Final Hand-Ins and Conclusion

Finally, I have handed in my 3 animations for this module:








It has been a great module and I have learned a lot. In this module I have really gotten to explore how it is to animate the face of the character as early as at the blocking stage and it has proven to be extremely beneficial as it has helped me to put myself into the same emotion as the character I am animating. It helps me to avoid over-animating things as well which is another field I have gotten to explore in this module. Doing extremely subtle movements so the character doesn't look too floaty.

Doing lip sync before the block on 11 second club was also a very interesting experiment. It does actually work quite well but I guess doing it afterwards wouldn't be too much of a problem either though. What I do think was nice is to get the lip sync over and done with at an early stage. The fact that the characters aren't moving either is good as well. I know that of course if the characters are moving, doing lip sync shouldn't be any problem because we can constrain a camera to the character's face for the lip sync. But based on the previous module, even doing that after the character is animated can give one some challenges as I experienced things obscuring the camera.

The dance that I did in AP2 is a perfect example of this as the two characters kept on obscuring each others face cams and it made the lip sync a longer process than it had to be because I had to do it in the perspective view.


When it comes to the animations I've done for this module, I am satisfied with what I've managed to deliver.

I didn't add the extra animation to the mime for him to better define the wall though. The reason for this is simply, I didn't have enough time for it. I decided it is better to leave it out than to try and put that animation in there and it would look half finished in the middle of the sequence. In simple words, quality instead of quantity.

The staircase would benefit from one more pass, refining and smoothing out the movements.
The 11 second I would do over again if I could to give it even better flow.

All of the 3 animations could have been done better but I guess that's the curse of being an animator, one just can't let the animations go and they're never good enough.

Even though they all could be better, I am also glad to let them go now as I have been working around the clock for the last 1-2 weeks and I'm pretty burnt out now and I need something new to work on (after 1-2 days of rest).

This concludes Acting for Animation.