Polishing A Spiderman Animation | Animation Review

All right. I love it when people send back work, um, after I've had a round of, um, notes on it. So let's take a look at where we're at here with the Spider-Man animation. Saw this animation a while back. It was, um, a little bit, uh, more, uh, kind of rough. It looks like there's lots of changes have been made. Lots of really cool stuff to talk about here. For sure. That opening moment of him hurdling over the car is really dope. A little Deadpool. Action for the wind here. All right. So Perna,

um, awesome. I, it's, I'm super happy to have you hand this back in cuz uh, I, I saw there was a lot of promise, uh, when I originally saw the first version, and I can see that lots of positive steps have been taken, although I do have a bunch of notes that we can, um, we can discuss, uh, for what they're worth. So let's dive in and, uh, take a closer look at all these, uh, all these ideas I have. All right, so, I really like this opening bit here, this whole hurdle. I really like the mechanics

of it a lot. It feels awesome. I really like the kind of parkour look. It's a little bit, not spider-man, maybe, but I mean, I think it's with, it's with intolerance, I think. I don't think it's, you have to always, you always need to keep in mind I. You know, you need to absorb a lot of the material if you're, if you're working with a branded character, you need to understand the way that branded character moves, especially comic book characters, cuz they usually have iconic ways of moving. So

you really want to make sure you absorb that as much as possible. And, uh, you know, your references you might be using may not com not be super compatible with, with those, uh, those iconic movements. So it's gonna be up to you to just sort of graft what you can into the, uh, into the mix. So I think this is okay. It's, uh, it feels a little bit too Par curry for, for Spider-Man. Um, but um, but I think it's, I think it's with intolerance like I said. Now that being said, um, the notes I have

here are. Whoa, that's jumping ahead too far. So I honestly, I think that your Achilles heel, having seen your work a few times now, your Achilles heel tends to be momentum preservation. This is a very common problem for animators. The idea being that you are, um, like momentum is disrupted, the flow of momentum, like it's either moving and then it stops suddenly for no reason, or it's moving at a certain pace or not moving at all and starts suddenly. Um, This idea of inconsistency with the, wit

h the idea that momentum has a certain inertia to it and it, um, you know, can't just change randomly or change suddenly, typically, um, there are exceptions to those rules, but there's always reasons for it. And usually these, uh, sort of, these problems stick out when there's really a lack of rationale. So what I'm, what am I getting at specifically here? Uh, if we take a look here, I want you to notice his, his, his waistline, his hips. Okay. Notice this, we're moving down to the left, down t

o the left, down to the left up. And then down, sorry, like I, sorry, like, hold on. I got confused now. So down, down to the left, down to the left, up into the left, down into the left, up into the left. Up into the left. So that little zigzag bit there reads as a pop. And it weird. It's just, it creates this strange stutter, which breaks up that flow that, um, that is kind of required for that, that action, that anticipation to, to work. It also feels like, um, and I don't know if this is my

next note or not, so I should, um, No, I think, yeah, I, I, I, I must have forgotten written this one. Write this one down. But I also get the feeling like when you're moving like this and hopping, you wanna kind of preserve as much of that horizontal momentum as possible. And I get the feeling that, that like, you're moving at a decent pace here, and then you, you're putting the brakes on a little bit here. Um, like look at how very little it's moving horizontally here. You know, like moving qu

ite a bit vertically here, but the horizontal sort sort somehow decided to, to disappear. I really feel like you need to be very careful there that to to, to, you know, unreasonably remove momentum that he could be otherwise using to get himself, um, over the car here. So just be careful with what you're doing. Those momentums. The next note I have here is, um, Try to coordinate the upper and lower body. I want you to notice how the upper body here on the launch right here, the upper body's alre

ady stretching character's body. The, the hips are still going down, but the upper body is stretching and then, you know, okay, the upper body, but then the upper body, you know, continues to stretch and then locks into this sort of, this fully stretched position, and the character hasn't even fully extended their legs yet. You wanna try to, Treat the whole body as one unit, almost like a spring or some sort of accordion. And the whole body, upper and lower needs to work together. It needs to fe

