This is the stage where I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel. The main animation is there, but still lacks something.
I started to do the lipsync with phonemes, but it took too much time, so I started doing jaw movement instead. This sped up the process significantly, and made it less like a chore. I tweaked the mouth afterward, to form the phonemes.
The dynamic facial expressions aren’t there at the moment, but I have put in a sad look on him, to help me “feel” the character more.
Here’s the clip (in .avi-format):
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_clean_and_lipsync_01.avi
Finally got to a rough animation. The main movements are there, but there’s still a lot of work to do besides the lipsync.
The poses are timed to fit the voice acting, but it’s not quite there yet.
I have tried to make it look less like a block animation and getting some follow-through there. But all the poses are more or less there.
Here’s the clip (in .avi-format)
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_rough_01.avi
This is the stage in between block and rough, simply because I made the block half-finished before I made it into the rough animation.
The timing is getting fixed and the poses tweaked a bit. I tried to experiment a bit with the lipsync, but decided I should delay it until I started closing in to the clean animation. I am not too sure about the animation and poses in the beginning here, but there should be time to fix it.
Still in .avi-format:
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_block_rough_02.avi
Invader Zim, a huge inspiration for my animation
I started on the animation by blocking out the key poses, and tend to use quite some time at this stage. This is important, because I want the exaggerated poses to follow through to the final product.
My inspirations have been Invader Zim, with it’s economical animation and hysterical characters, and the stereotypical Dr. Frankenstein-scientist type we all know and love.
Here’s an .avi-file of the block-in-progress (Max wouldn’t render to .mov for some reason):
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_block_01.avi
When the voice actor(James Harris) sessions were over, I started creating a very rough and quick animatic of how I wanted the final animation to be. The camera is supposed to go closer in on the scientist, as he gets more and more intense and frustrated. It was made in Photoshop and Premiere.
Here’s the animatic (.mov-file)
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_animatic_draft01.mov
