Tag Archives: refinement

Class 5 Week 8 – Assignment & Critique

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Hi kids! Hope you’ve had a good week! I’m still in Italy and it’s still just as likely to be thunderous and rainy as it is to be incredibly hot and sunny. I am in a state of perma-stickiness.

I’ve splined out all the characters for the assignment this week. They still need a lot of polishing up, but in general I’m happy with how the shot is turning out. I did quite a lot of revisions this week.

As you might notice, I’ve changed the mechanic quite a lot, so now it should (hopefully) be pretty obvious that he is a mechanic and is working on the car and isn’t travelling with the couple.

I decided to stick to my guns with regards to the office guy and his tie. My justification for it is that because he doesn’t go on holiday a lot, his tie represents his normal environment and is a source of comfort when he is scared. I considered doing the “biting his nails” thing, but felt that it was a little cliché – I’ve seen it too many times. This felt a little different. I’ll animate the tie once his body mechanics are completely locked down. Don’t worry though, it will definitely work – trust me! ;)

This is what we’re looking at:

Girl

There’s some small polishing to be done here and there but she’s working well overall. Based on descriptions I’ve provided previously, should she be more excited than she is?

Mechanic

The new animation for the mechanic is working really nicely, it’s nice and clear and looking good.

The thumbing could be a little faster, like it’s a throwaway comment, suggesting how he isn’t bothered by the situation.

Body mechanics issues to address: His hand shakes a little FRM110-120, watch the rear elbow shape when he’s crouched down, there is a rogue key at FRM149 where his entire body shifts position before the camera cut.

Guy

Now that we have the justification, the acting choice regarding the holding of the tie can “make sense”. Even if we don’t have a whole film with which to get a greater sense of the context of the character, it’s still important to answer these questions.

One thing that isn’t clear is if he’s letting go of the tie after the first shot. Also, it might be nice if he fiddles with it a little more, to add some ‘frequency’. He needs some additional refinement in the final shot, even if it’s just some breakdown poses.

A-

So a pretty good week then! What makes it even sweeter is that I didn’t do anything other than auto-tangent the mechanic and guy on Sunday morning. That’s right; I decided to throw off the shackles of AM slavery and just hand in what I had. Animation is never finished and typically I just keep working and working until the deadline is dangerously close. It felt good not to do that for a change.

Next week I will start trying to block in some proper facial animation as well as start cleaning up the animation. I’m hoping that adding in the facial is going to provide a sea-change in the overall appeal of the shot, like it did in my last one.

Let’s hope so.

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!