el synchronized, otherwise it'll feel discombobulated and you'll lose that feeling of like u u unification through the body mechanics. You always want the body to feel like it's working together. Always, always, always together. Um, and, uh, this is a good example of where that kind of falls apart a little bit. Next note here. Um, be careful not to have the momentum of the character accelerate after the launch. I see this problem like all of the time. Uh, basically the problem is, is that, you k

now, physically speaking, if you are, um, doing a jump or a leap or anything that requires some sort of ballistic like takeoff, um, The fastest moment of that takeoff is during the launch. So the moment between the anticipation pose, like the squash pose, and the last moment that we're still touching the ground. Now, the reason why that's the fastest is because we have propulsion. We are touching the ground and pushing away from it. Our leg muscles are. Pushing our mass upwards, at which point w

e will lose grip with the ground because our legs are only so long, and the momentum of that mass that we've been moving upwards continues forward or up or wherever you're going and just carries us off the ground. That's how jumps work. But Gravity has got other other plans for us, and so it's always pushing back down on us. Immediate, well all the time, but the effects of gravity are felt, start to be felt, uh, immediately after leaving the ground. As far as the upward slash horizontal momentum

is concerned, well, gravity works in the vertical realm here, so the horizontal wouldn't be affected by gravity at all. But so in a case like this, it would feel weird. Um, if, if after the launch we sped up because where's that speed coming from? Gravity should be slowing us down in the vertical dimension. So why are we speeding up? So just be careful cuz if you take a look at here, you know, it's just a moderate amount of motion right here. Like, it's like right here. That's the last moment.

We're still touching the ground and we're pushing, okay. Read that amount of motion, right? Kind of record that in your mind and then I want you to notice it feels to me. Especially this one little moment right here. It feels pretty big. Pretty big here too. Pretty big here too. Like it just feels like it's moving all together. Um, more than it was while it was down here. So just be careful cuz I feel like when I play this back it feels like he kind of flies up. It's not so bad. I mean, I'm bein

g pretty picky here. It's borderline. I think it would probably be okay. I just wanted to point it out cause I thought that it was a little close to, um, uncomfortable. Um, stiff upper body on the landing. Take a look here. This character's like spine right over here, like from right around here. It stays in the same pose even after connecting with the ground here. And then it starts to, kind of, then starts to bend forward a little bit on here, but like, that's more of just sort of tilting forw

ard with the hips, I think, than anything else. You wanna make sure that, just like the launch, um, that the whole body's working together. You want the same thing for the upper body, the bo, the, the spine and the head. The, the, the, the legs should compress together so the whole body can absorb that energy, um, on the landing. Okay. Um, I'm just kind of doing a rapid fire review here, so hopefully you don't mind the pace. Um, what else we got here? We got, where did the all the horizontal mom

entum go? So I want you to notice this too. So we're, we're booking it here. Take a look at how much horizontal momentum there is here. Okay. And there's a lot right here. Okay. Interestingly, with the momentum and the trend that you have here, this key's gonna fall. He's gonna fall because he's, he's got nothing. There's no leg out front being able to push against, like in this direction, this momentum that's going this way. So the legs are both behind him so that this foot would've had to like

be much quicker to catch up, to be able to do what you're doing. But what's happening is look, look at how much momentum there is here, and then we actually slow down quite a bit. But how are we slowing down? What are we using? What's creating this backwards force that allows him to slow down? You see how much he's slowed down here horizontally? This, this leg is back here, this leg off the ground. He's got nothing. He's got nothing to be able to slow himself down. So that's why that whole land

ing feels very awkward. You might be wondering why, that's why is there's no mechanical reason for that slowdown. So it feels, I mean, there's that plus the stiff back. There's a bunch of things going on there, but the, it, it also just feels strange. Like the momentum feels wrong and the weight feels wrong, and it's because of the things we just talked about. Momentum continues, right? It can't just stop on its own. Um, it can, is able to slow down and, and even stop if there is, um, a force th

at's pushing in the opposite direction. Um, why stop the momentum here? Uh, more importantly, how would he possibly stop his momentum with the current pose? So let's take a look at what's going on here. So he. Does manage to kind of then finally get his legs moving and he starts to, um, starts, he starts to kind of run forward. He raises his, his hands to shoot some web. Um, and then for some reason, like he's still got some forward momentum here. But then right around here, look at this, look a

