Andrew Gordon Notes from CG Char

It was great fun for me to go over to CG Char tonight and see a post from Andrew Gordon about polish. Andrew was one of my teachers, and he definitely knows his stuff. Below is what he said over at CG Char.

Andrew Gordon Polish Notes

Facial polish stuff....

• Avoid even timing on jawUD
• Slow in and Out
• Watch corners of mouth
• Arc corners and jaw in dialogue
• Compress closed mouth shapes
• overlaps fleshy parts of mouth
• don't forget to animate the cheeks where needed.
• Layer in Squash and Stretch
• Do closeup records for detail
• anticipate shapes
• don't over complicate brows
• Remember how the eye works
• Get those eye blinks looking good.
• don't have those lids hit a wall
• Change shapes on eye direction changes
• use the brow in conjunction with the eyes

General

• Plot your arcs
• Pay attention to your patterns
• work on your physicality - re reference a move if needed...
• Get your contact points working well (for ex: foot squashing when it contacts ground)
• Make sure you are starting and stopping your character properly
• break up twined poses
• fingers? are they animated
• so on and so on..

Animation is a medium of design, right? As we do different gestures and movements they make up different patterns. You may have a great acting idea, but how your head and arms move, may not have pleasing patterns. This is not to say that everything you do should look like a dancer. All I am saying, it to pay attention to what the different parts of the body are doing. Design your motion. Notice that things do move in interesting patterns. Arcs and Figure eights and so on... When I show a clip of a politician waving his arm around, it is to show the path of action his arm and hand move on as well as how much you as the viewer are mesmerized by it. When ever I am animating a scene, I try to block in what I am feeling for the scene. Then I will often go back into the shot and clean up things and work on a specific area. The patterns may be one thing I am trying to work out. Patterns can be arcs, head movement, or general motion of limbs in a spacial area. What I was talking about, was mostly related to the patterns of motion created by gesticulating with your arms and hands.