Character Animation

Blocking Second Pass (part 2)
I have taken the second part of the sequence through the same process I described below. This time however I filmed some reference footage for the first shot because I was not happy with the blocking. I recorded myself repeating the dialogue several times on my webcam until I got a few interesting gestures. I especially wanted to get rid of the "For Me..." gesture where he put his hand on his chest. That just seemed too obvious and in fact when I acted it out, that was the last thing I would do when saying those words.

In fact it still needs some tweaking because I haven't captured the second part of that gesture properly, but this is looking much better and more interesting than before. Now I could do with some feedback before taking it further.
Next Installment: Splined

Character Animation

Blocking Second Pass (part 1)

Here I have taken the first few shots of the piece through the second stage of my blocking process which adds breakdowns and inbetweens to further define the actions. Hopefully you can see that working in this way allows you to build up a nuanced and complicated performance from a very simple foundation.

At this stage I am generally not even touching the facial expressions or lip-sync. You want the performance to work without, so don't add it until you're happy with the physical acting. There are points in this where I want Karl to be thinking to himself and you can already see that coming across just because he stops looking at the other two and sort of retreats into himself physically. Ricky is quite manic and so his character is fast moving and dynamic but the other two are both quite dead pan deliveries. It should make a nice contrast and also it allows for some more subtle acting. It can be quite tempting in animation to over act but when a character is not moving, generally it means they are thinking. And that is when an audience starts to get drawn into a performance or character when they see a thought process stirring up inside.

Next installment: Blocking Second Pass (Part 2)

Character Animation

Thumbnailing
Now that we have our shots layed out we can go into photoshop and rough in some thumbnails. We have the characters basic positions in the frame and we can run through some rough acting/pose ideas to get things rolling.

This has the advantage of being able to try out ideas and experiment a bit without wasting time posing the rigs in 3D. Sometimes I would just use pencil and not bother scanning them in and putting it together like this but I thought it would show my ideas better.

Ok, so for first pass thumbnails we have some interesting ideas developing here. We've got enough to take into MAYA now and begin fleshing out these poses. I like to keep things loose throughout this process because I find I can feel out stronger poses and acting once we are in 3D.
Next installment: Blocking