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Dialogue - Performance and Character

I Thought

I've been jumping back and forth from Maya and 2-D, but because my limp went so smoothly, i thought it would be best to test my Maya abilities one more time, then using the remainder of my time in 2-D which I think will take more time to develop. So for the the dialogue piece i chose the tom hanks one and still cant find the original movie, which does have its benefits as i have no bias and the interpretation of the scene is completely my own. 

Character Bio

Name: Tim

Age: 46 

Height: 6'

Weight: 205 lb

Background: Parents originate from Poland, they immigrated to America in the 50's where he was born in Boston Massachusetts  
  
Personality: An introverted man with strong catholic beliefs, always looks out for the best interests in others

Hobby: DJ

Occupation: High school teacher

Pets: Cat named jimmy 

Friends & Family: Parents are Orthodox Christians, most of his friends are guys who he went to high school with 

Where is it set? Outside waiting for a bus

What is happening? having a conversation with his friend Jamie about helping his other friend Leo find a girlfriend

Who’s there? Tom and his friend Jamie

Why is it happening? Jamie and Tim are going to visit their friend Leo who just went through a tough rejection, Tim thought if he could help his friend get this girl hes loves, life would change and hes voicing his thinking to Jamie who doesn't think it'll help. 

Animating 


I started out with doing a rough storyboard with drawn poses with the words i wanted emphasised on each pose. I did this using a reference i recorded of me very badly acting out the audio.




looking at the poses they seemed like an easy piece to do, in 2-D or Maya so i began posing Bony but after a while i realised that I limited my self and wouldn't be able to any lip sync even if I wanted to. Reluctantly I started again this time using Walter.










This is my initial blocking using Walter, play blasted in perspective view and a camera that Johnny kindly set up for me. I think the gestures were clear and translated what the character was feeling.




After splining I could see that I had done something ridiculous to the arms. Going back to my previous stepped version, I looked back over the graph editor and i could that i over rotated the shoulders. I showed Johnny this issue and he told me to look into the Euler filter and gimble lock

I spend a large amount time fiddling with the graph editor trying to fix the rotation, the Euler filter should of been able to fix the issue but it didn't seem to work in fact it often made things worse.

What i found worked best was removing the key frames on the arms and reposing while using the gimble lock. This prevented me from over twisting the arms but it caused Maya to repeatedly crash. Somehow I was very lucky and Maya was saving instantly and the crash recovery was saving my ass.


There was still an issue with the arms but a much more manageable situation. The constant feedback i was getting was that there was too much movement which i agreed with and i felt that motion was still floaty. I got Johnny's opinion and he suggests active holds to show the poses more clear as well as trying to push the silhouette, to emphasise the emotion the character was feeling.  James also said that the hips were a bit stationary and to maybe offset them with the shoulders for a more dynamic pose. 

Having the poses all on keyframe on the same frame really made my job easier and i was able to identify any annomilies of keys i had made that were negatively effecting the animation.

 This was the main issue i had, when moving the arms it caused the chest or shoulders to cave in. It was quite fustrating posing the character correctly whilst not deforming the character. (P.S sorry Johnny i couldn't find the monster)



I'm fairly happy with the final motion, i think adding some eyebrow movement and some blinks will really make the character come to life. Overall this animation was surprisingly challenging, and in the future i need pay more attention to the rotation attributes and be more aware of the limitations of the rig especially if the rig doesn't already have limits built in.  

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