This week, we’re finally going to start to do the blocking process of performance animation.
First, I started choosing two characters for my animation. Because it’s a quarrelling animation, So I wanted to find a relatively strong person, and a person who looks more gentle, during which one of the characters has to have a collar because of the action of being picked up by the other character.
Models
Since I didn’t use male characters in previous animations, I spent a little time understanding these two models. Fortunately, the skeletons of these two characters are very similar, so I only need to know one to be familiar with the other. In general, I think the binding of these two roles is very good. The rigging of facial expression and mouth is also very detailed. After some debugging, I finally decided that it was the two of them.
Character 1
Character 2
If I finish the animation in advance in next few weeks, I will adjust their texture and render the lights when I have time with these.
Audio & Reference
I first processed the videos in PR, turned them into sequence frames, then exported the audio to wave format, and imported them into Maya, which ended my preparatory work. The original movie’s reference is to let me know the content of the lines. To be honest, the speed of their lines is so fast that I don’t know what English they are speaking. This reference video has subtitles for me to know the English lines and for me to do mouth animation.
I have to say that I realized that I had not done animation for several months, so it took me a little time to think about how to do these steps.
Although I know that the main part of my character is body language and expression, I still choose to do mouth animation first, because I think it’s strange that the smooth body action does not open and close the mouth. Do mouth first, let me listen to this audio repeatedly, let me better familiar with the mood and situation of the two characters.
Animation Principles
- Timing
- Staging
- Arcs
- Slow-in & slow-down
- Pose-to-pose
- Anticipation
- Follow-through and overlapping action
- Exaggeration
Phonemes
I divided phonemes into several clips to do the separate animation so that I can better adjust every frame on the timeline, and it’s easy to watch and modify. Because I found that there is always no way to play the mouth animation in real time, I have to playblast to see the problem and modify it.
At the beginning, my mouth shape range was a little small. After I finished my second role, I came back and began to readjust the mouth shape of this role.
In this part, I made a general mouth shape first, and then I may adjust it carefully, such as the part where the tongue touches the teeth and the part where the teeth bite the tongue. These details are not obvious now. I want to wait until the camera is set up and see the distance between the two characters before deciding whether it is necessary to do this step.
Maybe it’s the problem of model and binding. The mouth shape of the character on the right doesn’t look very obvious and exaggerated, especially from the side. But I put this problem aside and began to do physical exercises
Blocking
Then there is the initial action. In fact, I like Luke’s advice, which exaggerates two people’s actions. This shows that both characters have personality and attitude. The person on the left was lazy at the beginning. I didn’t step on his right foot on the floor, but it was empty, showing his disdain. The character on the right is more arrogant through the action of akimbo, his center of gravity is on the right foot, and the whole person leans forward.
Different standing posture and waist dynamic line.
Details of the shape and curvature of the fingers
In fact, I have a problem here. I plan to ask Luke for help when the animation is near the end. There seems to be something wrong with the mapping of this model. His face and body are one object, but they have two maps. I don’t know why this texture is like this, like UV is wrong, but unfortunately this character has been bound, I can’t adjust his UV, resulting in some strange shadows here. I think when I have time, I will find a way to solve this obstacle.
Then I made the character on the right first. In the reference, he didn’t have any body movements, but I added some myself, hoping that the character would be more vivid.
The difference between the two versions is that I added a foot movement, and the following movement of the head and chest. In addition, I tried to follow the eyes, I let his eyes always fixed on the opposite character’s face.
The second is the character on the left. I hope the audience’s attention is on the right, so I didn’t let him know a lot. It’s just a little blink, a little hand and foot movement.
The next part I think is the climax of my performance, and there are more movements, the range is relatively large, I spent more time to adjust.
The rhythm of this part is very fast, so the step I’ve been doing is to add keyframes. Then we made about 30 frames and began to play them to see where there was a problem. Generally speaking, when the rhythm is fast, too many keyframes will make the action look chaotic. To solve this problem, it is necessary to clean up the key frames properly, and use the curve editor to adjust the particularly abrupt curves or points. Generally speaking, I have deleted some sudden extremum points or unsmooth curves, and another point is to turn some curves into straight lines.
Here, the details of holding hands are a bit like the relationship between father and son, which is equivalent to the movement. So I am the details of keying animation frame by frame.
I think the key to this part is that I have a larger range in the hip of the two characters, in order to make them look more exaggerated
Another point is that this part of the arm swings a lot, although the distance between them is very close, which will increase the production of keyframe animation of the arm, because it is very possible to pass through the model. But a quick arm swing can create a tense atmosphere.
The outsider’s opening and gripping become my main concern this time, because it determines the strength of an action and the character’s mood.
The spine of the character on the right side is tilted forward to make it stronger
In fact, I’m in a hurry for the part 3, and I have encountered some problems. The first is that when they step back a little bit, the distance is very difficult to control, so I first make sure that when the character on the left points to his chest, the distance between them is not particularly short. In this case, I guarantee that when they step back, they try to keep their pace average.
In this part, I have never been able to find the feeling of finger pointing in the beginning, just like the finger is not forced now. I tried to join the following movement, and also tried to change the swing amplitude and frequency of the upper arm and lower arm, but the effect was not obvious.
And then I wanted to make the person on the right feel wobbly, but the leg movements were very difficult. The first thing I had to do was not to slide, and then the character couldn’t be too forward or too backward.
Another one is the left character grabbing the collar of the right character’s clothes. I don’t know why I always feel that both of them have to fall down. I think my reference is not good enough. I don’t know if it’s because of the lack of expression. Even if the distance between the two characters is very close, there is still no sense of tension. Generally speaking, I failed to achieve the desired effect. I will revise this paragraph later
But I always feel that I haven’t done a good job in this part. Maybe it’s the cooperation with the crotch. I always feel that there are some sliding steps, or the center of gravity is unstable, or people don’t step on the ground.
After completing the three segments, I spent some time to adjust the connection, such as frames 60 and 120. Sometimes, there will be stuck, because I didn’t get to the last frame of that segment, so I spent some time to connect the actions. This is the first version of blocking. I think there are still many things to be adjusted, but I have to say that when I adjust the animation after a month, my speed is not as fast as before, and my hands are not as skilled as before. So I only want to do this for the time being. I hope that I can adjust the status after that, and then modify some small details in detail.
Summary
I summed up some of the feelings of doing this.
The first is that good animation should consider time and stage. That is to say, when I do animation, I often feel that if one character moves and another character doesn’t move, it seems a little strange. But after some actions at home, I didn’t know who to put my eyes on. So we should try our best to let one character do the main animation, and the other character can have some obvious animation. We can’t grab the main position. The animation range of the main character should be large, exaggerated, and attract attention all at once.
The second is that in the process of walking, every part of the body should have subtle movements, even a little, it will make the character look less rigid. So at the beginning of K animation, the feet and hip should be paid attention to the centre of gravity together, so that they will not be adjusted repeatedly, because the displacement of the feet and hip determines the forward distance of the character. If one part goes wrong, many parts need to be modified.
Feedback
After Luke’s suggestion, I have the following parts to modify.
- At the beginning of the clip, the following movement of the character’s head and arms can be more obvious, creating a cartoon feeling.
- Two people slowly back in the process, pay attention to the direction of the spine, now very stiff. Note that the spine is a curve, and every joint of the body is bent, not just the crotch.
- Pay attention to the posture of raising your feet. If you raise your heels too high, you will feel like the character is about to fall.