More on how i Animate my Dance shots.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Well as you know i am on a dance Animation project so for a week to come or there about, all i'll be talking about will be updates on the Animation shot. Yeah, it's boring and who the hell wants to know about these progresses? Well to a lot of you, it could be boring as a matter of fact, it actually is. But again we have to consider the very new guy that is curious about how all these is been put together. Because as a newbie myself, i often wondered how this things work. Are these really animations? where they animated and stuffs like that. Yeah they really are animated and these are animations and it takes an aweful lot to decypher how these things actually work. So again, please bear with me and i promise to make it less painful.

Right, so in the past two editions i shared my progress regarding the model, rigging and texturing. Also i've been tweaking the model to get something as close as i want until i got this one. Now that the model is fairly ok, i have proceeded to Animating the character. How do i work? I Animate for some time like two months then i take a break to make researches. And every time i come back, there is something new that comes back with me, every time making me better, in that i see and reason better than i used to. And there's this mixed feeling of me jumping into Animating something also i get this "can you really do this feeling". It's crazy aint it? it's like going into a fight and you just want to get into the right frame of mind, handling your business. Anyways i do what Bruce Lee does or better still teaches. I empty my cup so that i can take in new content.

So here i've got my character bouncing and kind of dancing into the scene then every other thing follows suit. I am doing a pose to pose because i have to hit the animation at the exact key where there is a punch to the dance, that is at it's up and down. But before then, i set up the keys for the hits so that i place my feet at exactly where it should touch down. I've spent a while making some research on the kind of dance steps to use in the shot and what song to use as well. So that everyone gets a feel of what i am doing, i take it back old school but put a bit of new school feel to it. Not really gone far with it as at now but i intend to about wrap it up in a week or so. And that's because i intend to skip rendering and also partly because of some elements of the rig that is manually keyed or posed. Dang i miss the auto rig system. The fingers are the worse in this kind of rig set up as i'll have to manually rotate every finger bone one after the other. Unlike the auto-rig where i just use the sliders to pose an entire finger.

Like i said i'm just beginning animating the model and this primarily is its first pass in terms of posing the character. When i'm done doing all the posing, then i'll proceed with fine tuning all the key framing passed to it. And that is the fun part called the tweening.

Ok, so that's all about animations for the day and i'ld love to use this opportunity to introduce www.maxvisits.com to you guys especially the ones that blog like myself or has anything of passion that you do on the net worth letting people know about. So what does www.maxvisits.com do? Well they help you promote your website by literally dragging traffic towards it. And according to what i've heard, when they say traffic, they mean TRAFFIC. So go check em out.

Rigging Techniques and How important is your Rig Setup to your Animations.

Hello HypefroActive Fans and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Alright i'm stil on my character from the last edition and we are making progress.

As at today, i'm done with rigging and on to skinning. Also i take my time doing researches on the kind of dance moves that i'ld want to Animate as well as song for the shot. This Animated Dance video will come in two versions, the first will be short with a known popular song not yet determined at the moment but it would either be a Michael Jackson, An old school or a Nigerian song. But which ever way it goes the moves have to match any of these songs. I'm hoping it will be very entertaining and better than anything that i've ever done and the first would be short and available to all social media platforms while the longer version would be exclusive only to YouTubers.

Now as at the last time i posted an article on here, i just began working on this project and was in the rigging process where i was talking about the manual, automatic but i choose to use the composition of both of them. A lot of people see animation shots and ask how was this rigged or what software was used to achieve this? And when i look at issues such as this, it makes me wonder why people should bother themselves about type of rigs rather than how to Animate. But again, these people have a point like i discussed here http://reidchannel.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-to-animate-dance-animation-from.html especially if you are doing a dance Animation and there is this move where the hips have to go wild swinging wildly and fluidly, otherwise other than things like this about any kind of rig would do and the outcome for the animation finesse would depend a great deal on your Animation skill. It must be noted however that the more bones and controls you rig your model with, the more work you'll do.

