for exploration You want to get all of your crappy ideas out of your system You want to start acting things out and just get everything out all the cliches all the bad acting and just kind of Start to experiment you might come up with better ideas once you animate and you might be okay and fast enough to implement Those ideas right away always shooting reference again You can improvise you can explore and you can kind of look at how does your body move? Well, let's get to the seven tips tip number one if you can act it out yourself find an actor Meaning you're only as good as your reference So if you have a hard time acting things out because of this space because of other limitations Or you don't feel like you're not a good actor You're too shy then you have to find someone else find an animation buddy find someone in your class or a Friends and ask that person to act things out Maybe you are better at directing tip number two when you shoot reference Make sure that everything you set up your clothes your room your camera Whatever you have is going to match your final shot as closely as possible So in detail if you have your character sitting down then you sit down if your character sits down at a table Then you should have a table in your room if your character talks to someone that is taller than you Take some tape rip it up put two marks for eyeballs somewhere higher So your character looks and acts like this if you have a giant you're not gonna talk down to the giant So make sure that you have a mark on the wall and it could be even to to mimic eyeball So you can look left and right left and right and have something to talk to if your character has long hair Maybe you find a wig if the hair is falling down You have to constantly adjust the hair or do something with it It just gets you more into character because you look like and act like your character if you want to go crazy You can find some clothes that have maybe some lines here or whatever on your hips or shoulders Whatever you have so that when you do things like this and you move around that you actually have the lines that you can reference That's a bit hardcore, but why not this could also help you make sure that if your timeline in Maya if you animate in Maya Is set to 24 frames a second then shoot reference in 24 frames a second Make sure that your room that you're shooting in has enough lights You don't want to shoot reference and at the end you look at it like I can't tell what's going on Or you have a dark background and your clothing is all dark and then you can't tell what's going on The silhouette is all crappy So make sure that everything is set up and lit the way that you can look at it and actually get information from it Tip number three don't pretend if you can help meaning that if it's something heavy Then you're gonna lift something heavy if you're just pretending to lift some it's gonna Do something like that. It's kind of useless. You're shooting reference so you can study the reference You can see what your body is moving and how it behaves when you for instance lift something heavy Same goes if you have audio if you have a lip-sync and your character says something loud Then you're not gonna shoot reference like this Well, actually you could I mean if it's someone in danger when you can whisper it Why not? But if the audio is of a character that yells you're gonna go Something your energy level your body behavior is gonna be totally different if you're actually yelling things out or speaking at the same level At least of your reference of the audio piece you want to animate to so don't pretend speaking of audio tip number four Listen to your audio meaning know it if you have the line playing in the background a loop or headphones Whatever you want to use and you have to kind of Wait and and wait for the lines if you don't quite know what's going on You're trying to remember when which word comes up or whatever it is your reference is going to use this as well You need to know the lines you need to be able to just go through the acting choices So that you can feel the character and not really think about what the character is going to do Tip number five don't settle on your first take you might go All right That was good and the best actor ever and then you're gonna notice that it's gonna be the first basic cliche Stereotypical idea that everybody had so I highly recommend that you act things out 10 20 30 times if you have time to do as much And that's awesome. I'm just saying act it out a lot So that way you get again all the crappy ideas out of your system But you get to explore and be more organic and improvised and something where you're just not waiting for a moment You're completely in character and you can just act it out in a way That's more natural and something that fits the character and fits the situation It's gonna feel less rehearsed and it's gonna be much more natural tip number six When you shoot reference make sure that you shoot someone either that you know or you shoot yourself But don't think of reference as an I saw this great actor in this great movie I'm gonna take that reference and not actually shoot it and then trace that because a it's not very original Or it's not original at all and it's not gonna help you in selling yourself as an animator That comes up with original performances and if you use a movie that people know and they're gonna look at your shot They go wait a minute. I know this movie. That's from this scene and it's this actor Why did you copy this so all in all when you shoot