Moho Forum

Hi everyone,

A little over a year ago I started with AS, and put together a series of 12 episodes for an original comedy series called "Caucasian Asian" (it's about a random white guy who inherits a Chinese restaurant from a complete stranger; it actually makes gets crazier from there). Anyway, I really didn't know much of anything at the time I started.

Over the course of the past few months, though, animation has been growing from a hobby into a passion. I've been anonymously reading all your tips for some time now, and figured I should introduce myself and see if your community has room for one more.

Me and my team (of writers/actors) just posted the first episode of our second season of Caucasian Asian. I've made a lot of progress from the first season, but there is still so much for me to learn. I hope I can contribute to the forum, as I have learned a lot, and I know there is plenty I can learn from you all.

You can check out the first season and the start of the second season here: http://www.youtube.com/user/FactionFilm
The humor may not be for everyone, but I'd love any feedback you guys have on the animation (I know, the first season shows some weak skills; be kind!).

Thanks guys!

Hello Dan

First off, welcome to the community.

Your production is interesting, tons of voice work and I love the mood of it.

May I just give a pointer, work on elbow joints, they look sort of awfull. Use bones with a one piece arm or if you need to make them two pieces then make the joints overlap properlly and set the pivot center so it does not show that much.

Keep the good work!

Gilles

Thanks GCharb!

And good spot on those elbows. I used two layers for upper arm/lower arm, and used Region Binding. As a result, if the arm is down and still, it looks fine, but I have to watch it when the arm moves.

I'm keeping an eye on that for the new episodes, though. Good spot, and thanks!

The thing that immediately jumps out at me is your characters never blink -- indeed, they don't seem to have any eyelids (so no closed eyes, or squinty ones, for example).

It's hard as a general rule to talk about particular aspects of animation since so much is style, but the overall effect of this is very sterile and unbelievable (as opposed to unrealistic -- things can be very stylized, such as South Park, and still believable within the context of that universe). Your folk don't seem alive and I suspect most of the reason for this is the "dead eye" look.

Just adding a blink here and there to a character who is doing nothing else otherwise brings that character to life in a way nothing else can, IMHO. Not having it is a tough hurdle to overcome.

But -- that may be what you are going for, and a style is a style (and I'm hardly one to criticize style choices). For me, this lack kept me from being able to stay with any episode enough to enjoy it. For others this may be a trivial or completely unimportant issue.

Also, add some eye blink won't hurt the animation and would give much more life to the characters, specially on group scenes when one of them is talking .
-G

Hey,

good call on the blinking. I built in a blinking feature on the second season models (along with ears; people have ears, right?), and used a switch layer so it's really easy to just click them closed and open.

I usually employ the closed-eye as an effect of speaking, but I think now I'll just toss in a few random blinks. In fact, since I use a switch layer to open and shut eyes, I could throw together a data file for random blinking, and just put it on each character randomly.

Thanks, guys! Input is always appreciated!!

Nice lip-syncing!

There are occasions where your quirky animation style adds to the humor. Like when the samurai made a fist--that was interesting and funny. If I were you, I would do a lot more more point animation; your style is funny, and funny is good!

Thanks tonym!!

I find myself using more and more switch files with interloping layers. I think that is best suited to my style.

Thanks again for the comment!