For this Animation, i would have loved to customize the fingers so that they are been controlled by sliders via Attribute holders. An Attribute holder is a modifier in 3dsmax that helps in storing parameters added to a control object like the shape controller. But i couldnt do that because i'm hoping to use this same "everything" if possible for the next Animation shot. Stil i miss customizing the hands because it makes everything easy while animating because all i have  to do is pull down or push up a slider to get the desired pose i want. The downside is that the pose is on the average, that is a little bit close or away from what you EXACTLY want but in all it works. And now that the fingers are in the Manual setup, though i'll get precisely what i want in terms of posing the fingers, the thing is i'll have to rotate every finger bone link one after the other to get what i want. There are three bones in every finger, thus i have to rotate every bone individually and excruciatingly. Now that's not cool, but i get what i want so i'll let that pass, Manual i go.

Right now i'm in the skinning process and i also have to make up my mind on the ingredients for the shot as discussed above. So stick around as I'll be updating this post.

Ok, so i'm done with the skinning and texturing and i have something that looks like this. Ready to animate but i'm putting final touches to the character plus i still have to create the morph targets. when i'm done with this i dont think i'll be rendering this shot, at least not now. I'll probably setup the scene filling it with whatever i think it's neccesary but would want to keep it low poly as usual so dont expect much in terms of beautifying the scene. Ok, it's nice hanging with you guys and i'll probably update again with a pose or something or maybe create a new post when i begin animating. So i'll see you guys pretty soon. Keep the dream alive and keep Animating.

How to Animate a Dance Animation from scratch without Motion Capture, MOCAP.

Hello HypefroActive Fans and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's been a while even if it's like three or four days since i last posted anything here on this blog but hey i'm back now so let's get the show on the road.

So what do i have for you my HypefroActive people this season? Animations as usual of course or what else where you expecting? Yep Animations animations and more animations. But this time i intend again as usual to raise the bar a little higher than it already is at. We've got less than two weeks before november passes the torch and i still have to animate a shot for this month. In this month as mentioned earlier, i'll be doing a dance and afterwards a fight animation shot. Animating both shots has a lot more to do with principles otherwise every Animator would be Animating these kinds of shots in their CG films easily. You really have to get into the nitty gritty of actually knowing how these things work out in real life. Wether you draw, you use the video or act it out, cram or understand while you sink it into your head, it is your call. What matters is knowing how these things happen and in what order they occur. This is not to say that the principles will not be needed because that is definitely not what i mean. What i'm saying in essence is that after reading and digesting the principles, you still have to understand how these things work. These things you hope to animate, that you are so passionate about showing off to people. Well it's not easy especially for us newbies but we do our best. Heck it's not easy for the pros either because i hear them cry too so quit worrying and keep animating.

Alright, so i'm done with my model or my first model and there are no morphs at this time. The face has been textured but i've collapsed all the modifiers making the textured head an editable poly again because i felt the need to pull one or two vertices in the head section of the model. Ordinarily, after modelling and texturing i always bake the textures into an editable poly for no reason. It's like a ritual for me, it doesn't add or subtract anything, i just like doing it that way. But i'm growing and like everybody else i embrace change, so if it happens that i do the uvw map textures again, i'ld be tempted to leave it that way. There was a mistake that i made here though and it's that i should have copied the head model before collapsing it into a stack, that way i'ld have the original just in case and the option of the other i'll be collapsing should i change my mind about anything in the future like i'm doing now.

Ok, so i'm currently in the rigging stage and i did mention things like the Automatic and Manual type of rig in one of my recent posts which can be found here http://reidchannel.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-to-rig-character-in-any-software.htmlalso with their cons and pros. Well the thing is the decision to go with either of them is hard, so i'll be using both types in this one shot. Now because this is a dance Animation, i intend to make it as flexible as possible especially in the spine area so that the transition in animations between frames while animating is smooth. The spine is about twenty percent (20%) responsible for the jerks that happen within that area while animating a dance say if you are using a rig like the CAT or Biped in 3dsmax.
So having used all these and knowing where their strengths and weaknesses lies, i intend to use both the Auto which is the "customized" custom rig and the manual which is your 3dsmax custom bone rig without any customizations applied to it.