reference? This sounds like an obvious one film yourself or film someone that can help you with the reference But don't start using reference based on movies based on other properties that are not original tip number seven If you set up everything your props your sets yourself everything is there But you can't really act it out the way you want it to be in terms of the style You can start retiming the reference that you just shot Mike Safia enough. I think that's how you pronounce it I'm sorry if I butcher this put up a progression reel that shows his acting choices His progression the blocking the polish But also how he takes the reference that he shot and tweaks it to retime it and to kind of Make sure that the reference is closer to the style that he wants to animate at the end Which is great because that saves a ton of time Which is also a big thing about reference if you ask well, why would you shoot reference? Sometimes it's also just a big time saver if you google online for progression reels for animators You're going to get a lot of examples So I highly recommend that you look at those search for them study them Look at how people act things out. Maybe they're more exaggerating their deliveries. Maybe they're a bit more subtle So you can kind of look at what's a good way that's going to work for you Ultimately animation and the workflow and how you go about your your shot and your progression as an animator It's going to be very specific to you and there are progression reels that I post on my spongella blog So I'm going to put the link to that in the description and speaking of animators I have some more general tips, which is again very specific to how you want to animate or how you want to shoot reference But some people take more exaggerated reference when they're acting things out. They're already thinking about silhouettes They're thinking about the arcs and just exaggerated acting choices and that way in a way again, it saves time It's closer to the character. It's just their preferred process But even if you do that ultimately your reference is not going to work one to one Because your character is probably going to look differently than you do different scale different proportions It might even be something where you are acting something out as a human But it's something that's going to be applied to an animal. It doesn't mean it has to be Moving like an animal. It could be something where it's more like an animal that behaves like a human But still scale and proportions are going to be different and you're still going to have to tweak the silhouette The rhythm and the timing needs some more adjustment depending on the style you're going for You're going to tweak the arcs again It's not going to be exactly perfect what you shoot unless you're an awesome reference person Then you should hire out your talents and as production might continue or as you might change some of the ideas Your camera might change So ultimately whatever you animate has to work towards the final camera now going back to tip number two You should set everything up the camera angle the frames per second the lights and everything But things are never really final. So there will be changes. There is a big chance that your camera will change So ultimately even if you have perfect reference You still have to tweak things at the very end so that it fits your final vision your final camera Whatever final product you want to come up with there are times when you can shoot reference and then you just copy it You rotoscope it there. I say the r word just depends on the style Sometimes people might ask for exactly that they want exactly the reference and sometimes it's just faster Because then you get whatever your ideas are onto your rig quickly And then you can start taking out poses or certain moments that didn't work So it can be a completely valid tool in terms of workflow where you shoot reference quickly Put that on your rig quickly. So, you know, is this acting choice going to work with my rig those proportions this camera The set maybe a camera move and then you can start taking things away and ultimately use maybe 20 of your reference Was ultimately just keep what you need and what you don't need you delete So you might have 20 minutes of reference takes so then just copy copy paste paste Just do a master take of your 500 takes that you did and that's the one you're going to use for your animation Which in at the end you might tweak again, but it's going to be a good building block That will help you start the shot progress and you can always shoot reference as you are in progression on the shot So it doesn't mean that I shot it once and that's it No, if you're done and this moment doesn't quite work I need to shoot more reference of a specific hand grab or head dart or eye dart or whatever you need You can still reshoot reference and then reuse it I'm going to post a ton of links in the description below if you have other tips or other reference sites that might be useful Comment, let me know let other people know what you like There's something like keyframe pro that lets you use your reference footage that with Maya It syncs up directly in Maya, which is great. So there are a ton of tools out there There can be apps when you shoot reference on your iPhone that lets you change the frames per second from 24 to 30 to 60 Whatever you need, there's a ton of stuff out there again Let me know let other people know in the comments and as always if you watched till the very end Thank you very much and I'll see you next week