Dialogue Shot - No Mouth [Character Performance - Unit 05]

Dialogue Shot - No Mouth

24/06/24

Introduction

This next exercise began to explore dialogue. This started with no mouth, the next week moving to very short and then becoming progressively longer. The core concept with this animation was that often body language is more important than lip shapes and therefore should read well without a mouth being present. Other key theory I wanted to explore in this animation were : 

  • Hard accents over shooting and settling into the pose.
  • Soft accenting easing out into the pose without an overshoot.
  • Exploring the animation production pipeline of:
    • Thinking
    • Researching
    • Acting out
    • Thumbnailing
    • Blocking
    • Blocking Plus
    • Spline
    • Animation Passes
    • Polish
  • Studying the dialogue to find where the most exaggerated poses should be. Opposed to having all the poses exaggerated.

Project Management

The below images show an update of my project management processes. Everything is currently still on track, although I’m becoming increasingly more busy in the run up to summer with an array of different responsibilities.


To help visualise and plan my workload further I produced a production schedule to look at the work I needed to produce and think about where it would fit into my schedule. This was particularly important as I had some holidays coming up where I would lose some study time.



Audio and Concept

First I explored an array of different options for audio clips as this would ultimately form the foundation of the idea.

I settled on the "But Why!" Audio clip from ‘The Neverending Story’. This was because there was great contrast between the ‘but’ and the ‘why’ with the ‘but’ being low pitched and the ‘why’ being higher pitched and emphasised. I imagined that there would be an anticipation pose on the ‘but’ and an hard accent on the ‘Why’!

Research 

The images and videos below show an array of different materials I used to support my idea.

I firstly found the video clip (The Neverending Story - Atreyu faces G'mork, 2017) from NeverEnding Story (1984) that the audio clip is from. Shown at 2:32. Whilst the voice is exaggerated the posing is not, therefore, I would need to look further to help understand how I wanted to bring this clip to life.


This video clip below (But Why? - Jontron, 2017) has some good facial posing and some slight accents - more so than the previous clip. However, it still wasn’t hitting the level of posing and exaggeration I wanted to achieve in the ‘why’ exclamation.


I turned my research to studying ‘Looney Tunes’ characters and animations to find some more exaggerated angry accents. I was focussing a little more heavily on more angry characters such as Daffy Duck. I looked at the two videos below, firstly Looney Tunes | Duck Amuck | Classic Cartoon | WB Kids (2020) and secondly Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck OPEN SEASON (2015).



Next I turned to studying comedians again as they often exhibited a lot of pantomime-like posing that is useful to study when trying to understand the poses you want for an animation. This clip below (Sebastian Maniscalco - Bocelli (Why Would You Do That?), 2022) had some particularly strong hand poses when his points were being emphasised.


To further explore hand and poses poses with people that are expressing frustration or confusion I explored some photographic reference as shown below.

Kues (2016)


Langer-püschel (no date) 

Lazarev (no date)

ShotPrime Studio (2018)

Captured Reference

I now had a good base of research, however, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted in my mind so I moved into acting it out. I started with some photographic reference to capture the key poses, inspired by my research, but created in the way that I wanted.

Neutral Pose :

"But..." Anticipation Pose : 


"WHY?!" Accent Poses : 




Next I filmed myself acting this out several times to really understand how the animation would pan out.


I particularly liked the take of this that started at the 23 second mark. I’d use this as a good base for my animation.

Rig

I returned to the Jack rig from the Body Mechanics rig pack Daniels (no date). I opted for this because it is a simple to use humanoid rig, however, there are no facial controls to become distracted with. This made it a perfect rig for this animation exercise to test how well the lip synch worked without a face at all by just focussing on the body language and posing.


Thumbnails

I sketched out some simple thumbnails to plan the key timing and annotate the key poses. This also enabled me to think about the line of action across the animation.


Set Construction 

I came across this interesting Asian inspired set (Adant, 2022) that I thought would work well for this animation.

(Adant, 2022)

This next image shows the positioning of the character in the scene and the setup of the camera.

