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Working on a cartoon series
mrfuriousmc
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It's called We Are Fictional. I only have a couple minutes done so far, but the plan is to create a 45 minute pilot episode. Comments welcome.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=adfX0MpGXfM&feature=youtu.be
https://youtube.com/watch?v=adfX0MpGXfM&feature=youtu.be
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Is this a work in progress that you intend to incorporate feedback in? With youtube videos and animation you have to work a little harder to give us something to critique. This is primarily a visual art forum, so if you want critiques on something like this, You'll need to really put some stuff in the thread we can comment on, models, screen shots, sketches.
To comment on the work itself. The animation isn't all that bad, but everything is moving in way too measured of a fashion. Some of your slower transitions have that sort of "wading through water" effect, where they are just slowly moving to another point. For instance, the throw of the controller has a bunch of consideration in the posing, by contrast, the movement of the other guy on the couch moves through a series of poses all on the same beat with no acting or animation really in his hands.
This is an old animation it floated around the year I was graduating. I remembered that its a good one for talking about good animation in slow moments:
Because so many of the beats are slow. the pacing is really important, the way his hands slowly loosens when hes letting go of the phone anticipates him dropping it in a few quick beats. same with the gun. Its acting and timing even in the slow small moments that end up making this whole animation work.
The eyes look better in your promo image there, the extra gloss and texture on them is really jarring and unappealing, so is the lack of eyelashes or eyebrows. Without either, the whites of their eyes don't have any means to contrast with their skin, which makes it generally harder to read their emotions.
The lighting is weak, but unfortunately I have no technical ability in that area to give you pointers in 3D. Everything looks a bit to harsh and seems to be in plain white light. Some softer lights and better rendering are going to help a lot.
Otherwise? Its a weird tone, but I'm not really sure that you are going for funny, so I'm not sure how to judge it, necessarily.
I agree with you on the eye textures. I should probably keep the eyes consistent with the overall style of the characters. My reasoning for the solid colors was to avoid long render times.
The point to point animation is certainly noticeable, and deserves more attention. Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes I get lazy because I want to rush a scene and move on to the next one. I appreciate the reference video.
Nothing has really happened yet in terms of plot, but another 5 minutes into the episode and it will be clear what tone I'm going for. :twisted:
Generally, I think animation falls under the same rules as webcomics, You can have a really funny/excellently written comic that looks ugly, or you can have a really beautiful comic that has a meh plot, but you cant have an ugly comic with a shitty plot.
Animation follows that logic in a sort of similar way, You can have really weird/ugly characters and an off beat writing style, but if your animation is beautiful, people will still engage. That's how so many shorts get away with having such reduced, ambient stories. If you want your animation to work on the bare minimum, make sure the movement is excellent.
I also would work on your lighting, if possible. Maybe there are some tutorials out there to help. I think of how lighting is used in pixilpit's videos:
The characters are simple, the animation is weird and stylized to be choppy, but the lighting is incredibly pleasant. And that's not to say you need to go for soft looking day time scenes, you need to use lighting to your advantage and study how use it to push your compositions. Here's something quick and dirty:
Blurred out the background just a tad to bring the characters into focus, muted the colors back there to a blue tint, unifying them, and warmed the tones in the characters so everything isn't so grey and bland. I also added that little bit of eyelash to give the character eyes a lot more contrast. You could tone that down or do it another way, but you need some sort of eyelid indicator so your characters don't look like skulls with eyeballs popped in.
Dont just texture your stuff to texture it, though. You can get some really beautiful stuff without a bunch of unnecessary realism. Examples:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/X1Gmw
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P4OEB
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YP93P
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o0yRw
You probably want to curve your eyelids more, they would be coming down to tear ducts. I would also seriously consider reducing the tesxture there still.
(this is like two minutes of painting, I just wanted to show you visually about what I meant. The above links are mush better examples)
You basically have such a realistic texture it sort of calls into question all the stylization around it, and then the fact that the reflection is just thrown on top of the texture makes the whole thing flat. If you are looking for those like, pixar-esque eyes, Remember that those are actually modeled: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Creating_Pixar-looking_eyes_in_Blender
Keep looking at animation and asking yourself where you are being lazy, and don't settle. If you aren't, I would be lurking art station and just looking at a ton of 3D animation to get ideas. Like a tooooooon. You want to really know what's out there. That's how you are going to figure out what you could be doing with your own work, and generally the more influences you have, the more likely it is you'll find something unique to your own visual style.
Looking forward to seeing more, though, keep it up!
He's getting more and more realistic, which is totally fine. In my opinion, it looks like you're actually learning a ton and making more and more realistic looking models as your skill level increases.
So at this point, you might actually benefit more from technical advice rather than artistic feedback on your character. (Which I can not supply, sorry :P )