My friend told me that his mentor asks him to spend 20% of the time on reference and blocking, 80% on spline. I can't imagine how messy the animation looks when he gets those free in-between from a few poses.
When you go from stepped to spline and it goes all floaty/mushy etc are we ok to delete keyframes? Move them around etc to get the look we want? When it looks good in stepped and I have loads of keys but when I got to spline and it looks like crap, I start putting in moving holds, deleting keys that are slowing down the animation and generally start moving things around to make it look better. This is fine right, to delete keys in spline when not working?
I almost understood the whole video by just hearing some of the poses of the animation you worked on needed even more INFORMATION. Legit after you said the word Information, it already gave me an idea of when should I go to spline mode.
Great to hear that, yeah this idea of adding more information in order to get better animations sometimes gets forgotten but it's truly the best way for you to get those animation looks great.
@@harveynewman Yeah, thanks for this man, I really appreciate you and gonna take your animation courses once I get enough money. I'm tryna get as good as Arcane animators but it's really hard without getting a person that can tell you what ways they use to make their animations smooth- one of my friends that have 6 years of animating experience told me the timing of the character movements in arcane and the timing in general is Perfect, that makes the animations smooth and not snappy or making it have randomly speeded up and speeded down motions. Love your videos and keep up the good work, thanks again!
This is the one thing that makes every shot or project a complete rollercoaster of emotion for me. I just end up saturating the timeline with frames and it ends up being even more of a nightmare to clean up curves, keep track of ik/fk switches and more stuff. This video came out right as I was about to make the transition on this demo reel shot I'm working atm. Thank you so much for these guides!! edit: and yeah, taking more time to plan out the 1st blocking poses and keeping them clean is one of the things I've found is incredibly important in order to get smooth looking movements. That realization took a bit of time to click but no matter how nice your blocked anim looks, making sure the transform values are logical and and not all over the place is critical.
Hey Zo. Thanks for the great comment and yes working methodically and in an organized way goes a LONG. That is also something that takes time to learn as it's a game of repetition and making sure that every time you work on a shot you improve your workflow a little more. I'm glad things are starting to click for you...it's a bit of a rollercoaster the first few years but things get better the longer you animate. :)
Ah you been doing excellent work Jian and I can tell you got it. ;) Thanks for the question it really got me thinking and it was what sparked this video. Keep up the great work.
Man I love videos like these! My workflow is very similar to yours Harvey, I animate on 2's when going into spline. Once its splined I will find that my curves have small nuances and humps in there like yours. Then all I do is follow what the curves are doing and I just simplify them or push them if necessary. Great vid as always!
It’s a very comfortable way of working right? Gives you a little more time to think about your poses and animation overall. Thanks for the continued support Benny.
Cant believe how awesome this is and is just in step. Would love to see you animate an entire shot no matter how long the length gets to be. Even without Audio.
Thank you very much 🌟 This was very helpful. This was a process that I was very unsure of when tackling the splining phase and I experienced the exact same problem of animation as you showed. Now I feel much more confident going back now and animating 🌟🌟🌟
Thanks for this episode Harvey! I’m always unsure when to move out of blocking because it completely changes when I get into splined. Currently an animation student and your channel helps out a lot 😁 🙏🏻
I was never sure how I was meant to work on my animation. I'd try working in stepped doing the main poses and some in betweens then go into spline. I wasn't sure if I was meant to add a key every frame or just certain ones. I tried going back to just doing everything in spline, some recent animations ended up looking slightly better. But I'd still had a lot of gaps in keys trying to get it to work.
Yeah it’s part of the journey as an animator to find your workflow. Every animator has a different workflow…takes a while for you to find one that works for you.
When it comes to blocking poses, what's your method of going about it? Do you try to go in a specific view to try to essentially trace the the reference or do you have references not in Maya and just look at them to see roughly how the poses work? I've been trying both as I saw a TH-camr use Syncsketch to plan out the poses. Then I saw another do a jumping over some boxes animation and he was essentially tracing the positions.
Thanks for this video! Found it while looking for some workflow tips about spline. I'm curious, do you have any advice on what to do if you're wayyyyy more comfortable working the traditional method (stepping things out to 2s) but the production you're on asks you to do your blocking in spline due to certain constraints surrounding the project (short deadlines, how the client gives notes, etc.)? I'm a very new animator, so I don't have a ton of production experience. I'm determined to figure it out though and make it happen!! :D
Ah yes I've been in your shoes and I was also confusing at first. But basically if you apply the exact same principles that you use to block in stepped to spline you get the same result. Just try your best to ignore the smooth interpolation and all the horrible in-betweens that Maya gives you. Takes a while to get used to it but it eventually clicks. Hope that helps. I'll try to make a video about it in the future. ;)
@@harveynewman Thank you that helps a lot!! That's the approach I was thinking of giving a shot, so hearing you say that definitely helps boost my confidence. A video about it in the future would be awesome! Something I've also been struck by now that I'm animating professionally is the difference of animating in school vs. on a production. Difference in workflows, adapting to the client, making sure you bring all the shots assigned to you to a consistent level of quality, being able to quickly assess if you addressed a note right or not, knowing where it's okay to "cut corners" due to deadline but what is absolutely essential, etc. All that stuff has been blowing my mind. If you're taking suggestions for video ideas, it'd be awesome to see a video about the difference of animating in a school environment vs. a production environment! Thank you for the great resources you make for the community! :)
That looks amazing! You got some mad talents in the avocation field! I have a question. Is every key supposed to be stepped tangents when working on something? I am learning more about animation for my studies.
