Experimentation: Teacher Walk Cycle

I've taken some time to properly realise this shot in Scene 2, in which the teacher is shown walking down the classroom handing back test papers. The angle is a bit odd, and I've been struggling to figure out the walk cycle. 

Animatic: Scene 2, Shot 2

Early walk cycle test 

My initial test of the walk cycle without any reference footage was not anatomically correct at all. The legs moved unnaturally and it looked awkward. Because of this, I took some reference footage to get a sense of the body position. 

Version 2 of keyframes

Using my initial round of reference footage, I created the above version. I was still not happy with it however. Through conversation with one of my peers, I found that the position of the feet and the timing of the actions wasn't as resolved as I wanted it to be. In the initial reference video, I didn't include the arm movements, so I struggled with timing the foot movements and the arm movements together. This resulted in a lot of trial and error, and no resolutions I was happy with. 

So I recorded another round of footage of myself performing the actions, this time handing out papers to desks and walking towards the camera. I rotoscoped some keyframes in Photoshop, which gave me a much better sense of the body's movements and interaction with its surroundings. 

Rotoscoped keyframes

Rotoscoped version

After testing various methods of animating this walk cycle, I'm much happier with the appearance at this stage. I think during cleanup some more development will take place. 

I've changed the character design slightly to include boots, as this reflects the reference footage I recorded. When trying to draw the ballet pumps on the character, it kept coming across as though the character was walking on their tiptoes. I will need more experience animating walk cycles and foot movement to better understand how to animate flat shoes. Due to my time constraints, I simply chose to change the character's outfit. In future, I would like to have the flexibility in my drawing ability to animate any type of shoes. 

Experimentation: Lip Sync Test

 For my film, I have a lot of dialogue that I will need to lip sync. I've never done lip syncing before, so it was an interesting process learning how to do this. I first tried recording a video of myself saying the line I'm working with, and rotoscoping my mouth movements. As seen below, this wasn't at all successful. It looks awkward, the mouth movements don't sync up at all with the sound, and it's not very expressive. 

I found a YouTube tutorial on working with lip sync that seemed beginner friendly, so I followed along to that and developed my own chart of mouth shapes. I adjusted some of the shapes to fit more with my film's shape language. 

Here's the lip sync test that resulted from working with this method

This version is a lot more readable and flows well. I'll keep experimenting but I have a good framework for creating my lip synced shots now. 

Animation Test: June

 

I created the above animation test of Alistair's mom June twirling her dress. I tried this to see how long it would take to keyframe and tween a sketchy animation. The next step of this will be lining and colouring the frames. 
I took approximately 12 hours to animate this sequence, though some of this time was spent getting accustomed to Toonboom Harmony. Through this I have a better sense of how much time each sequence should take in my film. In my past experimentation with animation, I hadn't done much tweening, and I hadn't animated at 24 fps before, so this experiment gave me insight into the process. 

I think the twirl of the skirt isn't quite realistic, so I might need to try rotoscoping shots like this in future to get a realistic sense of the physics involved. 

Test: Scene 1 Shot 1

 

This is an animation test of Sunny in the opening shot of the film, opening their curtains to reveal their bedroom. This GIF plays with the colour palette of the film, the visual style, what elements will be visible in the background, and how the characters will interact with the backgrounds. 

By creating this test, I was able to learn that I don't want my colour palette to be so monochromatic, or so based in this yellow ochre hue. To evoke the softness I aim to capture in the film, I need to use slightly lighter tones and more variation in hue. 
I realised that the position of certain background elements, like their bed, don't work well, so this will need to change in future versions of Sunny's bedroom. 
I'm overall happy with the visual style - using charcoal brushes to create blocks of colour with slight variation and "messiness". With some more development I believe this will contribute to evoking the soft mood of the film. 
I've got a better sense now than I did before creating this test of how characters interact with background elements, and how colour and line quality can make them blend in or stand out from their surroundings.