Animation weirdo M dot Strange's new film. The guy worked four years all on his own to create another feature lenght animation movie. Looking forward to watch the whole thing when it's out.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Acting Test done!
I havent posted any updates since I'm in class five of Animation Mentor, so lets fix that right now:
If you read some of my older posts you might have seen the early stages of my acting test assignment. We had six weeks to get the body language right. Now, in class five, we got access to the full facial rig and had three weeks to get facial expressions and lip sync done. Wow, what an update! Check out how it looked before and after:
And the final version (I removed the glasses so the facial expressions are easier to read):
Facial animation and lipsync are a pair of brand new shoes. I'm at a point now where I feel quite confident in my understanding of body mechanics and am able to apply them to my animations without having to painstakingly wrap my head around it each time. But then with the whole facial stuff, I feel like I'm thrown back to class one. This is brand new stuff to learn.
Until now, almost everything we've learned has built upon the previous experiences and lessons. But with lipsync it's different. There's of course the technical aspect and it's really fun to learn what shapes the mouth actually produces when we speak. There's definetely some unexpected stuff going on. Ha! But I will eventually get to understand that too, just as it happended with body mechs. It's but a question of practice, practice, practice.
What's really interesting and gets me excited about animation, is that we now have the full spectrum unlocked and are able to create full body/full facial performances. Which means proper acting. Put all the technical things and challenges to the side and think about the character and what we need him to convey. This is the thing to master; breathe life into a stiff puppet, make his actions believable, his thoughts visible and make the audience empathize with the characters feelings and emotions. You can think about Megamind what you want, but this scene blew my mind. That's exactly what I'm talking about:
Man, I love animation..
So next week we start our two person dialog shot and I'll keep you posted on how it's coming along.
take care
Christoph
If you read some of my older posts you might have seen the early stages of my acting test assignment. We had six weeks to get the body language right. Now, in class five, we got access to the full facial rig and had three weeks to get facial expressions and lip sync done. Wow, what an update! Check out how it looked before and after:
And the final version (I removed the glasses so the facial expressions are easier to read):
Facial animation and lipsync are a pair of brand new shoes. I'm at a point now where I feel quite confident in my understanding of body mechanics and am able to apply them to my animations without having to painstakingly wrap my head around it each time. But then with the whole facial stuff, I feel like I'm thrown back to class one. This is brand new stuff to learn.
Until now, almost everything we've learned has built upon the previous experiences and lessons. But with lipsync it's different. There's of course the technical aspect and it's really fun to learn what shapes the mouth actually produces when we speak. There's definetely some unexpected stuff going on. Ha! But I will eventually get to understand that too, just as it happended with body mechs. It's but a question of practice, practice, practice.
What's really interesting and gets me excited about animation, is that we now have the full spectrum unlocked and are able to create full body/full facial performances. Which means proper acting. Put all the technical things and challenges to the side and think about the character and what we need him to convey. This is the thing to master; breathe life into a stiff puppet, make his actions believable, his thoughts visible and make the audience empathize with the characters feelings and emotions. You can think about Megamind what you want, but this scene blew my mind. That's exactly what I'm talking about:
Man, I love animation..
So next week we start our two person dialog shot and I'll keep you posted on how it's coming along.
take care
Christoph
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