t all this momentum that's just slowing down. All this momentum. He's just like, he literally ends up in a stationary pose here, and then he gets kinda launched up in the sky. I don't know why this is a, it's an odd choice because first of all, what's stopping him, again, there's no force this way. If anything, there's this tight, um, you know, these tight webs that are allowing him to probably rocket this way. If you were to like pull, right, but like what's causing him, what's the, where's the

slowdown coming from? His legs are behind him. There's no means by which for him to be able to slow down, so it feels artificial that momentum preservation is no longer being respected again, and things start to feel awkward. The other thing is, um, You know, like, why would he do that? Why would he not just run and jump and use his, you know, or just run and as he is running, use the things and help him move his, the, the goal is he wants to keep, he wants to move, move, move, moving forward f

ast, right? That's the end goal. So why slow down in order to move forward faster? So intellectually, Like logically, it, it doesn't make a lot of sense too, like the choreography of, of making that decision. So it feels kind of like awkward and not Spider-man. Spider-man, he's, when he gets going, he's going, he's just like a, he's just flying around because he zip, zip, zip with his swinging and his webs and all the craziness. It's just take a look at all the, all the reference material that w

e have access to at this point. You'll see that that's the trend with Spider-Man. He's just always in motion. Um, Okay. So the other thing here is, is like he's pulling here with his arms. Okay. But it feels weird because he is pulling backwards. But like, I don't understand, I don't understand the mechanic. It's like, is he like, I love the idea, but like I would, I would love to see as he pulls backwards that that's what's causing him to launch forwards. Like he's. Pulling like this, but he's

not, his body stays stationary and it's not until he does this that he then it looks like, he feels like he gets sucked towards the direction of those webs. So there's a bunch of things like you gotta think it through, like what's physically happening here. I feel like you're kind of, you've got some cool ideas and you're trying them, and I like it. I totally respect that. But cool ideas are hollow unless you can actually have some sort of rationale that makes sense. There's a physical. Logic to

what you're proposing. When you could start to do that, you could separate the good idea, the truly good ideas from the not so good ideas, and also you're gonna be able to make it look believable. Okay, what's next up here? Um, uh. The catapult action seems to be disconnected by, oh, I just said that, um, there is some angular momentum appearing out of nowhere here. So what I'm getting at here is I want you to notice once he launches, he launch for one, it's a little bit weird because he's pull

ing like, clearly he can only pull in the direction of these, these, these webs. But he kind of starts going in that direction. Then he just starts to go upwards, which defeats the logic of like, what's causing the upwards. You know what I mean? He didn't do a jump. Clearly there's no jump here. He's getting pulled off the ground. So why upwards is my main question. So again, there's a physical logic here that's kind of broken. Um, then I want you to notice that everything's okay. Angularly, Ang

u. When I say angular, I'm talking about the rotation. We notice that everything's cool here, but then suddenly he like turns kind of like he spins like yaw, like a, like a flying saucer would, or a helicopter would turn in mid-air. But that's weird because usually that has to happen. Pardon me. Wow. Um, usually that has to happen. There needs to be a force acted upon the body for that to happen. He just sort of happens outta nowhere, you know? And then, and then he, then he does it again. He co

mes up to the top of this motion here, and then he starts to kind of like, rotate back again, and then kind of even rolls forward. You can't have changes. The, the, the, the, the spin in orientation of a character in flight is determined based on the launch. That spin needs to be there. Now there are ways around that you can introduce spin by doing something with your body, like, you know, you know, um, swinging your arm around quickly to try to get you some sort of a cork screw. Um, using you'r

e tucking your knees in really quickly. You can. Provide, um, kind of a backwards spin or rotation. Uh, there are ways of manipulating, but I would need to see that on the body. But these things are happening unprovoked. He stays in pretty much the same pose here. Um, there's no quick actions to try to create any other momentums. They're just happening out of nowhere. So hopefully this is making sense cuz I think this is very critical for your ability to go to the next level in animation. Is thi

