So hey, here's a project I was working on for the past 8-9 days (with a 2-day buffer before posting it here because I wanted to see YT opinions before I went here as well).
Anyway, this is a very short animation I made which spawned from the inspiration I got playing Alien: Isolation. It's not super-creative in terms of story, but I aimed to make something a bit more serious/realistic than the very hyperactive/cartoony people I usually animate so this is territory I'm not too familiar with outside of work, which is to say there's a degree of freedom I haven't explored. So it's not perfect, but I hope you can enjoy it anyway!
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NnCAU81Jqk[/media]
Stuff dat b wrong:
[sp]-Her arms don't rotate and twist like they should during her run, would've fixed if I hadn't set a dumb deadline.
-Her fingers don't move nearly enough, they're very rigid and could use some move rotation. I got lazy because the rotational values on the fingers were off making them a pain to work with, and SFM handles fingers terribly anyway.
-Her turn before she starts running. Also would've fixed if deadline wasn't on me.
-A lot of small nitpick details here and there, stuff I know to avoid next time.[/sp]
Kinda sloppy animations but its great overall
[QUOTE=Sub-Zero;46903704]Kinda sloppy animations but its great overall[/QUOTE]
Could you go more in-depth? I like to improve so CC would be much appreciated!
Pros:
- Great camera work
- Great atmosphere
- Nice sound editing
- Balanced and good dynamic video composition
Cons:
- The chase scene could have been heavily improved but it's still good
- Acceptable animation, but needs improvements
- The Alien title in the ending could be improved but it was also acceptable
Overal: Pretty darn good I love you 8/10
[QUOTE=CubicMonster;46903814]Pros:
- Great camera work
- Great atmosphere
- Nice sound editing
- Balanced and good dynamic video composition
Cons:
- The chase scene could have been heavily improved but it's still good
- Acceptable animation, but needs improvements
- The Alien title in the ending could be improved but it was also acceptable
Overal: Pretty darn good I love you 8/10[/QUOTE]
Much appreciated <3 I think I focused more on the camera work and composition than the animation. I did this video kinda backwards, starting with the sound editing and camerawork and finishing with animatiion. So I think that might've been my first mistake!
Also that font was actually a placeholder, I just never got around to finding an Alien-font! D:
Well sorry, took me some time to answer back! Ok the running animations in the chase scene need to be improved.
Good job, Coyote!
I love how its a Halo based model. She should of used the Halo 1 Pistol. OP as fuck.
[QUOTE=Sub-Zero;46904588]Well sorry, took me some time to answer back! Ok the running animations in the chase scene need to be improved.[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah! I mentioned that in the spoiler tags. The hands are what ruin most of it, everything else is okay-ish. Lots of people pointed out that her running is slow after 1:06 but I figured she was just smashed into a solid wall and metal pipe, so she wouldn't be at her best. She does limp a bit, even if it's subtle (left steps are longer than right steps). But the floaty arms are what ruin the illusion.
Thanks! :D
[editline]11th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Xieneus;46904629]Good job, Coyote![/QUOTE]
<3
[editline]11th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;46904980]I love how its a Halo based model. She should of used the Halo 1 Pistol. OP as fuck.[/QUOTE]
It is? I'm just using the Sci-Fi citizens by Lt_Commander, no idea what his source of inspiration was. :b
I know I haven't said much on FP yet, but I hope I can offer some advice anyway on what could've been done better here, and how you could pay it forward with whatever else you choose to make.
Aside from the points people already brought up about the chase scene needing work, I think quite a bit of what you have going here works pretty well. The composition and staging work pretty nicely, and even though the timing could use some more work, it gets the point across and works well with the great sound editing.
As for the acting and animation, you did a pretty good job with the alien by giving a good sense of weight to his movements, especially when he falls out of the ceiling. I think one of the big problems I'm seeing for the girl though is that you hardly move her shoulders at all. When you do move the shoulders, it's to get her starting pose in that shot to look right, but you seem to be forgetting to move them later on when she moves her arms around. We use our shoulders a lot, not just to move our arms around, but also to convey emotion. Getting them more involved would go a long way to making her acting seem more convincing, giving her movements a stronger sense of weight like you have for the alien, and also giving her a stronger silhouette.
I'd also get the hips rotating more. That alone would probably do a lot to remove some of the uncanny movement you've currently got in her run cycle, and make the sudden change from a natural run to a struggle to limp through the door even more of a shock to the viewer. You might also have too many keyframes when the girl is starting to run, making her movement seem kinda jittery.
In the end though, you did great! Keep it up!
Who the hell goes [I]into[/I] the room the scary as fuck Alien was JUST in? :v:
In all seriousness, it looks pretty cool, even with the issues others have already mentioned.
[QUOTE=Piggybank;46905804]I think one of the big problems I'm seeing for the girl though is that you hardly move her shoulders at all. When you do move the shoulders, it's to get her starting pose in that shot to look right, but you seem to be forgetting to move them later on when she moves her arms around. We use our shoulders a lot, not just to move our arms around, but also to convey emotion. Getting them more involved would go a long way to making her acting seem more convincing, giving her movements a stronger sense of weight like you have for the alien, and also giving her a stronger silhouette.[/QUOTE]
Funny you should mention that, when I do cartoony animations people have described to me that they recognized my style because of my "shoulder-fetish", meaning I put a lot of emphasis on shoulder-movements :v: I kinda went for a more "realistic" approach in that this is how it would look for a real human and not an animation where exaggeration is usually key. This is one of those cases where motion capture would be a better choice of animation rather than hand-keyed.
