Monthly Archives: April 2010

Class 5 Week 3 – Dialogue Mid-Week Review

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Just a quick mid-week update on my shot. Mario told me to “go wild” with the asymmetry and elasticity of the face in my critique, so hopefully this is moving along the right lines:

The second clip shows the new version (left hand) against the version I handed in on Sunday (right hand) – I know it’s hard to see a difference (especially when Flickr won’t let you can’t frame-by-frame it), but trust me, they’re pretty different!

I showed this to Mario in our class Q&A yesterday afternoon and it seems like I am going in the right direction with the cartooniness of the face. Mario seemed happy with what I’ve done and told me to push it even further (which I have actually done already – I playblasted this late last night), so that’s good!

We’re meant to be finishing this shot by Sunday and as I said previously I’m actually away this weekend, so I don’t have much time left. The things I still need to do are:

  • Animate the tongue
  • Check the jaw/lip bounces on the “can’t a girl” phrase
  • Clean up the facial anim curves and add some subtle lip overlap
  • Adjust the hips and line of action for the end pose
  • Clean up the head movement at the end
  • Ensure the head movement propagates down the body
  • Any final tweaks

Not much to do then! 8)

Let me know if you have anything to add to the list!

Class 5 Week 2 – Assignment & Critique Notes

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Another week, another assignment, another critique!

This is what I handed in:

I’m fairly happy with the results although I probably spent too long refining the body mechanics rather than concentrating on the facial animation. Apart from the stuff mentioned in this week’s critique, I think the body mechanics are basically done – at least, I’m happy with them enough to concentrate solely on the face from now on.

On to my notes from Mario:

Mouth

The syncing and read of the dialogue is still working really well. The intensity of the mouth shapes is much better during the more extreme moments in the dialogue (e.g. “what’s the”) but continue to push the asymmetry of the face further; perhaps pick points where the body is more still so it can be clearly seen by the audience (e.g. “big idea”, “can’t a girl”).

Check the lips have at least 2 frames on the ‘m’, ‘p’ and ‘b’ visimes during “my public too”.

Brows / Eyes

The brows are working well. Check the eye direction at the end; if she isn’t focussing on specific targets during the shot consider bringing the eye direction back to face front again rather than further off to screen left.

Body

The phrasing at the end of the shot is a bit broken now with the new pose. It should be a relatively easy fix though: either bring the head motion forward in the timeline so that she hits the new pose on “too!” or wait a beat (12-24 frames maybe) for the audience to catch up and then hit the new pose.

The head motion at the end has to propagate down the body.

Take another look at the line of action in the end pose. [This is something I'm going to have to bring up in the Q&A this week - I've got no idea what to do!]

Overall

Asymmetry, asymmetry, asymmetry! The intensity of the mouth is good already – just push the asymmetry, go wild! Try to think of it in terms of her character: she has to try and retain her composure in the courtroom, so if the body is (relatively) calm all the energy, tension and anger is pent up in her mouth/face.

Change the timing of the head at the end.

B+

That mark covers the facial expressions exercises as well by the way.

So overall, another pretty good week with some nice comments and plenty of things to sort out. I must admit, I was a little more slack than I should have been last week and this week hasn’t started off much better so I really need to get my arse in gear and be more efficient. Especially as I’ll be at Alton Towers this weekend! \o/

As per usual, comments, questions or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Class 5 Week 2 – Facial Expression Exercises

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Part of our assignment this week was to find two photos where you find the face to be communicating a clear emotion. We then had to recreate the pose using Bishop, looking for areas to exaggerate and/or simplify. Here are the results:

c5w2 - Sketchbook 1 v2

I spent a lot longer than I thought I would creating this first expression, mainly because the mouth controls aren’t quite as flexible as the old guy’s face :)

c5w2 - Sketchbook 2

I love this photo. Every time I look at it, it makes me smile. This guy is a legend! Recreating this expression didn’t take nearly as long as the first one, but it was great fun to do. Most of the time was spent sculpting the shape of the eyelids (walking a fine line between getting close to the reference and breaking the rig) and the shape of the mouth. The negative values on cheeks’ “puff” attribute came in handy here!

Hope you like them. As always, questions, comments or suggestions are welcomed/encouraged!