Lip sync

I’ve had a go at some lip sync animation using the Mery rig and a clip from Greys Anatomy

 

Head rolls

We were given a task during class of animating a head roll using the Mery character, before jumping into the animating I found a few reference videos…

My first attempt at a general head roll, I found that creating an arc as the head turns gave a nicer effect than just a linear movement…

I then attempted another head roll, trying to give the effect that Mery is reacting to another character offscreen…  maybe they have said something silly/stupid…

Mery

Creating a generic walk cycle with the Mery rig…

It will be a 32 frame walk cycle, frames 1-17 of the left limbs will be copied and pated over to the right limbs on frames 17-33, making sure that 1 and 33 match exactly! Frame 9 and 25 will be the passing positions:

frame 5 and 21 will be the lowest positions of the hips with 13 and 29 being the highest…

Moment of the feet:

We discussed in class the differences between male and female walks, a mans hips will swing upwards as the leg moves forwards, also twisting in, whereas with a woman, as the leg moves forward the hips will lower and twist in…

Female walk cycle reference:

Male walk cycle reference:

Animated female, obvious hip movement:

Animating Mery’s hips, I’ve also added in the twisting of the foot as the weight shifts from on to the other:

Adding in the movement of the upper body:

Playblast of the walk before using the graph editor to adjust and smooth out the curves:

After adjusting the curves:

Final render:

Some reference taken form The Animator’s Survival Kit…

Step by step positions of the body:

The movement of a woman compared to a man:

The movement of the feet:

Acting animation

This week we were given a reference video of our tutor acting out an angry movement, which we would then use to animate the Mery rig, starting with blocking out the main movements and then adding the in-betweens using a plug-in called tween machine.

Some of the main poses pictured below:

Blocking the poses with the Mery rig:

The curves were then splined to see how the character would move from pose to pose:

I then moved on to adjusting the movement of the right arm, to make the movement a little more believable, trying to convey a sense of weight and by showing some more of the extreme positions:

Adjusting the fall of the right arm and the movement of the left:

I also attempted a different animation of the left arm, it no longer lifts off the table fully:

but I didn’t really like the movement, it seemed rather unnatural, So I’ve tried another movement which seems to have worked, it’s smoother than the previous attempt, also incorporating some facial animation, although it still needs a few tweaks…

I also looked at some of the 11 second club, feedback videos, to see how the pro’s go about animating and what they would change for the better:

I especially enjoyed the animation below, and the feedback shows just how sharp the professional’s eye is…