Hello, this is an animation I'm working on. It's a pirate character I made, delivering a beatdown with his canon. The idea is that he holds this canon over his shoulder and shoots it for a ranged attack, but if somebody gets to close he uses it as a melee weapon also.

So far I am working on getting my blocking set up in stepped mode. I'm really trying to get good arcs for the canon.

Any critiques would be very much appreciated.

Please be patient, it may take a moment for the files to load up.

Thanks!!

Wow, this looks pretty difficult to do, but this looks already great !
There is a good imagination in it, we feel the power of his movements and there is a good timing. I love the foots' movements.

I wonder if more exageration on the first hit's anticipation would make it better, because he prepares to do a great swing with a heavy canon with a lot of power.

At frame 81, there is something wrong with the canon's arcs.

This is going to be great, I can't wait to see the result !

Hey!
This looks really good. Is that for a game? I guess if you offset the rotation of his wrist so the cannon drags, and then overshoots when he's doing his changes in direction so it takes over the control of his upper body and drags that with it, the cannon will look very much heavier without seeming as if the pirate is loosing the control over it.
For a good example you might want to take a look at this superb shot in "The Incredibles" when Mr. Incredible lifts up that huge stone figure in the Volcanic room. (here at 0:45 min [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVrJhOVpzZk[/url] )

Just a tip for encoding quicktime movies: If you're using Quicktime Pro, you check "prepare for internet streaming" in the export options window and see what settings suit you best, I can't really tell you how they're called since I can't make Quicktime to work in english if my windows is in german. But by doing that, you can make the quicktime load immediately.

Thanks for the critiques guys!

wolle - This animation isn't for a game, it's just a character I made to practice with, and now I'm trying to animate him. I guess I'm going for a game feel for him though, except animation speed. I know most game animations play really fast, I'm not really going for that style, since it's not actually for a game. Thanks for the Quicktime tip. I think I may need to buy Quicktime Pro. I compressed these videos with After Effects, and I don't know where I can set the videos up for internet streaming there. I'll see if I can figure it out.

Olivier Vuil - It is difficult! This is the first animation I've tried to do of a character swinging something around. It's been a huge learning process for me. I think the key with these things though is to get good reference. I want outside and videotaped myself swinging around this heavy trident thing I have. It's the closest to a canon I could come up with.

So the update I have here is in linear mode now. I still have some arcs and general glitchiness to work out, but it's getting closer. What do you guys think of the timing and the weight now there there are inbetweens?

www.jesseobrien.com/blasty_left_side_2.mov

www.jesseobrien.com/blasty_right_side_2.mov

It's been a long time I didn't come to the mentorium and I didn't see your last message, I'm so sorry !
How your animation is going, it is finished ?

Hey Olivier Vuil, no worries. I've been working on this one quite a bit lately, no it's not finished yet. I've been really trying to get the weight of the canon to affect the body better. It's hard!! I'll post an update soon.