Initially starting the first of my adapted animated interviews, I wanted to use this footage to explore my more ‘realistic’ animated portrayal, as I felt the content in which she was speaking felt more serious and fitting for my initial aesthetic idea.
What I particularly found really interesting about this video is the subtle movements. She does not move around drastically, nor are her mouth movements very pronounced. A lot of the expression is in the eye movement, which I wanted to explore how to communicate emotions with eye movements. Since eye movements make up most of the emotional facial expressions, this should help with selling the performance (Tinwell, 2015).
Blocking
An essential part of the facial performance is the blocking of key jaw bounce/ viseme poses that time correctly with the audio. Due to the context of using pre-recorded footage as a reference, I felt it may be considered insensitive, particularly to the subject issue at hand. This brings to attention one of the slight ethical dilemmas of the animated documentary and its re-enacted nature. Due to this, I tried to interpret the original footage into a somewhat realistic portrayal of the performance.
One of the main things I did after blocking what Kenny Roy describes as the ‘core poses’, I tried to interpret the eye and eyebrow movements from the footage, but exaggerate them ever so slightly so the expression and intention are clearer. However, it came to my attention that one of the main issues is that they move too uniformly together when they should be slightly offset to add more realism. The same can be said about blinking, as this is a technique often used within CG animated films (particularly Pixar) to add a realistic quality. This is something I intend to add to the splineing process.
Smoothing
Creating the smooth and splined facial animation created leeway to add additional details, such as subtle cheek and nasal movements to help sell further the mouth and eye movements. During this process, I also added some slight subtle body movements, as even during a mid-shot the movement of the rest of the body needs to be considered. I think what draws back the realism of the shot is the lack of hair movement, however, the chosen rig did not have easily controlled hair, and the volume would have wildly changed and looked even more unconvincing. Looking into this as a future potential, I have found a few hair rigging tutorials that may be beneficial for the cause. I may also look into using N hair for more detailed simulations in future.
Finished Shot
Referencing the animation in the modelling environment, I had to adjust and re-analysed the movement now that she was sitting down. One of the main issues I had again regarded the rig itself, as their IK switch option did not work correctly, and therefore I could not convincingly place the hands on the table without them following the lower body movement. In order to sell the shot better, I kept the hands up the table and tried to animate the shoulders and arms within FK settings, to give them the appearance they weren’t just plainly following the body. I think this added largely to the unconvincing movements of the body itself, as I felt I could not move it too much without also affecting arm movement. I think in I future I will be warier of my rig choice, and when going forward with the documentary I will most likely model and rig my own characters so that the style is consistent.
References
.Roy, K. (2014) How to Cheat in Maya: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation. Abingdon, Oxon: Focal Press.
. Tinwell, A. (2015). The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.