Facial Animation
The aim of this project was to create a 10-30 sec animation of a superhero quoting a line from a film. My character is an overweight depressed Robin saying the line '3200 bucks thats what he gave me 3200 bucks for a lifetime, it wasnt even enough to pay for the coffin." from the film The Goodfellas.
This is the finished piece:
Finished animation
Side Reference
first had to create my own drawings and references for the character as I wanted him to be different to from the original character and used the film ‘The Incredibles’ as inspiration A lot of research went into good facial topology and I drew some guidelines onto my head references to help me.
Here is one of my inital rough storyboards, need to update this..
The final piece has changed a lot from the original draft and I would have liked to have included some of my original ideas as a lot of thought went into them.
Head Topolgy
I have learnt a lot by doing this project as it is the first time I have really considered the facial topology in regards to good deformation for lip synching.
UV texturing
It is the first time I have used UVS to texture a character and so this was a major learning curve. I am now quite efficient with using the UV editing tools. The textures could be improved in certain areas such as around the neck where the clothing meets the skin.
Creating the bones
I really like the facial rig that I have created, I find it very useful and would like to create a bigger one in future that holds more commands or experiment with different layouts as I have seen some which are on the face itself or in the shape of a face next to the model.
Face Rig & Blendshapes
Originally I kept the character quite stationary as he is feeling sad but after receiving some feedback I realised I had to create some more dynamic movements to give the character a personality and bring him to life. I did this by giving him a lot more upper body movement and by trying to find movements that matched what the character was saying and how he was saying it and also added actions that the character might not be aware he is doing such as scratching the back of his head.
For the lip synching I owe a great debt to ‘Stop Staring’ by Jason Osipa. I got the basic mouth shapes that are commonly used and blended them together to create others. I watched various video tutorials online about the different methods some animators used and other books such as ‘The Animators Survival Kit’ by Richard Williams.
For the lip synching I owe a great debt to ‘Stop Staring’ by Jason Osipa. I got the basic mouth shapes that are commonly used and blended them together to create others. I watched various video tutorials online about the different methods some animators used and other books such as ‘The Animators Survival Kit’ by Richard Williams.
Lighting
The lighting was quite important to me as it represents the character living space and tells a story about the kind of life he is living which I wanted to get across.
Overall I feel the animation has been quite succesfull although I dont like the last minute news logo I made in the corner and which I had kept it out! Compared to my previous animations I have improved, my movements are alot smoother in result of making better use of the graph editor.
