In the morning class we discussed facial animations and lip sync animation. When it comes to animating faces it is best to block out the expressions and then fine tune them to match the audio clip. A good rule of thumb is to make the shapes of the mouth come 2 frames before the audio so the audio sync as our brains register picture before audio. It is also good practice to animate the body movements before the face as the head may turn away from the camera. Alec also showed us how to use Studio Library, this allows the animator to pose the face, the system will log the pose, this allows the animator to quickly add common facial expressions without having to constantly repose the rig while a character is talking.
Pixel Works – FearFall Game
For the game project I talked with my team over the week and discussed what everyone would do for the next weeks presentation, I was tasked with creating some designs for the spider that will be the boss at the end of the game. I started with shape, I wanted her to look threating and scary so I mainly used sharp angles.
I got some feedback from my group and they liked the first, third and fifth design best so I used elements from all the designs to make the final shape of the spider.
Ones the shape was sorted I then set out to add more to her design as she looked quite plain, the idea of adding elements of the environment was suggested so I used that idea to make the first and third design. I also played with the idea of melted candles on her back but it did not quite fit what the team wanted.
The team really liked the idea of the spider with her eggs webbed to her back, this would also explain why there were smaller spiders in the previous levels. Finally I designed some colour pallets based on real spiders and the favorites were the black widow and the yellow garden spider.
