test - Latest Comments in http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Virgil — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:19:00 -0000

I, mostly... strongly disagree. :D
Although maybe it is true that very good animation can bring (unexpected :P ) life to otherwise badly designed and/or built characters, great animation is not only great because of how it moves, but because of how it looks too. The old Disney animation is so magical because its golden poses are simply truly gorgeous drawings, and the whole animation is built around them. so anyway, I saw crappy animation that looks appealing, and, as an animator, I didn't like it (I perceived it as cheap and unfinished), I saw great animation playblasted from Maya and looking very incomplete... from a "drawing appeal" point of view, but I think the real magic comes when animation is both correct/alive and good-looking. just like an ugly person, in reality, might be... real and all... but that doesn't make me want to look at him/her. while more interesting people have some charm, not necessarily because they are very good looking, but because they have something special in the way they look and behave. so I don't perceive appeal as "cuteness" but rather as personality, charm, charisma, which is obtained with both animation/acting/movement AND design. and idea. :)

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

@b — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:45:00 -0000

fantastic post...now whenever i come across any character to animate whether good or bad, this post will also be in my mind. thanks!

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Aaron — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:41:00 -0000

Hi Grejotte. Thanks for the question! A broken rig or a poorly weighted character is going to cloud the quality of the animation, there is no question about that. A broken rig should be avoided at all costs if you cannot fix it yourself, or if you are not in a production pipeline and having it fixed by someone else is impossible for some reason. If you are unable to achieve the poses you need, then clearly you will not be able to execute the animation at the level you wish. If the problem is weighting, then I would suggest parenting rough pieces of polygonal geometry to the character's joints, creating what some of us call a low-res "tootsie" character. Yes, Tootsie just like the chocolate rolls. By parenting the pieces you keep the rig light, and you can then hide the poorly weighted geometry, and work only with the new low-res character. You may get some intersections between the pieces when posing the character, but this will bother you a lot less than distortion in the geometry, caving in, or twisting, which are common symptoms of bad weighting. You can put all the tootsie pieces on a layer and easily hide them when you wish. Do this until the weighting issue are fixed by yourself or someone else. If this is not possible for some reason, then personally I would only ever show the tootsie geometry when presenting the animation. The poorly weighted geometry will only serve to detract from the animation. But remember, poor or uncreative design, which is what I wrote about, is VERY different from broken design, like broken rigs or incorrect weighting. So in the case of the latter, I do believe it can detract from the quality of the animation, but this is purely because these issues are "wrong" and do not exist in the character's universe, if that makes sense.

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Grejotte — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:06:00 -0000

Nice!

But what about a character design that is so poor that you can't make any great poses because of geometries going through each others or a bad bad weighting that makes the geometries looks really weird if you push the poses too much?

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Muddu — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:22:00 -0000

Gr8 post !

Re: http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/2008/10/how-do-you-make-unappealing-character.html

Laura — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:55:00 -0000

Very insightful! I'd never thought of that before. Thanks for posting!