WIP facial animation need some advice and comments!

bybyle

Hello guys, for a school project (short film), I need to do a facial animation for the last (and most important) scene in the film!
I've already change a lot of things, so here are the results!

But can you tell me what could I do better??

Links: (Quality could be better )

1st anim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXsTbxVljkg
1st retake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTbiL-vx0X8
2nd retake (final for now): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFVdwptQzVc

What do you guys think about tthat?
Thanks a lot for your help guys!!


PS: Link of the short film that i need to retake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdU7MWUDyZE

RKirtlink

If you're able to, recording yourself or looking into a mirror while you re-enact the scene yourself will give you a really solid reference to go off of for this animation. Your 2nd retake is a big step up from the first but I would try to really use reference in order to refine your facial expressions so that they really convey the emotion you're going for. It also seems to be going from each facial expression to the next with a small pause on each one. It would be good to get rid of these pauses and keep the face "alive" by adding subtle movements during the pauses or allowing them to have smoother transitions from one expression to the other. Once you've polished up these things, you could move on to smaller details like more realistic eye movement to take it to another level. Eye blinks for example usually happen when the character turns their head or moves their eyes quickly, not just every few seconds.

Hope this was helpful, I recommend uploading your animation to syncsketch though since it lets everyone go through it frame by frame and do paintovers. Uploading it there will let everyone give you more detailed critique.

HeXiFy

Like RKirt said, upload it to syncsketch, so that we can do paint overs and leave comments and review it frame by frame. 

bybyle

Hey! Thanks for the critique, I didnt know about this website!

Here you go: https://syncsketch.com/playground/6fdb7680f9b74a0f988d7cec86613c5e#212498

Thanks already!

(Idk how it works)

Karimelhann

y'a un probleme au niveau de t'est rendue ou eclairage sinon le reste est bon  

bybyle

Ce sont des playblasts c'est normal

HeXiFy

Okay, so I posted some feed back on that website. I feel like you're missing a lot in your animations, and it's mostly because it looks like you didn't shoot your reference and you're just going by that other video, which to be honest, is horrible. Your biggest issue, is that your animation is too robotic and your reference video is weighing you down a lot. Shoot your own reference, go through the animation principles, and don't forget to animate EVERYTHING, because if his arms are not moving in the same position, it looks horrible. Put forth effort and be proud of you work, not to kick you down or anything but your pride will show through in your animations, and this doesn't look like you're proud. 

Keep chugging along and keep asking for feed back and critique from EVERYONE. Ask the teacher for feed back constantly. Ask class mates... ask parents, ask friends, ask people who have no experience at all in animation. 

Please keep posting updates, I'm interested in the final cut!

bybyle

Thanks for that! Honestly i dont really like animating (i lové modeling!) so im struggling staying focus.. i tried to record myself but I know everything I want my character to do, so my recording doesnt look natural at all..
Well i thought I did well, ill restart from Nothing and Try to record again !
ill keep you updated!

thanks!

HeXiFy

Why does your animation have to match the video? That's a weird way of teaching especially if the original isn't good. I mean if you have no interest in animation, do whatever your teacher wants you to do to pass that certain class, but what I would do in the future is, record myself saying the script and animate from that reference video. Anyways, good luck!

bybyle

Hello,

Well... Im a bit disheartened. I dont like to animate and I can't do it properly. I can't find the right timing etc my animations are awful. I'm trying my best I filmed myself but I can't get it. I tried to make the arms looking realistic, in no way I could do it, It always feels terribly unrealistic.

I changed some things, but not that much tho, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Ill keep trying but holy this is hard when you really don't have the timing sense...

Thanks for the help tho!

(I added an explanation of the movements on the sketch!)


https://syncsketch.com/playground/91932e0599164d6c9059510195f83f8c#214632

HeXiFy

You can find the right timing by doing math. When you shoot reference and review it, download keyframe_mp. It will allow you to review videos frame by frame. So now math comes into play here. Depending on what fps you're going for, 24 is a good start... So we'll start with the biggest change you did in the latest animation. There's 24 frames per second, now review your reference video and see how many frames it takes for your head to move from one position to another. Time how long it takes to get from one position to another. If it takes 1 second, you know that the duration should be 24 frames. 

If you can't follow your own reference video, I honestly don't know how to help you much more. This is a pretty complex animation if you weren't taught properly or haven't gone over the basics for the 12 principles. Good luck to you my friend.

bybyle

I won't lie, in terms of animation, my school is bad af.. And its reputated as the bast school in Belgium. HUE
Ill do this on monday, thanks!!