And that’s it! No more time to spend on this animation right now (until Class 6 at least!) – it’s on to bigger and better things! Regardless, Mario still had to critique it, so here is what he had to say:

Mouth

“This is REALLY good stuff!” but there’s still room for adding a little more intensity to the “can’t a girl” section and perhaps either on “after” or “all”.

Brows & Eyes

Again, really good stuff. Full of nice beats and feels really solid. The brow changes feel like they’re coming from her, not me as an animator.

On the “can’t” expression, it might be possible to accentuate the asymmetry and squash and stretch of the face by swapping the eyebrows round to help define the line of action through the face.

Body

The new end pose is much more stylish, a lot clearer and easier to read. There are still opportunities to polish up the hip and shoulder movement, but that can wait for Class 6!

Overall

This is a great shot. It’s clear I’ve got a lot of experience already and there are only a few little this to shape and polish up; all the foundations are there and very solid. This shot is pretty much done!

A-

My first A-grade for the term! Woo! As I said earlier, I’ve been super-busy getting my drawings and layouts done for the next hand-in, so I’ll post those up when I get a spare moment!

As ever, please feel free to leave comments, questions or suggestions! Thanks for reading!

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!

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!

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!

I hate shooting video reference of myself :(

We also had to do a hand pose that would convey anger:

Michelle thought there wasn’t enough tension in the fingers and I’d agree, however I have no real idea about how to achieve that! It’s not helped by the fact that the rig in the hands is awful and we can’t edit the skinning. Just trying to get a pose that didn’t look really bad was tough enough!

Here’s the video reference:

And sketches for Clips 4 and 2:

The sketches are pretty quick and dirty (and photographed rather than scanned) as I’m in Florence this weekend to see Marie! More next week!