Character Animation

For about 12 weeks I made the goal to do both character cinematic animation and game animation to try and figure out what I like more. To be completely honest, character animation hasn't been my favorite thing to do. However, I tried a different workflow that I haven't done before and sort of figured that I didn't like character animation because I wasn't too good at it before. I hoped to figure out what I like more, but also hoped to learn how to animate in other styles.

The reference that I used for the character animation is about 20 seconds long so I spent about 7-8 weeks on this animation. The first 3 weeks were spent blocking, 2 on the first pass, 2 on second pass, and 1-2 on polish. The next 3 or so weeks were spent on the game animation.

The first animation I did during this time was the character animation. I animated a 20 second clip of a song called Moo by Doja Cat. While I worked on this animation, I took this time to try a different animation method in which you animate the translations and rotations separately. The animation went along decently, but as I got closer to the 7 week mark, I realized that I had wasted a lot of time. I hyper focused on this new way of animation and it didn’t work well for me. I didn’t learn if I liked character animation or not, but I did learn that my usual way of animating was the best for me. 

Horse Run Cycle

I called it after that and moved on to a horse run cycle with rider. This animation was a lot better for me mentally during this time as I made visible progress and felt like I was properly practicing animation. The horse run cycle wasn’t the most complex animation ever, but it is a completely different thing to animate a horse vs a human. The same basic principles of a human walk cycle are present in a horse run cycle i.e. the forward contact point, the first passing pose, the back contact point, and the second passing pose. The difference comes from the anatomy of the horse. I mitigated this challenge by very closely following the reference video.

Next I moved onto the rider. I used the same approach as the horse and only had 4 major poses. The inbetween poses really helped everything move smoothly. The main body wasn’t too difficult to animate with reference video, but the overlapping animation of the hair and clothes was a bit challenging. The shorter strands on the front of her head look good, but the main strand of hair was harder to get right.

Group Dialogue

Throughout the entire process of creating this animation, everyone in the group would give each other feedback and we would also occasionally exchange files so that we had a role in every part of the animation. Our overarching goal was to create a single animated clip, not several clips compiled together. Considering our varying skill levels and experience, I believe that we did a pretty good job at accomplishing our goal and meeting the assignment's criteria. I learned a lot doing this animation, most importantly working on this in a group. Working on this in a group really taught me the importance of communication as I don't believe that we could've done a better job otherwise.

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Monologue 1

After some time off, I decided to give character animation another shot. This monologue piece was created using an audio clip from the film American Psycho. The main character of the film, Patrick Bateman can be described as a narcissistic person who lacks empathy for others while also seeking validation. I wanted to take this audio clip and almost flip it. What I tried to do is make it seem as if Patrick is reflecting on life and as if there is some sort of void that he is trying to fill with his actions.

I started off this animation by filming some references. I had a bit of a hard time with this because acting doesn't come natural to me and I wasn't satisfied with anything that I came up with, so I just chose my best attempt and used that to animate to. The skull and the overall style of the animation was inspired by some sort of Shakspearian monologue and also by old self portraits of painters holding a skull. Overall, I spent about 3-4 weeks blocking and polishing the body movements.

My final step in creating this animation was to add in the lip syncing. I have never done this before, so I repeated different words from the audio and tried to feel what shapes I made with my mouth. I also referenced some images of mouth shapes. From what I can see, the mouth does sync to the audio for the most part. I do think there are areas where I over animated and tried to add in shapes for every letter instead of blending some together.

Monologue 2

After 2 character animation projects, I do like doing it more than before, but definitely need a lot more practice. I started another project using a clip from the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In this scene, the character Frank is showing off his wrestling persona named The Trashman. Working in this animation was a great experience. For the first time I really felt good about what I was doing. The process and the result felt much less awkward for me. Animating a monologue was still odd for me, much slower. I focused on pushing the poses as much as I could to make the process more fun but also to help make the animation look “natural” or rather to avoid making it look unnatural and robotic as my previous attempts have.

Something that I tried to get better at besides the body movements, was the lip syncing. I looked around online to find some tutorials and found one that made sense to me. What I learned was that you don’t have to do every single part of the speaking. You have the U/O, A/I, E, F, closed, closed teeth, open lips and a few others that make general shapes of the sounds of the words. People also don’t enunciate every single word, but rather combine words and speak some words faster than others.

Monologue 3

Monologue 2 was a significant animation for me as I felt my interest in character animation grow and I learned a lot. I moved onto a 3rd monologue animation. This one used a clip from the movie School of Rock where the protagonist is explaining why being a musician is so important. In the original clip, the protagonist is laying on a mattress covered by a blanket. I wanted to do something completely different from the original. For a couple hours, I listened to the audio, broke up the clip into sections, and practiced different poses until I figured out what I liked. I then recorded multiple takes of reference video.

Once I chose my best take, I broke down the reference into parts to mark key poses. I began posing the character from there. After a couple of days, I keyed all the major poses. My next step was to add in holds. Once the holds were in, I added breakdown poses. About a week into the project and a half, I was satisfied with the poses and decided to move onto the facial expressions and lip syncing. I took what I learned from the last project and applied it to this one. Overall, I was content with the final project. I felt like I did very well at animating the body while maintaining a natural human look while also capturing the essence of the character of the original clip. I think by now, I feel pretty comfortable doing character animation, at least enough to take another step to improving my skills.