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.