Shoot me again — version 3, take 3

More slight adjustments, mostly cleaning up lines and adding in a few little details here and there. I think there's still a bit more I could do to it but I think it's mostly at the stage where I'm happy with it (maybe I've just gone blind to the faults!)

Had a bit of fun making the hair flap around again — it's not terribly realistic but I think it adds a bit of interest and keeps things from looking too staticy. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it at the end when he pulls right back. I tried a few different things, like having it flop back a bit before bouncing back up but it didn't really make sense. Having it flop over his eye was more of a happy accident — tried it out of desperation and ended up pleasantly surprised with how it looked.

Shoot me again — version 3, take 2

Started cleaning up the lines a wee bit and trying to fix some volume problems. I added a couple of inbetweens and removed a few duplicate frames to help smooth it out a bit. I think it's looking better now but where he pulls back at the end is still really bothering me. The action just doesn't look right — he doesn't seem to move in an entirely natural way and his height is a bit inconsistent. Scrubbing through it frame by frame is helping to pick out the problems, but I'm having a bit of trouble with it. I think I'm worrying too much which is clouding my focus a bit.

There're some details missing (tail doesn't move and entirely vanishes in some frames) but I'm going to work on refining what I've currently got before I start trying to polish it too much. I need to look at refining the mouth shapes a little more.

I've also managed to finish the walk cycle from the previous posts, but unfortunately some slight technical problems (water + laptop = BAD) have gotten in the way. I don't think there was any lasting damage done and my computer's been drying out for the past couple of days so hopefully I'll be able to get that up tonight.

Shoot me again — version 3

In-progress retake of the "Shoot me again!" line. This time, I tried to keep the character's expressions and body language more angry or explosive. Originally I wanted him to draw backwards, sort of sarcastically, but I was having terrible difficulty in pinning the body language down. Instead I opted to have him throw up his arms as if shouting the last part — "I ENJOY it!!"

Admittedly I quite like the beginning part — I feel that the little detail of having his eyes blink at slightly different times helps to give him a bit more personality! Overall though I'm not entirely happy with it so far. I think it's more in keeping with the tone of the dialogue but I may have overcomplicated matters with having the entire body involved. There are a lot of proportion and volume problems — keeping the character looking the same from all angles/directions is something I struggle with!

Sketchbook: Shoot me again (re-do)

Andy gave me some great feedback on my lip syncs so far and suggested that my "shoot me again" was a little at odds with the sarcastic tone of the dialogue, so I'm having a bit of a crack at re-doing it to better reflect that. Rather than moving forwards, he suggested that the character should pull back.

Click for full size

Sarcasm is quite a tricky expression to convey in any case, but it's even worse when your character doesn't have eyebrows! You don't quite realise how much dimension they add to a character's face until you remove them.

I had a shot at drawing some 'regular' expressions first, before attempting to translate them onto my character's significantly more simplified features. I've always felt that the aim of animation, and indeed drawing in general, is to convey as much information with as few lines as possible. You need to make each and every line count — if it's not contributing anything to the expression, remove it!

Also trying to pin down his body language at this stage — I want him to shift his body weight backwards, shoulders and arms up in an almost defensive shrug. "Shoot me again — I enjoy it!" I'm having some trouble getting the balance right.

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So far I've not liked the way that adding eyebrows completely changes the structure of my character's face, so I'm leaning towards keeping them off. I'm trying to figure out a way of shaping his eyes to suggest the existence of eyebrows. I'm finding it quite difficult, though I think the inclusion of his lower eyelid into the expression helped a lot.

I still need to really pin down the expression and body language. I don't think it'll do too much good to keep working on them entirely separately. I need to start trying to combine them properly to see how they work together.

Finest wines — version 4

Working on this one a little more. I tried to fix the mouth on "we want the finest wines[...]" and I think it looks a bit better, but it's way too fast. It's quite a complicated sentence and I'm finding it difficult to figure out where to put each keyframe, which sounds to stress and for how long. I think the last part syncs up a little better now though.

Not too pleased with the gestures and facial expressions either. Seems a bit artificial and stiff and doesn't have much personality. I can't put my finger on what it is. He's a bit tipsy so he should probably have some spontaneous eye spasms or tilt his body about a bit more or something. He wasn't a particularly impressive character to begin with but he doesn't seem to have quite as much character as my pencil drawings. That's the only problem with Flash, it can tend to make things a bit 'clean.'

Finest wines — version 3

I did a little more forward planning on the "finest wines" lip sync in the hopes that it might make things a bit easier. I really struggled to come up with a character design initially and experimented with something not human, as I thought that a less complex figure might be easier to exaggerrate.  

Click for full size

Click for full size

They all felt too stiff and uninspired as you can probably see. I couldn't picture any of them with the voice in the clip, so I ended up looking at some photos of Richard E. Grant [the actor to whom the voice clip belongs] for some inspiration. The character he plays in the film, Withnail, is a washed-up, drunken actor, so I felt it would be appropriate to try and capture some of that scruffiness.

Withnail is such a dirty character with a multitude of hilarious expressions. It's all in his twisted, gurning mouth and heavily shadowed features. I'm not entirely sure if I'd be able to replicate the sheer genius of his face!

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I ended up reverting to a human figure, partly because it was easier; all my planning so far has been using a decidedly human-shaped stick man so it would be a bit more difficult to go back and re-animate everything to accommodate a completely different body shape.

I'm much happier with this design. It's simple enough to animate but with enough hlittle details that I can have some real fun with — knocking his beer glass over, swaying his tie around, etc.

