Tag Archives: facial expression

Class 5 Week 7 – Assignment

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Prepare yourselves for a lot of text! It’s been a tough week! Lots to do and LOTS of notes for Mario (most of which are replicated below)! That said, the only note I have for my facial expression assignment is that I had so much to do this week, I didn’t spend as long as it as I normally do:

c5w7 - Sketchbook 1

As I discussed with Mario at the Q&A this week, I tried to “super-block” my entire animation, rather than splining just one or two shots as I like to try and keep everything up to a similar level. The main issues for me this week were addressing some of the acting choices and issues surrounding characterisation, rather than the super-blocking itself:

So, is it reading OK? Some people that have watched it suggested that perhaps the guy should remain scared until Shot 4 when he gets confused by the mechanic’s weird conversation. I can’t decide. If I change it, it would mean some significant alterations to the animation, which scares me quite a lot. Here are my thoughts on the shot in general:

  • Girl: Generally happy with how her character is conveyed, although obviously let me know if you think differently or if there are any body mechanics issues to address.
  • Guy: This one has been the real tough cookie! As I said above, a couple of people I’ve shown this too haven’t really liked his acting choices and find it difficult to work out what he’s feeling at any one time. What do you think?
  • Mechanic: Overall, I’m pretty happy with this guy. If I have time, I think I might to change the opening shot so that he’s actually working on the wheel/tyre, rather than just scratching his head; perhaps it would be a little more interesting? Is it worth changing it at this stage, given how much work there is left to do?

How do you like the new end pose for the mechanic? I liked the idea of significantly changing his pose when he says “I thought you wanted to?” and I tried some quite dramatic changes, but none of them felt very good in terms of fitting with the dialogue. I quite like the way in the current version, he retains his ‘stupidity’ but the pose is reasonably different from his standard stance.

As I said, it’s been a really tough week and I’ve been having LOTS of problems trying to come up with interesting ideas, acting choices and poses – it’s been a source of great frustration and stress!

I’ll hopefully be back tomorrow with Mario’s critique notes…

As I discussed with Mario, I tried to “super-block” my entire animation, rather than splining just one or two shots as I like to try and keep everything up to a similar level.

Class 5 Week 6 – Assignment & Critique

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So… I’m feeling a little more on-track after my outburst on Sunday. Well, feeling a little more on-track after my hand-in/critique actually. On Sunday morning I had the feeling that my work was looking preeeetty shit. By the end of play on Sunday, I was actually reasonably happy with it. Take a look:

This has the updated camera, based on my feedback from last week. Obviously, there’s still no facial animation but the basic blocking is done with a few in-betweens.

Mario went quite in-depth with his critique, which was great as it gives me some goals to achieve and something I can actively work towards sorting out, rather than just “carrying on”.

Here’s what he said in more detail:

Characterisation

Consider changing the pose/style of the mechanic’s animation when his voice changes for the line “I thought you wanted to?”, as though he was ‘playing a part’ before and now he’s broken out of the character he thought he was meant to be.

The guy doesn’t seem to feel terribly worried any more after he says “What?!”

Body Mechanics

Add in some additional breakdowns for the girl to show the change of weight during her movement; between FRM24/25 both her feet move at the same time.

Put in some anticipation before the mechanic stands up; this should help to ensure that the movement reads properly across the camera cut.

Add more asymmetry to the guy after he says “WEREWOLF?!”. At the moment his face, head and shoulders are all completely parallel to the bonnet of the car.

Minor Fixes

Watch the knee at FRM20, it’s close to looking broken.

Check the silhouettes on FRM48, where the foreshortening of the arms is creating a high “traffic area” in the hands and the mechanic’s arm in the first shot. Be careful that the mechanic’s arm and head don’t create a tangent around FRM238.

Overall

I feel like Mario is starting to get the concept now, starting to understand what it is I’m trying to attain with this shot, so that feels good. I do need to be clearer about my goals and what the characters are meant to be feeling in each shot and I should have been from the start.

For the record, I LOVE the idea of changing up the mechanic’s personality quick dramatically after the guy asks “Why are you talking that way?!”, I think it’s a brilliant idea and I’m hoping I can do it justice!

As for the guy not being terribly scared after he says “What?!”, that was actually the plan from the start (one of those things I didn’t make clear). I wanted the absurdity of the conversation to distract him from the fact that he’s just heard a werewolf that he should be pretty concerned about. I will mention this at the Q&A this week.

The other part of our hand-in this week was another facial expression:

c5w6 - Sketchbook 1

Mario had no suggestions for improvements, but once again suggested that I’d been “cheating” by using deformers or lattices to create certain shapes: not true! Again, something to mention at the Q&A ;)

B+

As I said, I think I’m on the way up, out of my mid-term lull. I’ll certainly be attacking my blocking over the coming days to see if I can really exaggerate the characters and acting choices a lot more. I may even start tackling some of the facial animation.

Regardless, I need to get a move on with this stuff as I’m flying off to Florence for a couple of weeks to see Marie on Thursday. I will (of course) have access to a computer and (limited access) to the internet, but the more efficient I can be, the more time I can spend doing nice stuff.

Now, about those earlier nights I was talking about…

Class 5 Week 4 – Assignment & Critique – Part 1

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I’m going to split this post into two parts, otherwise it’s going to get overwhelmingly long [matron!].

Wow, what a busy week! Those of us in AM Class 5 are moving on from our single character dialogue shot to, that’s right you guessed it, our multi-character dialogue shot! It’s going to be pretty manic as we only have 8 weeks to get it done – are we really 4 weeks in already? I guess that means it’s been a whole month since I left SCEE Cambridge. Weird.

Anyway, before we get to the multi-character stuff, here’s the facial expression exercise I did this week:

c5w4 - Sketchbook 1 v3

It took me quite a few tweaks to feel really happy with this one. The original photo doesn’t have a particularly strong Line of Action down the face – if you compare the previous versions, it should be fairly clear that I decided to accentuate it. You might argue that I’ve actually inverted it but doing it this way means I can squash down the screen-left side of the face and stretch the screen-right side. Either way, Mario was really happy with it and didn’t have any changes to suggest.

I feel like I’ve got a really good grasp of the facial rig now. Mario’s been impressed with what I’ve been able to do with my facial exercises and keeps asking whether I’ve done any “funny business” to the model to get the achieved look, so I should take this opportunity to say: I’ve not used any additional deformers, sculpting techniques in Maya or post-processing in Photoshop! Everything you see here can be achieved using the default face rig and controls! Winnarz don’t use performance-enhancing… things! ;)

Critique Part 2 coming soon!