Weight Lift:

Lip Sync:

 

 

 

For this assignment we were tasked to create two different animations. One focusing on the body mechanics of a character lifting a weight and the other was to choose a short voice clip and create a character in lip sync to this.

Lip Sync

This was my first time attempting to animate a lip sync and I struggled a lot more than I thought I would. The actual movement of the mouth wasn’t the issue, it was pairing the expressions alongside them that became a challenge. I still do not have access to a screen graphics tablet at home so instead of using ToonBoom I used a software on my iPad called Toonsquid which I found to operate very similar to ToonBoom.

I looked at several different voice clips and originally decided on an Ozzy Osbourne clip, but when sketching out the block out I decided I didn’t feel like I was enjoying it so I had a look at other options. It was actually when I was watching King of the Hill, there was a scene with Hank Hill and Penny and after hearing it, I decided this was what I wanted to do. I looked at several mock sketches for character design and unfortunately hit a massive art block during this time and really started to struggle. I decided to go with something cute and simple as to not overload myself with too much detail.

I went onto ToonSquid and loaded in the voice clip and began to look at the mouth first.

I went through the sound clip and wrote down phonetics I could hear and this then allowed me to draw the mouth around the sounds a lot easier.

Below are some of the references I looked at to help:

 

Once I had the rough mouth shapes I then proceeded to draw out the characters and place this into a rough position and then use it as a guide to draw their mouths.

When the mouths where done, it was a still of the character with a moving mouth, so I began looking into adding expression and movement to give the characters more personality.

 

First stage:

This was the rough sketch of the character with the original mouth movements placed on top. This gave me a base to work from and develop further.

Second Stage:

For this stage I looked at the cheek movements and I also looked at the perspective movement of the paper he is holding when it moves down.

Third Stage:

For the next stage I looked at the head movements as this would be my foundation for working with the facial expressions in the final part.

 

I did use a video reference of myself but would prefer not to attach it! This was really helpful in getting the eyebrow expression and head movements used for Hank. However, I ran out of time with Peggy and feel like I didn’t get to focus on her movements as much but got a basic rough movement done. If I had of had more time I would have liked to look more at her head movements and her body, as I roughed out the head but drew in the body last minute so it is just stationary and does look out of place.

Final Animation:

For the final stage I looked at adding in Hanks expressions and then adding in Peggy at the end. I also tried to look at the characters ears and how they would react to the movement of the head. Unfortunately once I was done with the first character and moving onto Peggy’s voice clip I was coming very close to the deadline and I feel like her character is a lot more rigid that Hanks. I did the best I could with the time I had but I am definitely not happy with the final outcome for her. I tried to get her to shake her head but I framed it too quickly and it looks very awkward and as if there is a sudden jolt, so if I had of had the time I definitely would have fixed this and made sure that it was a softer and better keyframed head turn.

 

 

Weight Lift:

I was slightly more confident with the weight lifting animation due to the more specific reference I was able to resource. I’ve put a few examples of references below:

I had a lot of fun experimenting with different weights and different styles. I initially had the idea of a robot trying to lift a box and it being so heavy his arms pop off, I did a rough block out to test this, however, I found it to be too boxy in style for me and I knew I would struggle to keep proportions accurate so therefore looked into other options.

I used some of the references I sourced and looked at a weight lifting bar and made a quick animation of that to see how well it worked.

 

While looking through reference videos on Youtube there was a partical one caught my eye and gave me an idea for an animation. It was Atlas stone competitions, and due to the cold weather and snow… I had the idea of making a snowman and lifting the head like an atlas stone onto the snowmans body.

I began by drawing a rough stick man to get the body poses done correctly. This gave me a really strong base to work off.

 

 

I had a bit of time to work on this so decided to add more to the end and thought it would work well to have the ball of snow roll off the body and become destroyed on the ground so I added this into my rough stick man sketch.

Once I was happy with the fluidity of movement on the stick figure I started to bulk out the limbs and body frame to give the character a smoother look within the animation. Due to the overlap of certain items, I decided to add a bit of white colour to the snowman so that the animation just looked better as a whole.

 

Final Animation:

I am happy with how this animation turned out however there are some small flawed issues I have noticed after reviewing the animation that if I had time I would go back and fix. I do think they are minor enough as to not overly effect the quality of it but the proportions of some limbs are off in certain frames and when he stands with his hands on hips the stance has a tilt rather than being in an upright position.

 

 

Reflection:

I enjoyed this assignment and don’t feel I struggled as much as I thought I would with it. Unfortunately with the other module hand in just before Christmas and then having the busy Christmas period, I didn’t get to put as much time into this as I would have liked to. I do feel I had to rush it a lot and it shows, especially in my lip sync where I didn’t get the time to put into Peggy’s expressions and movements the same way I did with Hanks. Researching for the weight lift was definitely a lot easier and there was a tonne more resources that I found useful than the lip sync. The lip sync references are all very similar and hard to put into practice which is why I used my own video referencing to look at and that helped me a lot more than anything else did! I recorded a couple of different videos with slight changes to each in body movement and expression and ended up using a mix of two and stitched them together to get Hanks finished movements.

The weight lifting was a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable and having the free reign to decide HOW the character interacted with the weight added some fun into the research! I love watching the Strong men competitions and that’s how I ended up finding the movement I wanted but adding the twist to it with the character building a snowman. Again though, I didn’t get the time to polish it as it was the first animation I looked at and completed and due to the lip sync taking up so much of my time… I didn’t get to go back and refine it down. I would have liked to look at adding a stylised character design into the animation – and have a rough concept drawn out on a frame – but I knew it would be time consuming to repeatedly draw this out and I just wouldn’t get it finished!

I have learnt a lot during this module but still have so much to learn too! I’ve enjoyed my first attempt at lip sync but feel like I did it kind of arse-about-face so will have to look at a lot more tutorial videos and make my life a little easier with any future lip sync projects. In hindsight, I tried to make my life easier.. but it ended up making it more complex and complicated!  I got Toonsquid to complete this project and as it is so similar to ToonBoom it actually made it a smoother process as I was able to navigate the software quite easily. I do wish I was able to use ToonBoom more (I dabble in it but due to the lack of screen graphics tablet at home it makes it very difficult for accuracy and neatness). It will be my next investment to get one so I will thankfully be able to use ToonBoom properly! My weight lift was just completed in Procreate as its the software I used most. I know that the animation feature is basic but it is enough to allow the basic movement animations. Although, after using Toonsquid I may start using it more for any of my animations as it is a really lovely software to use and its handy on the iPad for when I’m out and about.

In conclusion – I am happy-ish with the final animations. Another week and I would have definitely been a lot happier but it is what it is! I know were the weaknesses are in the animations and I can now progress into future projects knowing I need to schedule my time better so that I can finish everything to a higher standard.