Due to our tutor Johny's absence our session for week 8 was self directed which would give us time to do some work on our animation exercises namely the dialogue exercise. I had recently recorded reference footage for the exercise yesterday and would now need to translate it into a storyboard and barsheet. My story for this exercise was a teacher scolding a student for insulting her and her bad behaviour. I translated the story and decided to start work on the animation itself.
I showed some of the students what I had planned and Stephan suggested perhaps including more body language as it didn't show much gestures. I corrected this and set to work on my animation using a Cintiq tablet. I had never used a Cintiq before and was considering purchasing one to get some experience. Munty one of the students in the group had used a Cintiq before and helped me set it up and get an understanding of how it works. It was essentially like using a two screen computer.
It did however, help me in doing my animation drawing in animate as I could look at the angled screen and draw better over the onion skinned outline. However there were some issues including how the mouse would hover over the wrong area of the toolbar for instance.
In doing the animation itself, I decided to work from the audio track to give me a basic idea of where to place the keyframes and what action the character needs to perform. Be it slamming her fist down or trying to contain her anger in clenching her fist. However, I felt that I was having difficulties with the timing aspect of the audio and how it didn't match up to the key frames. I felt a little frustrated that my figures actions were not in time with the audio for a particular section. Near the end of the lesson I realised that this would be one of the most difficult exercises we have had so far.
Looking back on this self directed lesson I would think I have learned a lot from using a Cintiq tablet and it has made me consider purchasing one for my own purposes. However I feel perhaps I still need more practice in using it better. In terms of my animation it is clear that I may need to work out a different strategy when executing it so then I can move onto the lip synch aspect of the exercise. I think the best strategy would be to first plot out some of the key poses that are needed in the audio/story then work on the in-betweens leading up to that particular scene.
I could now see the sense in why Johny asked us to do the facial movements for the last part of the exercise as mapping out the body/arm movements is the key before doing the face. In hindsight I could've spent more time on working with the animation to better refine it and work on the timing problem.
In conclusion I am satisfied with the experience I have had today and will work to better map out the key movements in the dialogue animation exercise.
In future I shall do some research on any new software I use or look into mapping out movements in dialogue based scenes.
I showed some of the students what I had planned and Stephan suggested perhaps including more body language as it didn't show much gestures. I corrected this and set to work on my animation using a Cintiq tablet. I had never used a Cintiq before and was considering purchasing one to get some experience. Munty one of the students in the group had used a Cintiq before and helped me set it up and get an understanding of how it works. It was essentially like using a two screen computer.
It did however, help me in doing my animation drawing in animate as I could look at the angled screen and draw better over the onion skinned outline. However there were some issues including how the mouse would hover over the wrong area of the toolbar for instance.
In doing the animation itself, I decided to work from the audio track to give me a basic idea of where to place the keyframes and what action the character needs to perform. Be it slamming her fist down or trying to contain her anger in clenching her fist. However, I felt that I was having difficulties with the timing aspect of the audio and how it didn't match up to the key frames. I felt a little frustrated that my figures actions were not in time with the audio for a particular section. Near the end of the lesson I realised that this would be one of the most difficult exercises we have had so far.
Looking back on this self directed lesson I would think I have learned a lot from using a Cintiq tablet and it has made me consider purchasing one for my own purposes. However I feel perhaps I still need more practice in using it better. In terms of my animation it is clear that I may need to work out a different strategy when executing it so then I can move onto the lip synch aspect of the exercise. I think the best strategy would be to first plot out some of the key poses that are needed in the audio/story then work on the in-betweens leading up to that particular scene.
I could now see the sense in why Johny asked us to do the facial movements for the last part of the exercise as mapping out the body/arm movements is the key before doing the face. In hindsight I could've spent more time on working with the animation to better refine it and work on the timing problem.
In conclusion I am satisfied with the experience I have had today and will work to better map out the key movements in the dialogue animation exercise.
In future I shall do some research on any new software I use or look into mapping out movements in dialogue based scenes.
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