When starting to think about what I would do for this assignment, I wanted to get some practice animation in regarding lip syncing. So I used some audio snippets from Minecraft youtuber Impulse SV. And created a 2D stylised animation video using it. This whole video was fully animated and finished, but unfortunately I lost the parts of the animation in which the video goes blank. Due to a hard drive failure issue.
Practice 2D Animation: (Unfinished)
Source Impulse SV – Hermit craft – Season 9: Episode 1
After finishing this animation I started to look into audio to use for my 3D final 12 second animation. I eventually came across this audio.
Audio Used for Final Animation:
Source: The Last of Us – Left Behind DLC
After filming a quick rough reference to use:
I then began blocking out the animation.
I wanted to try replicating Turning Reds more jumpy, pose to pose based animation style:
https://youtu.be/PGFToOp1Fkc
With a mixture of Frozens more traditional smooth Disney animation to complement the Waitress Rigs similar design:
With this in mind I further blocked out the scenes timings.
I then splined the rough blocking and turned off stepped preview, which resulted in a weird glitch
Once this was fixed here was the result
I then did more work on refining the timings considering the new pacing, further emphasising the pauses/quick movements and overall just improving the animation.
After this I then added rough lighting to the scene as a guide
After this, I then got feedback from Alec. Who brought to light many super helpful adjustments I could make, such as posing issues and lip sync timings which I adjusted and fixed accordingly.
I then continued animating, adding small nuances to the eyes, expressions, facial timings and fixing the hand movements. I then readjusted the scenes background and lighting. Adding a green and red light which was timed to accompany the animations storytelling. I then converted the rigs textures to Lambert and negotiated around constant computer crashes during rendering. Resulting in this final animation.
Final Outcome
I cant wait to take what I have learned throughout this animation process and apply it to my future 3D animations. As I definitely feel this exercise has made me more competent as an animator, while also highlighting what I can improve upon.
Conclusion:
Although I am really proud of the outcome for this assignment. I don’t really see this as my final take on this animation, I still see things that can be improved upon which I unfortunately didn’t have time to fix before rendering. Such as the readability of the hand accidently pressing the button. Or the facial and body movement timings for the final few lines. These are ultimately very small tweaks however. I am really really happy and proud of this animation. Overall this assignment has given me more insight into not only the differences between 2D and 3D lip sync animation. But also the challenges you can face with the 3D animation work flow.