I must say that intermediate is not that far for you. High beginner at worst, borderline intermediate at best. Your two most recent animation at the top show that you've a basic understanding of the fundamentals. You know what easing is, how to prevent stiffness, flow, and all the rest of the things tha require you to be intermediate, the problem is that the things that you've learned aren't nearly as much mastered, if it makes sense. What you've already got needs to be perfected. Your poses, for example, need some work in terms of stiffness and balance. Now I realise that you move each dot at a time which is good, but that doesn't stop there. Assymmetry and balance are just as important; the former means that each apex of a gesture—legs' gestures, for exampe— is inequal to its counterpart. To get you close to the picture, notice this example
The example on the left is most obvious. Sure, in the bad example the stance is balanced, but not natural, whereas its good counterpart has appeal, balance, and naturalism. Same goes for the one on your right. Notice how no leg or arm mirrors one another in the pose at your far right. It looks natural, you could already understand that he's blocking an attack(hopefully that's the case), and animating it wouldn't be awkward. If you see yourself in an awkward situation where you can't animate the character without making it look unbalanced—like in the fight anim at the end—be certain that it's because of the starting pose, or the pose that comes after a transition, and you will have to redo the one movement from that specific frame. Always refer yourself to real life to know what you're doing. The run animation looks really good. If you just finish it, your chances to get inter might get bigger. The only piece of critiism I could provide you withe is to give the arm that anticipates for the punch bigger spacing so that it doesn't look static.
If you check my posts, hit ctrl+f in chrome, you'll find the term "pose" repeated a little too much in every CC I type. I press on poses so much because they are 100% more important than the whole rest. I also apologize for my late response to your request. I had things to deal with which left me no choice but to make delays. Hope I've helped at all. Keep it up.
Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 12:26 pm