Which do i use where and why? Yeah places like the foot, i'ld fully customize the rig in that area because all the foot would do while planted on the ground would be to either roll on the heel, rotate

the toes or rotate the whole foot from the ankle. And  i think this would apply to it while in the air as well. Especially because less attention would be paid there and the bones to be animated are not much thus the order of animation is irrelevant as animations performed to this part of the body will mostly occur in one way or order. what i'm saying is there are like two bones in each toe and the parent bone been the first that's attached to the foot itself will rotate first before the other bone which is the child bone hence the child bone would depend on the parent. So Automating my rig here would be fine for me and easier while animating plus the character would be wearing shoes, but when it comes to the fingers where there are three bones in each finger, it's a different ball game. The other two will not necessarily rely on the parent bone to fully perform its rotation before it does it's own. At least not in all circumstance. Let's take for instance a person trying to curl the fingers and same person trying to grab or lift something. The difference in this two circumstances is the exertion of force at the parent finger bones which will ultimately transfer to the other two child bones. In this case you'ld need a manual type set of rig. So that you can adjust whatever it is the way you deem fit or as actually is in real life. If you choose to go with the Automatic type of rig then, in both instances where you curl or grab the fingers will move and present itself to you in the same order. In the curl, it might look natural but when you animate a "grab" it would look loose thus unnatural if you automated it.

The spine as at now, i have automated with three controls one of which drives both at same time and the other two are independent of one another but answer to their parent which is the hip bone. The biggest advantage in considering the automatic rig here is in the shoulders. All i have to do is move the hands up or down and the shoulders adjust to these movements. In this illustration the spine is animated to rotate at the hip giving that s- curve appeal animators look for in their shots. This is partly possible because this spine has already been customized and the bones in that region are the SplineHiSolver specially made for situations like this in 3dsmax.

Ok, that's all for now and if you've got any questions to ask or whatever to contribute, feel free to do so in the comment section. I'll see ya when i see a.

What's up with HypefroActive this November 2014.

Helllloooooooo HypefroActive fans and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's getting to the end of the year and i think i mentioned that in my last post, yeah so we've got less than two months to the end of the year and everything is looking promising. But more importantly is the fact that Google has deemed it fit to enable my adsense account, yippie and it's all thanks to you guys for all the love and support. Fact is, it would be very difficult to get here without you guys so once again, a BIG Thank You to each and every one that has made this possible and i believe we can do more together probably making HypefroActive a mega Animation Site.

So it's the month of November and people are Starting to close up shop for the year. As usual, i churn Animations out for every month and this month wont be an exception but the thing is i'll be doing just two of it for the remaining part of the month and they'll be short clipse say of about a minute or there about. The first been a dance and the second been a fight Animation. I'm also thinking of doing either an Old School or probably make it New and i'll be rigging the character with 3DsMax custom Bones because of the advantage housed in using its SplineIkSolver making the hips move independently from the upper body and you get that S-Curve feel in your rig when the hips are rotated. The upper and lower body are independent of each other in terms of rotations but have a common control that they both answer to when either moved or rotated. This kind of rig specially suits a dance kind of Animation. A CAT Rig would be a tad rigid in this case and even when rigged to comply to the expectations of very flexible splines wont really match up to the SpineIkSolver of the custom bones. And the same goes to the biped. Also, it's good practice to always start things from scratch especially when you are new to the programme because as you do, in this multiple number of times, you pick something that you never previously understood and ultimately you get better. The guys in The Big studios, that's how they grew. Doing the same thing all the time, only difference is that they get paid doing it. But in both cases these adds up to your resume as an Animator.

Well, here's an image of what i'm working on next, as usual it's low poly and i just finished texturing the head. Does it look like anyone you know? Maybe yes and maybe No. Anyways i hope to begin Animating this character sometime next week. And i'll probably be updating this post say later on.

So when next you visit this blog and you see things a little changed from what it used to be like the paid Adverts and whatever it is that will be here that hasn't been, then you should know that it's bacause of the enabled Google Adsense and please help a brother pay some bills by actually checking out this strategically placed Adverts. Matter of fact, i'll be spending a lot more time on this blog in the nearest future and that would mean either less animations or maybe churning out shots less than thirty seconds.

Alright that's it for now, i look forward to seeing you guys anytime soon with better and more challenging topics to trash, until then stay blessed.

UPDATE

This is an update for this topic and it's been done today 15th Nov 2014. I didnt know any better way to put it other than this talking about the update. So, i've been building up the scene talking about modelling the other parts of the Character and right here is the Head, eyes and body. The Body is actually in progress and as usual sculpted with 3dsmax and my style for modelling is the "wing chun" box modelling technique. Ok, the wing chun thing, i just made it up as there is no such thing in animation so dont go about making any research on that. Well as usual, i intend to keep things really simple except for this time i'm thinking of enhancing my characters poly-count for a change say about 25% mre than it used to be. So here's an image of what the body is like for now without it's limbs. I'm actually at the knee and i'm thinking the best way to go about my model, since i'm not attached to any particular reference. Ok, so keep Animating, keep the dream alive and stay focused my fellow Newbie brothers and sisters until i see you here again sometime soon.

