Feedback on the Lip Sync Task

After returning home for Christmas I still haven't heard from my module leader due to the email must have gotten lost in the system somehow. After sending another one I received and answer a couple of days ago.
The biggest problem is that the animation is too exaggerated and that it would be nice with a view of the face cam as well. hopefully I will have this ready after the new year as a family visit keeps me kind of busy as well as I want to enjoy the holiday.

So see you next year :)

WIP Lip Sync Task

So far I have kind of blocked and splined out my animation so far and I have sent this to my module leader and I'm now awaiting feedback during the next day or two:

Lip Sync Task

So I have decided to animate a really short clip for the lip sync so I hopefully can get started with the other 2 more demanding animations.

So far I have made a reference video of myself acting to the clip as well as a reference for the lip sync itself:






Next to this I have also made a transcript breaking down the lip sync. This is a helpful tool for me once I start the animation:

New Module, Animation Practice 2

It is time to start working on facial animation and lip sync to create even better character performance and acting than previously and I'm really looking forward to getting started with this module.

During this module there will be given 3 animation tasks which are more time consuming than the tasks that were given in the previous module:

Lip Sync:

Accurately lip sync the mouth of your character to provided audio clip. You are free to include facial expressions and acting. Though this is mainly a test of accuracy of your lip sync.


Presenter Task:

In this sequence your character is a TV presenter walking and talking to the camera with personality.
It is important to ensure that your character maintains eye contact with the camera and shows interest in his surroundings.
He does not have to walk for the whole clip. He may need to handle props depending on your choice of clip. You are allowed to include a second character if appropriate.

For this sequence you will have the choice of four audio clips
All preparatory sketches and thumbnails for this sequence should be done in your sketchbook and clearly marked.

Duration, the length of the clip plus up to two seconds either side.
You can use your own audio clip but you must have it approved first by your module leader.

Song And Dance:

Your character is to accurately lip sync to the song and deliver a convincing performance in terms of facial expression, movement and acting.
All preparatory sketches and thumbnails for this sequence should be done in your sketchbook and clearly marked.

Duration, the length of the clip plus up to five seconds either side.
You can use your own song clip but you must have it approved first by your module leader.


In addition to these 3 animation tasks we are also given a presentation task were we can either present alone or in teams, breaking down an animation sequence in detail for the class.

Animation Practice 1, The final hand-ins

Even though I planned to hand in on Monday the 6th, I ended up handing in 10 minutes before the deadline today.

The hardest thing about animation is to let it go since one can think that the animation still isn't good enough.
I am pretty satisfied with the result I have now finished but of course I can still see things that needs more work and that there is still room for improvement.

Even so, it is also nice to finally put the animations to the side as working more with them right now will probably drive me nuts (working for too long on the same piece of animation isn't exactly good for the mind)

With that said I now present to you the final versions of the different tasks from Animation Practice 1:

Animation Task 1: Bouncing Balls

I haven't really done much with this animation as I think it is satisfactory. I do realize that the small ball should have a bit less hang-time in the air, but after trying doing changes to both timing and spacing, I couldn't get any better result without having to start completely over and with the deadline it simply wasn't enough time for me to do that





Animation Task 2: The Pendulum

Here I have increased the speed of the animation a bit as it was kind of "underwater" like.
I also made the pendulum start swinging to the opposite side as the base slows down to full stop.





Animation Task 3: The Ball With a Tail

For this animation I have made very small changes. What I have done is to add some extra animation to the ball's body as the camera zooms out, making the ball look more excited than he did in the previous version.






Animation Task 4: The Thief

This task was about creating a walk cycle that has a stop in it. As I have described my idea earlier I will not go more into detail about that.

I have now worked more on the animation making the bag look more heavy, I have also smoothed out the animation the best I can.

Instead of laser beams I have now changed that with jail rails that fall down from the ceiling.




Task 5: Posing and Staging

For this task I have made the following poses:

I'm free
Waiting for news
What's in there?
Dancing to impress
How am I going to do this?
I'm angry with you

Click the image for full size




Animation Task 6 and 7: The Lost Bucket

We were to choose one of the tasks but I combined them into one as I had a cool reference with a interesting scenario that I wanted to use.

I have now added more extremes and really tried my best to smooth out the animation, adding follow through and overlapping action where needed. There is still areas that definitely could use one more polish to smooth the animation even further but I'm out of time and it is about time I let go of this animation.





This now concludes Animation Practice 1
of course stay tuned to this blog as I will continue blogging here for the following modules. Next up, Animation Practice 2 :)

Climbing and Lifting Animation WIP, Splined version 2

In this version I have done changes based on the feedback from the previous version as well as started to add extreme poses for the secondary character.



It is unfortunate that I am this late with the task but I have also lost a day of production due to illness. Due to the bad weather conditions in Middlesbrough these days I do have some luck in because of the deadline being extended even further until the 8th of December.

So now I'm working as much as possible and I am aiming in on finishing my ICA for the 6th of December.