Acting Dialog

Chris Rohlfing

Hello all. Been doing this assignment for my university and I wanted to get some outside opinions. This is my current state. I worked a lot of improving arcs and creating secondary animation. I even animated the objects on the desk moving from the force of his fist coming down. I am trying to use the antennas as a mood indicator as well.


http://syncsketch.com/playground/42a989610a374fc7ae545d7b18c12a60#104668

Please feel free to dissect it and give any crits.

dotsonkt

Yo. It would help if you had some info on what is happening in the video, but the right hand at the end is stiff with the fingers

Chris Rohlfing

The basic story is a worker is not happy with what his coworkers are doing. He is venting the to the audience. Here is my latest update. Currently working on my first lip sync so any advice would be appreciated. 


Synchsketch
http://syncsketch.com/playground/a715b03b9fdf4400a2069f95e625acee#105992

Fashoomp

I've got some free time so I'll try and leave you some thorough notes on this. It's a solid first pass. I can see your ideas and how you implemented it but some of it still lacks clarity.

-Around frame 12 as his head comes forward, it seems to hit a wall and recoil back along the same path. This is a nice place to add some overlap on the head. You could dip it down and get a nice arc as it travels back. 

-The blink around 42 is a little wonky. It seems to have the "pixar blink" approach where the eyes blink offset by 1 frame. Hold the eyes closed for 2 frames each so the viewer can get a read on it and it doesn't appear to pop. The frame before the blink should be sitting closer to open. Imagine that the eyes slam shut instead of evenly drift closed.

-Around frame 54, everything on the body seems to start up at the same time. Offset some timing so it feels more natural. It could also use an antic leading into it so it doesn't all pop off at once. 

-When he smashes the desk, you have the antenna leading the action. Try instead to have the smash, and then use the antenna as a secondary action to emphasize the hold he has there. 

-The final hand gesture has some nice arcs in the hand. Take a look at the elbow however. The motion of the shoulder as it connects to the wrist feels disjointed. I bet if you track some nice arcs into the elbow it will greatly improve the motion!

As for the lip sync, you've got a lot of the right shapes in there, but some of the shapes appear muddied and they're not being transitioned nicely into once another. Try and avoid jumping too much between wide and narrow mouth shapes. It can cause the jaw to feel flappy. The timing is also ever so slightly late. This is very common in lipsync. I generally do all my work and then just drag the entire timeline of mouth keys back about 2 frames. 

Hope all of this helps, and good luck getting to the finish line!

Chris Rohlfing

Thanks for the critiques! I really think this helped my final animation. I let this render overnight and I am pretty happy with the results. I did notice that the hand got shifted. *Facepalm* Ill fix that and re-render that tonight for my portfolio.