Animation

30/06/24

I first worked on blocking out the key poses. Here I really wanted to nail the poses before I got too deep into motion.








Blocking Hard Accent Over-Shoot and Settle :


Blocking Plus :


Spline Refinenent : 


I continued to work on the animation further, focussing on overlap and polish but the program crashed and I hadn’t saved for about 2.5 hours. This is an absolute rookie mistake and something I don’t typically do, however, it happened today! It was frustrating but I decided to leave the animation where it was as I’d achieved what I wanted from the exercise even though I didn’t have the final outcome. In future I was absolutely going to look into auto-save to prevent things like this from happening again as an additional fail safe.

Conclusion

This was a good exercise particularly with focussing on perfecting posing in the early stages of the animation. If your initial poses are strong you need less polish later to fix any weak poses and that was certainly the case on this animation. It was frustrating losing time due to the crash, however, its episodes like this that you learn from in the long run. Autosave is an easy feature to set up and whilst I felt I didn’t need this it shows that accidents can happen! I feel the strengths of this piece were in the exploration of accents to help make some of these poses pop!

Learning Outcomes : 

  • Comprehend the principles behind animating dialogue without using a character's mouth.
  • Demonstrate the ability to animate a character speaking lines of dialogue by employing body language, gestures, and other non-verbal cues. 
  • Utilise sound and music to enhance dialogue.
  • Develop the ability to plan and visualise dialogue animations through thumbnail sketches.
  • Import and synchronise sound files in Maya.
I feel I have achieved the learning outcomes because I have :
  • Explored key body language principles, including hard and soft accents, and used a rig without a face to execute a lip synch animation without a face.
  • I’ve used an array of research and my own acting to create a strong base for an animation that explores key poses within body language, gestures and non verbal cues such as the shaking of the head in anticipation to show frustration.
  • I’ve explored an array of audio clip options and used these clips to develop my own concept.
  • I’ve explored thumbnailing and acting techniques to build a strong foundation for the animation.
  • I’ve imported the audio clip into Maya and used this as a base for the animation.

Reference List

  1. Adant, A. (2022) Xìngfú Restaurant, June 13th [Sketchfab]. Available at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/xingfu-restaurant-1ff9da558f954ca595917687bd83de53 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  2. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck OPEN SEASON (2015) YouTube video, added by Origin Records [Online]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0kSYH-L-YQ (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  3. But Why? - Jontron (2017) YouTube video, added by SheerSniper7 [Online]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2weNM4JtME (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  4. Daniels, J. (no date) Body Mechanics Rigs - Mega Pack!, Gumroad. Available at: https://joedanimation.gumroad.com/l/xhRK (Accessed: 20 June 2024).
  5. Kues (2016) young french artist confused pose [Online]. Available at https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-french-artist-confused-pose-524021122 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  6. Langer-püschel, C. (no date) Confused man raising his upturned palms and shrugging to show his ignorance, isolated on white [Online]. Available at https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-confused-man-raising-his-upturned-palms-shrugging-to-show-ignorance-isolated-white-image36781669 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  7. Lazarev, T. (no date) Angry man yelling and shouting in rage, crazy and mad [Online]. Available at https://stock.adobe.com/de/images/angry-man-yelling-and-shouting-in-rage-crazy-and-mad/138303813 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  8. Looney Tunes | Duck Amuck | Classic Cartoon | WB Kids (2020) YouTube video, added by WB Kids [Online]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XvXsuSJ-1A (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  9. NeverEnding Story (1984) Directed by W. Petersen [Feature film]. USA: Warner Bros.
  10. Sebastian Maniscalco - Bocelli (Why Would You Do That?) (2022) YouTube video, added by Sebastian Maniscalco [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yCe9K-F2Wg (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  11. ShotPrime Studio (2018) angry man, emotions [Online]. Available at https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/angry-man-emotions-1049479763 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  12. The Neverending Story - Atreyu faces G'mork (2017) YouTube video, added by Hal M. [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3HYXinYgtY (Accessed 12th January 2025).

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