Wednesday 23 February 2011

First lip sync

UPDATE:

Here is a new, slightly altered based on the feedback.



I've been working on a lip sync to get some practise in facial animation since we don't get that as an exercise at uni. Concidering this is my first attempt of it, as well as my first time working in Maya when I understand the workflow and tools (though I have some rather less successful, but educational meetings with the program prior to this), I am quite happy with the result, but please give some critique:)




Here is some acting reference I did as well. Unfortunately, it's from an old mobile camera so the quality isn't great..


3 comments:

Geoff King said...

Hey Magnus, I think the lipsync is quite good for your first attempt!
I'd say the 'O's on 'so' and 'done' as well as the 'at' on 'that' are the ones that need to be nailed.

The O on 'so' seems to start at the right time but feels a bit large to me. Of course the angle of the shot (wide or close) will effect this.
I think the 'O' on 'done' should not be an O shape but rather closer to a relaxed open mouth to lead into the 'th' of 'that' more naturally.
The 'do' feels a bit late too but its probably only a matter of 1 or 2 frames.

I really like that you've posted your reference, its great to see. I think the first video of takes are much more believable from an acting point of view, but that's just my preference.

Animation wise i'd say keep it simple. One thing I still try to stop myself doing is adding too many keys. The least you can get away with the better! For a 2 second shot too much movement is unnecessary and distracting. It would be nice to add some time to the beginning and maybe even hear the girl speak. There is a really nice opportunity to see his expression change as he forms the sentence in his head.

Oh and blinking! I thought you could do away with the second blink, it seems squashed in there and loses the intensity of his dead pan expression. And I can't play it frame by frame but his last blink feels very fast. For normal blinking the eye is usually closed for at least 2 frames. Sorry if you knew that already, i wasn't sure.

Hope some of that helps

Ben Ho said...

Looking good. My thought is that you could probably lead with the eye more before the body moves. So at the the end movement when he glances towards the camera there could be more time between when his eyes look over there and when his body catches up.

Magnus Kråvik said...

Thanks a lot for the good feedback :) It was really good!

I have made some adjustments from what both of you said and put the new version up. Although I didn't add more animation in front of it. I see your point and do agree, but a part of the point with this for me was to keep it short so that I could focus on a small bit while starting out learning Maya and facial animation. But the next one .. ;)

Geoff: I think maybe I've heared about holding a blink for two frames, it sounds familiar, but it was long forgotten, so thanks :)