It depends, at the start as you are posing yes...with as much detailed as possible. Once you have enough information then you go to spline to clean up your animation. Initially always see Spline as a clean up pass and blocking as the animation blocking/setup. Hope that helps
I have a question; in gaming how many characters are given to an animator to animate at a time and how much time is the animator given to complete it? I hope this makes sense. Sorry I am not too familiar with working animation but I've always been intrigued by it.
No need to be sorry...it's a good question. It really depends on the studio, project and pacing of the studio. In games you can either have an exclusive character assigned to you or you can get several divided amongst a few animators. The speed it depends, but you can go from doing 3 or 4 animations a week to doing 1 animation a week depending on complexity.
may I ask how to working in spline blocking method? I mean blocking without going into stepped key. 90% of people in my office work this way and it's 2-3 time faster than my way. And I can't understand how it work. When I try to do it my animation become really bad.
@@harveynewman What an awesome video.. thank you thank thank ur far soo kind for sharing this.. it helped tons and i really appreciate the time u put doing these videos man.. respect..
Honestly I wouldn't fret over the posing and tweening before the ball reaches the subject. Tweening and folding is sometimes harped on too much, you won't always have dynamic poses, real life isn't like that so animation can follow a similar visual representation.
Going to Spline is super scary when you get started. Feel free to ask questions or share your experiences with the good old Graph Editor below 😀
My friend told me that his mentor asks him to spend 20% of the time on reference and blocking, 80% on spline. I can't imagine how messy the animation looks when he gets those free in-between from a few poses.
When you go from stepped to spline and it goes all floaty/mushy etc are we ok to delete keyframes? Move them around etc to get the look we want? When it looks good in stepped and I have loads of keys but when I got to spline and it looks like crap, I start putting in moving holds, deleting keys that are slowing down the animation and generally start moving things around to make it look better. This is fine right, to delete keys in spline when not working?
I almost understood the whole video by just hearing some of the poses of the animation you worked on needed even more INFORMATION.
Legit after you said the word Information, it already gave me an idea of when should I go to spline mode.
Great to hear that, yeah this idea of adding more information in order to get better animations sometimes gets forgotten but it's truly the best way for you to get those animation looks great.
@@harveynewman Yeah, thanks for this man, I really appreciate you and gonna take your animation courses once I get enough money.
I'm tryna get as good as Arcane animators but it's really hard without getting a person that can tell you what ways they use to make their animations smooth-
one of my friends that have 6 years of animating experience told me the timing of the character movements in arcane and the timing in general is Perfect, that makes the animations smooth and not snappy or making it have randomly speeded up and speeded down motions.
Love your videos and keep up the good work, thanks again!
This is the one thing that makes every shot or project a complete rollercoaster of emotion for me. I just end up saturating the timeline with frames and it ends up being even more of a nightmare to clean up curves, keep track of ik/fk switches and more stuff. This video came out right as I was about to make the transition on this demo reel shot I'm working atm. Thank you so much for these guides!!
edit: and yeah, taking more time to plan out the 1st blocking poses and keeping them clean is one of the things I've found is incredibly important in order to get smooth looking movements. That realization took a bit of time to click but no matter how nice your blocked anim looks, making sure the transform values are logical and and not all over the place is critical.
Hey Zo. Thanks for the great comment and yes working methodically and in an organized way goes a LONG. That is also something that takes time to learn as it's a game of repetition and making sure that every time you work on a shot you improve your workflow a little more. I'm glad things are starting to click for you...it's a bit of a rollercoaster the first few years but things get better the longer you animate. :)
Thank you, Harvey! When I finally got to the spline recently, I can understand why you tell me that I should spend more time on blocking.
Ah you been doing excellent work Jian and I can tell you got it. ;) Thanks for the question it really got me thinking and it was what sparked this video. Keep up the great work.
Man I love videos like these! My workflow is very similar to yours Harvey, I animate on 2's when going into spline. Once its splined I will find that my curves have small nuances and humps in there like yours. Then all I do is follow what the curves are doing and I just simplify them or push them if necessary. Great vid as always!
It’s a very comfortable way of working right? Gives you a little more time to think about your poses and animation overall. Thanks for the continued support Benny.
This has helped me tremendously! Thank you so much!
Glad it helped Tyler! Thanks for watching
Cant believe how awesome this is and is just in step. Would love to see you animate an entire shot no matter how long the length gets to be. Even without Audio.
Thanks Oriol…I’m planning something like that at some point in the future.
