Parlo

Here's a second (and much shorter) piece of animation I'm working on with the same character as before. An evening's work so far. QT, Sorenson3, 900kb All comments and crits are welcome as usual.

This is a really fine face mesh Kungfu! A great combination of character and realtively low spline weight. The only suggestion I'd make, comparing your model to the photo, is the jaw - it seems a tad thin in your version. I only say this because it'll effect how much movement you can get out of his bottom lips. However, this is really great stuff!

3DArtz - That's pretty much the method I've been using. The major problem is the quality of his voice - he hits almost every single sound full on and he does it pretty darn quickly. If I slur too much over the shapes the voice sounds totally disembodied; the trick is in finding a balance. This character also has problems with the position of his mouth - it's very hard to get a decent E smile shape out of him without overstretching the sides of his face. I'm in the process of rebuilding the phonemes and other mouth controls, so I'll be giving the sync another couple of passes before the week is out. For the time being, here's a few minor tweaks (including that sentence which was totally off!).... Hello Again - QT, Sorenson3, 2.3mb Thanks guys!

Nice work Vern! I have a question - By naming the short ISA, and by putting that at the very begining of the piece, are you giving too much away? How differently would it play without it? Just a thought, cause my brain made me. (And yes, AE splines are annoying at best!)

Which parts in particular? Looking closely at it again I'm fairly happy with it except from "regarded this earth with envious eyes", which is totally off. This is due pushing the audio forward a frame when it coumes to render and not resetting it when tweaking. I got quite confused.... I tried hitting all the shapes but he looked like he was chewing a particularly vicious toffee! He needs some annunciation intensity due to the quality of the voice - finding the balance is hard.

Awesome Vern! Had me laughing all over again.... I was wondering if you had a copy of the "pitch" that you gave at last Wednesday's chat? This would be really useful to read again having seen the animatic. I want to see the finished film now!

Yep - this line has been one of the hardest to make work. The shift-in has never looked or felt right to me. Combine that with the fact that he is bringing his left hand into play and it's been a real nightmare! (These big hands are so hard to make appear natural and flowing). I tweaked a bit this morning and I think I'm making some progress - the move is bolder now. Cutting away would be a possibility if this piece wasn't for my demo reel - if I cut away on the demo reel I'd just be 'demoing' that I didn't know how to do that bit! The music is part of the actual clip. The clip is the introduction to "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds" - A bizarre but entertaining part prog-rock, part disco concept album. It's H.G. Wells' story narrated by Richard Burton. It used to scare the life out of me when I was a kid. This was partly due to the fact that I used to live very near Horsell Common, the place where the martians first land in the story. I'll probably take the music off when I edit the scene as part of my reel. Do you mean bring the music forward so that it comes in quicker? Thanks for the responses guys! This has definately proved to be a productive process.

This is hypnotic! I really get the sense of the moon's gravity, or lack of. Few things I noticed, FFTIOBO ('feel free to ignore or be offended') 1 - The weight when both legs hit the ground seems like it should favour the right leg more as it settles. At the moment it appears to go to the left, then straight down. Should it be left then a little to the right to settle? 2 - His turn to the left seems a little bit too nibble. Could it be more awkward? 3 - The balance as he side steps out appears a little bit off - He may be stepping too far... 4 - Please have him fall over backwards as he looks up at the end.

Here's a final render. There are still some things to smarten up, but this is as good a place as any to stop so that I can get some feedback on the whole thing. Quicktime, Sorenson3 , 2.3mb There's a line across his forhead that flickers in an out occassionally. It's not a decal overlaping point so it must be something to do with the geometry. Has anyone got any ideas what may be causing this?

Ha! Hadn't thought of that one. Interesting choice, very interesting. (If I remember correctly) it's got just the right sort of rythmn as well as being very well known. I'll have to raid my cd collection and give it a listen. Thanks Steve.

I'm without the cartoon network, so I'm lost as to who it is based on. However, she's a mighty fine lady with strong legs and liable to hear the phrase "have someone's eye out". I took a look at her on your site - though AP crashed explorer the first time, fine the second. Great stuff. As to number 3#, I don't think I'm qualified to say

Well... I've got to the end of the lip work, and I'm happy with all the poses. There is still some tidy-up to do, but I've started a final render of it to see how it all holds together. To render all 43 seconds @ PAL rez will take a couple of days - this will give me some time to work on something else so I can come back to it with a clearer head. Anyhow, here's the latest pass for those who are interested. 43 seconds, QT, sorenson3, 1.73mb Robo - I see him as being quite agile despite his looks and limp. With limbs like he's got, he'd be in serious trouble if he wasn't fit and perky! Steve - I've got this idea of him performing a guitar solo. He's definately got rythmn! Thanks again! Word

Doug, These aren't part of my project and are intended for my demo reel. I realised that spending so much time animating one project in it's associated style, I wasn't doing enough of the kind of work that would really help me develop my character animation skills. This is becoming my main focus (other than commercial work).

