I got my first critique for the term from Mario yesterday and I have to say, it was absolutely fantastic! It was so good in fact, that I just had to tell someone, anyone! I couldn’t have hoped for better – plenty of detail about stuff to fix, but really motivational! It made me feel so inspired about working on my shot and making it better!

For your reference, here’s what I handed in last week:

I will now relay to you, all the things I need to sort out:

Mouth

• The synchronisation of the mouth to the dialogue seems to work well already.
• Push the intensity for some of the expressions – “Edgewise” has a perfect level of intensity but there are a number of places where the face needs to match just how intense the dialogue is, for example “sake” and “after all”.
• “Can’t a girl” – Needs more ‘bounces’, either with the jaw or lips. Perhaps it needs to be faster as well? Maybe reduce the jaw rotations here and concentrate on the lip shapes instead.

Brow

• All the phrases of emotion are reading really well already.

Eyes

• Generally everything is working OK so far.
• What is she looking at on FRM18?
• Add in some minor eye adjustments/movement.
• Perhaps re-time the blink at FRM30 – it happens too soon before “What’s the big idea?”

Body

• Watch that head jerk at the end of the animation – “my public too!”
• Bring the head down in the pose at FRM155 so we keep her eyes towards camera – don’t disconnect her from the audience.
• Are the eyes shut too long at the end of the animation? Changing this could involve a reasonably large modification to the final pose – something to discuss at the Q&A.

Overall

• Push the intensity of the facial expressions. Try going a bit crazy and see how far you can push it. The dialogue is very over the top so try to match that in the facial animation. Bishop has a very elastic, cartoony mouth – perhaps watch some Bug Bunny and other Looney Tunes stuff to see how they do it.
• “Can’t a girl” – Good brow asymmetry, try doing it on the mouth as well. Think about it in terms of Squash & Stretch – one side of the face stretches whilst the other squashes down.
• Remember to keep the whole face working together as one unit.

B+

There we go then! Plenty to sort out, but on the whole it’s working pretty well. There are a few things I want to discuss at the Q&A this week, such as what he meant about the ‘bounces’ because I understood about ‘reducing the jaw rotations and concentrating on the lip shapes’ and also what other possibilities exist with regards to changing the end pose as that might have quite a dramatic impact on the animation.

If you guys have any additional things you think I need to sort out, let me know!