Polish - more notes

Here's a follow up that started with this post about polish (scroll all the way down) and ended with yesterday's talk in class about what polish is exactly.

To recap: "If the blocking is correct and your breakdowns are in place, the polish phase should only enhance the animation, .... It's not there to change the [overall] timing."

Polishing your shot should not change the overall timing and idea of your acting choice, body movement, etc. But instead of writing down what I said yesterday, I will point you to a post about polish that I just read, found @ Synchrolux via Cooked Art's "Other News from the Grapevine...".

Just like a certain someone in our class who prefers to listen to his friends' advice as opposed to what is said in class, even though the advice is the same (I couldn't resist, I had to mention it! Your email still cracks me up! ;) ), you might understand or prefer to read about the aspect of polishing better when explained by someone else. And no, I'm not having a pity party or anything like that, it makes total sense. How many times did my parents tell me what to do and I never did, but when my friends said the same thing, I somehow got it. Wait, did I just compare myself to being a parent and you guys are my children? Hmm.... Anyway.

Even though no one had questions yesterday after that polish lecture, I'm just going to assume that you want to know more about it and hear/read an explanation presented in a more professional way, without me going off on a tangent talking about Bernie's ding dong. Wait, what?

So here a few highlights from Kevin Koch's post:

• One of the things I spoke about then was the need to treat the body as a connected whole — when the head moves, for example, the chest and shoulders are going to move, too. Without this nuanced connectedness, almost any movement looks unnatural.

• polish rule number one: Polish simply takes time.

• Rule number two: polish is subtle. If it made a huge difference, then it wouldn’t be polish, it would be animation.

• The key to efficient polish comes BEFORE the polish phase. So first, do good animation.

• Polishing takes forever when you’ve animated without really making a commitment to what you’re animating. It takes forever when you’re not completely clear in your mind what you want for that scene. You need to start with good, clear ideas.

There's a lot more to read and I can't just copy/paste the whole thing, so please head over to Kevin Koch's SynchroLux and read the post "How much polish is too much?"

You can also listen to John Kahrs' podcast about Polish. There are some great comments about time management and what is the most important part to fix and polish.

- pic source