My Animation Reels.

Hello Peeps and Welcome to another interactive session of Animations on HypefroActive. We indeed have come a long way together on this blog and i dare say most of the Animations i have featured here were all created on this blog and during its operation. This in a way gives the Newbie a sense of direction to the duration in which he could achieve a particular level in Animation. Though i'm still growing and will always continue to seek more knowledge and ultimately get better, but this lays the foundation as to what to expect from yourself at a particular point in time in your life animating. Another thing is i animate almost every time because i really want to get good at it and want to do that within the shortest time possible. Back then i was worried and not really sure if i could pull this off and how much time it could take. It's a lot worse when you are from Africa where we are not as exposed as the rest of the world to this trade or profession if you like but the good news is that things are changing rapidly and the awareness of animations here is growing. Just so we are clear, we watch cartoons alot so that's not what i'm talking about. I'm saying we do not have Animation Schools neither do we produce Animations here but again, all that is rapidly changing.

So, in this episode i'ld be featuring all of my Animation Shots in The order they have been made from the first one on my YouTube page to the most recent. I hope you Enjoy them.

The first on the list is this Dance Animation inspired by some friends, Animators i look up to and lastly for the love of the song itself http://youtu.be/opFjvErscKw

Afterward i proceeded to a stick figure Animation, testing out some violent skills learnt. Lol. Ok, its about a guy and his girl dating with the girl wanting alot more than just date. You can check that out here http://youtu.be/sBAKHD4ZKC0

Next in line is this comedy-like gospel song titled "Prayer is the key". And you can click on this next link if you believe in prayers, or not. Lol. http://youtu.be/E3ZZ9eBJpgo

This one is easy. It was the World Cup season and i had to do something about that. Probably one of my biggest challenge at the time and will replicate a better version sometime in the near future or maybe have my students do it. http://youtu.be/Z-vY3sZ5hlM

Now, in all these i longed to know how cartoony animations are done so i took some time off to do some study. Yeah and in this one, my quest for understanding facial animations began. http://youtu.be/3t401J7vSSA

Followed very closely by this one. Facial Animations understood here and this one was produced about a week after the last one. http://youtu.be/eqHd2CKiXfI

Then here comes the last on the list. Again closely following the last two and i think they were all done almost in the same month. Anyways, they were all done within the space of five weeks and here it is. http://youtu.be/wlMF5CoHOCc

So that's all for now. And I'll be doing some very interesting and better animations soon and of course starting with this month as i usually do.

Again, If  you are aspiring to be an Animator, you need some sort of help, coaching, mentoring or you need some sort of Animation service, you could drop your comments below or send mail to chimatic@gmail.com and i'll be sure to respond ASAP.

Animating Fight Scenes, What to consider.

Hello Peeps and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's that time of the year when we all regardless of religion or race come together to pop bottles, smile at one another and say Thank you Lord for another Year. Well, i  will be doing something like that myself as i'll be doing some heavy discounted anime videos for those of you out there that needs such services particularly my beloved fans. I love you guys.

Well, it just occured to me that the only kind of Anime video that i've not done is the fight scene type. The action flick type of video that made Killer Bean popular and Kung fu Panda what it is. Everyone today wants to have very nice fight scenes in their movies and animations and as for the games, what is a combat type of game without a decent fight scene. Though i am not party to violence and this is not what this is about but i really love fight scenes talking entertainment wise. And its one of the most difficult things to animate in the world of animations especially if no MOCAP is not involved.

Why is that you may ask? Well i'll tell you. After putting all the principles of animation in your head, you still have to know some certain other things that are not directly animation related. Things like fighting for instance. Animators try to simulate real life actions while animating by acting what ever they have in there head out. This way they get a clearer picture of what to do and how to go about it. Other animators shoot a video of these ideas and analyse these videos then animate. But that is half of the problem. The real problem is knowing "how to". Everybody know how to walk and run. Well, almost everybody and you see animators mimicking many other stuffs including creatures and monsters but when it comes to fighting scenes, the skillset seem not to flourish that much. And this is not because the animators dont know how to animate but because these are very special type of animations requiring special skill to pull off. It's like this, you see high profile martial artistes like Bruce Lee, Jet lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen or MJW etc in films doing their thing and everything is so easy and beautiful the way they do it and you'll again agree with me that very few actors or Martial Artistes on Tv are on that level. You can tell the difference just by seeing them perform on the screen. Yeah, the idea is if it's that hard for an animator to pull off then animating it would be another hell in itself. It's possible to pull it off but would be very difficult if not impossible except ofcourse with the aid of someone else that knows "the how to" or with the use of MOCAP and nobody will kill you if you choose the later because it really is very difficult to pull off.

