Animation Project: Dialogue #01 - Part 2

 

 Animation Project - Dialogue #01

Part 2 - Refining Mouth Animation

March 2021

 The turnover for this progress report was pretty fast, as I mainly finished up the second and third segments of syncing, then strung them all together. After that, I went back through to refine the timing and streamline the breaks and flow. Now the full mouth animation is complete, aside from a few more tweaks I may make once I begin animating the rest of the body. So far, the pacing is still a bit fast, but it is much more readable and relative to the audio. The rig I have used for this project is the Polly rig from NoisyChain on Turbosquid.

After seeing how the first segment turned out, I had better foresight going into the completion of the other segments. The first was particularly fast-paced and hard to read at certain frames. As a result, I tried my hardest to slow down the key frames, and maximized my time allotted for each spoken phrase. However, with so much dialogue going through so fast, it was hard to determine which movements were major enough to stay, and which were unnecessary in the long run. After having cut out what I could, the animation has cleared up substantially. For now, it is workable, and I will move on, but there is still some timing to take care of, as well as some further cuts potentially.

For now, I am leaving the mouth animations as they are. I feel that in order to refine it even more requires playing to the camera rather than nailing down the minute details that might not even show through in the end. So, I will be moving onto the blocking for the whole body animations next. Hopefully that will give me new perspective on making this animation even better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animation Project: Dialogue #01 - Part 1

 

 Animation Project - Dialogue #01

Part 1 - Blocking and Mouth Animation

March 2021

This is the first progress report for a larger animation project. I am creating an animated dialogue piece for my portfolio. This particular animation has been split into three segments, each being subject to their own multiple phases/passes of animation. This will likely take a while to complete as intended, but I plan on reaching certain goals periodically, maybe not all in one go. The rig I have used for this project is the Polly rig from NoisyChain on Turbosquid.

The project as a whole, once finished, will have a cohesive flow of facial and body movements synced with the chosen audio clip. I plan to move from the mouth animations to the rest of the face, and then the full body. I also plan to move through each of the three segments equally in terms of refinement. As of now, the plan is to move from blocking - refining - timing - finalization for each of the aforementioned phases. So far, blocking has taken place for the entirety of the mouth animations, and refinement and timing are underway.

For this first part of the dialogue, I have synced the mouth shapes and movements fairly close to the audio clip. For reference, I did some blocking in real-time video, and also made sure to save specific mouth expressions to call back for an easier process. The in-between movements were tailored as needed depending on how fast or slow the audio pacing was.

 (Segment 1/3, refined and synced with audio)

 

The hardships of the initial stages for this project were mainly getting familiar with the base mouth shapes. I used the standard charts for facial animations and tried to get as close as possible using the provided manipulators on the rig. Furthermore, the rig is relatively new to me, and it took some time to get familiar with the controls. In fact, there is much more to explore, once I move on past the mouth to the rest of the face, and eventually the entire body controls.

For the refining stage of the first and currently second and third segments, it has been particularly tough keeping in sync with the audio while also keeping the expression readable. The timing is important because some parts of the speech are faster, and others are slower, not to mention the various pauses. As a compromise, some key shapes must be cut out or expressed in transition. From what I learned from lectures, sometimes less is more when animating dialogue. It is more important to accentuate the extreme poses and the natural flow rather than fit in every single movement.

The remaining two parts of the dialogue are blocked out with the basic shapes, however the syncing is not complete, so they will be included with the next post. In the meantime, I will be going through and streamlining each individual clip, then eventually blocking out shapes that will merge them together once rendered out for compilation in editing. As mentioned before, once the mouth animation is finished, or up to an acceptable level for me, I will move on to the next phase and repeat the process.