Two Character Dialogue - Blocking Plus

Here's my latest playblast for my two character dialogue.  I added some little nuances based on Mark's eCritique (i.e. - "Rarely do you pick anything on your body and not take a look at it." HA!) and then stumbled across some things as I went.  It's still making me laugh, so that's good!

"Hey, look, I found something squishy..."

Here's a bit of advice, and it's easy to take at this stage of the game (blocking plus instead of polish!)... If something's not working, feel free to save a version, wipe out that section of animation and try again.  In the fourth shot, the businessman turns to the homeless guy and berates him.  I had something that was ok, but it just didin't feel right.  So, I did what every mentor's been telling me for my entire time at AM... bookend the animation with keys, kill it and start new.  It works, trust me.  I acted out what I thought might work, tried some quick ideas, and after a few tries, it seems ok now.  It's better to delete a section than to keep working a dead animation.  Plus, it keeps the frustration levels down and motivation up!

Looking For A Job Dressed Like That?!

I feel like someone's going to say that to me when I try to get my next job... hehe... ANYWAY...

I'm having far too much fun with this shot.  So many ideas, so few frames.  HA!  Here's a quick movie of the breakdowns I did for my assignment this week.  I have a few things to adjust, tweak, add, subtract, but in general, I'm really enjoying it... and so is Mark, so that's good!

Facial Poses.... FTW!

Not to brag, but the facial poses are really working for this shot.  I hope I can bring the magic all the way to the finish line with this one.  Something tells me Mark won't have it any other way.  HAHA!  (P.S. - He's an amazing mentor, in case you wanted to know.  Something about those Canadian animators!)

I'll be posting the updated movie this week with the few tweaks, some of which will make me laugh (and hopefully anyone who watches it!).  Either way, I'm having fun, and that's half the battle.  GO JOE!

Are You Employed, Sir?

... I am, but not in animation!  But that's not the point here.  What is important is my newest assignment and the big slice of pie at AM, the two person dialogue shot.  Here's what I have in mind...

The Dialogue - The Big Lebowski

The dialogue I chose comes from the Big Lebowski.  I really wanted something where the contrast between characters wasn't because of gender or anything "shallow", but because there was something a little deeper inside the characters.

With a little help from a friend, I thought it would be funny to switch this up to a homeless guy and a business man (not that far off, really!).  The ending came to me when I did some research for homeless people and I started noticing a lot of the people were pictured a ton of things like electronics, pets, etc.  I found myself saying "You have no home but you have items that are not necessities in life...".  The punchline of my animation was born (to be shown at a later date.  STAY TUNED!).

Characters - A business man and a homeless guy meet on the street...

Here are my initial character setups.  Somewhat of a stereotype, but I needed them easily recognizable because the entire shot is only 15 seconds!

The Businessman.  Props will be shown later.

The Homeless man.  Props to be shown later.

Keep your eyes peeled.  I'll be posting my layout soon.

Facial Poses - Part 3

Here's another...

...

Out With The Old...

So, this was the last week to work on my line of dialogue with one person.  I'll be honest, I'm not happy with it from a body mechanics point of view, but the lip sync and facial expressions are definitely getting there.  Eventually I'll go back and make it the way I want (ditch all the acting and do the shovel idea I spoke about in a previous blog post).

Side note: It's amazing how much you can see when you're refreshed and not burnt out anymore.  There's so much about this shot that I cringe at, but it's good because I at least know what to fix!  I feel like Neo in the animation matrix (... *sigh* oh boy).

Pointy pointer...

Coming up... two person dialogue.  WOO HOO!

Makin' Faces

Part of last week's assignment was facial expressions, which was actually a lot of fun.  Here's two I put together, one is subtle, the other not so much.  I kind of planned it that way because I felt like I've been doing a lot of big motions in animation, so why not try subtle stuff to see if I can pull it off.  I think they came out pretty well... of course I'm slightly biased.

Awesome!

So this lady was easily the best image I found of winking/happy on Shutterstock.com.  I really liked the asymmetry and how "big" her face got with excitement.  To give you the inside scoop, I started large (tilted the head, general eye open/close, jaw open) and worked my way down to the smaller details (lip sections up/down, eyelid edge shape) as I went.  I didn't focus on one thing and get it perfect because it seemed like so much effected everything else.  The face definitely has a lot of push and pull going on depending on the expression.

Somebody looks a little evil...

Same thing with this guy.  Even though parts of the face don't look like they are being influenced, they really are.  His face is squished on the camera right side.  His cheek pushes out because of this, his lips curl, eyebrow comes down.  Kinda cool to look at the tiny stuff.  It's also good to think about a slight rotation to the head... up, down, left or right.  Straight to camera is not as interesting as a slight twist... especially with this guy.  Makes him look a little more distrustful.  :) 

One last "hint".  I really find that the asymmetry of these faces works well when you think of things in terms of greater than/less than symbols... wait, WHAT?!  Hehe, no, seriously.  Here...

See?  When one side of the face pushes, it looks really nice to have the other side pull the other direction.  Even in the subtle face you can see this and it helps keep it interesting without being symmetric.

Advanced Acting... It Has Begun...

So my new class is Advanced acting with Mark Pullyblank.  I haven't met him yet (my class is from 12AM-1AM on Thursday morning... UGH!) but he seems like a cool guy in his profile.  He has worked at Rainmaker Digital, Frantic Films, Weta and is currently at Sony Imageworks in Vancouver.  Cool!  He has some cool stuff on his blog, which I'll link here as well as on my sidebar.  Definitely check him out!

http://pullyblank.blogspot.com/

So I'm ready to tackle my assignment this week, even though I'm not thrilled with the result from last class.  I'll be blocking out the mouth shapes this week and I'll post it either this weekend or after my eCritique.  I'm actually excited to add this step and I'll make sure I fill you guys in on what I learned or other "stuff" that's come up!

Off to watch my 2 hour class!!!  WOO HOO!