The lip sync animation.

In class we looked over character acting, in which we were taught how we needed to convey emotion within the lip sync, to give a sense of the character we looked over different references on character acting and were told to think about what kind of personality our character has, are they reserved? Are they confident? Are they anxious?. We were also taught about how important eyes are to conveying emotion and the importance of clear silhouettes.

 

For the lip sync animation I chose a sound clip from a game I enjoy called “cookie run kingdom”. The clip uses an audio of a character called “pure vanilla cookie” speaking to another called “Shadow Milk Cookie”. I chose this because of the difference in personalities. Pure Vanilla is a kind, good natured person, a bit reserved but trying his best. He is also partially blind and thus only opens his eyes when he wants to make a point. I wanted to use this information to really be able to emphasise the emotion of the scene. Shadow Milk on the other hand is a flamboyant clown character who was once looked at as a deity before going against his old values. He is a lonely, easily angered character who hates to be wrong. I found this dialogue would be fun to animate as pure vanilla is being kind to someone who has caused so much pain, and instead of accepting Shadow Milk lashes out. I thought the emotions of the scene would be fun to try and demonstrate. I went through many drafts trying to figure out where I wanted them to be, how close to each other, in particular the line “I’m right here” .I struggled with what to do with it and the composition still bothers me. I took references not only of myself but I also enlisted the help of a friend to get ideas for the shots to get another perspective on how he should move.

 

In the first draft of trying to figure out how I want the characters to act within the audio I created little mini designs of them that were very simplistic just to get an idea of what the plan was to be and how I wanted them to move. Shadow milk floats so I drew him in before taking references of myself to get a grasp on how I want him to float as taking references of that was rather difficult. For the “I’m right here” line I actually ended up taking a reference from a clip from the movie “Sinbad” for the hair animation of him;

https://youtu.be/maZm43Bf4GI?si=auJ3IO3Eqzs_LzwI

Initially I was going to include a staff for pure vanilla but I found I could make him more animated with his hands without it so I ended up removing the staff. I spent most of the time animating pure vanillas body movement as I wanted to get that figured out before I started animating the mouth, initially I was going to draft it within procreate dreams then later move it to harmony as I was getting a new drawing tablet for christmas but due to time constraints I ended up having to abandon that idea as I simply did not have the time to move it to another system like I would have wanted.

For the lip sync I went to a video by a youtube named Shar;

https://youtu.be/94UNkUHXmR0?si=0VcHyLj_W1m0pFJ6

 She broke down the lip movements in a way that made it very easy for me to understand, additionally I kept having to pull up mirrors and look at my moth movements to try and figure out how the moth moves and for mouth movements i struggled with I would look up other animated films and shows to see how they do their lip syncs, to see if there’s a better way to convey it. Something shar did that I found very useful within my process was sketching out the key movements in the lip sync before animating it, breaking down the word. I did that for my main two sync scenes as I wanted to properly convey the emotion and breaking it down beforehand helped me figure out the head movements and dramatics I wanted to animate before jumping straight into it. Using this through trial and error I figured out the lip sync and for the most part I am rather pleased with how the movement all worked out. 

In conclusion the lip sync went not too badly, if I were to do it again I would have paid particular attention to composition and would have thoroughly studied and researched it, but I shall instead do that once submission is over in effort to make it up to my standard for a portfolio.

After the submission I plan to work further on it. I want to move it to harmony and reanimate the “I’m right here” line as I’m still not pleased with how it turned out. I think shadow milks movement is fun in that shot but I dislike Pure Vanilla’s movement, but as it was the 4th redraw of that shot I knew I had to leave it. I enjoyed the actual lip syncing process, and I didn’t have a huge amount of trouble with the mouth movements thanks to the Youtube video.

Weight lift

We looked over weight lifting in class and the examination of the different poses within the lift made me fully understand why we are practising the lift. We did a few practices in class using references given to us by the teachers as to help us understand giving characters a sense of weight. I found these little tasks fun and enjoyed trying to get the sense of weight and how people move around objects they are trying to lift. 

For the weight lift I spent some time trying to figure out what I wanted the character to lift and the sense of the character.. I struggled with whether to go comedic or if what would look appealing to the eye as I feared making it boring. The brainstorming was rather difficult and I watched many videos trying to get inspiration. Eventually I decided I wanted to animate the dc character “Jason Todd” and get his personality across. Which is that of a grumpy, strong character. I enjoyed the process of recording the video trying to act him out, although it took quite a few tries as I kept almost dropping the box. The box itself was heavy, filled with art supplies from my gcse and a level years although by the time I finished the references I had gotten rather used to lugging the box around. I did brainstorm a comedic character tripping over a heavy bag and struggling to pick it up but I ended up not going with it.

 

In the first draft of the weight lift I really focused on trying to just get the base movements, and as such I drew the character with no detail, just a being made of boxes as to see what direction it is facing and what sort of limb movements it makes. I made it with very basse barebones and had it looked over by the teacher. After adding more weight to it I moved on to cheating a quick character sheet for experimentation sake. I felt the need to practice actually creating a full thorough character design and felt that a character sheet practice would be a good opportunity.  I found it enjoyable to look through others’ designs and create my own. It was very helpful drawing the different angles before moving into the animation as I used them as reference through out to try and keep him consistent. I feel the base animation came out rather well and served as a good start to the whole animation.

For the full animation of it I worked from the bottom up, working on the legs then the torso then the arms then the hands. Unfortunately due to the time constraints I was unable to get the head fully finished, only managing about the first second of its movements. It was disappointing but submission was more important and thus I needed to move on. I managed to get the body movements for the animation at least and I felt that was the most important part of it. I feel the leg movement is the better part of the animation as it came through quite smoothly and looks quite well in my opinion. I think it may be due to having practiced it so much for the previous assignment. Or perhaps I have simply gained a better understanding of leg movements. I feel that the torso was the weakest element of the animation, and the box itself was likely due a redo. In future I think I’ll just start the animation in harmony rather than messing about in other programs.

If I were to redo the project I would have blocked out the scenes beforehand like I had done with the lip sync, I would have liked to perhaps do composition work as I feel the layout of the shot is rather dull looking. I should have planned out more of a story or something alike.

If I had more time I would have fully animated the head and moved it to harmony. I wanted to animate the jacket for a nice bit of secondary action but unfortunately time was not on my side for this assignment and my ambition, despite I shall continue working on this animation after the assignment and shall use the character design for further animation practice as I want to practice animating more and hopefully improve the speed at which I create, so in the future I will not have to leave off bits to get it completed. I had also wanted to animate books in the box, to have it be a crate of files and books but like the jacket I didn’t get to it and it shall be a continued project of mine. If I were to do this again I may have instead created a shorter reference or may have spent less time on creating a practice reference sheet.