Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Tagged: bishop

“This is what you need”, gathering references 12

Animation / Education

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“This is what you need”, gathering references

As I was saying yesterday, I have started working on a new shot based on Stars Wars Episode 03 – Revenge of the Sith but I am treating one of the major turning point of the series with a twist. Here is my version of the story, Star Wars fan boys don’t hate me 😉

“Anakin Skywalker left Tatooine years ago and is a college drop out who currently works part time as a Costco business delivery boy to fund a life which is not leading anywhere as he is very remotely interested in pursuing any professional career.

The Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is a very driven man who fuels his very busy schedule and around the clock meetings by drinking Diet Moutain Dew instead of coffee. Coffee upsets his stomach but the kick provided by Mountain Dew and its sweet taste without the sugar intake seem to work wonder for the health-conscious Chancellor and his office has become such a regular delivery address for the young Anakin Skywalker that Palpatine and him have become very good friends. The Emperor has become a bit of a confident and a father figure but Palpatine is getting increasingly tired of Anakin wasting his life and he has today decided to help him out to get a job and is trying to convince the young man to work for him….”

I need to clarify that I am not addicted to Diet Mountain Dew and I would probably recommend not to drink any Diet sodas or eat anything containing aspartame. Eat five fruits a day instead and drink a large glass of fresh water instead of coffee everytime you crave for caffeine, unless you live next to Philz 😉

Right, back to the shot, make sure you check my previous post in the first place just to situate the sequence in the movie. Here are my references and customisations I applied to the Animation Mentor rig Bishop to sell the story better. I am still missing the Darth Vader outfit but this is not the priority for now. it will come at a later time.

Now what about the audio clip you may wonder, well, once again, I found a great clip in a very unlikely movie which I will not reveal for now. As soon as I heard the clip I immediately saw it as a worthy contender as it contains humour without being 11 seconds club funny and the sound and music in the background contribute to create an ambiance and make it very dramatic. A very cinematographic audio clip for which I could immediately picture the facial expressions of the character.

I then started thinking about a situation that could work with the context and make the clip even more funny and came up with the story above.

I will post my layout and acting ideas in few days once I have those worked out. Here is the audio clip with the facial expressions I came up with in the meantime. The audio is slightly offsync but the acting should be clear enough. Don’t make fun of me I know I am a cartoon 😉

Related post:
Emotional beats, Star Wars Episode 03

La fete. Done 2

Animation / Animation Mentor / Portfolio

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La fete. Done

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18268452[/vimeo]

Here we go, I am pretty much done with that shot. It is still in French but I added some subtitles for those who want to understand what this is about.

The audio clip came from a funny french candid camera show my friend animator extraordinaire and BYOA organiser Samy shared on Facebook.

In that clip the host was pretending to be a tattoo artist until, looking at the work he had started on their body, people realised with horror he didn’t know how to draw. Fortunately the needle was in fact a felt pen.

I really liked the audio as it couldn’t get more genuine, presented with an opportunity for a “take/gear change” and allowed for something broad without looking overanimated.

The original character was standing fairly still but I believe entertainment doesn’t come from under-animation or over-animation but instead in stylised choices situated at the edge of both. A good showreel should demonstrate understanding in broad and subtle acting. This will be my broad piece.

Link to the original video

I will leave it in playblast for now and do a full render if I do an other pass. My goal wasn’t to have the best shot ever but just to get more experience with some of the concepts I rediscovered studying “the work of the masters” few weeks ago and hopefully get a junior or even a regular animation job in a french feature animation studio.

For the technical nitty gritty, I used my world orient FK spine again, world orient head and arms. I really like that workflow as it allows me to work in a layered method and keep adding levels of detail even when in polish. For my next close up shots I will be using an IK spine instead but I am still unsure how Bishop handles that.

For the nose I did something a bit fancy that I think is participating to make the face look more organic. In real life, if you observe people talking you will notice that the tip of their nose, nostrils and cheeks keep moving up and down following the opening and closing of the mouth.

Bishop has cheeks controls but with my custom nose, moving the nose control up and down wouldn’t have looked realistic. The skin of the face doesn’t just move up and down shifting the nose, it actually slides over its cartilage and the skull, causing a stretch of the soft parts of the head. (the ears also move actually)

Instead, I created a custom blend shape where the side and lower part of the nose came down simulating the pull of the skin according to the opening of the mouth. The effect is very subtle right now and I would have liked to push it further but after breaking the rig several time and using up few evenings with technical things I think this will do for that shot, time to move on, I think it is a nice close up shot with very stylised facial animation.

Related posts:
Lip sync observations
La fête – polish pass
Norman FK world aligned spine
World orient head and shoulders

La fete – polish (French audio) 1

Animation

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La fete – polish (French audio)

Sorry for not replying to your emails guys but I have no internet at home at the moment so lunch time breaks are extremely short to do all my online business 🙁

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/16055287[/vimeo]

Since I am looking for work in France, I worked out it would be smart to use a french audio track for once.

For this piece I wanted to mainly focus on facial polish and lip sync and using a layered approach.

It is about 18 hours of work and I am sure this could be polished a bit more but I have become a bit blind to it. I will start a new two characters shot in the meantime and come back to this with fresh eyes.

The audio seem off by half a frame to one frame so if it bothers you, you can always download the avi version from Vimeo

[update] I just tweaked Bishop a bit, the video is exactly the same as above. Watching it with fresh eyes I realised that the mouth is a bit too poppy at the beginning and the lipsynch seems slightly off in places. I will revisit this in few days
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/16370801[/vimeo]