After doing the 2D/3D walk cycle and lip sync I decided to create 3D walk cycle and lip sync. I found 3D animation more enjoyable as I prefer doing it digitally and not draw each frame by hand. Since I'm using Maya software for modelling, rendering and now animating I would like to have the opportunity to create another 3D walk cycle and lip sync from scratch. Most of my work I have done has been 2D work, so this is another reason I'm creating 3D walk cycle and lip sync. This will give me a better understanding of the basics and improve my mistakes from past work. (I will also add 2D work from weekly tasks)
I will be using Richard Williams walk cycle as a guide if happen to have any issues, the poses and the looping. I'm aware the timing is unnatural and will take out my own.
The phonemes shape reference I used for my 2D animation and will be using for my 3D lip animation. I find this reference more accurate.
I decided to add a 2D throw animation I did a few weeks back, I wanted to go deeper into the animation cycles. I wanted to try out anticipation movement to see how the movements works. When the character is about to throw the ball, it goes from a relaxed pose to anticipation pose (1-28 frame), that's when the body stretches out, feet raises and rotates forward. Then the body bends where the left arm moves forward and most of the weight will be on the left leg.
This is my throw animation, although this is my first time creating an anticipation movement, I'm quite happy with the gesture and weight. I was only using the throw animation reference as a guide for the poses, I took out my own frames and experimented myself. The timing was something I was struggling with which made the animation look rough. Pose 1-4 had more frames because that's when the anticipation occurs, the other poses had less frames as the character is throwing it.
I would say this is a much more complex movement compared with the walk cycle as I had to pay attention to the shoulder, legs, hips, arms and body rotation. I noticed the arm has a huge impact in the body, as the arm moves backward the body will stretch out and legs will straighten out.
My second 2D I decided to include is a 2D lip sync, the art might not be the best, but I found this very challenging. Even though this is a short audio clip the guy speaks extremely fast.
As I created the phoneme shapes, I had to be careful picking out the vowels and translate different words such as screwed into "skrud". Extending some of the mouth animation was to make it clearer and obvious what he was saying.
Although I could have added more movement to the character to give him more expression, work on the timing to see the lip animation better and create better phoneme shapes. Timing it was the most difficult part during this process. Overall, the outcome looks alright but I'm glad I sort of managed to time it.
I created a 3D lip sync animation using an audio clip called Orange is the new black - "Toy Story", the audio clip is the button next to the 3D - Lip sync title. During this whole process I had some issues timing the lip sync, the woman speaks constantly with not enough pause in-between in my opinion. After a couple of hours, I managed to improve the timing, the timing isn't completely accurate but the phoneme shapes does match the audio.
Using another rigged character allowed me to experiment the different options, although the controls were very similar with the Blake rigged character, I didn't have a lot of issues animating the character. This is my second time creating a 3D lip animation and I would say I have learnt a lot and through my issues. This could be adding too many key frames in the lip sync, arm animation and cut scenes which ruined the animation. As I got deeper into the brief things went much smoother and I could see improvements myself.
Something I can work on next time is to be careful with the number of key frames I add, since it makes a huge difference how the character behaves. Another thing is to get a better understanding of the lip sync and try to time it a bit better at it as I feel like the lip animation was a bit behind. Lastly, I'm quite happy with the outcome as I expected the results to be worse. Noting the issues I had the first time (3D animation) was the arm animation and lip sync falling behind, but I have done some improvements for my second lip animation which I'm quite happy about.
The video walk cycle I will be using for this brief will be an old video from week 1 of my classmate, were I created this walk cycle in 2D. But I want to recreate the walk cycle in 3D as I found her walk quite interesting, such as the bounce, hunched forward a bit etc.
Using Photoshop I imported the frame to layers, this imports each frame in the timeline. I'm using this method so I can be more precise taking out the contact-, down-, passing- and up pose. I also used a ruler liner to be more precise with the poses and a guide line.
I have taken out the four different poses and the frames, this is to ease my work when creating the walk cycle in Maya later. From the contact pose to the pass pose there are 9 frames in-between, her walk cycle is a lot slower as she takes bigger step and takes more time to go from the down pose to passing pose. Looking at her position her back is hunched forward a bit and arms are relaxed. There is also a Follow through and Overlapping action as her hair bounces, as she is on her way down her hair bounces up, if I possibly can find a rig where the character has a ponytail I will try to attempt that into my walk cycle. Her walk gives her personality as the exaggeration gives her some bounce when she walks which makes her walk dynamic.
