Looking for Monologue Animation Critique
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Hello Polycount!
This is my first time with using Mocap data in Maya and it is the second time I've done lip sync.
This is all for my university module so any and all critique is welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVV-fmv9B8k
This is my first time with using Mocap data in Maya and it is the second time I've done lip sync.
This is all for my university module so any and all critique is welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVV-fmv9B8k
Replies
I like what you've got, so don't let the critique I'm about to give to you get in the road of that. You've got a good energy in your piece thus far, so throughout all your changes, try and keep that.
So I'm gonna split the critique into two parts - body motion and lip sync.
Body motion:
- On the third (I think it's third haha) step, the left arm freezes for about 10-14 frames. It's actually really hard to do if you're moving your other arm in a walking motion like you have it doing. You could have it going back a bit further or going up behind his back, or something, but as it is right not, it's a little jarring to have it just hanging there.
- The second watch through I had, I noticed that the eyes weren't really looking at a set place during the monologue. I don't know if you mean to have him talking to an audience or to a single person, because that is never established (which is fine), but the eyes go from looking far in one direction, to straight when standing in about the same point.
- When the hand is close up to the face - half curled up - I'd recommend opening it up more, as in rotating it towards the camera, to the point where you can start to see his thumb. It will give the motion more readability.
- The head shake around "to be in power" does add something, I like it.
- I don't know if I like the double hand shake around that same part. He does the same motion twice and it feels a little awkward. It does add a little bit of a nervousness feel, but something about it is kind of getting on my nerves in that little section. I understand that's what the actor did in the mocap, but I think cleaning or changing that action could improve that part.
- I think adding just a little bit more extra upper body motion, left to right, could take your character from being a little generic, to give him more of a tough guy look.
Alright, I think I'm done with the body motions, onto the lip sync!
- First thing I'm noticing is that you don't have enough mouth motion. You're skipping over syllables. Don't think of it as words, but as sounds. One word that stood out to me instantly was Hungarians. From his mouth, it could have been one syllable. Without sound I wouldn't have had an idea what he was saying. We watch people speak all the time, we know it intrinsically, so you have to be careful.
- "To be in power" feels a little awkward. It's already really quick so this is going to be really hard, but your lip sync will improve massively by adding a hold on your B's, P's and M's. Right now, you hit the closed mouth for one frame on the B in Be, but you drop it straight away, when a two frame hold would improve that one part drastically, the same on the P, but you need to actually close the mouth on the P.
- Your movement on Guns is awesome. Absolutely awesome.
- There's also two more major things that are hitting me with your lip sync, your mouth stays wide most of the time - I don't know if this is a rig problem - but you need to really push the puckering when it comes to lip syncing, so if you can do it, you absolutely should. And the other is if you have the time, add some tongue movement. It doesn't have to be perfect, but even a little bit can improve your motion ten fold.
Hopefully I was able to explain my thoughts clearly! And I wish that Youtube would let me have sound when I slowed the playback so that I could do more with the lip sync, but either way; you've got a good base!
And you don't have to take all my body motion feed back, some of it could just be personal preference, so keep that in mind!