Introduction and First Stages: Lip Syncing

For this assessment, I had to develop and produce an animation where an animated character would speak dialogue by synchronizing lip movement with the audio. To achieve this, a series of software programs and techniques were required, specifically the 3D animation software, Autodesk Maya, although producing the animation in 2D is optional.

For the choice of dialogue, I went through a series of ideas before finally settling on what I assumed would be a good sketch. So I typed down lines of dialogue that may be good for the script and then I simply constructed the script with some camera angles and descriptions of the characters. The script is shown in the next post. 


Below are a few links of research on the subject of character animation.


http://www.animationarena.com/character-animation-tutorials.html


http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/05/character-animation-tutorials-and-more-from-robert-powers.html


http://www.cgindia.org/2006/05/tutorial-character-animation.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwkIuFG6-2U


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-foUw-27keY&feature=related


http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-lip-sync-animation 

Script for Sketch

“TWO DRUNKS IN A BAR.”

SKETCH FOR CHARACTER ANIMATION

Written by

MICHAEL HINES

INT. BAR - DAY

WIDE SHOT

Two men are sitting at a bar counter. The first man is looking down gloomily at his half empty glass. The second man notices him.

TWO SHOT

MAN 2

Are you alright, mate? You seem very quiet.

The first man looks up briefly and then looks at the glass again.

MAN 1

Oh, just thinking.

MAN 2

                         (curiously)

Thinking about what?

CLOSE UP – MAN 1

MAN 1

Oh, a friend of mine. Got into a bit of trouble he did. He fell through a trap door and broke his neck.

TWO SHOT

MAN 2

Oh the poor fella. Was it an accident?

MAN 1

                         (looks up)

No, they were hanging him.

Man 2 looks at the camera confused.

END

Pre-Production Stages

References and Original Designs

After the script was written, I got into the next stage by producing designs and images for the setting of the scene. First, I designed the background, which for this I decided to set the scene in a local pub. So I researched on several photos for reference and so I produced several images of the interior of a fictional bar. When I finished them, they were scanned in and I proceeded to colour and texturize them using Photoshop.

Then I began drawing rough sketches of the main characters that will be involved in the scene. I simply drew them in a few poses, then scanned them in grayscale format and later used them for a rough animatic.

A series of images of bar interiors (above), which inspired me on the design of the background.

Design of behind the counter in the local pub, before colorization and texturing in Photoshop.

Same image as above, but complete with colour, texture and lighting effects.

Original design for unnamed Man No.2.

Original design for unnamed Man No.1. With several lip shapes shown.

Rough sketches of how the characters should pose throughout the animation, based on their emotions.

Another original design of the bar interior where the scene takes place, completed with colour and texture.

Images below show a few examples of the dope sheets I used to keep track of what frames to use certain lip shapes for the dialogue as well as record how long a character changes from one pose to the next. Notice the lip shape symbols I drew in the FX column to determine when the character moves his mouth for the next sound of dialogue.

Reference Footage and Lip Sync Tests

This post contains clips of footage including lip sync test and live action footage that I had recorded and used as reference for the key drawings.

This here is the reference footage I recorded of myself taking on both roles of the main characters. Used Adobe After Effects for putting the footage together, but unfortunately no audio.

This here is the first lip sync I did using hand drawn images. Managed to line up appropriate lip shapes with dialogue in the audio. 

This is a rough animatic of the entire sequence containing some rough audio and the main shots I would use for the final animation version. This clip was composed of several key drawings and using the Puppet Tool in After Effects. Not much emotion in the characters but, like I said, this is a rough animatic and all this can be fixed in the final animation clip.

Final Stages

Once all the key drawings, extremes and in-betweens were drawn and scanned, I proceeded to colour them in and animate them using After Effects. I used the drawings over again for movement, if I had decided to draw every single frame of the clip individually, it would have taken more time, so I used a bit of cutout style to finish certain scenes. 

The only part of the animation clip that was completely CGI (computer generated imagery) was the eyes of the characters. I had created almost photorealistic eyes in the past for other projects and I simply decided to use them. Since I did few key drawings and the characters won't have much movement, I learned you can give a character more emotion by simply using their eyes. We all know that our eyes can help show different emotions and also tell us that we are thinking about what is being said so I attempted to use the same technique for these two characters.

The last shot of the clip done in After Effects. Each shot in the entire clip was composed of sophisticated sequences of several 3D converted layers of the images. I wanted to make it three dimensional by shading and texturing the background in Photoshop and applied the Bevel and Emboss mode in After Effects to the characters so you can see that light is reflecting off their bodies and other parts have shadow. Also, the background is slightly blurred to give the shot more of a depth of field, as well as using a 3D camera mode.

This image shows the final sequence being edited together. The longest shot in this clip is roughly 17 seconds, an image of it shown at the top right. 

Not only did I use After Effects to animate the characters, I had to use Premiere Pro to piece the lip sync shots together. I used several images over again for each lip sound so it looked like the character was actually speaking. Then I had to render and convert them into separate movie files to be altered in After Effect. Had to put them against a green screen background so I could the Chroma Key Effect to piece the layers more easily.

To note, there were a few technical difficulties throughout the production, including a bug that caused the picture to change in tone of colour when rendering but I managed to fix this by choosing the correct format to convert the movie file.

You can now view the finished movie in this link below. Enjoy it, I hope you will.

Two Men in a Bar: Character Animation Assessment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyd2f-skrVE