Kenny Roy Workflow Lecture - Part III

Hey Everybody!

This is the review of the third part of Kenny Roy's Workflow Lecture! You can get thw whole 3 part - lecture on

www.kennyroy.com

by subscribing to the website! I made it few days ago and I totally recommend it! You get great lectures, articles, rigs,
and you also have the chance to actually get the Maya files of the shot animated by Kenny!
This is absolutely great because you can see how a PROFESSIONAL scene should look like and this is just awesome! And you can actually
practice on Kenny's scene so that if you want to practice some Polish, you can start from the Blocking Plus stage that Kenny
animated! I never had the chance to do this before!

The last part of the lecture starts with Kenny telling you how important is for you to have GREAT fundamentals. You have to
practice a lot on fundamentals so that when you work on your shots you know how to deal with them.
This is why they stress you so much on FUNDAMENTALS in Animation Mentor!
If you've practiced a lot with let's say Overlaps, you're going to make your overlaps in no time when working! So practice fundamentals
everytime you have the the chance! Maybe sometimes try to practice on small details, don't always practice on complete shots.

After this, Kenny reviews all the steps that took him to final stage which is POLISH. Again, if you clearly know what you've done and you're
following the "path" (your workflow) you won't have any problem finishing the shot!

In Polish stage you have to start with a new mindset and here, more than ever, is very important to consider this because during
polishing you "LOCK" your scene. You start adding details, finessing and texture and so it's very very hard to go back and fix
issues of previous stages.
So be sure to have you blocking plus approved and also don't start polishing too early!!

USE WHAT YOU GOT: In this stage you see Kenny adding all the details, refining arcs and silhouette and it is great to see how he faces several problems. Sometimes you'll have to work with poor rigs but you have to take the best out of your rig to achieve the best
in term of posing. So use everything the rig gives you to make great poses!

PERFORMANCE TEXTURE: This is a great stage to see because he starts adding tiny details on the poses that enhance the whole performance!
He tells you how to add tiny NOISE to create natural and organic poses! And those are the little things that really make your character
LOOK ALIVE!!

FINESSING AND CONTACTS: this is what he calls "the last 5%". In this stage he works out all the contacts of the body and feet, he double
checks arcs and silhouettes and try to spot twinned poses. Twinning is one thing you should avoid in animation because it makes your character
look very mechanical. Sometimes a little delay or a tiny rotation can make a big difference so double check your poses and try to avoid twinned ones!

This is the end of the last part! I really enjoyed this lecture because I finally realized how important is for you to know your workflow
and how it can affect the final result of your animation. I learned that a good workflow lets you save tons of time and remember that on your
job you have to be FAST! Working without a method, making fixes on the fly, spotting mistakes here and there is DANGEROUS and TIME CONSUMING!

Once again I totally recommend it to you guys and I'd like to Thank Kenny Roy for doing this lecture! It's a great resource and a MUST-HAVE
for every animator! I just can't wait to watch other videos and learn as much as I can!

Hope this helped , happy animating to everyone!!!

Kenny Roy Workflow Lecture - Part II

Hi everybody,

This is the review of the second part of Kenny Roy's Workflow lecture!! You can get it by subscribing here at

www.kennyroy.com

And here you can see the trailer of the lecture!




The first part of the lecture ends with Kenny showing you the final blocking stage.Here you can see that the
storytelling, the action and timing are already clear and beautiful!
As Kenny says, at the end of your blocking you have to end up with something you can clearly show to the
director and that is easily editable. If you get your blocking approved you can go on with the BLOCKING
PLUS stage.

Before starting with the blocking plus stage Kenny makes a fast review of what he has done before and
what he's going to do next. As he points out, WORKFLOW is a powerful TOOL to improve your animation.

It's like a path to follow so that you're not
going to "guess" what to do next. If you know what you've done and you're sure about it, just go to the next
stage without any doubt left!

-BLOCKING PLUS: here you have to start with a new mindset. Here he shows you good habits to work "on path",
suchs as making a list of fixes. You don't have to scrub through the animation spotting the mistakes and fix
them on the fly.
Take your notpad , list down all the fixes and work on them. If you fix on the fly you're gonna loose your
fresh eye scrubbing on the timeline and this is bad because the more you watch your animation, the harder it
gets to spots mistakes and to improve your animation.

- COPIED PAIRS METHOD: here he shows you a quick method he usually teaches while mentoring for AM.
If there is a hold during the animation he keys the entire body, copy the key and paste it further on the time
line so that he's not going to lose the timing when passing to spline.

This is because when working in stepped mode you could have one key and the other one after lot of frames.
In stepped mode it still looks snappy but when you switch to spline it'll be floaty because Maya interpolates
the transition between the poses. Using copied pairs method, you're going to LOCK your timing!

Here you get several tips and tricks on how to make fast holds and breakdowns!

- FUNDAMENTALS: After putting the holds and the breakdowns in,he switches to spline curves and works on the
fundamentals. He works on small chuncks of animation looking for the right feeling of weight, checking the
arcs and creating nice and snappy overlaps.

-GREAT TIP: this is a great thing I've never seen before. It's quite simple but very important. You see Kenny
taking back his skectchpad and he compares the Thumbnails he sketched when planning the animation with the poses
he nailed down while blocking. By doing this he wants to be sure he didn't lose the freshness he had when drawing
loose thumbnails!

- ARCs AND WEIGHT CHECK: Here you see Kenny working out the arcs. In order to get nice arcs he tracks small body
parts like hands and feet. For big body parts he works only on the silhouette without tracking anything!
This is a nice tip to make nice and smooth arcs! It's great to see him working because you see how fast he manages
to create a great cartoony style with great sense of humor and great sense of weight and motion!

And here ends the second part! As Kenny remembers, JOURNAL your Workflow, you'll be amazed for how many new things
you discover! It 'll just blow your mind!

Hope this helps! Once again, I want to recommend this lecture because you'll see how dramatically your animations
will improve by using a proper workflow!

See you for the review of the last part!