s is holding you back. This concept of being able to understand the physical forces here and the rules that need to be true. You know, there are some intuition, intuitive, sort of logical rules to, to, to, um, to, you know, objects in motion that need to be kind of, um, understood and then consistently applied to your animation for things to start feeling really solid and, um, And cohesive. Uh, what is the next one we have? Um, oh yeah. So I don't know if this is intentional or if this is just a

work of progress, but this cut does not work. You can't have a character going up like this into the shot and then cut to a very similar shot with slightly a bit different angle. And so we've teleported somewhere and he's in a completely different pose because what's that's suggesting is there's a, there's a discontinuity in the edit. Jump cuts can be used in positive effect. This is a not a good example of that. Jump cuts are often used in action sequences, um, to dist the audience. Uh, I don'

t see any purpose for that here. Um, so it's just gonna be read as confusing and people aren't gonna understand what just happened there. There's no flow between those two cuts. A good way to fix that is to have Spiderman leave the shot and then he could come into the shot. That would be one way of, of, of making it happen. Um, or it has to, he has to at least leave one of the shots, otherwise you, you can see where he was and what Posey was in, in one shot, and then it cuts to a completely diff

erent pose. The only thing that could possibly have happened there is there's a missing chunk of time, and this is not something we wanna normally do. Um, when we're doing kind of a match cut like this, where you actually have, um, very similar, um, you know, cob compositions, um, where the character's in the shot and he just sort of changes. It doesn't, um, changes location and pose no good. Okay. So what's next? Um, Got a bunch more notes here. Downwards momentum. So yet again, momentum is com

ing to haunt you. I want you to notice, look at how much speed he's coming down with, which makes great. I love how that feels. By the way, this, this, this fall feels really, really good. I really like the way it feels. The where the things start to fall apart is on the landing. Cuz look at how fast he's moving. First of all, he's moving a lot here. I get the feeling that he slowed down slightly right before he lands. This is a big no-no. Um, I highly recommend you have a good contact pose. It'

s usually frowned upon to have a pose that's kind of like approaching the ground, almost touching, and then one that's already starting to squash. It's better in my opinion. Richard Williams was the one who, um, was the one that sort of. Pushed for this, um, in his, uh, Anit animator survival kit. Um, that that book, um, was a almost borderline controversial because people were kind of doing it a bit of a different way and he made a really good point. And I think the majority of the animation in

dustry would, would, uh, would agree with the, what he was saying, and that is on contact. But like when you're having something land. And squash. Try to have a good strong contact pose where you're nice and straight and it's like the moment where you're moving the fastest and you're about to squash, and then you can show the squash. Don't do what's going on here. That's gonna help you keep, keep you honest and make it feel like there's never these moments where, um, you feels like you might hav

e slowed down for one frame before you contact. Cause I really feel like there's less movement here downwards than there is here. Now that might be the camera that's helping that make, makes it feel like that, but I really feel like it's also the, the, the choices you made with the poses. So I would've had this pose already touching the ground, and then the next pose would've been squashing. Okay. But I want you to also notice something very important cuz even though he's slowing down a little b

it here, he's still moving quite a bit. Vertically. But then why is he hardly only? So two things happen. Not only does he not move nearly as much in one single frame, suddenly with no justification for that immediate slowdown, he goes from like a consistent like drop of even speeding up. Well, technically, like I said, it looks like he's slowing down a little bit for one frame, but other than that one frame betraying that it looks like if we go back up, it really feels like he's accelerating to

wards the ground. Okay. Which is good. That's what you want. Um, but then when you hit. This. Suddenly he just like slows down to a complete like a fraction of that movement, and he's no longer moving straight down. He's moving almost more horizontally than anything else. See this, so you can't do that. It's very important that that squash is happening, at least for the first couple frames whenever possible, it needs to happen as like in the same speed that he was traveling, just moments before.