I found a free rig from highend3d that has a female character with pony tail that can be adjusted. Even though the face rigs are separated such as left eye lid and right eye lid etc this rigged character has everything I need to create a walk cycle including the Follow through and Overlapping action.
Once I set up the poses I created the animation for the rigged character. Comparing the rigged character and my classmate's walk, the rigged character's back leg moves a bit slower. Although I think I could've done the timing a bit better, especially from the down pose to passing pose by minimizing the frames in between.
Another thing I noticed was that her boots have a hard sole so there wouldn't be a lot of bend at the toes. When making the follow through and overlapping action her ponytail would bounce up and outwards when she got to the down pose and opposite when she reached the up pose. So far I'm quite happy with the placement of the poses, but the walk doesn't look good yet due the the arms aren't animated yet.
Before
After
Once I finished the leg animation I did the arm animation, I found this quite difficult as her lower arms swings at the contact pose and arm is quite straight at down pose. On the left side is the before and after, the before shows how I had some issues with the back arm as it freezes at the down pose. I deleted unnecessary frames that caused the issue and got a smoother animation. I also think the walk changes a bit due to the rigged character's massive hands and head.
I added some exaggeration to the character, since I only had a side view walk of my classmate it was difficult to tell how the exaggeration was. So I sort of had to guess and analyse it, since the walk is quite bouncy there would be some exaggeration at the pelvis and shoulders. Her shoulder won't have much exaggeration due to the short motion in her arm swing. However I think the arms looks a bit stiff and I could have added more movement into them. But since I didn't know how the walk was from the front it was difficult to tell how the exaggerated walk would look like.
Overall this has been the most difficult walk cycle for me so far but looking at the video I think I have gotten better with the timing. The timing used to be something I had issues with before, even if the final walk cycle isn't completely accurate, I learnt how to take out the different poses, analyse the posture, add exaggeration, timing etc. Something new I got to try was the Follow through and Overlapping action added for the pony tail, it makes the character more realistic. And trying out different rigged character made me analyse things differently, such as the body proportions.
This was a fun experience and challenging at the same time, due to everyone has a different walk cycle it will always be something challenging and learning. In the future I would improve the timing in the arms and understand the motion of them, how the hand, lower arm and upper body are kept separate as it were an elastic band. I could have used better references (video), I didn't really think it through as I only had a side view and not different perspectives. This prevented me to analyse the exaggeration properly.
This semester has been a very fun and learning, there were some stuff I enjoyed more than others. Animating either 2D or 3D was my first time, and I had no idea how to start to develop my own animation. At the beginning of the course I was a bit confused with the software, development, poses, lip sync and other stuff. But my experience in this module has given me a better understanding within all those areas.
I got to try several different ideas such as walk cycle, lip sync, throw animation, camera, arm animation etc. I also tried other stuff which was anticipation that was a 2D throw animation and follow through and overlapping which was the 3D walk cycle for this brief. I have enjoyed doing these practical work as I got to use different materials in both 2D and 3D.
I liked the idea to begin the module with 2D, even though I prefer 3D. But starting with 2D gave me a better understanding to observe the human behavior. I learnt this through research by drawings, references and develop my own methods, I could eventually take out my own timing, poses, exaggeration etc. This was thanks to the module, references and other research in both 2D and 3D. Once I reached this area, I could do this outside the lectures independently and do my own research, a few examples: follow through and overlapping, old lady walk cycle and throw animation. As I got to do this process independently, I noticed my mistakes and weaker areas, within lip sync and walk cycle it was the timing. I was bad at timing each frame which made the animation look unnatural and this was very frustrating. Weeks went by and I got better at planning and found my own methods, take out each pose - create a sketch and write down key frames to ease my process.
The module has developed my skills and knowledge in various areas. Comparing how I was the first week and now is a huge difference, I can finally create my own walk cycle, lip animation and other stuff. This allowed me to work independently for this brief and other module that included animation, this would be animating objects and create a running character. Even though my final walk cycle and lip sync isn't perfect I have improved in all areas and taken the mistakes with me from past weeks. And I have other areas to improve on which is the timing in the lip animation and understand the arm motion.
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