Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• A game of two halves...Take off section is nice and shows potential. The second half feels rushed and requires polish to address the neck intersecting the ground etc.
• Good job on taking on the challenge of fantasy creature animation! I wish there was documentation linked to this project as I would have loved to see what technical challenges you might have encountered, how you dealt with them and what the process and thinking behind the project were. The animations look good overall apart from the recovery which seems the most rushed. The idle variation that was outlined in the project brief is missing. The base idle could be pushed further to a polished state if you animate the separate wing segments a little bit as they are currently stationary and only the whole wing moves. I would animate them just a bit but make sure to overlap them. I think I can see very subtle overlap in the tail – I would try to add a bit more depending on how many controls you have for it. I like the timing and anticipation of the take off and then the crash landing. Currently all parts start moving at the same time at the beginning of the anticipation, I would make sure to delay some of them. During the crash, the head clips quite a bit with the ground, at one point it goes fully under the ground plane. I would try to avoid that and keep it above ground as much as possible. I would also love to see the wings coming down to the ground as well at the last part of the crash to sell the impact and loss of control more – that would be a cool additional layer to that animation if you want to push it further. The recovery needs more work as it currently happens quite quickly and abruptly for a large creature. The chest and the head move quite fast. I would slow down the chest a bit and make sure the head keeps being on the ground and dragging as support, while the chest goes up. At the moment, the head is coming up horizontally with the chest, making it feel weightless and rushed. I see that you have added a little bit of overlap on the head but there should be a ton more to truly sell the scale and weight of this creature. I believe this could be a compelling piece for a showreel if you develop it a bit more. Creature animation is quite challenging and always appreciated when done well. Keep up the good work.
• Lovely to see you using a more complex rig. Overall fantastic effort with the animation. With your idle, I’d love to see some more movement on the head, adding some of that nice overlapping action you’ve got going on with the tail. A longer loop or some loop variants with some little head darts would make her feel more alive. Your spring up is great, the anticipation and weight shift with the right leg step and roar really bring her to life. Some things you could add would be a little dip down in the head in the anticipation phase before the stretch up. You could also consider making her move up higher over a longer time to try and avoid some of the tail clipping you’re getting with the floor. For actions like this I tend to add a motion trail to see the spacing between frames to make sure there’s no sudden increase or decrease in speed. Maya has it’s own, there are better versions out there but it does an ok job https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-A4F827EE-61C2-4F0A-9592-E91AA20F5D2C Bear in mind how the IK is effecting the legs in the air to make sure they don’t get too pinned in place. I tend to keep the legs in FK when they’re off the ground for extended periods so that they stay nice and loose, but this methodology isn’t for everyone. I can see you’ve broken the action between both of them a little but I think you could be push this further, and maybe exaggerating the kick out before she starts to sweep down – so moving the thigh forwards first to tuck them up more towards the body. The dive down has got a really nice flow, good job on making the tail sweep up behind her. With the end, I would be tempted to keep the pose with the neck swept around as she skids forwards. You could then work into this slumped pose more, bringing the right wing down for instance, and then hold in the pose for a few beats before getting up - if she was an enemy in a game this would give players a chance to get some hits in. This would also give you more time when returning to idle to get the feet into place slower, and almost drag the head back into position.
• Firstly I’d like to congratulate you that you animated a dragon and were able to make the submission in time. It’s an achievement in itself. Animating a dragon could be quite complicated as the whole body is similar lizard or reptile like creature and bat for wings. So, we need to understand how a tailed body moves. This would require observing a lot of references. I’d love to see the documentation for this on how you went about animating the piece and what steps did you take, which I didn’t find in the submission folder. The idle animation is quite nice. The timing on breathe works well and I do think we can make it even more powerful. Although, I do feel the pose looks a bit out of balance and the front body looks like it’s floating. I feel like it could use the support from the arms cause of how heavy the front body my be. At the moment, the dragon stands more like a raptor. The anticipation before the flight is quite nice. Really nice poses. Love the overlapping motion on the wings. Not sure if the dragon’s intention was to crash but if it was to land. I think it could’ve had some overlapping animation on the whole body in both cases. Like the Head crashes first, then the Upper body, then the lower body, and then the tail. The recover animation from the crash is quite nice. Loves how the neck comes up later than the body. The absorbing of the motion in the arms after getting up feels nice too. I think it could’ve had a nice dynamic pose because at the moment the arms are just in T-pose. Overall I think it was quite a complicated piece of animation with the Dragon. I think the whole animation sequence could have had more overlapping motion throughout the body. Need to have a lot of references for a creature like this. One thing we need to understand while animating a dragon is that the Head moves separately from the body. It is connected to the body but it moves separately. With the Posing you have in the Idle animation and the style that I think you might have wanted with this dragon, I can only think of how a vulture moves. It would be nice to observe some vulture references for this piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2z-VFSY86M
• Unable to rate on Documentation / Research and Technical workflow as these areas are missing or broken (the scene is only 308 bytes in size) The animation was a difficult one to attempt but a really good effort overall. Main areas of improvement - While the idle loops nicely, it is relatively static with little head or claw/foot movement. Just the odd facial blink or toe tap, and a slight lateral sway to the neck would add much needed nuance. - The leap is very nice with a strong pose, but the tail clips through the ground. - We also see big clipping on the initial ground impact after the dive which is unfortuante as it takes away from the overall feel. - This could be hidden if not easily fixable with some dust effects .. (as games often use smoke and mirrors to hide issues). - A longer delay before recovering from the impact would help as this seems a little rushed, and the balance on the recovery also seems very front heavy.
