Hi everybody Im new and heres some stuff I made

brilliant.....not only was the stick fight film crap...it was so crap i couldnt watch past the elevator scene....worse still, it prompted me to not watch your second link

:eek: That was kind of....well......cruel.
Im all in favor of criticism, but calling "crap" an effort is rather unnecesary. Animated Ape and Victor are old members of this site, and thier opinion is always relevant, but reggardless of a future career in animation, Steven wanted constructive criticism.....not that kind of "real crap" Victor did.
Anyways, Great job Steven, just as Ape said, you have a knock for this, just keep working...... Maybe one day we will be good enough for Victor.....:D

meeoow

hand bags at dawn

I am glad you are having fun at uni, but violent stick figure and claymation fare, may win over adolescent audiences, but it's not going to do much for you in the long run.

Some fun work Steve. I couldn't watch all of the first one. I can only watch so much stick figures fighting each other.

The claymation short is pretty well done. The animation was ok, but the compositing of the smoke, blood, and lightsabers was well done.

Aloha,
the Ape

What I liked the most on your work was the timing of the animation, the use of the sound effects, and the mixture of 3d elements with the claymation. Very neat.

But if you want to improve your work even more, I'd say you could study a little more about composition (not compositing!), posing, editing and storytelling in general.

And try to find some different tunes for your soundtrack, that Prodigy song was already a clichée when it was used in Matrix, many years ago... Imagine now... ;)

brilliant.....not only was the stick fight film crap...it was so crap i couldnt watch past the elevator scene....worse still, it prompted me to not watch your second link

well done

do yourself a favour and animate something with some thought

and dont offload crap like "so I didnt have enough time to make better plots and what not."

you had time to do this crap....so you have time to invest in something worthwhile

im sure you impressed your mates with this...just like im sure they are impressed when someone over vinegars their chips and they fall through the wrapper......thats quite funny actually

mental note

if this hadnt been the first thread on the first forum i visited today...i wouldnt have even bothered responding

hard luck
:D

relax

anyway if you had read my post it was the first thing I ever made and I made it in 1st year of uni.

i did read it....and the point i was making was that regardless of age, experience or time....you still chose to invest your time and effort in something fundamentally crap.

looking through my crass language, the input was constructive. i am happy to spell it out though.

if you spend a little time planning out a thoughtful piece for your next animated film, then regardless of your software knowledge and animation ability you will still have something with merit. something which will hopefully appeal to an audience.

if you have a good story to tell and tell it well, then it will shine through your artistic and technilogical short-comings

i have no problem with you calling me names. better that than for you to mooch off thinking the movies you shared with us were something they were not.

with any luck you will sulk off and come back in a few weeks with something awesome just to prove your point...i really hope you do

we all make shitty films mate...and the reason we share them on line is we hope the people will like them...but if they dont, for the sake of our growth, we want honest feedback no matter how painful

im sorry i couldnt be more constructive about the content of your stickman fight film....but there wasnt anything worth commenting on

i really think people are being too polite to you

the second film was dreadful too

the pace and editing was very good though and you certainly have a flair for it

but really....you are doing a degree.....which makes you nearly 20?

thats 20 years of life experience. you should be chock full of memory moments from which to draw thoughtful narratives.

they dont even have to be stories in the traditional sense

animating a child apprehensively entering a garden to retrieve his ball

picking yourself up after falling off your skateboard in front of other people only to go off and hide to nurse your knee

sitting in the dentist waiting room

managine to climb over a really tall fence for the first time

these are not stories as such, but they are all about conflict and emotion

they are all things which an audience will relate to....even if they have never been to the dentist, they will relate to that fear and expectation

tackling a short animated exercise like this will do much more for your animation toolbelt than a million fight scenes

also. stopmotion is notoriously hard to do well. true animation is animation, but before embarking on a stopmotion project, you should invest some time in planning out and drawing key poses and making a note of when they might occur

...but these projects were made whilst having to make other projects at the same time so I didnt have enough time to make better plots and what not.

Were these other projects other animation projects? Just wondering.

Steve, don't get constructive in-put confused with blind praise. Three of the four people that gave their input all had something negative to say about the kung-fu stick men animation. That in it self is pretty telling. Sure you're going to get people who like that, but most of them are most likely 14 to 20 year old boys and most likely are NOT animators. I liked that stuff when I was that age. Hell, I like that stuff now, but there is so much of it around that it all blends together. If you aren't the first one or two people who do it, or the first couple people to do a great spoof of it, DON'T do it.

