Introduction to the assignment
For my animation, I really wanted to try my hand more at biped animation. As I have been focused on practising quadruped animation lately, I haven’t had an opportunity to work on human animation in quite a while, and I feel that this assignment could give me a great refresher on the subject. Moreover, my goal for this task is to include a professional level of lip-syncing and a fluid level of character action, portraying emotions through body language and expression.
Audio sourcing and inspirations for the animation
The audio that I will be using is sourced from the series, Arcane, which is a series that has been a huge inspiration for my work lately. I further wish to recreate the scene in which the sound is sourced and to animate how I would’ve if the characters’ full bodies were shown in the scene. In order to do this, I will have to make the animation believable and somewhat have it resemble the same kind of style of animation that Fortiche used for Arcane, which means conducting visual research and a lot of references- both first and second hand. Below, I have begun documenting this process.
The audio I will be referencing in my animation
This is probably my favourite scene in the whole series. I find it to be really emotional as the two sisters reunite, but years of trauma have severely impacted Jinx’s judgement, and it’s portrayed heavily here. Overall, the voice acting, music, and visuals make it more effective and I wish to create this scene from my own perspective of the sound. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do the whole three minutes of sound, so I’ll be sourcing the first twelve seconds of audio at the start.
With my version of the animation, I decided that I would also involve the use of the gun asset. To get a rough idea of what I wanted to go for, I looked at sources like Overwatch and Apex Legends as these two games rely heavily on gun animations and very dynamic pacing. Although my aims specifically aren’t to have extremely dynamic animation, I was curious about how other studios portray gun animations and how they convey weight and body movement in this process. Ultimately, I found looking into these two video games really helpful, and they have given me a better idea of how I’ll get Jinx to hold the gun during my animation.
Below are the animation highlights I looked at
With Overwatch, I really liked the animations of Ana and Ashe. Although they both wield different guns, it gives me a good sense of how the body would move in response to the weight and anticipation of holding the gun.
With Apex legends, I really liked Wraith’s character animation and how she prepares to attack. This pose is really effective and well-paced, though a bit too dynamic for what I’ll be wanting to animate. I feel as though Bloodhound’s character animation will be a bit more like what I’ll create, but it does lack the extra addition of Jinx’s quirks and personality- so this is something that I will portray in my own. I will use these references as the main source of influence and an expectation of the quality I should aim for.
Planning the Animation
After doing research and copious amounts of ideas, I sketched down the actions that I wanted to animate in storyboard form- this is shown below. The movements that I have in my head are a lot faster and more fluid, therefore the storyboard doesn’t quite achieve this as well. In turn, it lines out the most important actions that will help me ultimately remember the order. Overall, I quite like this use of the storyboard. I feel as though I captured a good sense of Jinx’s behaviours here, and I am really eager to get started blocking out my actual animation.
Acting out the Jinx animation storyboard
Here, I decided to act out the poses that I sketched out for my storyboard planning. I really like how this turned out, and I feel as though this will help a ton whenever I start blocking out my animation in Maya. Acting out these actions has made me understand the weight of the body when carrying out these poses, as well as how the gun would be held and pointed. By acting it out myself, it has given me a higher level of understanding of the movement and pacing I will need to consider for this animation.
Other references of Movement, weight and pacing
In addition to acting out the actions of the animation, I also looked into second-hand videos and references. Below are some videos and book pages that I looked at during this process.
Video References
As there is a section in my animation where Jinx will need to have a walk animation, I thought it would be rather beneficial to go back and watch the video above. This video is one that I personally find really helpful in my studies, and it allows me to understand how every joint will move in the process of a bipedal walk. I will further use this whenever I block out the walking sections of my animation.
I thought it would also be helpful to look into a walk sequence under an Xray. This is something I haven’t seen before until coming across it on YouTube. I found it especially interesting to see how each joint moves underneath the skin. Ultimately, a really great reference and will be beneficial to my studies.
Book Extracts: Richard Williams- The Animator’s Survival Guide
I decided to go back to The Animator’s Survival Guide for advice on my animation. Some of the things I have worried about are the movement, expressions and the anticipation of them both. I sought out some relevant pages in the book and immediately began reading for information. Ultimately, a really great book to understand the main, key principles of animation- highly recommended.
Page 109- Set the Tempo: Really good reading about the movement and rhythm of a walk. The visuals make it even more helpful, as well as variations of the tempo.
Page 266- Anticipation of movements: Great examples of anticipation, very similar movement to what I’ll be doing for Jinx’s gun pull, which gives me a better understanding of how I should approach the anticipation for this given moment. Doing this will help me convey the weight of the action, making it more realistic.
Page 320- Expression Anticipation: As I will be including lip sync and expressions in an animation that takes place during an emotional scene, I will need to have some priority for the facial expressions. Overall, this is amazing advice on how to approach this, and I will further incorporate my understandings learnt from this page and prepare to add in anticipation for my facial expressions.
The Animation- Progress and Finalisation
Here are some clips showing the progress of the jinx animation. It starts with my initial blocking animation, and then further progresses to the final animation. This progress shows my thought process throughout this journey and it’s evident that many studies (and hours) were put into this animation. Furthermore, after I had finished the main movements such as the walk cycle, arm and hand motions and the head movement, I then worked on the hair, then finally the lip sync. More self-analysis will be described below along with the videos.
Model and Rig by Iona Dolidze at ArtStation – Maya Rig – Arcane Jinx (Non-Commercial) | Game Assets
The initial block out of movement and pacing is a work in progress here.
Block out is finished, but pacing and timing still need a lot of work
Main body movements completed, working on the hair animation block out.
The process of adding Lip-Sync
Below are some videos documenting the stages of the lip sync that was soon finished and polished. This was relatively easier than I expected, and honestly, I’m quite happy with how the final lip sync turned out. I’m sure there are probably areas I could’ve worked on, but for the most part, this was my first time trying out lip-sync animation and I feel as though I did exceptionally well.
A reference that helped to understand Lip-Sync and mouth shapes
And alas, the final animation…
Alt link to the playblast: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-fugVzW8zI_yebEKels8l-zrf9eewuw4?usp=sharing
Ultimately, I’m really proud of the results of this animation. It is quite fluid, well-timed and has a decent sense of anticipation. I feel as though I did an excellent job with the body language and facial expressions, further conveying the emotions of the scene – which is something that definitely wasn’t easy but clearly has been a huge benefit to my skill set. During the process of this animation, there were many things that I found difficult to do. One of the main examples would have been the hair animation. This is something that took me a lot of trial and error as the controls for it was difficult to work with and sometimes they didn’t animate well, despite my placement. I finally got them sorted and I am very much satisfied with the outcome. If I were to redo this animation, I would give myself more time to reconsider the timing of the hair as it starts off quite realistic and then slows down. This isn’t something incredibly drastic, and at first, isn’t all that noticeable, however, it is an area of improvement.