PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
For my personal development project it took me quite a while of deliberating and choosing between multiple different clips and audios I wanted to animate, but ultimately I decided on audio taken from a scene in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
I like the fact I chose this audio because even with the scene playing back, very little happens in it so there’s no way I could be influenced to basically just copy what happens in it, so it gives me the opportunity to practice acting and movement in my attempt.
For my animation, I decided to go with animating one of my original characters Zephyr, who’s an alien, because I feel like their aesthetic and general look would fit the audio I chose most, I was also excited to use them because their antennae would be very good practice in secondary animation for me.
I wanted to use my own art style based off my previous art of them for the animation as well. I researched possible art styles I could’ve taken inspiration from – like the obvious She-Ra, but I decided against it in favour of practising my 2D animation with more frames. In the long run this was more of a hindrance because the amount of frames I gave it meant it was hard to get the animation done on the time I had, but the final animation is very good for my skill level, so I can’t say I regret it.
Before I started, I needed to do some research into lip syncing, as I’d never animated it before and didn’t really know how to draw out the specific phonetics in speech to make it look natural. I found some lip sync guides to help me with this problem before it came up – and it was such a helpful tool to have in front of me when it came to animating the dialogue.
I used my own reference of movement for this animation to give me a guide, and I started my animation with a rough storyboard/motion approach, animating rough motion from my reference just to block things out before I started.
As I added more frames to the sketch I started to block out the lip sync and the secondary animation of the antennae and the hair, I had to figure out how their antennas would move as they moved and leant forward. I tweak this and work on it the further I get into the process.
By the time I had the final sketch done. There is one obvious sort of change – when Zephyr is saying “Hold on,” in the reference video and initial blocking I had their hands up, but when it got to the final rough sketch the hands weren’t there. I was worried the motion would be too fast in the final animation to give the intended effect of a pause to add tension, and come across instead as them just raising their hands for no reason. In the end, I just didn’t think it made too much sense to keep it in, especially with the motion I had in it already.
Then I went and lined and coloured the animation.
By the final outcome, there were some issues, but overall I was very proud of what I’d made!
There’s issues with the movement in the hands as they’re lifted and clenched, but I think that’s more an issue of me not really placing the arcs of the hands or maybe adding enough frames, or possibly just not really knowing how to add the in betweens for the motions in the hands, trying to figure out how to rotate the fist was very difficult for me – I think this is just a case of me needing to practice hands more. But the hand motions at the start and as they lean forward I like, I think I added a very nice arc when they lean forward excitedly. The shoulders are a little too bouncy at times, but I think most of the time they’re fine and convey exactly what movement is taking place.
I think I did a very good job at the lip sync, I think it’s pretty much on time and conveys a lot of the emotion. I also think it stayed consistent because I made a conscious effort to pay attention to the anatomy of the mouth and try to stick to the rule that the teeth don’t move. I also am very proud of the secondary animation of the antennas, I think they add a lot more personality and far less stiffness in the animation.
To add the final touches, I created a simple background and blurred it to take interest away from it and to my character, and did some colour correction.
If I had a chance to redo aspects of this, it would be to add more frames and better transitions and arcs to the hands at times, as well as tweak the shoulders at points. Overall though, I’m quite proud of what I’ve made. This was my first attempt at a lip sync animation and I think that turned out very well! I also tried to stay consistently on model and try to avoid as much warping of the proportions as possible and I think I did a good job at that as well. I also think the movement and acting in the animation was believable.
Overall though, I’m very happy with it!
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