Category: Animation Strategies

Creating a lip sync animation is the second task for this assignment. I needed to find an audio to begin the lip sync. I intended to attempt a Chinese lip sync, but I wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate choice, so I went to ask Aodhan for advice. He advised me to do my lip sync in English so that the lecturers could more easily mark it and offer feedback. I discovered a suitable soundtrack for my lip sync from the movie “Turning Red,” in which Mei Lee, the main character, introduced her family and discussed how children in many Asian families must respect their parents. The original video was about 40 more seconds which I had to cut it down around in between 10 to 11 seconds long then converted it into audio.

英语配音原版3分钟左右，适合1人 http://xhslink.com/o/fdbOZ2cFaw
复制后打开【小红书】查看笔记 

Audio:

I kind of straight started working on the lip sync animation as soon as I had the music figured out. This is my first time making a lip sync. To get started, I looked at the reference image of the mouth shapes that Aodhan provided us. He also showed us during lectures how to use the image to begin our lip sync animation, but even though I knew I was following the process and method that Aodhan used in the lecture record, I still had some trouble. I wasn’t entirely sure where to find the mouth’s key shapes and if I should have several drawings for each transition drawings between the mouth’s opening and closing. I was not pleased with the lip sync animation’s first performance, so I made a few basic experimental attempts on the mouth shapes.

mouth draft 1

mouth draft 2

I searched for additional instructions and reference images to help me create this lip sync animation because I was still having trouble after those unsuccessful tries. Most online tutorials show how to perform a lip sync animation with accurate mouth shapes and well-executed movements. I discovered another mouth chart that I might use as a guide for performing the lip sync. I was reminded by one of the tutorial films that I could record myself for reference to improve my lip sync acting and mouth shape accuracy.

To improve my accuracy with the forms, I recorded my mouth while reading the audio dialogue. I began the animation again with the lips lining the mouth shapes and the sounds afterward I added the eyes with a few basic blinks and actions.

lipsyncDraft 0

I created a simple girl character with two side ponytails as the character. I decided to have both the girl’s hands holding under the chin. When the audio reaches the line “Well,” I want it to have a brief, straightforward movement to go along with it. To help myself with the action, I took a few pictures of myself with my hands and arms moving and picked between them. I don’t want a lot of activity that will make lip syncing more challenging for me. Additionally, the original video didn’t really benefit me either because the audio in the movie is more like a background soundtrack with no action playing with the audio, and the dialogue in the audio was quite calm throughout, so I couldn’t really think of any dramatic moves that could coordinate with the audio. Lastly, I decided to have a shrugs action along with the word ‘well’. send the first draft of the lip sync animation to Aodhan for some feedback.

 

lipsyncDraft 1

The first set of feed I received was the timing of the mouth shapes looked great generally, but there are still a few small areas that I could improve. As Aodhan recommended in frame 46, I might have the “ee” sound’s mouth shape performs earlier. I returned to that drawing frame and extruded it further forward. A further suggestion was that the head in frame 210, where the shrugs are occurring, appeared a little stiff. To address this, I added a nod when the hands moved to the sides during the shrugs.

lipsyncDraft 2

The second set of feedback I got was that the character still seems a little sniffy, Aodhan suggested that I could add a bit of the movement to the chin. I wasn’t confident of the way to change so kept it as it is then cleaned up the sketch lines. 

lipsync final

Reflection

Compared to the last task, this one was far more challenging for me. I found it difficult to get the heavy weight to move naturally in the weight lift animation, as well as the poses in which the character lifts the object. I think I could make a lot of improvements for any similar project in the future. I believe that practicing more and doing more experimental work was the most important thing I could have done better for the project. The same applies with lip sync; if I worked on them more, there were still small mistakes with the mouth shape, and the body movement was still very stiff. I feel like my lip sync is not the best I could accomplish. I think I could make the weight lift more dramatic and exaggerated.

The first task for this assignment is a weight lift animation. To help me to better understand how to perform a natural and realistic weightlifting movement, I’ve found some reference videos and information that show the heavy or light weight on the object to be lifted as well as how the character’s body features respond to the weights while lifting the object. I learned from Richard Williams’ book “The Animator’s Survival Kit” that when a character is lifting a heavy object, they usually have their back straight going slightly arched forward and stick as close to the object as they can, so they have an additional part to hold it in instead of their arms and hands. The main influence over whether the object will be successfully lifted or not is the character’s back when they grip it and hoist it. Additionally, if the back is not positioned correctly, it can be easily injured. I’m considering creating an animation like the example in Richard Williams’ Animators Survival Kit, incorporating pull, drag, and squash to create an effect that is more dramatic.

