The goal of this document is to track my progress and development of my workflow. By doing this I can find ways to work faster and more efficiently. By sharing I can help others who are just starting or want to see a certain perspective. Written in mostly real-time during the project so expect to see changes in my thought process.
Audio
Challenge
I felt like I needed to try my hand at a longer dialogue piece, I enjoy emotional dialog or scenes with drama. I also wanted to add more movement and focus on performance of the character as a whole.
- Emotional dialogue
- Lip sync
- Performance
RIGS
Morpheus By Josh Burton - http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp
Thumbnails
Quickly sketched out the important story parts for general performance staging of the characters.
Still trying out new ways I can plan my shots out more. Dissecting the audio.
Ref
Looking for weight, body movements, and a general timing. I wish the room was evenly lit so there wouldn't be as much shadows so that I can grab more subtleties in the face but I'm hoping my drawings and the reference will be enough.
Blocking
Just body,head and hand movement. Rough timing that I'll clean up and breakdown more for in the next blocking pass. Decided not to include the handcuffs because I felt they restricted movement to the character and given the location ( a visiting room ) I didn't feel they we're necessary as It could possibly heighten the threat level of the inmate. I re-shot a few hand gestures for reference.
II
Broke down a few of the major poses to get a better feel for the timing. I feel confident enough to start blocking out the face. The lip sync will be after I spline the body.
III
My favorite part of blocking is adding in the expressions. I'm ready to see where the spline will look like.
Spline
No adjustments, this is what it looked like immediately after splining.
I wasn't too happy with the result. Some parts were okay but I thought that overral it wasn't a successful blocking to spline. Took a few days to recharge after the disappointment and tried to see where I think I went wrong in the final phase of blocking:
1. Too many key poses with not enough breakdowns lead one action to another either feeling too floaty or too fast.
2. Too many breakdowns without enough time for pause.
3. IK/FK switching during complicated movements is really hard (I tried fixing this for so long in spline).
4. Moving everything is a waste of energy and confused the focal point of the shot.
5. Breakdown fast movements in blocking more, this doesn't mean more keys just make sure the action is as close to spline as possible.
I
I'm much happier after cleaning up the initial spline. I re-timed a lot of things, held poses for longer, tried smoothing out the jerky movements and made a few changes in the acting choices. I want to make the part where he gets up less robotic and then I can begin putting in the small details, tightening the timing even more and lip sync.
II
This is the final spline pass before I ask a few peers for feedback, then I'll go into the polish phase. While I wait for feedback I'll start on the second character, the son who responds, "I'm not going anywhere".
III
I added the son, I splined him all the way through while I waited for feedback. Then went back to add in the notes I received. Going to polish everything and then flatten out the environment.
Polish
I went over the facial and main controls and tweaked the timing of certain things I felt could be better. I'm going to render it out with lighting and then add some minor things Davinci Resolve and that'll be the final.
Final
Conclusion
I had a lot of fun with this one. I got to take some steps into acting with a performance and a two character interaction. In future pieces I would like to perfect my final blocking -> spline pass. I also think my mouth shapes could be stronger especially when the characters talk fast, I found that difficult to time and look good. I also would like to see if I can do something cartoony with dialog in the future. I think I did well to dissect the audio I could probably work on making the process faster by combing a few elements such as making the animatic with more facial and body detail or skipping it and working straight from reference. Either way I'm glad to call this done and ready to move on to the next challenge.