• Hi! Hope you are doing well, Thank you for participating in the Search for a Star Competition! This is a challenging one! The reason why I say this is because it is hard to find real-life dragon references but luckily enough we have great dragon animations from talented animators around the world. So this is a good step to study and understand the movement and behavior of a dragon. Adding more personality to your character enriches the viewer's experience. Video reference: https://youtu.be/WZVG7THSvBY?si=InXXa4N-3Z3V7BhE&t=77 https://youtu.be/mALwMPMILvk?si=GjcBF5uKUuprgR_v&t=233 https://youtu.be/mALwMPMILvk?si=LHB1JjGvFsySGMoM&t=55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfIhnNPDvHs&ab_channel=Jayden https://youtu.be/r607d7MoROA?si=GOuK45q5lW2ioZe2&t=23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzpt-uoO8qU&ab_channel=JonathanSymmonds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8EYJW3-Njg&ab_channel=alessandrotommasi Hope this helps Keep working on it!
• There is some nice motion in here for sure. There is some problem with weight when the dragon brings his leg up. Screen's right leg is completely straight and not moving throughout. Dragon's whole body should move to the screen right at the same time as he moves up so weightless on the other leg to bring it up, it's nice to see overlap between body and leg coming down, but I wouldn't bring the body lower before planting the leg. Make foot straight down for contact and then bend the ankle. I would try to work a bit on that first pose, the legs are so far apart from each other, leaving a big gap, I would try to move a bit around those legs to create a nicer pose. For the jump, it's nice to see opening the wings and bringing them down to get impulse but I would delay the body coming up after the wings are completely down like the wing that you got from flapping the wings so hard is what makes the dragon be able to get airborne. Also, remember to avoid everything being so perfectly mirrored. change a bit the pose between the left side of the body and the right side. When on the air, you are losing an opportunity to flap your wings before moving into attack. Again I would wait for a wing flap to move the body forward as an impulse. Not really sure what motivates the fall, if it's either an injury, maybe a gust of air? The tail should come down once he hits the ground and body should move further forward as right now the legs are stuck in one place and body overshoots and comes back like he was caught with a rope or something like that. The last thing is when he gets up seems like the body hits a wall, should be a bit more follow thru overall
• First of all I want to congratulate you on making your project, in my opinion self-discipline and willpower are important for this:). I am an animator by speciality, so I will mostly comment on the body mechanics of your character, taking into account the peculiarities of gameplay animation. You have a beautiful dragon, it takes off well, nice wingspan, but the moment of lift-off from the ground is too abrupt, I would recommend slowing down the moment of lift-off a bit, as it will add weight to your dragon. He lands well, only you are a bit sloppy in phasing his neck and head because they go through the ground. But the main point is that in my opinion, it's not really clear what the dragon is attacking. There's a sense that he's not feeling well and has fallen. Overall you have a good sense of composition and line of movement. You just need to pay more attention to the packaging of animation, and the search for body balance. Thank you for a great job!
• The idea is really nice and what you've done here is pretty good, although there is some issues with the clipping of the tail during the raise up, as well as clipping through the floor of the head / neck during the land. Make sure to pay more attention to how the dragon would actually try to get in the air, instead of using the legs as the main force to bring them up, it's more likely they would flap their wings really hard, It would also be good to see an in-air settle and some attempt to balance the hover with some extra wing flaps and body movement before dashing down on the ground. Not having any wind-up / anticipation before the dash also makes it a bit hard to read what the animation is actually supposed to be without reading the name, is it a fall, landing, dashing, attack, gust of wind knocking the dragon over, the dragon getting shot and falling down? It just feels a bit rushed and not thought through. Overall a pretty cool animation though and I see a lot of potential, just try to pay a bit more attention to those smaller details and the plan of action of the character you animate. Well done :)
• Really cool animation here and nice to see that you are tackling some creature animations too! Great job on this! The breathing on the idle feels really nice and the timing is good. To push this animation a bit further, it would be good to see the creature looking around a bit more as we don’t get too much personality from it. You could have a look at some reference videos of animals similar to the personality you want to portray in the creature, which will help push this idle a bit further! The lift off is really nice and I like the timing for it. I would put a stronger squash pose on the creature before taking off though, you could bring the hip down a bit more and crunch the neck down so we feel the explosive lift off more! The swoop down is good and has a nice transition from the liftoff, it does look like the creature is undershooting their target though. You could have the head more tilted and looking at where it is going to land along with rolling the whole body a bit more as it feels very symmetrical as it’s coming down. I love the neck swooping around on the attack as it lands and it whips around after being dragged on the floor! Watch out for the clipping of the creature through the ground and I feel like the recovery could be slowed down more to help show the weight of the creature, you have a great settle when it goes back into idle but slow that transition down a bit! This is a good animation and it’s nice to see a creature animation, great job at tackling an animation like this! I would have loved to have seen the documentation and motivation behind this piece but I couldn’t find it! But overall you have some great motion and timing here, some stronger silhouettes in the creature posing will help push the animation to the next stage! Awesome job here, looking forward to seeing more!