Animation Workshop Feedback - Shuhan Xu #9 (2022)

All righty here, let's watch the whole thing. It's a longer sequence. All right, cool. So I think my main reaction is some of the staging in the camera and some of the actions. Let me see. That sounds very broad. So you're gonna have to have this character out of frame so that we don't see him. This guy opens the door, comes out. What I would tweak is, I would bring that camera down so that your framing is more like this, to be honest. So that, let's go fancy here with the extra drawing tool. It would be more like this. This continues on. We see this and then, you know, whatever is down there, to continue that thing. So that we are in, like, crappily drawn thirds. Oof. Somewhat, right? So that the one character comes out and is here. And then the other character comes out, you know, here-ish. So that we still have that much room to refocus. Hold on, let me take this out. Because right now what's happening, we have this character center. Like, we're center frames. Composition is a bit, it's usually not that center unless it's for a very specific reason. I'm gonna go a bit more traditional, like I said, in my crappily drawn thirds. So somewhere around here. The other thing that happens now, because we're so center and low, is that when he comes out, A, they're kind of moving at the same time. I know he opens the door first, but just give the characters enough time to register to the audience. Because the moment he comes in, right, door opens. Okay, wait, what? And then this character comes in. So it's, there's not enough time to me. But also, he's way too low. And then he gets, goes out of frame, pretty much. I mean, kind of stays put there. But we never really get to see it. So it's either you do this and you don't show this character and you keep it centered. And I would technically still be there just to kind of give us a bit more room there, even if the other guy doesn't show up. But having that solo and coming out almost at the same time, it's just a bit, I don't want to say confusing, but we still know where to look. So if you take this guy out, and you just have him comes out here, and then looks down, even then you might even argue that you can do something. Let me see, can I, my hotkeys, for some reason, not working. So it will be almost something like this. Let me bring down framing to something like that. So now you have character comes out, and it ends up in those, you know, thirds. And then you can have him look over because now he's not as small. Now we can register what's going on facially a bit better. And he can, he can look over and then do a big sharp turn with his head to look down. And then as an audience, we look down as well. And then maybe you can have the door open. So we see movement. So we're ready to go. Oh, something is down there that I want to see. And then let me reframe slowly, painfully. Then you cut to the second shot. And now we are here and the door continues to open and he comes out. But the thing is, again, it's so small. Like what are you showing off in this? It's, we barely see anything in terms of back here. You got a silhouette with that arm, which is a nice, I like the framing, but still technically we don't really see what's going on. And I don't think we need it to, need to have it that wide. This might work as a first shot where we see something. It's an establishing shot. We understand the geography. Okay. Then the door opens and we see movement. Then we cut to this, like I said, where it's the closeup. And then we cut back to a third shot. But then that third shot, let me do, wait, wait, slowly go into, I mean, I would even go, to be honest, something like that. Oops, I'm trying to drag my frame. Something like that. Because again, we've had the establishing shot and then you can do really big, broad moves. Because again, at something, a character that size, it's going to be all about big gestures, which could work here, but then this would be more of a story shot of maybe showing, you know, how far away they are that this guy goes back in. Like there's not much you would show off animation wise in terms of putting this on a reel. So that's something just for you to think about. If you do this whole sequence and you want to put the whole thing on the reel, I still be careful to have every shot show something that's substantial in terms of showing off your skills versus this being more of a story sequence, if that makes sense. Then you have this here, and then I'd be careful with, like this is a big, it looks more like a translate down versus a rotation. I don't know if you need it. You could cut, but if you do something like that, I would again have him more here in the thirds. And then as the character moves over, you gradually pan with the character and tilt down to land here. But the character would be leading the action a bit more as in it could cut off here, like you could break frame and then the camera catches up and just lands a bit slower with a bit more overlap. Not saying you have to do a lot of handheldy stuff, but I would make the camera moves less sharp because this is borderline a cut, right? You move a bit, but you stop really sharply and then you might as well just cut from shot to shot. Same thing here. This goes down one, two, three frames. Like this is, might as well do a cut, but you can do this all in one long shot coming down. By now, maybe the camera has settled. And again, it would be reframing and not be so far to the left there because now I'm expecting someone to come through that window or jump into frame, but we never have that. Then you go down to this. I don't mind that. I will probably have that character here, at least at the beginning. So it's a bit more, you know, not that much of an overlap there and potential tangents. But I don't, this is where I have slight questions about the character choices. So the character comes down here and this guy's just kind of waiting, looks at the feet, doesn't really look up. And it kind of waits, right? Going left and right. And what is he doing? Why is he not already grabbing the feet? And what is this? Is this like, come at me, bro. This is a taunt. Is he going for a hug? I'm not understanding what this is. Then we have that. And then generally animation is just really, really fast. I'm not quite buying the, what's it called? The weight. And then this is tricky because now you're crossing the line. As in, we're looking to his right side. He goes left to right, cut to a 180 break. We're now really looking at his left side and he goes right to left. So I will keep that a bit more, again, tilt down or cut into a wide. That's technically this. And then the character can just continue because there's no other shot after that. So you might as well have something like this. You might have to change this here, but that's the exit. So the character comes out and then jumps out here. And again, this is in terms of animation, a bit wonky in terms of that much momentum going forward. Comes to a sudden stop, then goes out to a sharp right. I will keep that a bit more fluid with a wider arc. And if he goes like this, to me, it's more like, well, you're going to put this arm here and not go like that. I mean, unless he wants to push off. That's what I think it looks like because it's not really sticking to the wall. Is he supposed to jump and then push off here? Or is he just going to bolt the other side, you know, like this arm down, flip him over. He just kind of jumps over that. And then again, momentum wise, if he does this and actually uses this wall and pushes off, that momentum will carry him way to the left. And this feels like he hits a wall right here. He goes, boom. All right, just draw that line here. So he just goes here. It's that wall and just falls down. So that exit would be out this way and not like this. If that makes sense. So that's kind of that. If I played a whole thing, what are we at here? 70, 25% slower. Comes out. Hey, oh, what's over there? You over there. It's a bit slow in places and in places it's okay. Like actually, I really prefer that 25% slower. But then this feels, the jump feels good to me, better. This feels slow and the rest feels a bit slow. So to me, it's a mix between 25% slower and then regular speed and then slower again. And that's kind of that. So I know those are bigger changes in terms of, well, do you want to change the camera? Do you want to change the whole beginning and make it an establishing shot? And it's not to say that you can't do an establishing shot afterwards, but I would probably still go closer here. I would still probably play with the idea of character frames this way. And then at least when the other guy comes in, we see more of it. That's probably the biggest thing for that. And you could still cut to that and make that the biggest establishing shot and do this right where you have here with the big moves. I think either way would work, doing this first or not. So whatever version I have before, I think they both can work. I would just definitely rework this. And then after that, it's mostly camera movement. If you want to go just cut and cut and cut or make this one longer shot, but then really work on the camera moves. It's less over three frames and just sharp. And then the character interaction feels a bit weird. Like I said, what is he doing here? I don't quite get this. And I don't know what the red light is here. I don't see anything in your email. Why is it constantly getting having that layer of red on and off? And that's it. All right. Thanks. All right. There's an email. You can sign up. You can start whenever you want. You can submit whenever you want. You get 16 submissions. Either way, a like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you.