Anyways, if you thinking in this direction then these are the things to consider. Ok, so i hope to give it a shot before the year runs out but before then, i would be doing a dance anime since i'm hungry for it. Alright that's it for now and i'll see you guys some other time.

My October 2014 progressive Animation Shots

Hello Peeps and welcome to another exciting edition of Animations on HypefoActive. Hope you guys are doing good, keeping the spirit alive and breaking new grounds because that's what learning and living is all about. If we are on same page, i say kudos to you and if we are not but you want to somehow be then i think all you need is a little more push to break that yoke. Well today i wont be talking much, so here we go.

It occured to me that i havent posted my last shot on here since i completed it. So, i'm going to use this opportunity to introduce all the shots that i did for the month of october including the last one.
I started with this one in which i flagged off the campaign to learning facial animations  http://youtu.be/3t401J7vSSA

I didn't understand it until somewhere in the middle, but still went on to produce it that way so that i could compare it to the next one to come which would be this one  http://youtu.be/eqHd2CKiXfIat
So having gotten to that level and there was some little time left in the month, i decided to do this cartoony shot here   http://youtu.be/wlMF5CoHOCc
The cartoony shot was something I've always wanted to do, because cartoons are just plain goofs and interesting to watch.
So these were the shots i did in the month of october and looking back from where it all began with me as a newbie some few years back, i'ld say i'm proud of myself but still have a lot to learn and i'm definitely on course. And why do i say all these things? To encourage the new guys and make them understand that with lots of determination and focus, nothing is impossible.

Tips and Tricks for Animating. Animating on ones or twos or both.

Hello fans and welcome to another edition of animations on HypefroActive. It's been quite a while and a very busy one i'ld say. Now on a quick review, i produced two animation shots this month of October. One been a spill over from September and the other which i started right after that. As usual, i've been testing out stuffs and seeing what works, what doesnt, how things are put together and generally improving on the quality of my animations. The pictures attached to this posts are extracted from my current animation shot that would be ready say, next week. So lets get to it then.

Yeah, in this Awesome episode i'ld be talking about some tricks to the trade that may come as tips for you while animating. Now, some time not too long ago when i was getting started with learning from scratch i went about looking for video tutorials. I managed to get some or lets say very few and honestly very few was what i needed at the time because watching a bulky monster piled video from a rack and all on animations would be troublesome. You might say the more the merrier but the truth is if you are considering things like time, money and other parameters all tied to learning then you'd see that this type of "the more the merrier" is not where you want to go especially if you want to have an all round knowledge of everything relating to animations from modelling, texturing, rigging animating bla bla bla the whole nine yards, or maybe again you could do that with time as opposed to trying to learn and store everything in your head all at once. OK so back to the matter, i got about two videos or there about, with one been a Jeff Lew video animation tutorial and in one of the videos Jeff was talking about interpolation which is same as "tweening or in-betweening". As you know, Jeff is a 3D animator and a very good one at that and he was saying something about people animating on ones "i.e, frame by frame animation" that it was a bad way to animate and reason been that the computer already sets the tweening for you and that there was no reason to animate on ones. And instead of animating on ones, you could do it on twos threes and maybe fours. And when you think about it, it does make alot of sense not animating on ones especially when the computer willingly handles the tweenings for you ultimately saving you plenty of time and energy wether blood or money or both, you could use the saves as reserves. Now for a long time, i put this in my head and is still is. Animating on threes and fours especially when the actions are linear and are very simple moves. This saved me plenty and i had a lot less to worry about at the time. But when you start talking about very complex type animations especially the cartoony types then this rule may cease to apply but not in all situations.

