Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Great job on the fantastic project – I love the amount of detail and effort you have put into the planning, documentation and the execution! Your style and camera analyses are great and I love that you have successfully tackled these technical challenges in Unreal. I think the final product is already showreel-worthy, there are just a couple of issues. I cannot see what you mean about gimbaling feet but what I notice is that they are sliding. I would make sure to add transitions in which he takes steps between the different feet stances in order to deal with that. Your posing is overall strong, which is great and I love the amount of overlap you have added throughout most of your animations, especially that drag on the sword. I think the blend between the taunt and the overhead sword hit would benefit from a transitional animation as at the moment all the body parts move at the same time during that and I assume it is due to the blending between the two. I also feel like the timing of that transition could be a little different – either with a bigger pause between the two actions to make them separate, or have less of a pause than there currently is in order to connect the two motions more as a sequence. When he is standing straight just before the close-in of the camera, all body parts move at the same time and the hands are twinning, so bear in mind that it would be good to fix that in order to completely polish this project. I love his expression during the sword thrust and the cinematography, as well as the cloth animation during the pause that follows – this really sells the impact of the attack in my opinion. The only thing I would mention is that it would be good to rotate his right ankle to point a bit more in the direction the rest of his body is facing, as it looks a little broken at the moment. The recovery would benefit from a bit more detail, as it feels rushed in comparison to the release state. The feet are currently sliding, so there should be animated steps there instead and the settle could be a little longer with more overlap as everything goes back to idle too quick and at the same time right now. The head currently rotates half-way through, which makes it look like he whips his head really fast at the end. I would keep his head facing the same direction throughout, looking at his target. Again, great job, this is a very strong project.
• Lovely idle pose. Really dynamic and love the silhouette. Overall a great piece. The arcs on the sword are quite nice too. Always love to see smear frames in the animation. The Facial animation on the slow motion is really cool and adds so much too much detail to the piece. As a whole it looks fabulous and I think we can easily make it really powerful by working on tiny adjustments. The thing that caught my eye mainly was at some points in your animation, almost all the body parts move at the same time, which makes everything look a bit floaty. When the character points at the enemy or the anticipation for the slash attack and recovering from the attack, mainly around these bits I think everything moves at the same time. This could easily be fixed in the graphs and managing the spaces and timing of certain body parts to make it feel more natural. One thing I want to mention is the attention to detail. Like when he pushes up the sword with his shoulder and the cloth animations. Absolutely love them. Love the anime feel to it as well. Especially the impact frame shows so much power in the attack. Other than that, I think your submission is lovely. Really love the detailed documentation. I think this is a solid piece. Your timing and posing are amazing on the animations. I think it only needs just a little bit of work on the basics along with removing certain foot sliding and I think it'll be an amazing portfolio piece.
• Very well researched project. I would have liked to see a bit more focus on real-life reference videos and thumbnails focusing on movement and timing of the character's motion. A very technically proficient project, I particularly liked your use of Procreate as a post-production tool.
• Fantastic overall result, you set out to do a lot and have really accomplished your goal, I hope you are very proud of your work. Your inspirations can be seen clearly in your final animation, and all your research has paid off in achieving a stylised, impactful animation well suited to the type of game it’s intended for. You’ve got some striking poses that read well. I would think about how some of your action reads from the side when it’s in between these poses. For example, with his left arm as he’s going into the point you could make the arc come up and over so you read the arm pose all through the motion. During your closer dramatic camera when smaller details are more visible it would be great to work into the hand pose to break up the fingers silhouette. I love that you’ve pushed his facial expression before the stab, it would be great to see a little bit more movement in the face during the other animations to keep it alive. The black and white impact frames are a great touch, and adding the overlapping action to his skirt and hair after really sells it, as well as the camera movement and strong pose. I would think about where he would want to be looking in the blend coming out of this pose, for instance you could keep the eyeline on the enemy for longer and then dip the head down before being bought back up. The motion arc of the sword also, I sometimes add a locator, constrain it to the tip of a weapon, and then add a motion trail to check what kind of arc it’s making, as the audience’s eye is often drawn to this. Maya has it’s own one if you’ve not used it, 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 I would try and make sure your feet are planted where they should be stationary, and add in small steps where they need to move to avoid sliding unless this is part of the movement, such as between the different animations. I would also be mindful of your IK arms when they’re not fixed to a surface such as during your idle variant. I often use FK on arms while they’re not pinned to surfaces to help with this, so you don’t get any locking in the elbows and they stay loose.
• Hi! Hope you are doing well, Thank you for participating in the Search for a Star Competition! Feedback: Impressive research and development presentation you did! Well done! I like how you go into detail about character poses, camera work and animation style. You spent a good amount of time on your research and it paid off. You have strong poses and good timing too. Some minor fixes would be on the popping arms, the right arm rotation on the recovery and the neck rotation. It is very interesting to compare the dynamic perspective and the side perspective because it makes a difference. It all depends on the style of the game. If we are playing a game that gives us a 360 view of the world, then we need to make sure that the character's animation looks good in every angle. But if we are given only one point of view then we focus on the animation and poses from this perspective. This helps us tell a story, personality, and style and makes the player grounded in the world we are in. Feedback drawing: https://www.syncsketch.com/sketch/MWY3NTdiNGYw/ Recommended links to boost your animation skills: Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL0_ccwcqFA&ab_channel=Jean-DenisHaas Breaking Down Attack Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LewXWM7HDd8&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Too Much is Just Right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNBKzLzDKtM&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Assigning Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV8xIP480qk&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames How to Push Your Animation Poses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVD7pwDpJA&t=1s&ab_channel=AnimSchool Weight in Animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3oIxjzdMqY&ab_channel=AlessandroCamporota The Perils of Interpolation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFwamE6Hy04&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Knockback https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVktK4a9Yfo&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Damage Animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xHE3ypX96U&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Follow-Throughs Make the Impact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIB0BUe6Ihk&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames Attack Poses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99gdMDF7V2E&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames
• A good attempt with many good aspects & documentation. While a great overall effect here are some of the areas to work on for improvement. - The pose transitions need work to address balance shift, easement & momentum, with foot sliding being a big issue throughout. - Dont neglect the small things like hand movement and posing, even on the weapon hand. - Make sure the head is looking at the right place when returning to your upright pose, it should lead the action not follow. - Knee and elbow locking while hitting the final strike pose, usually seen when IK is used in creation, be careful to look out for this and mitigate when needed. I would also look at trying to recreate using an animation blueprint and run in realtime using state transitions.
