Good references:
- Animator Mentor
- Charlie Chapman
- Dick Van Dyke
Need to film myself for the reference which should last 10 – 15 seconds by 22 January 2021.
My Ideas for the audio:
- Summer Heights High
- Friends
- Mean Girls
- The Other Guys
For our final major task for the first term is to create a performance animation. This is giving character to your animated character. A personality reflected in how they speak and move. The clip only needs to be 10-15 seconds. We have to choose a voice clip and act out our own animation reference to this clip.
I have chosen the hilarious character Eddie from my favourite TV series Friends.
Chandlers crazy new roommate thinks he stole his fish which was never there and accuses him of sleeping with his girlfriend even though she only came over to drop off this fish tank. I love this line in Friends and think that its a really great expressive moment which I can have a lot of fun playing with.
For my chosen rig I decided to use the Judy Hops rig. I love the film Zootropolis and wanted to have a whack at using it for my animation. I think the contrast of Eddie’s voice and Judy Hops character is amusing. I went online to look on Youtube to see how people have used the rig to make facial expressions to help me as a reference.
Same as the lip syncing project prior, I used the webcam to mimic the movements of my mouth. This was a new rig which did not have the cheat controls like the rig I used before. This was difficult at first because the mouth shape was different and is in the shape of a rabbit not a human. I had play around a lot with the controls to get the shape I need. Wasn’t as straight forwards as a human mouth. However, after I had worked with it long enough, I started to remember the shapes I made for specific sounds. This means that by half way I was able to finish a lot faster than when I started. Becoming use to a new rig is important as you work a lot faster.
Final Phoneme Outcome
So proud of how it came out. There are still a few tweaks in the beginning of the clip because I was still learning how to use the rig in that stage. It is evident that I improve as I go along because the lips are more accurate.
Next I need to focus on the facial expressions. I have made a video to mimic what the face should look like. This is just a close up and will have another reference for the performance.
I used the screenshots of my reference to block my animation so that I could get the gist of Judy will move through the scene. This was quite because my movements in the video weren’t a simple walk cycle. So this meant the feet were dragging along the floor which looked really unnatural. I had to go back and edit the feed so there was toe role the weight shifts to the right foot. This messed with the hands by not being in front of Judy but inside of her. This looked really bad so I had to make sure they were all mover forward.
I also wanted to include the ears in the animation as there are good points where it could add appeal to the character. I used it when Judy slaps here head in shock and also at the end when she beats her fists in the air towards the ground. I also used her facial expressions to show more of her appeal as angry. I didn’t get the chance to do as much as I would like as I had been struggling with learning and the time frame it takes to do it.
I am in my final stages of my performance animation. I have used a preexisting environment from the UAL drive for my staging. I have no particular reason for using a tropical island but I thought it was a bit comical as it it totally out of context. I didn’t realise you had to link the files from sources images in order for it to work. Thankfully Luke showed me but am also struggling with trying to get the iris of the bunny rig to show up.
Final Animation Render:
I had some issues with the timing of the animation and the audio clip so it is out of sync a little and the mouth doesn’t quite meet up. This is a shame! As it looks so much better on Maya. Because of time limits i haven’t had the chance to try it again but will do later in the next term. Either way I am happy how it looks. I am proud of the outcome considering this is all being learnt from scratch.