Originally, I thought about animating a quadruped to really stretch my skills. I picked my sound and completed my storyboard and animatic for the project, as well as doing plenty of research on different studios and their unique styles. I looked specifically at the DreamWorks movie “The Secret Life of Pets” as the characters have very human personalities which I wanted to capture in my animation. I also looked at ‘The Queen’s Corgi’ by studio Nwave as I find real-life corgi dogs very distinctive and thought this would be interesting to animate. The movie was able to capture the nuances of corgi movements and personality quirks which was useful.

For my animation references, I took some videos of my own small dog to give me a starting point. Then to get a better understanding of the poses I wanted to recreate, I found a list of dog references on YouTube. For example, stealing food from a table and expressive walk cycles. The video ‘Animal Gaits for Animators’ by Jamie Capsola was particularly helpful.

When I was ready to animate I did a simple test on the rig to get used to the controls and see how it moved. However, I quickly realised that my skills are not yet strong enough to animate with a quadruped. So I decided to practice and become more confident working with bipeds before I move on to quadrupeds. Still, this initial research got me thinking about body shapes and muscle movements for my animation.

For my second attempt, I decided to use the same audio but change it to a human male rig. I thought this  would be a good opportunity to be expressive with body movements and hand gestures. I also enjoyed the humour of it and wanted to explore this in my animation as comedy is one of my favourite genres. I looked at some studios closer to home this time, particularly the work of Blue Zoo. The emotive characters and expressions, particularly in their Christmas ads, are comedy-heavy. Their children’s shows are also very expressive so I looked to these for inspiration. I also considered Italic Pig’s VR game ‘The Infinite Hotel’ where the hotel manager expresses a lot of emotions through his hands. These were particularly helpful references as they are both studios I would enjoy working for.

Again I filmed references for myself for both the body movements and the lipsync. I thought this would be the most helpful for my block out as I could try to match it frame for frame initially before adding my own spin later on. I also used the original video attached to the clip to see what distinct mouth shapes would be needed for the lipsync. Another source I looked at was ‘Dextor’s Laboratory’ as although it is a 2D animation the movements of DeeDee pressing the button is a perfect action reference for my scene. There was also a range of tips and reference videos on YouTube which helped me. I found that ‘Podborski’ makes great reference videos and the animation ‘button push animation’ was particularly relevant to my project. Finally, I accessed some content from my Berkeley college course as I found this extremely helpful in getting a solid grasp on basic techniques.

Before I started my blockout, I drew myself up a fresh storyboard for the new rig, as well as a new animatic. This animatic really helped me to think about the timing of the poses, as well as how I could bring life and character into the rig.

Before I started my block out I drew up a fresh storyboard and animatic for the new rig. This helped me to think about the timing of the poses, as well as how I could bring life and character into the rig.

Once I was happy with this, I was able to use it and the videos I recorded to get me started on the blocking for my animation. I made the mistake of starting with my lipsync before doing the character’s body animations which initially made it difficult to get the expressions correct. In my first pass at the lipsync, I noticed the mouth was trying to make too many syllables and therefore didn’t look like realistic speech. My tutor was also able to give me feedback that the action was a little too late compared to the sound, so everything should be moved back a few frames to make the movements look more natural.

At first, I struggled to keep the character’s movements contained within the workspace and there was some clicking on the joints, particularly the knees. I was able to fix this by lowering the body a little on certain frames and adjusting the rest of the body to match the balance. This was the longest animation I have completed to date, but I found that once I broke the sound down into sections it was a lot easier to not get overwhelmed and I was able to work more efficiently. This also helped me towards the end when I was doing my polishing pass as it allowed to me focus solely on each section and get the subtle nuances I wanted from the character.

After my initial block-out pass of the body and poses I wanted, I focused on making sure I was happy with how each limb was moving. I then went back to the lipsync and looked at the expressions of the character. The characters at Blue Zoo show a lot of emotions in their expressions and I wanted to capture this in my animation as this brings models to life. It was at this point I realized I wasn’t completely satisfied with the lipsync so I reworked it again. I wrote out the sounds of the clip phonetically and used a chart to see which shapes would be the most expressive. I also recorded another video of myself, this time saying the words slowly to see how the mouth shapes differentiated between words.