As for her hips, indeed, didn't even animate them during the running because I didn't think they'd be in shot long enough to bother. Ultimately I was wrong though.
It's something I like to call the "Pixar Principle". If it isn't in the shot, don't bother animating it. If you saw the scene itself outside of cameras I cut so many corners you might as well be looking at a perfect circle. :P
The jitter in her movement when she starts to run again is her losing balance when she tries to get back up after the impact, but I kinda messed that up and never got to fix it. Pretty much the entire run-sequence was botched horribly because I didn't have the time to make it prettier, because I put so much time into planning and doing the cinematography itself.
But I thank you for your critique, and I love you. <3
[editline]11th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=NikoChekhov;46905915]Who the hell goes [I]into[/I] the room the scary as fuck Alien was JUST in? :v:
In all seriousness, it looks pretty cool, even with the issues others have already mentioned.[/QUOTE]
Horror movie cliches all up in dis :v:
Thank you!
gage alien pack when :v:
I think you really did a great job, espically the facial animations.
Just needs the alien model from Isolation. That fucker's scarier imo.
The only things that really stood out in my opinion was it was a bit bright, and that the alien seemed to move a little quickly when it dropped out of the vent. In the film, and in the game, it tends to move quite slowly, smoothly and deliberately when it enters somewhere new - it has this sense of control over its environment, even if the environment it's in is completely alien to it (hurr).
Oh, and other than the mechanical arm, the environment didn't feel very Alien-esque, but that's just a nitpick, since I doubt there's anything better available
but yeah otherwise that's hella cool
Main weaknesses for me were that the eyebrows didn't appear rigged or animated, which is essential for emotive characters- also I noticed some of the lens flares were very poorly tracked. Consider doing a second pass of scenes with lens flares using bright visible tracking marks and basic lighting so your postwork tracking is more accurate-- given you've got the time for it, of course.
Other than that, hopefully Isolation will be properly ported someday, so that quality SFM stuff like this can be taken to the next level.
[QUOTE=evlbzltyr;46906269]The only things that really stood out in my opinion was it was a bit bright, and that the alien seemed to move a little quickly when it dropped out of the vent. In the film, and in the game, it tends to move quite slowly, smoothly and deliberately when it enters somewhere new - it has this sense of control over its environment, even if the environment it's in is completely alien to it (hurr).
Oh, and other than the mechanical arm, the environment didn't feel very Alien-esque, but that's just a nitpick, since I doubt there's anything better available
but yeah otherwise that's hella cool[/QUOTE]
I was afraid of going a bit too dark so I made it a bit too bright instead while keeping the blue-green darker colors. I agree the alien moves a bit too quickly, but then I didn't want a 1-minute video to be 40 seconds of the Alien looking around ominously. :b
And yeah, wasn't much I could do with the environment. I did what I could with Hammer to kinda make something that resembled Sevastopol, but my mapping skills are very limited.
[QUOTE=Biscuit-Boy;46906818]Main weaknesses for me were that the eyebrows didn't appear rigged or animated, which is essential for emotive characters- also I noticed some of the lens flares were very poorly tracked. Consider doing a second pass of scenes with lens flares using bright visible tracking marks and basic lighting so your postwork tracking is more accurate-- given you've got the time for it, of course.[/QUOTE]
They were actually, but not very well. There were up-and-down sliders for the inner eyebrows but not the outer, so making a worried face was near impossible. Lens flares weren't even tracked, they were keyed in with Sony Vegas's HitMovie effects. :v: I know how to use After Effects, I just never... do.
[QUOTE=NikoChekhov;46906087]Just needs the alien model from Isolation. That fucker's scarier imo.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Biscuit-Boy;46906818]Other than that, hopefully Isolation will be properly ported someday, so that quality SFM stuff like this can be taken to the next level.[/QUOTE]
I contacted Cra0kalo who was doing some porting stuff and was asking if he had a Xeno model I could use but from what I gathered it would take a while for that to become a reality and I have very little patience once my inspiration kicks in, so I went with what I had instead. I might make another Alien-video though, since people seemed to like this one, and for that I'll wait til better resources are out!
If you want some incredibly useful advice, when you're doing your animations - film yourself doing them, makes it a hell of a lot easier if you have the EXACT reference you're looking for when you animate.
Just gotta be a good actor :P
[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;46907120]If you want some incredibly useful advice, when you're doing your animations - film yourself doing them, makes it a hell of a lot easier if you have the EXACT reference you're looking for when you animate.
Just gotta be a good actor :P[/QUOTE]
I did that actually, although I did record it in a very tiny space, so outside of the turning, looking around and hiding from the alien I had to wing it. :b
I loved the way the ending happened - just a quick cut to the title. Pretty good!
she made sex noises when she was spooked by the alien, and she had limp dick arms when she ran, other than that, pretty quality for a week of work
For some reason I really expected a comedic ending. Like spontaneous break dance battle or something that'd be rad.
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