The computer tries to create animations in-between extreme poses and it does this as it deems fit. Now while creating a pose say on a particular frame that serves as part of the in-between of two extreme poses, there might be need for you to do so on ones if its a cartoony type or you are trying to constrain poses to a frame because that is what you want seen on that frame. There are different ways to animate which is evident from the variety of animation films you see on television. Some relating to Epic Story telling, Games or Super hero comics that do not have the same feel like the squashy "Tom and Jerry" Cartoony type of Animations. While the first type may agree with what was said about how Jeff teaches or advices to animate and would work very very well because they are life-like in nature just like you'ld see in "The Matrix" and "Transformers". The Tom and Jerry Cartoony type would frown at this type of method and will tend to favour a lot of "squash and stretch" making it funny bouncy and humanly unrealistic and that's why people love it and alot of frame by frame abides here as you could set extreme poses on fours, eights, twelves or any frames you want.

The Animation principles were carved out for Animations by 2D Animation Legends and a lot of mistakes 3D Artist do is that we get lazy wanting the computer to do everything for us which is not a bad thing at all, but has it ever occured to you that these things could be done in many other ways other than what the computer offers? Yeah, you could choose to do it however you want, constraining your animations to every frame or maybe two, three or four frames. But the thing to put in mind is that, the more constrained it is, the more work for you to do but it does come out better though.

So, in conclusion animation whether 2 or 3D could be done on ones, two's or however you want them animated but please resist the urge to go beyond four. Unless it's in a kind of hold or somewhat passive action that would require say sixteen frames or so. See you guys next time and keep animating.

How to rig a Character in any software. What to consider.

Hello Peeps and welcome to another fresh and exciting edition of Animations on HypefroActive. Ok so this is a fresh month and i've managed to produce two animation shots last month that have been published on YouTube plus another which i just uploaded this morning all coming down to three. Yep, i'm on fire and it's all thanks to you guys for the support and encouragement. And today i'll be talking about How to rig and what to expect in the way you set up your rigs while Animating. So here we go.

Alright prior to learning how to animate, i learnt how to rig characters. The rig as you know are what drives the models or mesh and serves as the skeletons of the mesh. Rigging has to be taken very seriously if you want the desired results for your animations. Meaning if you have a character for instance that will be dancing then you'll need a very flexible rig especially for the spine and the connections to the head, so that the spine is broken into like three or more segments and the more segments you break them into, the better the quality of animation but the more work you get to do. But this again will depend on the type of rig you have set up. If its a manual rig wherein you have to animate every bone, helper or controller Ooooorrr if its an automatic type where certain bones or helpers within a setup say the spine for instance, where you have about three bones and the middle bone is constrained to the first and last by means of the position and rotational constraints. This makes the work easier but not necessarily finer or better. But you really do a lot less work compared to it been in the manual.

A Naked Manual rig

I follow a lot of online schools and watch there awesome reels and its just so cool seeing how their students  churn out spectacular reels. And sometimes i go as far as reading their reviews and you here people saying things like, "how can i get these school type of rig"? Or the rig is what makes the animation different or special. Well, they are partly right in how they think and in there judgement of everything, but first thing first these guys actually know how to animate. They understand these things and are able to break them down in any order or manner they choose. So it's not like the rig do these stuffs automatically after been set up. You as an Animator still need to Animate stuff to produce results and that means setting up and understanding the rig.

Manual Rig with Controls

Every part of a rig has sections and segments. The spine is a section having as much segments as you choose or woul want it to have in a rig. The arm has the clavicle, upper and lower arms, hand and fingers as segments while the lower arm has the bones in the wrist that performs the twist otherwise the mesh would appear ruptured when attempting to twist the hand.

So just like the war between the "pose to pose" and "straight ahead" methods OR animating on "1s or 2s" and many other stuffs in the Animation world causing a debate, rigging is no different. The manual and automatic types of rig complement each other. You just have to use what where and this will largely depend on what you hope to achieve. If you doing normal animation stuffs like walking, running or normal chores that dont need exceptional hip poses, then any type of necessary rig would do. But if you are doing a dance and maybe a fight then its most

The Auto rig with constraints at the Hands and spines

likely the manual that would fair better because of the added advantage of turning a bone whenever you want it to, instead of it reacting to two or so bones its constrained to. This doesn't mean that the automatic wont do well here as i have used the automatic setup on many occasions than i can remember. But if you want the cartoony type of overlapping action somewhere around the spine then use the manual. Ok, thats all about rigging types and i'll see you guys some other time.