Introduction: In the majority of your animations, you will be animating a character speaking to an existing vocal track. Voice actors will be recorded in a studio and during these sessions, in order to make the animation process easier for you, video reference must be recorded at the same time the dialogue is being recorded. The process for animating dialogue is the same as the previous “Gear Change” assignment. Instead of two poses, you have many that are strung together, with the character holding the pose for as long as he is reciting the line of dialogue. After you strung together your poses, you can then break down your animation by adding moving holds, overlapping action and finally phoneme mouth shapes.
From my experience in teaching phoneme shapes, due to the complexity of this assignment, we will break this assignment down into two sections. The first assignment, this one you are reading at the moment, you will be focusing on the body language, posing, gesture, timing and positioning. After you have done this, you will proceed to the second animation assignment, where you will integrate phoneme shapes.
Follow the posing tutorial in the last assignment to help you along.
Adding Sound to the Maya Timeline Video Tutorial
The video tutorial below covers how to import a .wav file into the Maya timeline so you can animate this monologue track.
http://www.randolfdimalanta.com/tutorials/mayasound/index.html
Assignment Description:
Due to its complexity, this assignment will be broken down into two parts. Secure a soundclip with one character speaking that is about 5 – 10 seconds long. Use a free character rig and pose your character’s body as if he is reciting the lines. Its best if you have video reference to work from, if not, you may have to act out the scene and record yourself, or you may have to locate the actual footage to help you along. This is a pantomime exercise, so your character must look as if he is expressing the monologue without any lip movement, it should be done with body language, hand, head an eye movement.
Competencies:
By the end of this exercise, the student should be able to:
- Pose CG characters in emotive poses.
- Link these poses together so the character pantomimes the dialogue.
- Create a smooth transition between the poses.
- Incorporate animation principles of overlapping action and anticipation.
- Incorporate subtle movements in the animation called moving holds.
- Convey the speech into a believable pantomime performance.
PrePlanning:
Before you begin, just as the beginning animation exercises suggest, sketch out and identify the poses you may need. Try to keep this as simple as possible, but try not make your character stand perfectly still. Its best if you can locate video reference to help you pose the character to match the shot, and to help you include the details needed to create subtle expressions in the eyes, or hands. For simplicity, you may choose to animate the character from the waste up.
Before you begin, load your sound file on to your time slider so you can see the wave forms. You will need this so you know where to hit your keyframes. Keep things simple and hold your poses just as you did in the previous assignments. Break these down once you are comfortable.
Simple Movements:
Since this is the first time you are animating dialogue, its important to keep things simple. This means keeping your body movement minimum. There will times where you will be animating a lot of body movement. A common pitfall, is that students add too much movement, that we lose focus of what is being said, this is called overacting.
Keep your keyframes simple, neat and organized, but be sure you capture the emotion being expressed in the dialogue. Unlike the gear change, the poses you are creating for this exercise will number between 7 – 10. Anymore, I would consider to be too much and I would encourage you to simplify.
Below are a few tips before you begin posing.
- Memorize your lines.
- Do 48 frames at a time.
- Use the bookend method to pose and hold your keyframes.
- Refer to your video reference and see how many frames it takes to hold a pose. You will interpret and adjust this later, but it will serve as a start.
- Refer to your last assignments to see how blocked in the pantomime.
- Do playblasts often to check to see if you are on target.
EVALUATION:
Here are some questions to consider asking yourself to make sure you are on target with this assignment.
- Is the emotion correct in these poses?
- Does it look like your character is saying the words believably (without words)?
- Is the character holding the pose long enough?
- Is there enough exaggeration? Can I exaggerate the pose more to enhance the emotion?
- Is this pantomime clear, or is he moving too fast for his voice?
- Compare your animation to actual footage, is the timing similar, if not, why?
