Medium Dialogue Shot (Muppet Music) [Character Performance - Unit 08]

Medium Dialogue Shot (Muppet Music)

17/07/24

Introduction

This next animation aimed to develop a longer lip synch shot, however, using some creative restrictions to explore a longer animation in a shorter amount of time. This animation exercise was planned to have a character seated at a piano so that the poses they engage with are a little more limited. This meant that the focus of the effort was on the timing of the animation, the lip synch and the finding the accents within the audio clip. In this animation I planned to have a little bit of fun and use a more stylised rig to lean into the fun nature of this animation exercise!

Project Management

At this point I was making good progress but I was starting to run out of time. My production schedule shows that we are in the run up to my holiday break and when I return I would turn my hand to the assignment. Despite this I had covered all theory from the lectures and this animation was a little more experimental. Therefore, despite limited time I felt like I was in a good place and was ready to tackle the assignment soon.



Concept and Audio

The concept behind this animation was to animate a character singing along to music and playing the animation. The idea was to use a seated pose with the character bouncing along to the music, playing the piano and singing along. 

I found this fun clip below (Muppet Show. Fozzie Bear and Rowlf - An Actor's Life for Me, 2007) that I could use to build my contrast and additionally as research. I didn’t look too deep into reference or thumbnailing but instead used the audio clip to drive the posing. I did this through looking for the peaks in the audio and exaggerating these poses. This meant that I could contrast the accents throughout to create an interesting animation. Once I had the main poses I could work on the transitions between these poses to get it feeling snappy.

Asset Acquisition

The following images below show the assets I’ve gathered to construction this animation.

I decided to use the Willy Rig by Matthew Moore, supplied by course lecturer Alex Williams, due to the stylistic nature of the animation. The character looks like they would fit in the world of ‘The Muppets’ or ‘Sesame Street’ so it felt like a good rig to use for this animation.


Next I looked for a stylised piano that would work well with the stylised character and found this asset by Richterbelmont26 (2018).

Richterbelmont26 (2018) 

I needed a stylised stool for the character to sit on. I found this asset (emmashanks, 2020) and whilst it didn’t fit the style as well as it could, I planned to alter the colours using simple materials to make it feel a little more stylised to help it fit the world better.

(emmashanks, 2020)

Set Construction

The image below shows the complete set up of the scene I’ve used a simple plane thats stretched out to create an infinity backdrop. I’ve used a simple faded orange colour to slightly complement the blue of the main character. You can also see the camera angle I’ve set up for the shot - this was challenging to find a view that allowed you to see a three quarter shot of the character but didn’t have the mouth covered by the open part of the piano.

Animation

18/07/24

Conclusion

It was fun to explore this animation and take a different approach to creating the animation. Rather than spending too long in preproduction it instead focussed on allowing the music to drive the creation of a short animation sequence. I did run out of time a little with this animation and I did feel like the lack of planning was to the detriment of the animation as a whole. It felt a little restricted with posing and the emphasis was a little more on the facial animation, which I didn’t get to. Despite this it was a good exercise to explore a more restricted approach to creating an animation. This shows how creation restrictions can lead to interesting outcomes. This will be definitely one to revisit!

I have achieved the learning outcomes, listed below, because I have : 
  1. Created a distinct character voice through searching for an appropriate voice clip that would match this character.
  2. I've experimented with animating a medium length animation. Whilst the animation isn't polished it explored the process of creating a larger animation quickly.
  3. The traditional animation pipeline of blocking to spline and refine has been used to create the animation. Key beats and accents from the audio clip has been used to drive this.
  4. Lip syncing techniques have been used to add accents to the voice through body language. Whilst the face hasn't been animated time has been prioritised to complete this assignment amongst other commitments.
  5. The full sequence has been blocked out with some refinement to envisage how the full animation could look. This animation was significantly longer than others created so far. However, more time is being placed in the assignment so that this can be achieved to a high standard.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Create distinct character voices.
  2. Animate medium-length dialogue.
  3. Block out dialogue shots in Maya.
  4. Apply advanced lip-sync techniques.
  5. Execute a complete medium dialogue animation.

Reference List

  1. emmashanks (2020) Haunted Mansion - Piano Stool, November 11th [Sketchfab]. Available at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/haunted-mansion-piano-stool-37f3e0f115b14b7ca2728122b268bb37 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  2. Muppet Show. Fozzie Bear and Rowlf - An Actor's Life for Me (2007) YouTube video, added by aarnis [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op8y-_jpjd4 (Accessed 12th January 2025).
  3. Richterbelmont26 (2018) Grand Piano, August 9th [Sketchfab]. Available at https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/grand-piano-4ce9e8dbeb74425eb215e4168807dcb5 (Accessed 12th January 2025).


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