Interesting idea Steve, but I'm wary that doing this could turn it into more of an 'epic' than I intended it to be. I can see that more air in the pauses would give me more room to create character, but I really like the idea of working with the timing that it dictates. I'm doing a bit more to try to make what pauses there are carry extra weight. The next lip sync piece I'm going to do will be a much more dialogue type piece. There's a couple of exchanges from 'Dr Strangelove' that have got my brain buzzing.... Thanks for the compliments!

this couldn't be more true! (Check my sig) It all boils down to this - don't be disappointed if the first thing you try doesn't come out exactly as you wanted it to. Most advanced users would say pretty much the same thing. The key is to learn from each attempt or project, and take that into the next. You can't expect to produce stella work immediately but the more you try, the more goes you have at it, the better you'll be. Don't be afraid of making mistakes (as long as you save often!) - The more you fall over - the better practiced you'll be at standing up.

The end is in sight Version H I've given him a limp to add to his personality. For those of you who are still hanging in with this - can't you just taste the cold beverage at the end of the long journey? All comments welcome. One more session to go... But for now... I sleep.

Cool dive! I think you probably already know where it could be polished... The weight in the second bounce isn't quite there for me... it feels like the diving board should bend more before he dives.

This is great - 4 hours eh?! The biggest thing I notice is the lack of anticipation before he dives. I love the speed at which he flies off and feel it would be even funnier if he tenses his body back to the right more, and for longer. Build up the energy before he dives. I'd really like to see more of this if you decide to take another pass at it.

Robo - You're right about the "gulf of space", I've added more breakdowns and it seems to be much stronger if he looks at it just as/after he gestures to it. I've realised that the clip is 40 seconds long! I say that with surprise because even as I work on it I don't realise it's that long. I think it's safe to say that this is because of the extraordinary nature of Richard Burton's voice - and nothing to do with my animation

Some more detail work done today - and some modeling fixes which aren't quite finished yet (his right hand has new fingers... which alas means that they've lost what smart skin they once had). I've started to add some detail to the finger animation, and the last section is taking better shape. I'm going to get to the end of the lip sync tonight, I've been putting it off a bit because once I start, time seems to just fall away... I've set myself a deadline of this weekend - otherwise i could go on for ever with this thing.... Quicktime, sorenson 3, 1.8mb Here we go again!

Another day... another update. Quicktime, sorenson 3, 1.7mb Here I am JH With all the enocuragement, I've decided to work to the end of the sound clip. At the moment the second half is just roughly blocked in, but you can now see where I'm heading with it. Justin - I'm gonna put my headphones back on and go through the lip sync again as you suggest. I was afraid of the ooo, www and uuuuu sounds - but I'm gonna screw my courage to the sticking place, and wrestle them into submission. I can also see where more definition is needed. As you said, the tone of the clip has lead me to unemphasis a lot of it. Hands are still just "fist" and "no fist" at the moment. I'm gonna take a short break from this to address some rigging issues (and get some other things done with my spare time ). Posting as I work like this has been immeasurably helpful. Thanks guys

These are great. I think it's working when I find myself saying, "oh, I'd like to live there!". There's a slight muddiness/murkiness to these renders but I'm sure you already know that so I'll go shhh now. (The picture on the left reminds me of the joke - "I friend of mine has been stealing futons.... he's lying low for a bit." )

Robo - you are so right. I've be so proccupied with trying to make the "no one would have dreamed" transition work I haven't noticed that it's the wrong one! I think the 2nd "no one" needs the same kind of accent as the first; I'm fearful of repitition but here it is legitimate, and if I use his left hand it solves a lot of problems at once. Shaun - Yep, he's remembering milking a cow . The "claspiness" of the hand is due mainly to the fact that it's all controlled by one "make fist" pose at the moment. I need to work out where the clasps are really important, cut the rest, then go in and animate each finger individually to give it more life. The lipsync took a while but I'm really pleased with it. I tried using the Dope Sheet tools to begin with but found it easier (and I had much more control) if I just laid out the keys by hand. Dope sheet was very useful though, in that it gave me visual markers in the timeline for each word. I knew I was starting to "get" lip sync when I realised that all mouth shapes are heavily influenced by both the ones that have come before, and the ones that are about to be made. This gives it a fluidity and avoids the pitful of it being too snappy (a lot of heed was taken to Richard Williams' section on sync - gez that guy rocks). I also used the old trick of animating the sync then moving all the keys one frame ahead. Thanks once again guys - this give me the fuel I need for the next stage.

tobinjim: You're right about the eyes - the interpolation for the eyeball movement is currently set to 'hold'; i.e all the changes in where he looks only take one frame to happen. This is the same in v1 - 4, but I suppose that the addition of blinking in v4 draws much more attention to it. Once I'm sure that I'm happy with where he is looking, I'll go back and finesse the movement. You're also right about the eyebrows moving independently of each other. I'm still playing around with this. Thanks for the encouragement - There are actually a couple more lines of the speech that I haven't done yet.....

Another session and I've made some more progress.... Not far off now.... Click here for the 4th stage movie Thanks to everyone who's posted a reply. It's really helping me to keep my momentum going.