Okay, so what that would mean is he would be in a kind of a contact pose and then pretty much down all the way into that sort of three point landing in like the next frame. You could maybe cheat and have it like in two frames, and then you could have a good cushion and a kind of recovery, kind of like settle to it to really sell that landing. But what you're doing now is like hitting the ground, going really fast and then just moving really slowly into that, that that deep bomb bottom pose is,

uh, is definitely not working. There's another thing that's going on here. Uh, there's a bunch of things actually. Um, sliding foot during a moment of high friction. You have to be very careful, um, about this kind of stuff. Like, it, like, there's quite a bit like, because you're moving over to screen, right? There's, there's a lot of that crazy force that's coming down onto that left foot. Um, the foot that's on the right and it's sliding. So that's, you know, not usually a, a good way to sort

of support the feeling that that foot's taking weight if it's sliding around. Uh, what else? Um, the right wrist is strangely immobile. You wanna be careful, like when you have like a violent movement like this and like theri, like the fingers come down, you can't, you know, just because the fingers are touching doesn't mean that that whole wrist, like that whole thing should be very flexible, right? It's like, you know, if I put my fingers down, I can do this kind of stuff, but like, just have

it like this and have the arm move around and have no mobility on the wrist starts to feel pretty weird. So look out for that. Um, so Deadpool, uh, watch out for eye direction. Um, the pose itself, like this pose he ends up is not what I would consider an awesome pose. There are, there's much to be, um, there's much to be, um, Improved here. I would highly recommend taking a look at some comic books of, of, of Deadpool and taking a look at some iconic poses that he has. Um, you know, the line o

f action feels a little bit off. Um, the body seems in conflict, like, you know, it feels like the, the, oh, it's always weird when like, The, the, the hips are kind of trying to turn this way, but then the upper body is trying to turn the other way. Um, unless there's a good reason for it. Here, I don't really see one cuz he's just trying to like strike a balanced pose and ready to fight. He doesn't look like he's balanced. He doesn't look like he's ready to fight. It just kind of feels like it

just. There's, it doesn't, it's not something I would want to print and put up on my wall as a poster. And it needs to be, I need to look at this pose and go like, yeah, that's right. Deadpool's awesome, but I'm not feeling that right now. And I just feel like it's because you just haven't put enough time in on that pose. Um, another point to be made here would be the eyes. Like I was saying, he doesn't have pupils, so it's hard to kind of get an idea of his eye direction. His eye direction is

gonna have to come from his head direction, and his head direction doesn't look like it locks on anything. As a matter of fact, it feels kind of like it just moves with the body. This makes 'em look blind. Right. It, it just looks like his hu it it's fused like his, there's no focus on his head. Like, you know, when someone moves around, there's a lot of this kind of stuff. Yes, it's not just my eyes that are locking, but it's more or less my overall face because I want my face looking in the ge

neral direction of the camera, even though I'm doing a lot of this stuff that makes me look actively, like, actively focused on something. As opposed to just like my head is just attached to my body and it's kind of going, coming along for the ride. Um, head heads need to be driving, especially in something like combat because obviously you won't survive very long if you don't keep your eye on your opponent. And so you need to really make sure that that's always a key thing that's happening is t

hat, that there's, there's, there's a, a line of a line of hour there, there's a, an eye direction that's consistent and locked in on the right things. Um, almost done. I think we're going a little over time here, but I, that's normal with me. Try to not move so much when striking a pose like this. Um, and if you need to do some movement, try to make sure that there's more overlap in it. So basically, I think my problem here is if we take a look. You know, he kind of, he comes, he's doing this s

tuff with a sword, um, which is kind of slow moving. It's not really aggressive. It doesn't excite me. This is a cool moment. Like, you have this cool intro where someone steps in, you're like, who is that? And we cut and he's just sort of doing this kind of stuff. It looks like someone who, um, um, I get, I get the feeling you might have shot your own reference here, um, which is always dangerous because if you don't know how to handle swords well, Then you're gonna end up with a character that

