Performance and Character - Weeks 9-10

Dialogue Performance

This was the animation that I was most looking forward to when I first read all of the tasks, because from experience from my previous non uni related animations, a voice, I always find is the finishing touch to giving life to characters, so to apply the professional animation practices that I have used in this module to a voice clip would likely result in a final product that I am extremely happy with.

Before I could start any pre-production work, I first had to select what voice clip to use, as there were several options. This is another piece where emulating emotion is a primary goal, therefore I picked one where the subject has a clear, strong and expressive emotion. The one that I ended up with was a voice clip (from who I believe is Tom Hanks?), which consists of the following:

"I thought... that, if I could help him in some way, get him this *urm* this girl that he loves... that maybe, you know... things would change for ME"

From analysing this voice clip, I can decipher the following about this character

• The phrase 'things would change for ME', suggests that this character is self centered and only tends to think about himself
• He shows a lot of passion in what he says, meaning that he will likely emote his body with what he is saying.
• Due to the way in which he is speaking to whoever he supposedly talking to, it appears as though he is close to them, and opening up to them, therefore I will ensure to show some form of empathy emitted from the character to the other occupant.
• The way in which he speaks suggests he is cocky, the line 'things would change for ME' also suggests this. This would mean that for the most of the animation, he will have an open posture, as that is how confident people present themselves.

An illustration showing the difference between open and closed bodies, with the open ones showing more confidence to one another

Lip syncing was something that I've always aimed to be competent at, and feel as though in the field of 2D animation, I have enough knowledge to pull it off. It was for this reason that at first I decided that I would delve into 2D animation, after promising to do so previously in the topic. I decided against this however and remained with my good ol' trusty Keith rig, the reason being that it was too late in the module to learn new software so I may aswell perfect the ones I've started. This has made me realise that I should start on learning any software that may be beneficial towards a brief right after reading a it. 

As the main emotion that I will be emulating is anger, I briefly researched angry key poses, and found a secondary resource image of some dynamic, angry poses, and what to avoid.

Below is the reference material that I recorded for this dialogue performance. For this, I had the sound clip running on loop, whilst I spoke along with what the character says, so that the actions would appear more genuine. The footage came to over 5 minutes, but I managed to trim it down to one take that I felt did justice to the voice over. 

Unfortunately, the method of pre-production that I established in the previous two animations wouldn't be applicable for this animation, as I am no longer working with a looping cycle. This caused me to come up with a new way to record, as I was never keen on the bar sheets. This new design of production sheet is a lot simpler, however a lot more informative, as I have listed the point at which every action from every moving part would start, reach key pose, pause and end (if applicable). This was handy as the timings are perfectly aligned with the reference material, although I knew intended to alter these slightly when it came to production to help build anticipation and follow through for certain moments. The only thing that this lacks is a visual element, but despite that, I found it a lot easier to follow than all the other sheets I used in this module, showing that I may not be as much of a visual learner as I expected.

Dialogue Performance Timings

When animating, I created a floating sphere which would act as a point of reference for the character, therefore preventing the character to appear as though he is looking into space.

Below is the final animation

Below is the final animation overlapped over my reference material, in order to show how how faithful I was to it, and the adjustments that I made for the better.

What went well -

• Every action is perfectly synced up to the dialogue performance.
• Although for the most part the timings were translated accurately from the video reference material, I still managed to emphasise some movements and poses and add in some anticipation for a more emotive and entertaining performance.
• Due to the fact for the most part the feet remained static on the ground, I was able to focus more on the upper body movements, which I perfected to the best of my ability and completed relatively quickly. I also enjoyed making this more than I did with any other animation in this module.
• Due to the fact that I kept a close eye on the graph editor, all movements flowed in the way I intended, with no sudden jumps.

What have gone better -

• Although I was pleased with how it turned out, I think that perhaps if I made the character move about more, it would help liven the piece up and make for a more cinematic experience.
• I would have liked to have completed this task with either a comedic voice clip from something that I enjoy, or create my own VO entirely, as I feel this would add a more personal element to the piece.

What I will change next time -

• I will make sure to create something that I have fabricated out of my own imagination, therefore meaning that I can create my own story and feel more personally attached to the piece.
• I will make sure to make the character move about more for my final animation, as it would allow me to familiarise myself more with the weight and manoeuvrability of my characters.