Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Unfortunately the documentation is missing and the .zip file appears to be corrupted so this one is hard to judge. From what I can see in the video you had a good pre-established concept for the sequence with clear separate states with clear poses in mind. It is good that you included a snapshot of your Unreal process in your showcase video as that shows some of the work that has gone into it. Good job with the animations – they present a solid base with decent timing and just need some further polish. In the idle animation, currently all body parts seem to move roughly at the same time (hips, chest, head, arm) – I would make sure that they are all offset by a few frames (hips followed by chest, followed by head) to create the necessary overlap. You seem to have applied this to your Charge loop but not to either of the two idles. I like the circular motion that the weapon arm makes in your first idle. I would apply this to the fists in the second idle as well, as their movement is following a straight line at the moment which we want to avoid. During your Charge loop, the elbow of the weapon hand almost overextends as the hand doesn’t follow the forward motion of the hips. One way to avoid this would be to animate that arm in FK rather than IK – this way you would only need to worry about rotation and making sure that you animate all four controls (shoulder, upper arm, lower arm and hand) with a bit of overlap down the chain. Working with FK is a very valuable skill to learn as it is preferable in such cases when the arms (or legs) don’t have a contact point with a surface. During your release/recovery states one thing to mind is the center of gravity of your character – currently they are a bit unbalanced with the hips and torso rotation going too far to either his left or forwards (hard to judge based on the angle). Make sure that your character is balanced at all times. It is useful to record your own reference footage to analyse how the center of gravity works in real life. Once the sword is stuck, the hips then rotate the whole character which results in overextension of his right knee. Make sure that no limbs overextend. You should use the chest and head controls for rotation to create an overlap/follow through with the hips as his whole upper body moves as one block in that sequence at the moment. Doing this should also reduce a bit of the overextension issue. I like the arc and timing of the sword during that sequence. I would only suggest leaving it stuck for a couple of more frames as that would sell it being stuck + the force needed to remove it even more. The recovery is missing some settle at the end as he goes back to the idle pose too quickly. It would be better if he overshoots a bit (e.g. hips go a bit more up and/or backwards) and then goes back to idle from that. If you work on these feedback points, I believe you would have a decently strong project.
• Hi Chris! Hope you are doing well, Thank you for participating in the Search for a Star Competition! You have interesting poses and good snappy animation. I like the way to placed the character's hand screen right on his abdomen. This already says to me that the character has gone through some rough times and it has its personality. You could add some offset from one to another, to give a realistic feel. Would be interesting to see all your animations blending and see if they have a smooth transition. Keep working on it. I want to see your final result. Recommended links to boost your animation skills: 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 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
• Some nice motions and weight in the anims. When you IK the hand to the upper body, make sure to once in a while detach it and move it, as it currently looks glued with 0 motion. During the attack, the arm fully straightens and the elbow pops. There is a bunch of feet sliding and clipping of feet through the floor. Overall a pretty good project and you've showed some good understanding of weighting and timing, well done!
• I couldn’t find any documentation and the Unreal zip is corrupted, so the feedback will be based on the video you sent in! For Idle 1, I really like that you’ve gone for an injured animation which creates a nice silhouette in the idle along with the long and deep breaths to get a sense of the last stand! My main feedback is on the left hand which sits on the hip, it doesn’t feel too connected to the body but rather glued on. First, you could bring the wrist more in line with the stomach and open up the hand a bit more so we can see the fingers in contact with the body, then to help push this even further, you could Parent the Hand Offset Group to the Hip and then animate the Hand Ctrl with a slight overlap to help give the arm more life! The charge transition is really fluid and has a good sense of weight on the body. You could add a bit of drag and overlap to the sword since it feels like the arm is easily moving instead of being affected by this sword slightly, this will help us feel weight in the sword and a connection between the character and the object! The attack feels realistic and meaty, great job on conveying that with the weight and timing, I think you could push the injury feeling across more here, especially on the transition from the first swing to the second, you could drag behind the upper torso and head to make the character feel lethargic and injured. Then, as they go to hit their final strike, you can extend the Right hand out straight and while curving the back backwards, loosen the Left Hand from the torso and let it fall down creating this feeling of the character putting all they can into this finishing blow. This will help change the poses up a bit on the attacks and will push the animation further! I love the feeling of when the sword gets pulled out at the end of the attack, looks and feels great. This is super promising work so far Vona, it’s a shame I couldn’t dig deeper into the UE project and see your motivations, but you’ve got a solid understanding of weight and timing. I would recommend looking into some stronger silhouettes when doing attack moves but other than that you’ve done a great job at making this animation! Hoping to see more from you!
• Really Dynamic idle pose and love the heavy breathing animation over the pose. One thing that might make it look even better is to remove linear motion and that might be because of everything moving at the same time. I think we can adjust the timing on the neck and arms moving down a bit within the breathing time as the breathing timing does work well in the animation. The Charge idle pose is Lovely. The breathing animation here does have the overlap on the neck and the arms which makes it look a bit more natural. The only thing that caught my eye was the right arm overextension. And that might be the cause of animating in IK. Release and recover has some amazing anticipation. It shows the power and the intention very clearly. It’s much readable. Love the arc on the blade too. The minor thing that we can adjust here is on the first slash. I think the COG goes out of balance by going too forward which makes it feels like he’s going to fall after the first attack. Overall, I think your posing is really nice, the timing is on point. You had a really nice idea and it was implemented very well. I think the basic thing that could be worked on is understanding how the COG moves a bit more in detail. We need to observe how our COG moves when lifting a feet or how it moves when attacking in this case. What is the limit of COG, how far can it go, and how COG is responsible for balancing our whole body? I’d have loved to see some documentation of what motivated you to make this animation and some behind the scenes but, there was some error with the zip file stating “Unknown Format”. This might mean that it’s corrupted.
• Idle posing seems unnatural and off balance and the speed is very laboured. Weighting and timing issues with the attack.
• I think you’ve got a really good understanding of the weight of your character which is great to see, and the animations are feeling nice and fluid on the whole. I would keep an eye on your IK arms when they’re not fixed to a surface. For example, in your charge idle this is making the elbow on his right arm seem pinned in place. I often use FK on arms while they’re not pinned to surfaces to help with this. Keep an eye on your wrist as well on the sword hand, some subtle rotations during this anim would loosen it a bit. In a similar fashion the left arm in your idle 2 I think could have a bit more up and down so you’re not moving around one point with the wrist. Good idea to have a target for your charge release/recover, I always find this helps me with attack animations. You’ve got some great momentum with the leg coming forward for the stab. I would try to consider his eyeline while he’s attacking like this, he would probably try to keep eye contact with the target as much as possible, so for example its good to have the head react to the first swing, but then getting that eye contact back sooner would be a nice touch. I think it would be nice to work into that sword arm a bit more on the swing, making sure the wrist rotations feel comfortable and checking some of the arcs with a motion trail. Maya has it’s own one if you’ve not used it, there are better versions out there but it does an job ok. https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-A4F827EE-61C2-4F0A-9592-E91AA20F5D2C With the sword getting stuck in the opponent, I like the idea and think it’s working pretty well, you might want to consider giving a little bit of give in the sword, so some subtle translation and rotation.
• 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, head and right shoulder. 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. On the posing - in the first idle, it's like he's been shot sideways. Better to choose more neutral poses, in my opinion. Transition to charge and charge idle - pay attention to the hand with the sword. There the arm looks like someone is pulling on it, i.e. the kinematics are not quite right, the movement should go from the shoulder, not the other way round. 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!