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
Woman: We were friends, how could you betray me like that?
The Process
First I wrote down the audio in my notebook. I drew lines under moments in the audio that varied from relaxed to stressed. The more lines, the more stressed the audio was.I feel this will help me when I shoot my reference.
I also wrote down the tone of the woman speaking. She sounded sad but stern with whoever/whatever she was speaking with. This is important because it will help me make a matching mannerism.
Lastly, I thumbnail the angles and rough character layout of the scene.
Rigs
David & Dana - Gabriel Salas
Going with Ol’ Reliable for this one. I’m familiar with these two rigs and they’re one of my favorite pairs to use.
Reference
I decided that I wanted a closer view and focus on facial animation and emotion when I began my reference. My thumbnail sketch showed more of the body but I think moving forward I will isolate the upper body and face for the first shot. Looking back I should’ve taken my glasses off for this.
More reference, mouth shapes.
While looking for more female emotions and faces I came across a cool study titled “Compound facial expressions of emotion” - https://www.pnas.org/content/111/15/E145
Scene Setup
I began by hiding most of the controls I didn't need and putting my camera on a layer. I will also hide the facial controls as I start on blocking out the body.
Blocking Phase 1 : Body Pass
For this shot I blocked out the body poses for every 1 (24 frames), ½ (12 frames) and ¼ (6 frames) seconds. I also added in poses every 4 frames for smaller actions. I stayed organized by using bookmarks on my timeline.
Yellow : Start and End of Shot#
Red: Indicates 1second or 24 frames
Blue: Indicates ½ second or 12 frames
Orange: Indicates ¼ second or 6 frames
Green : Start and End of dialog
Blocking Phase 2 : Body + Face
For this phase I cleaned up the body a bit more and began blocking the face which included the eyebrows, eyes, nose and opening the mouth.
Spline Phase 1 : Body + Face
For this phase I splined the body and face whilst cleaning up the timing for certain parts. I was surprised at how little I had to tweak and for the first pass I didn't think It was too bad.
Spline Phase 2 : Body + Face + Mouth
For this phase I worked in spline for the lip sync and continued to make minor tweaks to the face. I wanted to exaggerate a few mouth shapes as I felt my reference was a little too boring at towards the end. For this phase I introduced purple bookmakers that were used for the really tight movements in the mouth shapes (1-3) frames.
Final Pass
Before this point I tweaked minor things in the graph editor but for this phase I wanted to work entirely in the graph editor for "polish". I went through all the major controllers first then the minor ones smoothing curves while paying attention to the timing of the audio so as not to offset anything.
Render
Nothing too fancy, in the end I didn't end up adding the second character or the scene. Initially, I thought it would be nice to add a second character or a second shot to tell a story but decided to just focus on the performance and not get carried away. A simple 3-Point lighting set up with smooth render settings inside the viewport will suffice for this short exercise.
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Conclusion & What I Learned
I learned a lot, I like the phase approach I took with this shot. I also enjoyed using bookmakers it really helped staying organized with my keys and allowed me to re-time things easily towards the end. One thing I struggled with was eye darts early on and a few mouth shapes. When I got stuck I took a break from working to really look at my reference and watched a few videos online on what I was stuck on. I wasted the most time on feeling like something would be easy and end up noodling micro movements.