• Very cool project, outside of animation you've demonstrated a nice understanding of shaders and post processing as well as rendering, well done.
• Great research and documentation were provided. Pleasing art style to choose. Would liked to have seen slightly more actual animated content for the final presentation personally, but the posing , weight and timing of what was there good. Could maybe add polish to avoid the character's sliding feet and the dynamic camera could maybe do with some additional polish, but overall a strong submisssion.
• Lovely presentation. In terms of what may be missing from your blocking to your final animation are some good in-betweens. I can see your main poses are mostly correct, the anticipation one is out of balance and you would fall back if you tried to copy that same pose. I feel like you could get more information on those in-betweens if you shoot some video reference and see how you transition from one to the other pose, or check some movies of sword fights. Feet are not coming off the ground and they slide instead. I would bring them up the ground whenever you want to do a change in your pose to attack or anticipate etc. Again references would help you a lot. Usually, feet when on the ground, are very rigid and they don't slide around unless you are with socks on a smooth surface or with ice. For your dynamic camera, your posing works better than if you look from the side, but for videogames, you will want to work from any angle. When doing the attack I would make him do a step forward bringing his right leg forward with the sword and then go back to what you have, it would be a nice break in your posing and I feel the hit would feel stronger.
• 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. About the idles - in my opinion you made too much amplitude on the chest, hands and shoulders. It feels like he's floating. The timing would be more natural if you phased the acceleration and deceleration to the keyframes. Right now the timing is too even. I would recommend reducing the amplitude and breaking up the squats with small body movements. Also note the sword penetration in the shoulders, but that's minor stuff. I really like the shader of your character, the colour scheme of your project is beautifully chosen, everything is tasteful. The Character strikes quite spectacularly, but don't forget about realistic body mechanics, even if it is sped up in time, keep track of the character's weight transfers. The blow itself looks good, the blow is spectacular and beautiful. Overall you have a good sense of composition and line of movement. Thank you for a great job!
• Starting off with the research, you’ve followed all the correct steps needed when concepting an animation! Stating what sort of animation style you want to create and using examples from games to help get ideas of attacks and styles, looking into how they achieve those animations and breaking them down to see how the character moves and where the camera is placed, as well as looking into how the shaders are created! Stress testing the rigs was great research too, along with detailed analysis on why you choose the Ganon rig, rigs are super important when it comes to animations as they are the base of your scene. So stress testing rigs and knowing what you are looking for will help tremendously when asking for specific requirements from Technical Animators in the future, along with testing the rig in engine before making the animation is a clear sign of a well thought out plan and process, great job! You have found some great references and you look at how each frame works, such as the impact 2D effects and using websites like the UltimateFrameData to get some more detailed information on how the animations work and the timings. My only feedback for this is to get reference of yourself doing this action, it’s great to use pre-existing animations from games but recording yourself doing the action will help you understand what muscles are being used and how things like feet should pivot and balance. I can understand you went for more stylised but having a good reference to use as a base will help and then you can push it to be more styled, giving you a more grounded and anatomically correct animation when pushing those strong stylised poses! Great job on working with shaders in Unreal Engine, understanding how they work and creating it yourself, this sort of research helps you gain knowledge of how other departments work in the industry which is good for cross department collaboration. Incredible job on the secondary motion of the clothes on the idle, it would be great if you could keep with the consistency through with the point part too, since the cloth feels a bit static there and could use some drag and overlap on the sleeve. The character does match the strong fighter feel and the impact of the ultimate attack feels amazing, the 2D effects are done incredibly! The upper body is done really well but I feel like the legs need a bit more love, we see a bit of sliding when the feet should be static and they could do with some pivoting to feel more natural; I know you said there was also some Gimbal Lock issue, you can use the Euler Filter or change the Rotation Order of the control in the Attribute Editor (This needs to be done at the beginning of your animation else your rotations will be messed up in the animation). I love the idle pose with the sword on the shoulder, it holds so much personality! Just a small detail to help improve this would be to parent (not too sure how you’ve set up the sword and hand constraint, but let's say you did sword to hand) the hand offset group (In the outliner, the hand control will have an offset group which will help with parenting, allowing you to freely animate the hand control) to the shoulder here so it will breath up and down with the shoulder and feel a bit more solid! My last feedback will be the transition from the ultimate attack, it feels a bit like a blend at the moment so you could add a transition of the character stepping into the idle pose, so the back foot lifts and goes to the final pose and then a small lift adjustment on the front foot! Overall you’ve done an amazing job here Philip and the animation has great style, feel and presentation. From looking at your previous piece with SFAS 2023, you have stepped up hugely and I look forward to seeing what more you have in store!