For week 9, just before the easter beak we had moved onto Facial animation and lip syncing for this class. Our lecturer Alex had gotten covid so we were covered by Henry for the morning session. Alec left us videos and files on blackboard to follow to try and lip sync the Azui rig with audio.

For the group project with models sculpted and textures sent into the OneDrive. We had a group meeting involving animations that would be out within the game and who would do what before the Monday we come back after the Easter break. I got the one where the others pick one which involved their own models. Since I was busy with other work for the other two assignments I got the one which involved the boss standing up from his chair which I was ok with. For Jasmine had sculpted the characters and Alex with rigged them I was able to animate the boss character this Easter. 

For references I found a couple on YouTube to help me with the boss character standing up and how I would first start and finish it. Instead of being the legs and bottom moving, it would be the strength of the arms pushing him up and the feet moving slightly back. With the head looking down then up to show how we actually stand up. I knew what I needed to do and got Jasmine’s character and stated animating. The textures would be added onto 

For my assignment 2 from pervious weeks and during the easter week, I had started drawing concept art, picking my 11 second audio and plan out the storyboard for my 11 second animation assignment for April. It was difficult to choose one audio from Alec’s recommend website as I didn’t get the feel from them but instead went to other things that interested me from movies and music videos I enjoyed and choose an audio I like and imagine the scene to go along with. 

I was able to draw concept art for my two characters whom would be talking within the scene and what is happening with body movement, facial expressions and timing. During this time I was collecting references for the body movements and facial expressions so I may have some support for my 2D animation. 

Here is my storyboard and concept art of characters which then were brought into krita for colour scheme selection.

Art style Inspiration – dot/bead eyes

When I was creating my characters I was thinking about art style and how they would look. For the eyes I thought of putting a childlike appearance seeing it’s a common trope within cartoons and comics/drawings to have dot eyes or quite known as beady eyes like what dollies have. As well as their appearance to be child friendly like toys you would see at child store along with toy cars or on any cartoon you would see for children 3+.

So then I decided to make the characters appear doll like but human as close as possible to match the movement of animation from the references. 

Animatic version 1 

Balancing both I’m still in the process of my 11 second animation which I hope to finish before submission.