, that's supposed to be a superhero, that is an expert with swords, um, not knowing how to handle weapons. So, You gotta be careful with that. You, you be better off looking for some good reference online. Um, stunt, um, actor footage is always very, uh, helpful in this case cuz they train for years to be able to handle things like this so they look good on film. Um, I would recommend not doing, relying on your re own reference for things that are, you know, you need to, that you need to look pr

ofessional and you don't have the, the skill level. Um, but that being said, after we get into this, um, like to get into that pose, you notice how you just sort of like, kind of just drift around here. Like there, there's no real meaning to that movement. Does it look like that's a moment that could have been cool? Where he is like, and he gets an posee, he's like, like maybe breathing heavily. Like never feel the space with just movement that has no purpose. You always. Everything should have

a reason. Everything should have a purpose. Otherwise it doesn't have any, there's no place for it on screen. It's wasted, wasted frames. Unless you're telling some sort of, um, part of the story and there's nothing being told to me there other than just this character that's sort of moving around. Um, you're better off having something really iconic. I mean, take a look at, um, you know, anime, they're experts at this. They, they tend to be very economic with the poses and they try to get you q

uickly into poses. Therefore, ne not needing a lot of drawings to get there, and then they hang on those. Pose with a bunch of moving holds. Uh, maybe the hair's flapping around, but it's pretty much to pose. I'm not saying you gotta be that severe with the pose, but try to tighten it up a little bit and, um, try to stay on a pose, uh, to make it, you know, more emphasized. And then make, you know, find ways of putting, moving on top like texture, like breathing, um, or even just like a little b

it of overlap, like whether he's settling into that pose or something. But, um, yeah. Okay. Last two notes. Um, a bit awkward here. The way he kind of moves forward. This, this feels very awkward, the way he's running. Um, I think a lot of it has to do with how deep he dips and how wide his legs get. Um, I, I just, in, in, in fact his leg, his upper body seems almost drag. Like someone who's in a pose like this and wants start moving, he's gonna tip in. He's gonna lean in and start running. That

's not what's going on here. So I think again, some good reference is gonna help you, uh, go a long way. This whole thing feels a little ad a lib. I feel like you've either shot your own reference. Um, in pieces and there was big holes in it. There's something going on here that like, when I see you working off of real reference, you seem to be doing much better. So I'm curious. I'd be curious to know what, what wrong, what, what went on here? Like what's the difference? Lack of reference, bad r

eference, what is it? I'm sure you'll be watching this right away, going guilty as charged, and that's what I'm here for, to try to call out people for making those kinds of mistakes and not cutting corners. Um, and, you know, doing what they need to do to give themselves the winning conditions to knock it out of the park. Last note I have here is it feels a little bit, um, off brand for Spider-Man. So this kick that he does, this kick isn't so bad, but it like, I mean, it just feels too kind of

kung fu or something like the, just the way the kick is, especially the way he ends. This feels almost like something from like the Matrix choreography or something like that. Um, it just doesn't feel like Spider-Man. It feels like he's too much of a martial artist. That's not what Spider, that's not how Spider-Man rolls again. Make sure you study the, the, the character's ip, um, the IP being like the intellectual property. There's a brand to that character, iconic movement. And like the way t

hey fight needs to be understood so that it, it's, it's properly represented in the animation. Otherwise, you know, cuz if you're, if you're working on Spider-Man on a movie, then you, you did something like this, Marvel's gonna be like, no, that's just not what spider, that's not how he moves. And you're gonna have to go back to the drawing board. So, um, if you wanna put this kinda stuff on your, on your demo reel, it's a good idea to make sure that you can show the people that we'd be looking

at your work, that you know how to work on that dimension as well. It's not just about making the animation, it's not just about making it entertaining. It's not just about doing all these things, but it's also if you put branded characters in there that you are saying, Hey, I studied this brand and I know how to make a move. I can sell you on Spider-Man. Because if it's not Spider-Man, it's something else. That someone's gonna hire you to work on and they want to know that, you know how to act

ually do the research and um, and um, you know, do their character proud. So that's pretty much it for me. Um, as typical Brent George style. I kind of just dug right in on the things you need to work on. Obviously there's a lot of very good work here. I mean, um, hopefully, hopefully that goes without too much saying, um, There's a lot of promise, and if you were to focus on these big problems that I kind of pointed out, you're gonna see some pretty big improvements on this, uh, this, uh, this

whole sequence. So, uh, thanks again for sending back into me. Uh, it's always a pleasure to look at your work and, um, stay animated.