Any advice for making movement look less "floaty"

[Famix]

It seems like a common issue, but I barely seen it talked about

[Capt Fuzzy]

Could you better explain what you mean by 'floaty'?

[Famix]

Originally posted by Capt Fuzzy:

Could you better explain what you mean by 'floaty'?

For example, in this video, the movement feels uncanny, and someone told me it looked "floaty"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX7mX8OaTJI

An older video of mine has this worse at the beginning and end, while also having movement that looks sped up throughout the whole thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig_1Gz3PKHA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ6MMQDCIPU

This one also has "floaty robotic movement syndrome"

[EmperorFaiz.wav]

What I see on those videos, the problems are:

• The animations lack weights on them hence the floaty animation, there are no acceleration and deceleration on those movements. Like they are always moving slowly.
  
• Terrible poses. Human and any organic being usually pose in "curved" line.
  
• The whole body need to moves even subtlety. For example, when turning around to look back, the whole body part even the pelvis need to move as well. You can exaggerate the poses a bit if it looks good.
  
• Very stiff animation. No living being able to hold any part of their body completely still unless they're doing a robot movement on purpose or being a robot. Even holding an arm "still" in the air, there should be a subtle movement on it especially if the character moves around more. Put more bounce on the movement.

Here's my advice

𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐖𝐄𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐖!/ 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐎 𝐈 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

You need to learn and understands the 12 principles of animation. Then, look for tutorials that specialized in SFM animation such as Thomas Larson, Jesse Baumgartner, and Steam Guides like Basic Animation in Source Filmmaker and Animate my d;ck - the animation guide.
Watch cartoon or anime, observe and study their movements and try to replicate the movements yourself. Start from simple bouncing ball to mildly complicated walk cycle.

**BONUS STUFF FOR EXTRA KNOWLEDGE**

• Disney - The Magic of Animation

[GitGud]

I can point out some obvious thing that need to be adjusted in your video. I'm not an expert but I know what could have been better or worse.

• Character movement speed is not syncing together at all. There's some moment when the character need to move fast, it's move really slow and the same goes for opposite. The most noticeable part is when your character blink, they don't blink naturally, it's too slow. You need to make it happens in 1 or 2 frames only. There are some movement with body that also look really weird. I suggest you speed them up to blur the moment.
• Bad transition scene. Every scene in your video seem to be in linear. There's no resting moment for the audience to admire your character expression. One animation, one line and the camera immediately switch into other characters which they also response immediately. The part you are missing is the emotion when a character stop saying and when they are about to says something. You need to slow it down, everyone need time to breath. Those thing should only happen for scene with quick actions.
• Bad camera placing. This happen at your video #2 at 0:20. They looks like puppet. Even with proper animation, the camera shouldn't be there as well. It doesn't portray how scary Soldier and Scout is against Heavy at all. There's no soul in that scene. I could sense some laziness here. It could be fixed by placing the camera behind Scout and Soldier back, they slowly backing away for a few step with their back crumble, remember to adjust their root position up and down for the illusion of physic, then turn around and run. Not that backward walking. Heavy also need to be adjusted too, but you get the point.
• You are in the grey zone of cartoon-ish and realistic animation. They look so weird and fake. You should go for one style only. They either smooth and clean, or swagger all the way with "It's good because it's too stupid". A good comparision so you can understand is the Youtube Channel called Eltorro64Rus.
• No voice actors as well as sound track. This is the worst. No matter how better you become in animation, without those two, you can't go far. The scene will always look weird and hurt people ears with a bunch of audio scrap together. If you don't have professional voice actor, I suggest you record your own voice, then morphing it with others software, then put it in SFM. It would still not really good, but it's still smooth and better. Unless you want to stick with TF2 and L4D2 model only and become another Eltorro64Rus.

[Famix]

Originally posted by Lông Nách:

I can point out some obvious thing that need to be adjusted in your video. I'm not an expert but I know what could have been better or worse.

