Intro to dialogue

This is my first dialogue shot! Started working on it in the end of class 4 and ended it in the first few weeks of class 5. Lots of work and it can be improved still :-)

It's a big step moving to a scene where there are facial expressions and lip synch! So this will be a simple introduction to animating a dialogue.

1. Body pass

To begin with, as usual...reference! I made the reference for the body movements first and animated that (going through blocking, first pass, etc). I played with eye movements and blinks at this point a little, just so the face doesn't look too stiff. Also had a bit of jaw rotations going on too, but just very simple mouth movements. This is how it looked when this body pass was over:

2. Animating the face

To start doing the facial animation, I did another reference video so I could see the expressions clearly and also the mouth shapes. This one was done sitting still in front of the camera. I did check the other reference every now and then too: although I did it mostly for body reference, there are some facial expressions there that make sense, besides, it's still helpful if I want to improve the body, etc...

Using the reference and the sound file I planned the mouth shapes (visemes). First it's necessary to write down the line that will be said but the way it sounds. Each sound is called a phoneme. So for my line, for example

"I...I haven't totally decided...he can ahm...he can live or... (inhale)...he can die"

I wrote the sound as:

"Ae...Ae heven toudaly dicided...hee kenah...hee ken leev oah...hee ken dae"

This transcription has to be done in a way YOU understand it, after all, you're the one animating it. Then it's good to mark the important visemes, the mouth shapes that yo MUST HAVE there or the viewers will notice something's wrong. The order of importance as I learned in AM would be:

1.both lips – p (as in play), b (bye), m (mom), w (wine)
2.lips and teeth – f (four), v (vote)
3.tongue tip and teeth – th (thin)
4.tongue tip and ridge between teeth – t (tick), d (date), s (sue), z (zoo), n (noodle), l (lemon)
5.tongue blade and palate – sh (rush), j (rouge), ch (rich), r (run), y (yaw)
6.tongue back and top of throat – k (back), g (lag), ng (sang)
7.vocal folds – h (hey)

You have to be aware that one sound may affect the mouth shape of another sound. That's called co-articulation. For example, when you say "cold" and "key" you say the sound "k" in both. But when your mouth is saying the "k" it's already preparing to make the next sound. In the first word (cold) the shape will be narrower and the jaw rotation a bit more open, anticipating the "oo" sound that follows. For the second word, the shape will be wider.

Here I have the important mouth shapes in red:

"Ae...Ae heven toudaly dicided...hee kenah...hee ken leev oah...hee ken dae"

In order to know when to set each mouth shape, it's very helpful to make plan on which frame each sound occurs. I'll talk about this in another post. So I set the mouth shapes following the planning and the facial expressions following the reference, did another polish on the body and the result is what you saw up there :-)

There's a lot more to dialogue...but this is a start! I'll talk about planning the mouth shapes in the next post.

cool video - How to break into animation

This is a great video from a speech by Steve Hickner - Dreamworks Director/Producer. Here are a few things he talks about:

•  you may not be the smartest/talented, but if you're disciplined and stick to stuff until you get it, it pays off.

•  another thing that counts a lot is attitude - animation is a very collaborative process, so that counts a lot, you need people that can contribute with optimism and great attitude

•  if you want to get into the business, you have to take the iniciative and do stuff nobody else would do

•  he tells some funny and inspirational stories, like the guy that found out where the sound people got their pizza - he wanted to work at a sound place in hollywood - and got a job at the pizza place at night, so he'd deliver the pizza to them. And after a while delivering he told the guys he wanted to work there and he got hired! Gotta think outside the box :-)

•  you need to watch movies to get better, everyone is influenced by other people's work, the best people are.

•  never turn down a combat mission...it might lead to a great place (even if it doesn't look like that)! He did that...it's great to see him tell his story.

Ok, I'll stop with the bullets, just watch it, it's worth it and he's fun to watch :-) Very inspiring and motivating!

Camera cuts

This week in AM we learned some basics about camera cuts. I found it very interesting, so I thought I'd just share a few things I learned.

The idea in a video is giving the audience the „best seat in the house“. So for a scene, we might have to show views from different angles so the viewer can see everything that matters. For that, we may have to cut the scene from one camera to another. For example, we could first show a person saying something and then cut to a different camera to show the listener reacting to that. The cut should happen seamlessly so the audience doesn't even notice it.

When cutting, it's important let the action end. When something moves, usually the following steps ocurr:
1. Element is at rest
2. Reaches maximum velocity
3. Slows down and keeps constant velocity
4. Full extension/Impact
5. Recoil/Bounce Back

And to cut, we should wait for this whole cycle to end, or the audience would feel interrupted, which we don't usually want. Of course there are exceptions: like horror movies, were the idea is actually interrupting the audience's thoughts, frightening them, etc.

One example that was given was about ballet dance. There are lots of moments were the arms/legs extend and that pose is kept for a little while. So, if you want to cut, wait for that moment to arrive, include a couple of frames to let that image sink in the viewer's brain and then cut. You could make a cut in the middle to zoom in to the arms reaching out for example. But we didn't go into this too much, as it's more like an introduction to the theme.

Another example I think I should mention too is when cutting a walk, we shouldn't cut when the foot reaches the floor: let the body go up a little so that movement is completed.

Dialogues!
When cutting on dialogues we also have to find a point where the idea has been „closed“. There are 4 rules for cutting a dialogue:

1. You can cut on a period. One could make an analogy to the silence of the period with the element coming at rest again. So that's a place were you can have a clean cut. Remember to cut 1 to 3 frames after the sentence ended – they call that giving it a bit of air.
2.  Cut on a comma, which could be considered like a small period in the middle of the sentence. Then you could cut to the interlocutor to show the reaction the speech had on them while the speech goes on in the background. Like before, let a little bit of air before you go to the next cut. 
3. You can cut in the middle of pauses that last long enough.
4. Cut on a plosive. That would be a powerful more emphasized word in a sentence. It was explained that for a split second, there's some disorientation in the brain because of that strong word, so while the brain reorganizes itself, we can cut to a different angle. This usually happens in the middle of physical action scenes and very agressive verbal utterances.

So, except for the last rule, let pause hit, some air settle and make the cut. This way the audience always follows well what's happening. These are just the basics, but when you see movies try to notice how those rules are applied :-)

Well, this was only a part of the lecture, I'll come back to this theme soon!