Research Project: Artifact 5

Research Project Question:
What is the relationship between dialogue and body language? 

From Acting for animators, " Remember our sense of sight is a lot more powerful than our sense of hearing."
 
Artifact 5
A full mime without any sound or dialogue.

Q1: What is the story about?
Q2: With only the facial expression and body language, is it already enough for you to understand?
How did the facial expression and body language helped?

Research Project: Artifact 4

Research Project Question:
What is the relationship between dialogue and body language? 

Artifact 4:
-Playing only audio first ( I used Chinese instead of English)
-Then play the actual animation, see if he audience can understand how much of it.

Audio:
Q1: What do you think is happening? How many people are there?

Actual animation:

Q2: What is happening?

Q3: How did the body language helped to understand the story/scene?

Research Project: Artifact 3

Research Project Question:
What is the relationship between dialogue and body language? 

Artifact 3
From the book Acting and performance for animation,  "...it is possible to animate a character with their back to the camera and still have audience understand exactly what he/she is feeling."

Therefore, I animated 3 short clips and try to show them with my tutorial group for feedback.

Q1: Emotion?
Q2: What do you think about animating with characters back to camera? Is it difficult/ easy to understand? Or do you get confuse?

 

Q1: Emotion?
Q2: What do you think about animating with characters back to camera? Is it difficult/ easy to understand? Or do you get confuse?

Q1: Emotion?
Q2: What do you think about animating with characters back to camera? Is it difficult/ easy to understand? Or do you get confuse?

Research Project: Artifact 2

Research Project Question:
What is the relationship between dialogue and body language?

Ed Hooks: Acting is very little to do with dialogue. The character's thoughts, emotions and intentions are more important. 

 For artifact 1, I animated 2 clips and played without sound.
In artifact 2, there are 2 clips. One without dialogue and one with dialogue.

-To compare two clips, if the gestures too exaggerated?
- Do the audience understand?

Clip 1: without dialogue

Clip 2: with dialogue

 Compare

Feedback:
Q1) What is happening? Do you understand what they are doing?
They bumped into each other, the man is apologetic while the boy is arrogant.
2 men bump into each other. The boy is dominated/rude/assertive. The man is compliant and polite, subdued.
Bumping into each other. Rude child. Adult scared and compliant.
One asked the other to move out of the way.
The kid says "move out the way!" The adult apologies.
People carrying things clash. Kid tells man to get out of the way. Guy says NO.
They bumped into each other. The old guy is apologizing and the boy is arguing and blaming him angrily.

Q2) What is happening? Compared to the first video, do you think the dialogue in the second video helped a lot? Do you think the character gestures in the first video are too exaggerated? Which one do you prefer - with or without dialogue? Why?
Story is the same. I don't think the gesture are too exaggerated. Prefer the 1st one as I feel you get to know the character better.
Prefer the gesture in the first video, because they are a lot sassier and emotive.
Same as first one. Gestures are suitable substitutes for dialogue that not really necessary. Adult gestures a bit too exaggerated. Prefer 1st video, gives more information about character personality.
Same story. Prefer the 2nd one as the movement and the tone of voice seem to show the different personalities of the characters.
The gestures work well enough to eliminate the need for dialogue. However prefer the 2nd one.
Same thing but the guy is apologetic, dialogue helped with the guy, I prefer the 2nd one (laughed more)
Same scenario. The dialogue helped to bring more personality to the characters and explain what was happening in a more natural way. 1st video more exaggerated and unnatural. Prefer the 2nd.
 

Research Project: Artifact_1

Research Project Question:
What is the relationship between dialogue and body language?

Artifact 1:
- Animated 2 clips
- Experiment whether the audience can understand an animated character by playing without sound.
- What gestures/ body language helped them believe/ understand the scene.

Clip 1:

Q1: What do you think he is doing?
Q2: What's his attitude?
Q3: Why do you think that? What poses/ gestures make you believe that?

Clip 2:

Q1: What do you think he is doing?
Q2: Do you think that he is talking to a girl?
Q3: What poses/ gestures make you believe that?

Client project: week 16 Chrarcter finished blend shapes+rigged+ineractive skin edit

I finished blend shapes+rigged+interactive skin edit finally and started to animate it.

 

 

At first, I found that it's really weird when I edit blend shape with the mouth. It was really not natural at all. So I kept trying and correcting and get the second result finally.

 Other blend shapes:

 I add a simple eye controller for him too.

 

I am trying to add the depth of field to it but don't know why it's not working. I will keep experiment it later.

Animated test for 3 sec.
https://vimeo.com/79455932

Client project: week 15 Chrarcter unwrap + paint in mudbox + blend shapes

After done the hair last Thursday, I modeled the hat and his clothes. And start to do the unwrapping in maya.

I'm quite exciting to paint it in mudbox as I really enjoyed it.

I was trying to paint the projection of a feather on the model, but I found out that the result is not that good. Therefore, I created some illustration in photoshop and re-imported in mudbox. 

The final textured of my little Robin Hood.

I also tried to use the light settings in mudbox, the above one is using Gallery mode which I love the most.
I experiment the light settings in mudbox to have different tone on my character.
This is the soft light mode:

For the eyes:
I modeled the eyes in maya and then painted them in mudbox.
I tried to use blue and brown colour and I decided to use the brown one because it is more suitable for my character.

 

 When I duplicate the eye and fit them into my character, it is finally complete!

I think I will need to figure out how to use the lighting set up in maya soon.

I'm going to do blend shapes and rig it soon..

Here's the result in maya:

I'm currently working on blend shapes..

https://vimeo.com/78879583