• Character movement speed is not syncing together at all. There's some moment when the character need to move fast, it's move really slow and the same goes for opposite. The most noticeable part is when your character blink, they don't blink naturally, it's too slow. You need to make it happens in 1 or 2 frames only. There are some movement with body that also look really weird. I suggest you speed them up to blur the moment.
• Bad transition scene. Every scene in your video seem to be in linear. There's no resting moment for the audience to admire your character expression. One animation, one line and the camera immediately switch into other characters which they also response immediately. The part you are missing is the emotion when a character stop saying and when they are about to says something. You need to slow it down, everyone need time to breath. Those thing should only happen for scene with quick actions.
• Bad camera placing. This happen at your video #2 at 0:20. They looks like puppet. Even with proper animation, the camera shouldn't be there as well. It doesn't portray how scary Soldier and Scout is against Heavy at all. There's no soul in that scene. I could sense some laziness here. It could be fixed by placing the camera behind Scout and Soldier back, they slowly backing away for a few step with their back crumble, remember to adjust their root position up and down for the illusion of physic, then turn around and run. Not that backward walking. Heavy also need to be adjusted too, but you get the point.
• You are in the grey zone of cartoon-ish and realistic animation. They look so weird and fake. You should go for one style only. They either smooth and clean, or swagger all the way with "It's good because it's too stupid". A good comparision so you can understand is the Youtube Channel called Eltorro64Rus.
• No voice actors as well as sound track. This is the worst. No matter how better you become in animation, without those two, you can't go far. The scene will always look weird and hurt people ears with a bunch of audio scrap together. If you don't have professional voice actor, I suggest you record your own voice, then morphing it with others software, then put it in SFM. It would still not really good, but it's still smooth and better. Unless you want to stick with TF2 and L4D2 model only and become another Eltorro64Rus.

Quick question, since these are older videos of mine, how would you rate more recent animations of mine? I absolutely love your response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgz3F5AcgoU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RENmL3lgq-w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWi8mYLFI8

[GitGud]

Originally posted by Famix:

Quick question, since these are older videos of mine, how would you rate more recent animations of mine? I absolutely love your response

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgz3F5AcgoU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RENmL3lgq-w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWi8mYLFI8

The first video, Scout kicking animation it's not natural. It's look like he's having a glitch. You can see what I mean in this picture. You seem to be having a case of "moving from A to B, but visit C in the middle" which make the model looks out of scene for a tiny bit of frames. I suggest you force the model to be in the right place frames by frames, or adjust the animation better.
https://imgur.com/a/XY9EvK4

When a character is in pain, they will always react in panic. The first and the third video can use some Jitter effect for Heavy head when they scream. Not all but some of it when the pain starting to kick in. That the most easy and cheapest way to express pain in a long scene. That's exactly what they done with Peter head when he eat Fudgesicle. Otherwise, make it short like 2-3 seconds only. And when a character is in pain for 2-3 seconds, they often result in something like jumping around, holding their hurting spot, not just make a whiny face.
Also, the soldier face at the end when he's finish the sentence, he's clearly smiling. In the video, he's clearly annoy with a disgusting flashback. A tired face or even an angry face would suit him better. Just make his lips corner go down.

The second video, I have not much to says about it's animation. Probably because it's too short and there's not much animation in it. But the sketch is pretty lame. You just choose random meme joke and use it without putting much effort in creating a scene. Just a punch line.

[Famix]

Originally posted by Lông Nách:

Also, the soldier face at the end when he's finish the sentence, he's clearly smiling. In the video, he's clearly annoy with a disgusting flashback. A tired face or even an angry face would suit him better. Just make his lips corner go down.

The idea of the smiling is that he's essentially mocking him by making this event something to laugh at. If you're talking about Engineer in Fudgesicle.

And when a character is in pain for 2-3 seconds, they often result in something like jumping around, holding their hurting spo

I can assure you that when you're kicked in the nuts, you're not going to be jumping around.

It's look like he's having a glitch. You can see what I mean in this picture. You seem to be having a case of "moving from A to B, but visit C in the middle" which make the model looks out of scene for a tiny bit of frames

I don't see the problem. It makes the leg look more springy and makes the kick look more painful. You can actually see something similar that doesn't use Motion Blur to achieve the trick in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irK8mxUCZCk

https://i.imgur.com/4e2wkO6.png

The second video, I have not much to says about it's animation. Probably because it's too short and there's not much animation in it. But the sketch is pretty lame. You just choose random meme joke and use it without putting much effort in creating a scene. Just a punch line.

I don't see how it's a meme. I just really wanted an excuse to use Ash, as Evil-Ash made the model for Gmod, and I needed to make some tweaks to the model and its textures for it to look good in SFM and have functional eyes. My friends and I are fans of both franchises and I made something we could chuckle at. But this isn't about my ability to write a script, as professional animators usually don't do their own scripts. When you say there's barely animation, does that mean the animation is stiff?


I'll see what I can do, though. I want to get better. I'll especially try the jitter, because that'll definitely improve the quality and show the pain better