It's still early stages, but I'm mostly happy with the body movement now. It could use some tweaking here and there — the fist slam still bothers me. It's not a terribly aggressive voice in the clip though so I don't want to overblow it completely. I'm half thinking I should simply remove it and just have him drop his beer glass back down onto the table.

I also changed the hand that's holding the beer glass as I quite liked some of the gestures he could make with it.

The mouth is all over the shop and I'm not at all happy with it so far. It syncs fairly well at the end, but "BALLS" just doesn't look at all right to me. "We want the finest wines available to humanity" looks completely wrong as well. I think I just need to make each mouth shape a bit more distinguished and perhaps cut down on the amount of different shapes I'm using, see if I can squash some sounds together. I think his jaw needs to move up and down as well. I can sort of get away with having the mouth just move when he's facing the front, but from the side his jaw is more prominent so it needs to hinge up and down as he speaks.

Finest wines — version 2

Mucked around with this one a little more, not changed too much, mostly just playing with the fist slam at the end. It's still not quite right. I don't really know if it's working with the voice clip — it's not really angry enough for him to pound his fist on the table like that.

I'm going to have a look at getting some sort of character design roughed out so I can start tinkering with the mouth. 

The audio quality is still horrible... can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it!

Second more refined lip sync

Done a couple of little things today; refined my "Shoot me again!" lip sync a little more, cleaning up odd lines and making some further adjustments to the hair. I also tried Ron's suggestion of keeping the eyes facing the same way rather than rolling back in the head at the beginning, which I think looks a lot better!

It's still far from perfect — the head keeps changing shape/size and the hair wiggles about a bit weirdly at the beginning but otherwise I'm reasonably happy with it!

I started playing around a bit more with another sound clip this afternoon and making loose plans for another lip sync. I didn't do any forward planning and it really shows. I really just wanted to have a bit of fun and get to know Flash a bit more.

Ron suggested that we try animating the body and head movements first and then work the mouth around that — hence why there's no actual lip sync yet! I want to keep working with this one so I'm going to try and refine the movements a bit more, especially the fist slam at the end. It's a bit lifeless at the moment so I'm going to try and loosen it up a bit before getting a face on there.

I'm not quite sure why the audio quality is so bad, it sounds absolutely fine during playback in Flash, just seems to deteriorate whenever I export. Very strange!

Slightly more refined lip sync

Ron gave me some helpful feedback on my work so far, suggesting that I work on making the hair flap about a bit more. He also suggested that I add a few inbetweens to cushion the snap-back between "-JOY" and "it". I've added just one so far — I'm going to see if I can get in another to try and smooth it out a bit.

The hair movement's a bit choppy and there are still a lot of problems with volume and such, so I'll see if I can fix that up and refine it a little more.

Lip sync test, take 3

Third attempt. I'm a bit happier with this one!

It's still far from perfect; it seems to be moving a bit too quickly and I think there's too much going on with the eyes right at the beginning. There's too much movement in a short space of time and I don't think it really 'reads.' I tried to add a bit more life to the hair, making it flap around a bit — could certainly use more care and attention but I think it's getting there.

I also tried using a smear frame to make the "enJOY" part a bit more snappy which seemed to work much better than I thought it would. Overall I'm slightly more satisfied, but something still looks strange with the mouth — I can't really put my finger on it.

Lip sync test, take 2

Second attempt at a lip sync, this time messing with the character design a bit to try and make him a bit more interesting. 

I don't think it came out too well — I think I overcomplicated the design a bit which made it much harder to keep things consistent, leading to lots of problems with volume and shape. He looks like a totally different character by the end! I probably got a bit far ahead of myself and tried to do too much too soon.

I also found that the beak got in the way and made shaping the mouth much more difficult. I think I'll go back to the simplified design and try to smooth it out a bit before I start thinking about more complex characters.

Still, it's a start I suppose!

Some interesting lip sync examples

If you can look past how irritating Penny is, the Rescuers has some interesting little scenes that are heavily dialogue-based. Normally there's something of a rule of 'show, don't tell,' but the animators were careful enough to keep enough happening in the scene so it wasn't just two characters talking at each other. There's some great personality expression here — the emotions and movements are exaggerated without being too over the top or unbelievable. If you watch closely the lip sync really isn't completely accurate — often the character's mouths just kind of open and close in time with the words. This is especially apparent in the Jungle Book scene where Shere Khan uses a lot of 'Oo' words but his lips don't really purse at all.  It still reads very well, though — I guess the sight of Auntie Medusa peeling off her eyelashes is so gruesome that you don't really notice anything else!

The eyes show a great deal. They completely change shape to accommodate the lack of proper eyebrows but remain consistent in volume; so far I've found it difficult to get such flexibility and character in the face without distending it ridiculously. There's nothing wrong with that if done correctly, but so far my attempts have just come out looking stiff and lifeless. I think the problem is that I'm isolating them as their own shape, rather than considering their volume and how they affect the rest of the face.

Lip sync version 1 (unpolished)

First attempt at a lip sync! I apologise for the most uncreative selection of dialogue...

I basically just drafted out the vague mouth shapes on paper and whacked it all together in Flash just to see if my timing was right. There's absolutely no expression or emotion just yet and the mouth is all over the shop in terms of volume and consistency. I plan on doing something more exciting later, but I really just wanted to make sure it synced up correctly.

It doesn't really look quite right to me but I'm not entirely sure why. I'm worried I might be using too many shapes for each sound?