This week I have focused on some final body movement fixes based on our lecturer Ting’s feedback in class, and I have moved on to give the facial animation a final push by watching more tutorials online.
First of all, here is my project shot list with updated notes in progression. As I have kept this good habit of noting things done, this will help me check each specific shot:
For the splining of the body movements in my project, here are the notes and visualisation this week:
- In shot 1, I speed up the moment when Dex turns his body to the left and looks at his watch. Since the previous movement was slower, this adjustment brings a more fluent flow and pace to the animation.
- In shot 6, while Jill is turning her body to the right to point Dex to walk with her, I added a few offsets to give her body layers. Where her root turns first, and then her spine, and then her neck, and lastly her head.
- In shot 8, where Dex slips over, it’s one of the most difficult shots in this project. I rotated his foot more throughout the moment he tried to balance himself by following my online reference. Also, I tried to follow the reference to stretch more of his legs through a curve in this shot.
- In shot 10, Ting mentioned that the rig of Jill’s hand was broken as I overpushed it, hence I pulled it back by rotating it to the right-hand side of the screen by following her elbow and shoulder.
- In shot 10, the frame just before her hand attaches to the underwear, I have adjusted the pose to make the constraint work more reasonably from the vision.
- In shot 16, Ting mentioned that there should always be a curve when my character is standing up. Hence, I double checked my reference, and to make sure his root is rising up in each frame.
Over the feedback session, Ting recommended we watch the tutorials below. As I followed each of them carefully, I attached my written notes to this blog.
This video is really good at explaining the pipeline and the order of making the facial animation. The lecturer has given case studies showing the ‘S’ curve of mouth shapes and the line of the action of facial shape. He has also mentioned the importance of connecting facial rigs, while they should all move within a similar pattern when there is a specific level of emotion happening.
He pointed out facial expression of my character should always be asymmetrical, and only when they are more ‘extreme’ in an expressive way, they will create a less controllable symmetrical face.
He has also pointed out the importance of keeping the eyelid always on the edge of the bulge (pupil) of the eyes, and the eyelid should always follow the flow of the eyebrows.
During the Q&A, he mentioned that only the anthropomorphic characters follow the principles he talked about; creatures within VFX will be different. And it also depends on the style of the project I am working with.
As far as I follow the line of the action of the character’s face, it will be hard for me to break the rig.
This video mentions similar points which have been mentioned by the previous one; it emphasises more on the principle of eyebrows. They always have three points, and the lower the narrower, the higher the wider. Also, two eyebrows always need to be connected to create the ‘flow of the brows’.
This third video shows more of the process of sculpting the facial rig to match the 2D sketch, and demonstrates the use of blend shapes of how the soft brush tool and sculpting tool can help to form specific expressions.
Due to the time limitation, as this project needs to be handed in within 10 days, I will be fixing the facial animation of shots which are focusing more on character expressions. By applying to principles I have learnt above, I hope to develop mine through practice as well.