I looked at a lot of examples showing how people lift big objects before starting to work on my final weightlifting video. The first one I looked at was more akin to a knowledge video about safe and proper weightlifting techniques. When lifting an enormous amount of weight, we must bend our back, waist, knees, and squad down to pick it up, according to a few principles that have significantly improved my comprehension of weightlifting. Aodhan also mentioned that while lifting a heavy object, we often bend our knees lower than the object and, if it’s below your waist or lower, place our pelvis just about level with the object.

https://youtu.be/z4epeIusue0?si=neSu9uOQyd1YCHVV

I used one of the reference videos that Aodhan provided us during the lecture, and I also found one myself, based on my final decision to have my character hoist a big, round rock. When I compared them, I noticed that they both did the same thing: they bent their bodies into a C shape and then reached as close to the rock as they could. They basically used their bodies as wrappers to wrap themselves around the rock to pick it up. To gain greater strength to raise the stone higher, they both sort of paused after taking it up, did a tiny squad down, and set the rock closer to their bodies.

he Ardblair Stones (18kg-152kg) with Andy Crawford , no tacky, 3rd attempt, all 9 stones completed

weight lifting reference…

Additionally, I discovered several 3D weightlifting references in which the individual in the video pulls and drags their arms and body a lot while attempting to lift heavy objects. I think they would be helpful to me in improving my sense of weight and making my weightlifting more dramatic.

Lift Box Animation Reference

Animation – Lifting a Heavy Weight 

 

I don’t have anything that is comparable to or as heavy as the rock, but I have some weights that I have attempted to lift to experience the feeling of pull and drag. Furthermore, I let myself to experience how my body would react as I lifted the weight off the ground in the lifting of rocks posture.

 

I started to work on my weight lift animation with the various blocking poses referencing the video that I discovered online. I begin to incorporate in-between movements to make the character move smoothly and the action seem more natural once I believe that I’ve created enough key poses. Then play round with different timing of the frames. After that, I forward it to Aodhan for feedback.

 

The first set of feedback I received from Aodhan was that while my animation started out good, I could experiment more with the timing of specific actions to break up the pacing because the frames were too evenly spaced out, which kind of made the character’s movement appear slower and less natural. I shortened the time frame between movements and extruded the length of the key action to solve the problem. I added an additional frame where the figure stretched higher to break up the similarities between the tug actions in frame 40 and the action in front of it, as suggested by Aodhan. Aodhan mentioned that the fall from frame 85 was too slow due to the length of time between movements. He advised that I remove a few drawings, which I did to address the issue. I also adjusted the pace slightly for the several frames in which the character is falling to the ground. Aodhan’s final suggestion for the first section was that there isn’t a realistic sense of impact from Frame 95, where the character doesn’t feel the weight of the rock falling on top of him. He recommended that I give the character more squashes and make the arms and legs swing up and down as the character falls. To correct this, a few drawing frames were removed, and the character’s arms and legs swung higher as they fell to the ground rather than bending and taking in.

Aodhan’s second set of feedback on my weight lift animation was that, although the timing of the fall appeared better, I may have made a mistake by removing a pose that had strong anticipation, which I should add back into the animation. He advised that I delay the drop of the legs and arms instead of having them fall at the same time as the head. The landing of the fall also looked better, but I could have some more experimental timing variations with the legs and arms to provide more sense of appeal.

Final:

For the previous three cycles, I did 3D, but for the last one for the run and jump, I decided to do 2D because I want to try completing a cycle in 2D alongside seeing what my skills and capabilities are when it comes to creating 2D movement cycles. I begin the run and jump cycle using Richard William’s example as a guide, sketching out each contact, down, passing, and up pose.

 

I received feedback from Aodhan; he suggested that for the run and jump, he wants us to attempt to create our own run and jump rather than imitating Richard William’s reference. I had an idea to use a volleyball spike to create an anime called ‘Haikyu,’ which I like. Before I began, I asked Aodhan if I could run and jump, reaching for an object rather than jumping over an obstacle, as he had said before. So, I tried at the run-and-jump spike.

 

During the process, I was unable to find a reference video or image that included the run, jump, spike of the ball in the air, and return to the run, so I had to use bits and pieces from several reference pictures and videos and combine them to create my run and jump spike.

 

 

 

Reference videos:

 

 

First draft of run and jump spike:

Aodhan gave me some comments on the first draft of the spike, which included extra in-between movements to enhance the anticipation rather than having the second pose hold for three frames. Also, at frame 15, the right arm that is in the air should bounce back after the spike to add a sense of realism.

After arranging the first section of feedback and tidying up the lines, I began working on adding additional distinguishing characteristics to the stickman to evoke more depth to the run and jump spike.

While experimenting with the expression and adding some secondary components, I received some further feedback from Aodhan, who advised that I include more in-between poses from frames 18 to 19, 23 to 24, and 24 to 25. He also advised that the design doesn’t have to be super detailed.