Steve, you obviously have a gift for timing, pacing and staging. Now, keep working on those, and at the same time bring up your other animation skills. Work on the animation principles: timing, spacing, squash and stretch, anticipation and over shots, overlapping action, secondary action, arcs, clear posing, etc.

One last piece of advice, get used to bad reviews. You will never please all the people all the time.

Aloha,
the Ape

Wow, I've never had any early animation assignments that had to be 30 seconds long. Usually they are exercises like the ball bounce, flour sack drop, flour sack walk, walk cycles and the like.

You're right, my early animation wasn't anything stellar. A lot of it still isn't. The thing is animation is a very team oriented, unless you are going to animate sorts all by your self. If you are planning to work in a studio environment, you are going to have all types of directors giving you advice on your shots. Some will be nice, others will be jerks, and still others will know less than you. They will how ever be your boss, so you will have to listen to them and learn how to listen to their advice, and figure out what they want and how you are going to get it done. Once you figure this out, animation will be a lot more enjoyable.

Don't feel like I'm harping on you. Your attitude isn't actually that bad. There have been worse here. I'm just giving out some advice. Some applies to you, so doesn't.

Believe me, I know what it's like to pour your heart into something to have it ripped apart. I've actually had shots worse than ripped apart. I've had shots that I've worked hard on, come back with the note, "reanimate entire shot." Yeah, that sucks, but thats life. Doing things over again makes you better. If it sucks, good for you. You've figured a way not to do something.

Aloha,
the Ape

I mean Im sure the very first projects you guys worked on werent the most ground breaking pieces ever

aw man...i have so many first projects...

my first attempt was way back when my uncle loaned me his video camera. it didnt do stop frame so i had to click record and pause really quickly...you never quite knew if the tape had spooled through 5 frames or no frames....i only did a 8 frame bird flight cycle....painted it all in cell...took me forever

the camera was huge and had a ruck sack for the battery

and that put me off animation until a few years later when i got an amiga and a copy of delux paint......i then animated a caterpillar cycle......it was so crap

again...this put me off animation

although througout my life i have always made little flickbooks....but usually of people being sick or exploding

so yup....all my first attempts were appalling by todays standards......times have moved on though....line testers, flash and CGI were unheard of when i started out....

now the technology is available to all....books are available which werent when i was young.....expectation is so much higher.

i almost feel sorry for young animators today.....the process of becoming an animator has less sense of discovery.....they certainly are poorer for having this technology......you cant beat the problem solving of trying to make an animation without equipment...you get a greater understanding of timing

heres the thing though dude....it sounds to me like you are on the wrong degree. if you enjoy the animation modules more than the other ones.....why the hell arent you on an animation specific degree and not a media generic one which aint worth the paper its written on

a good course, in any subject, will have a holistic approach to the units they teach.....they will all be written to benefit each other with the ultimate goal of producing a graduate with a specific set of skills which are transferable.....these generic courses are a waste of time in my oppinion....

as you say yourself...you have a lot of other classes.....ask yourself what you want to be...if the answer is animator, you are on the wrong course....if it is 'i dont know'...then you are on the right course(or you shouldnt be doing a degree at all)

I've never had any early animation assignments that had to be 30 seconds long. Usually they are exercises like the ball bounce, flour sack drop, flour sack walk, walk cycles and the like.

yeah....it is unusual for a course that teaches animation to not get you to understand the principles first

that equates to doing a medical degree and then giving you a patient in your first week and telling you to heal them

Your attitude isn't actually that bad. There have been worse here

mine for example.....i hate critisism......it ruins my whole day....most of the time i have to go and walk it off outside before i can continue with the job

only yesterday i told my team of animators that they had to reanimate completely several of their shots.....im sure it bummed them out....but if it aint right it aint right....im not going to sugar coat my instructions to them...it is not worth it......critique needs to be blunt and to the point, otherwise you leave yourself open to misinterpretation and time and money is wasted

game on

that equates to doing a medical degree and then giving you a patient in your first week and telling you to heal them

I thought it seemed strange when they had us do a heart transplant on our first day of med school! :P

Yes, I much prefer straight forward notes from the director. Tell me what you want damn it!

Aloha,
the Ape