Reflection

For this assignment we looked at animating body mechanics and lip syncing using both Blender and Toon Boom.

I found the object constraint exercises on Blender easy to understand, for one of the exercises I had to animate a sphere being thrown up and caught. I added a bit of squash and stretch to create the appearance of momentum. When animating the Snow rig to lift a weight, the hands would move into the ball. I also noticed the elbow would lock up and the knees would glitch into the arms, I tried to fix this by widening the stance and moving the ball further away from the body but it didn’t change much. I animated the head slowly bobbing up like Alex advised and it shows more tension for the character lifting. The computer I was animating this on was glitching towards the end and Blender was slower to animate on so the movement is too fast.

In the last coursework reflection I said wanted to experiment more with Toon Boom. For this assignment I used Toon Boom more than Blender when animating, when I first used it I found it difficult and hard to work on but over the last few weeks I actually started to enjoy using the programme. My computer would not let me render out my animations so I had to record them on my phone then convert the .mov to .mp4 on Blender’s video editing so the animations may be hard to watch. I found Krita to be simpler than ToonBoom and easier to use but I’ve come to appreciate ToonBoom. I found sketching to be difficult as the lines came out wonky so when I was animating the mouths I used the polymorph tool to make it look cleaner and easier to read.

Using ToonBoom I animated a head turn, I made the turn rather dramatic instead of a simple 180* stationary turn. It was fun to make but I should have kept it simple. For the head turn we were to meant to animate a head in a certain style, I feel I stayed loyal to the character’s design but I may have made the jawline too big on the first and last frames. I added a blink animation as well which I found difficult at first, I made the two lids shut too quickly at first but looking at Aodhan’s head turn I quickly fixed the eyes and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

I had a lot of fun animating the jump cycle on Toon Boom. I used a video from @endlessreferences on YouTube as a close reference and tried to incorporate other jump cycle videos into my animation. I feel I’ve followed the poses too closely and when you look at the frames individually there was not much fluidity. I tried to elongate some of the key frames to create more fluid motion but I feel the poses weren’t exaggerated enough. I should have added more frames for the character’s run up to make the jump look more powerful. I would add more spring in the heels and bend the/straighten the legs more for exaggeration. For my jump animation on Blender I followed the jump cycle reference sheet closely as well as a video from @James Brent on YouTube. I’m not happy with how it turned out as it looks artificial. I needed to focus on animating the other body parts for more fluid animation.

When Lip Syncing I used Toon Boom again, I first animated a mouth saying “I smell human”, using one of the audio exercise files provided. I like how it turned out, rather than following the style in the phenome reference sheet exactly I changed the style to reflect the character’s voice. I think the L phenome was delayed a bit in the animation, I added a frame of the tongue moving into position as the dialogue’s pacing is slow and the tongue just randomly appeared behind the teeth. I think I should have put more emphasis on the ‘M’ Phenome when the character says “smell” as there’s more concentration on the “ell”. I liked how the “human” segment turned out, especially on the ‘U’ phenome as it felt pronounced.

For my lip sync animation I found a clip from the animated TV series SONIC BOOM, which i found hilarious. I extracted the audio from the video on blender and imported it into Toon Boom. For the characters I wanted to use my avatar and a friend’s avatar from our current Dungeons and Dragons campaign – Mr Meowscles and Sylvie, as I felt the audio fitted both characters’ personality. I made the mistake of drawing the characters in detail first before animating so the movement is very very blocky, I wanted to focus more on the lip syncing. If I had more time I would animate the character’s shrugging more and turning to face each other as well as animating the rest of the face. I really enjoyed lip syncing the characters to the audio, I drew out the phenomes for Mr Meowscles before and took inspiration from the phenomes on Rocky Rickaby’s character sheet from Lackadaisy’s (YouTube Animated Pilot). After drawing them out I simply copied and pasted the phenomes into place, making necessary adjustments so the mouth would move more organically. I’m really proud of the “Only if you let it be” part of the dialogue, I feel it looks natural and is synced up well to the audio. Sylvie’s dialogue “Knuckles that’s prison was well done I think, I didn’t plan out the phenomes like I did for Meowscles as her dialogue required very little phenomes.

I wish I recorded myself acting out the poses, I tried to record myself jumping as a reference but the angles never looked right and when I’d ask someone to record they moved the camera around. I did use more online references however and tried to incorporate them into my work. I enjoyed the lip syncing the most during his coursework, although it felt tedious at times watching the final lip sync feels very rewarding. I think I did well on Toon Boom, I didn’t animate with it last term so I did struggle initially but I think I’ll continue to use it after this assignment.