 

 

Final

 

Following the walk cycle, I began my walk in the personality cycle, which I at first thought was a thief walk. I did a couple of research images on it and tried to recreate the poses in the image while walking sneakily.

This is an example from Richard William’s Animation Survival Kit book:

Other image examples:

 

 

Allowing myself to properly understand how various body characteristics were placed and positioned. Also, the weight of our body that’s given the pressures when we walked gently in certain poses with weight on our feet—it was as if we were thieves trying to sneak in and escape.

I was delighted that, out of several personalities’ walk examples, Rachel was able to contribute a set of tutorials on how she completed a sneak walk cycle, which significantly helped me in getting the walk started. Instead of following the tutorial exactly frame by frame, I tried to do some bits and sections myself, skipping through the videos and focusing on Rachel’s walk outcome. Trying to keyframe the Rain rig just by looking at the rough position of the contact, up passing, and down poses in Rachel’s sneak walk cycle.

Reference image used as a guide:

For this task, I concentrated more on the 3D side because it took longer to complete than a normal walk cycle. I received some feedback after completing the sneak walk cycle, and the points made started with correcting the mistake of having a nice slight arch movement of the waist and hips but not having the same type of movement happening in the second half of the cycle, so to solve this problem, I copied and pasted the keyframe of the hips from the first half to the second half. Another couple of issues were that in some keyframes, the feet were too straight, pointing down, which stretched the legs little, so I rotated the ankle upward and raised the feet a bit as well. She also remarked that the hips were very static and that to reduce the stiffness, I needed to incorporate more up and down movements into the hips. Finally, Rachel suggested that I add some expressions to finish up, so I experimented with facial controllers. I adjusted the brows and mouth downwards to indicate that the character is feeling nervous.

Sync Sketch Link that Rachel used to give feedback: Rain Rig – Sneak Cycle Sideview -> Sneak Cycle Side

After I updated the first section of the feedback, Rachel reviewed my sneak walk in my Blender file, in which she noticed some unnecessary movements were the feet sliding side to side and some of them sliding forward as well. We discovered that I had keyframes on the Z and X axes that should not have been moving. To resolve this issue, I went through all the foot’s keyframes and set most of the Z-axis and X-axis locations to the same distance, preventing the feet from sliding.

 

 

Rachel also advised me that when you are walking light on your feet, you won’t want to make any loud sounds, so you will tend to land and walk on the tips of your toes. So, I went to some of the keyframes that I’ve made where the feet landed flat on the ground and rotated the ankles, lifting them more off the ground. I think this advice has added more personality to my sneak walk.

 

Final

 

 

In week one of our second year, we began with a lecture that briefly explained our objectives and assignments, specifically what would happen and what was required to be completed. Getting ready to begin work involves downloading files and software. During the morning session, our lecturer Alec demonstrated several controls in the Rain rig by adjusting the body and adding weights to the legs while carrying out the walk cycle. In the afternoon session, Aodhan introduced us to new software called Toon Boom, which I tried out. It did not differ too much compared to Krita, but there were some little differences that I just needed to get used to using. We will continue to work on both 2D and 3D together during the first semester. We had to finish a walk cycle, a run cycle, a run and jump, and a walking-in-personality cycle for the first assignment.

In week two, the lecturer continued to demonstrate and lead us through the walk cycle, and I began attempting the 3D walk cycle by following Rachel’s tutorials and the 2D walk cycle by following Aodhan’s Krita tutorials. Following the 2D and 3D videos, I compared my knowledge of how I comprehend doing each walk cycle, and I discovered that doing the 2D is much more straightforward for me than doing the 3D, but I believe this could be since I am still developing my skills of using 3D software. I was also more interested in 3D, even though I found doing 3D more difficult than 2D; therefore, I decided to challenge myself to start with a 3D walk cycle for my assignment.

The references images:

 

Here’s my attempt at the 2D walk cycle:

The draft version, which still needs a lot of tidying up on the lines, further drag and pull movements for the hands, arms, and feet must be done.

We were given instructions to create a secondary part and rotate it to the character’s head. I also completed this section by following Aodhan’s tutorials. After tidying up the lines and adding the secondary element and rotation, Aodhan suggested that I experiment with changing the speeds in between frames.

The 3D walk cycle process with the keyframes spaced out in fives:

 

Since I followed the tutorial step by step, I still got stuck on the pull and drag of the hair and had to reset its keyframe a couple of times, and Rachel helped me in smoothing out the hair movement.

 

 

 

After I finished the walk cycle, Rachel gave me some input on how I might extend the front foot in the contact pose of frames 15 and 30 a little more to straighten the legs slightly more, as well as play around with bringing the hips up a little more.

 

 

Final