Thank you very much 🌟
This was very helpful. This was a process that I was very unsure of when tackling the splining phase and I experienced the exact same problem of animation as you showed. Now I feel much more confident going back now and animating 🌟🌟🌟
Glad it was helpful Eliano. I struggled with the process for many years when I started. Once it clicks it’s easy, you’ll see. ;) thanks for watching.
Going back to my blocking and to try this as my spline looks awful now. Thank you for the tips!
Best of luck! 🤞 and most welcome.
Another great video, Thanks Harvey!
My pleasure Quinn! Another great comment. ;)
Thanks for this episode Harvey! I’m always unsure when to move out of blocking because it completely changes when I get into splined. Currently an animation student and your channel helps out a lot 😁 🙏🏻
Glad it is useful Joe. Thanks for the support. 🙏🏾
I was literally doing this today and not having a great time with it so thank you! 😂 Love the vids Harvey!
Ah perfect timing hey? Glad it helped, once it clicks it's actually quite easy. ;)
I was never sure how I was meant to work on my animation. I'd try working in stepped doing the main poses and some in betweens then go into spline. I wasn't sure if I was meant to add a key every frame or just certain ones. I tried going back to just doing everything in spline, some recent animations ended up looking slightly better. But I'd still had a lot of gaps in keys trying to get it to work.
Yeah it’s part of the journey as an animator to find your workflow. Every animator has a different workflow…takes a while for you to find one that works for you.
When it comes to blocking poses, what's your method of going about it? Do you try to go in a specific view to try to essentially trace the the reference or do you have references not in Maya and just look at them to see roughly how the poses work?
I've been trying both as I saw a TH-camr use Syncsketch to plan out the poses. Then I saw another do a jumping over some boxes animation and he was essentially tracing the positions.
Thank you, this info is invaluable!
Glad it was helpful Waz! Keep in touch
Nice one man
Thanks for watching Otiete
Thanks for this video! Found it while looking for some workflow tips about spline. I'm curious, do you have any advice on what to do if you're wayyyyy more comfortable working the traditional method (stepping things out to 2s) but the production you're on asks you to do your blocking in spline due to certain constraints surrounding the project (short deadlines, how the client gives notes, etc.)? I'm a very new animator, so I don't have a ton of production experience. I'm determined to figure it out though and make it happen!! :D
Ah yes I've been in your shoes and I was also confusing at first. But basically if you apply the exact same principles that you use to block in stepped to spline you get the same result. Just try your best to ignore the smooth interpolation and all the horrible in-betweens that Maya gives you. Takes a while to get used to it but it eventually clicks. Hope that helps. I'll try to make a video about it in the future. ;)
@@harveynewman Thank you that helps a lot!! That's the approach I was thinking of giving a shot, so hearing you say that definitely helps boost my confidence. A video about it in the future would be awesome! Something I've also been struck by now that I'm animating professionally is the difference of animating in school vs. on a production. Difference in workflows, adapting to the client, making sure you bring all the shots assigned to you to a consistent level of quality, being able to quickly assess if you addressed a note right or not, knowing where it's okay to "cut corners" due to deadline but what is absolutely essential, etc. All that stuff has been blowing my mind. If you're taking suggestions for video ideas, it'd be awesome to see a video about the difference of animating in a school environment vs. a production environment! Thank you for the great resources you make for the community! :)
Amazing video, excelente explanation!
Thanks a lot Luc, glad it resonated.
That looks amazing! You got some mad talents in the avocation field!
I have a question. Is every key supposed to be stepped tangents when working on something? I am learning more about animation for my studies.
It depends, at the start as you are posing yes...with as much detailed as possible. Once you have enough information then you go to spline to clean up your animation. Initially always see Spline as a clean up pass and blocking as the animation blocking/setup. Hope that helps
@@harveynewman
This is a very helpful tip! Thanks man!
Whoops! I meant to say "animation field" up there. Sorry about that.
I have a question; in gaming how many characters are given to an animator to animate at a time and how much time is the animator given to complete it? I hope this makes sense. Sorry I am not too familiar with working animation but I've always been intrigued by it.
No need to be sorry...it's a good question. It really depends on the studio, project and pacing of the studio. In games you can either have an exclusive character assigned to you or you can get several divided amongst a few animators. The speed it depends, but you can go from doing 3 or 4 animations a week to doing 1 animation a week depending on complexity.
So helpful! Thanks
Thanks for watching Sean.
may I ask how to working in spline blocking method?
I mean blocking without going into stepped key. 90% of people in my office work this way and it's 2-3 time faster than my way. And I can't understand how it work. When I try to do it my animation become really bad.
That's a great suggestion for a video Jae. I'll add it to the schedule. ;)
Wayyyy thanks for this,
You bet Forza. Thanks for watching.
i was waiting for this.. 😂 😂
Great I hope it helps Ibrahim. :)
@@harveynewman What an awesome video.. thank you thank thank ur far soo kind for sharing this.. it helped tons and i really appreciate the time u put doing these videos man.. respect..
Honestly I wouldn't fret over the posing and tweening before the ball reaches the subject. Tweening and folding is sometimes harped on too much, you won't always have dynamic poses, real life isn't like that so animation can follow a similar visual representation.
Thanks 👍
Thanks for watching!