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.

Blocking to Final

This is the last animation of the magician. All three of them were done during advanced body mechanics class (that's term 3 in AM) so the idea was to make the character do things that demand working on getting timing and spacing right, the feeling of weight, balance, drag, overlap, etc...all the principles, so that when we start working on acting (term 4) the body mechanics are already there. That's why this magician does some things in a very exaggerated way – so that I can practice my body mechanics skills ;-)

This final shot shows him getting out from beneath the tank, getting up, making one last magic trick changing the tank back into Tailor and thanking the audience. I'll just make this one like last post, showing how I went from one version to the next.

So here's the blocking of the idea

The main comments I got from my mentor:

•  the pose at 85 is too twinned, too even

•  make the pose on 127 bigger and have him hold that

•  there's not enough time for the audience to read the bow in the end, so simplify it. After all that quick action have Stewie simply lift Tailor and have Tailor thank the viewers.

So here's the re-block, after changing those things and starting to spline:

I see now that this still looks very even, seems all the movements happen at a similar speed - but while working on it I couldn't see this. Here are some comments I got on it:

•  correct the weight around pose 85, shift the weight slightly or it'll look like he'll fall over.

•  I was in doubt about how exactly I should keep Stewie alive in the end while holding that final pose, after all, the focus was on Tailor, not Stewie at that point. So my mentor told me to shift Stewie's weight after catching Tailor, have him raise the hand quickly then overshoot and settle.

•  track the tip of the hat. Especially in the beginning, there is a very irregular movement going on there. Well, I mentioned this in another post...this pointy hat has this problem.

Here's the version that followed:

Now some comments start getting subtler, more specific, she said I still should work on the holds and break up the timing.

• pick a primary pose and ease the other poses into it. So speed up from about frame 25 to 46 - have it happen over 15 frames. Then then hold 46 for 5 frames.

•  on frame 73 let it overshoot and settle back the hip

•  drag toe on 112 and on 118 shift his weight so it's on back foot

•  128-158 is taking too long, could be 10-15 frames. Have Stewie catch Tailor just before he falls.

And finally:

It always helps seing which comments people get on their shots an how they progress. So I hope these posts about how I arrived to the final version were interesting. I tried not to make it too big so didn't write about all the comments I got, just the main ones.

I think one of the things that got a lot clearer to me during advanced body mechanics class is that we should always know when to simplify. Also, it's good to exaggerate and do all the crazy things animation allows us to do...but need contrast too, to have a nice texture in the animation...crazy can get boring too, if it's just that all the time.

Bouncing balls

A very common assignment for beginners involves bouncing balls...several of the 12 principles of animation can be practiced there, like Timing, Squash and Stretch, Slow In and Slow Out, Anticipation and others. Later it should be easier to apply these concepts to other more complex animations. :-)

So...here are 3 bouncing ball animations. The first one only to learn the basics, how to set those trajectory arcs properly and get the ball bouncing with the weight of a basketball, for example. Then an animation showing two balls with different weights – a beach ball and a cannon ball. The last one shows a ball jumping happily around an obstacle course, showing some anticipation (before starting it does this really big squash to gather energy for its first jump) and some squash and stretch.


Uma tarefa comum para quem está começando a animar envolve bolas saltitantes...diversos dos 12 princípios da animação podem ser praticados como timing, squash & stretch, slow in e slow out, antecipação e outros. Com esse treino torna-se mais fácil aplicar tais conceitos a outras animações mais complexas. :-)

Então...aqui estão 3 animações de bolinhas saltitantes. A primeira apenas para aprender a base, como acertar os arcos da trajetória corretamente e fazer a bola pular com o peso de uma bola de basquete, por exemplo. Em seguida, uma animação mostrando duas bolas com pesos diferentes – uma bola de praia e uma de canhão. A última animação mostra uma bolinha quicando alegremente por obstáculos, mostrando um pouco de antecipação (antes de comecar a pular, ela se aperta toda para juntar energia para o primeiro pulo) e um tanto de squash & stretch.