Attached Link: Walking test

May I throw in one more suggestion?

If acquiring voice work is an issue, make a silent movie.

Now, before you start laughing maniacally, consider that in a silent (and I mean a true silent, not one with dialogue cards inserted) forces you to communicate everything through body language and action. It can be a real lesson in how to make a character move and tell a story at the same time, not just move for the sake of movement.

Before you tackle that Hollywood feature film, do a little exercise. Using just one character mesh, see what you can accomplish in three minutes without having your character say a single gosh-darn thing. Dont make it part of your larger project: this is something akin to an animator's sketchbook. If you do a simple walk test, for example, make the act of walking tell a story, no matter how brief, with a beginning and an end. If you work up a character throwing a punch, give it more than just accurate arm movement: make us understand a bit of why the character is doing it.

For example, this walk test I built is an exercise and noting more. It has some issues in the knees, but more importantly, notice how the facial expressions give you a sense of who this guy is. Granted, not much; I mean, hey, it's only 14 seconds long. But I wasnt going for depth of character, just a brief sense of someone you might pass on the street and think, "Hmm. Who's that?" With enough training, anyone can learn to animate. That's just mechanics: we're mechanical beings, after all. But once you set your characters in motion, they become real personalities, so let us see them.

The other advantage of this kind of project is that it's short, easily done, and yet very, very rewarding. You've accomplished something. It's right there in front of you, walking and skipping and punching and doing whatever it was you wanted it to do. Yeah, maybe it's awful. Maybe the knees are all screwy, but it's an accomplished goal. That, my friend, is the important thing. And then you can either file the mini-project away or delete it altogther: after all, it's just a sketch. The bottom line is: you started it and you finished it.

Think of it this way: a marathon runner doesnt start his career goal by getting up, put on his running shoes, and leave the house for a daily 28-mile run. He builds up to it: maybe first jst a half mile. Then a mile. Then he adds a few more here and a few more there. But he had to start with that half mile.

Finally, as a technical note: I have never liked using the DAZ figures for animation purposes. I've tried — my current animation project is just some brief exercises: sit ups, bench presses, and the like. I ran tests using Michael 4, Michael 3, Hiro 3, David, the G2 male, the P4 male, and Him from the Human Project, and I ran with the G2s. If I use the DAZ characters, the file sizes become small monsters: H3 in particular, as much as I love that mesh, was close to impossible. If I use the G2 characters, they start to become a lot more manageable. Maybe not as pretty to look at, but that's more a question of character modification than anything else: a few morphs and a decent texture wrap, and they clean up just fine. But Vicky and Michael, as lovely as they may be, are just too freaking big for long term animation unless you have some serious computer horsepower behind you: it's like shoving oil around on a watercolour painting.Someone once noted that Jar-Jar from Star Wars, as annoying a character as there ever might be, has half the polygons of V3, and yet it's far more expressive. Think about it.

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