Animation Fundamentals - Project 3 (Walk Cycle & Lip Sync)
May 10th, 2022 - Jul 4th, 2022 (Week 7 - Week 14)
Rusydina Fazlin Athirah Binti Fauzi
Animation Fundamentals
Week 7 [May 10th, 2022]
Project 3 - Walk Cycle & Lip Cycle
INSTRUCTIONS
All Lectures Completed. Refer to 'Lectures':
Project
Project 3
May 10th, 2022
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Tasks for Week 7 (May 10th, 2022):
- Walk-Cycle animation
- Practice an animation of a sack of flour carrying out an action of sneaking (walk-cycle), this will look at the animation principle of arcs of motion
The first thing to acknowledge in this exercise is that we are to reference a walking video, specifically the one seen below(at the exact timestamp):
The sneaking walk cycle is then later to be paired up with a sack of flour. So in its visual outcome, an animation of a sack of flour sneaking would be the exercise that will be carried out.
Examples below:
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| -sacks of flour, for reference. |
-a sack of flour, walk cycle
As seen above these are the references for the animation exercise for this week. Instead of a sack of flour walking it's more of a sneak cycle with a sack of flour.
To start off this exercise, I decided to search through Pinterest for more references on the sneak walk cycle, and seen below is what I resided on.
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| sneak walk cycle reference |
After that, I implemented the image into the stage of adobe animate and started from there.
There were about 5 processes to this exercise and, it didn't take long to understand the flow of how the line of actions the walk was in.
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| adding sneak cycle reference |
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| drawing/sketching in the action of the walkthrough rough sketches |
As seen above, I started by drawing out the action of the sneaking walk cycle in a form of stick figures to use them as a reference to overlay a sketch of a shape of the flour sneaking.
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| rough sketch of shaping sack of flour over stick figure sketch |
-next was sketching in the shape and dorm of a sack of flour to later then be lined out for a better visual of the sneak walk cycle.
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| drawing visible lines above the sketch layer for animation finalization |
Finally, adding in lines to finish the drawings from the sketch of the sack of flour. Each frame consisted of each of the sneaking cycles.
Final Animation outcome:
Tasks for Week 10 - 11 (May 31st - June 7th, 2022):
- sketch out a character turnaround of the animals from the KL Tower Trip to the Mini Zoo Excursion
- lineout character from sketch
1. Character turnaround (Dustin the goat)
To start off this task., there were a few sketches that were carried out during the excursion. Since we were meant to only choose one animal for the character turnaround, I still wanted to experiment with the few animal shapes and forms to better understand them before choosing the one animal I'd use for the character turnaround.
-later after sketching out most of the animals, I decided on choosing the goat, to begin with, a character turnaround. I skipped one step and went straight into a goat character turnaround where they stand on their hind lands.
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| Goat Character Turnaround sketch, June 7th, 2022 |
The first sketch I have shown above had a shape of an upside-down tear drop that shapes out the goat's body, but after a small consultation with Mr. Hafiz on enhancing the shape of the goat's body seen below, a clearer understanding to better turn the character around can be seen.
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| Goat Character Turnaround sketch (body shape improvement), June 7th, 2022 |
-right after a few assistance by Mr. Hafiz in shaping the character's body, the next step is to refine the sketches and finish it off with line art and some coloring.
Since Mr. Hafiz helped out on the body shape of the character turnaround, I utilized the shape he helped drew in and worked my way on refining it with a more visible lineart.
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| Right side & front view lineart with shape |
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| 1/4 front view lineart with shape |
Next, I wanted to experiment with refining the character turnaround even more by visiting Adobe Illustrator to display the character with much finer lines.
I'm very much aware that when animating the walk of this animal I've chosen would have to cut back to drawing it with my own hands without the guidance of a pen tool- unless.
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| illustration sketches of character turnaround |
As seen above, the progress starts with me just using the pen tool to trace over the sketches I've already sketched out.
NOTE!
I've found a way to color it but it was beyond being convenient, but all in all, it is a complete character turnaround.
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| Dustin the goat, character turnaround |
When the character turnaround is completed, moving into the walk cycle with the chosen animal character chosen to utilize one of the walks provided by Mr. Hafiz. For instance, my character would be Dustin the goat.
After completing the illustration, I implemented the Ai file into adobe animate which gave me the access to transfer my illustrations into adobe animate as layers to work on actually animating the turnaround of Dustin the goat.
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| adding frames to spin the character around |
I left the file as it is still in progress of completing the turnaround.
Tasks for Week 12 - Week 13 (June 14th - June 21st, 2022):
- additional quarter back view of goat to achieve smoother animation of character turnaround.
- begin the walk cycle of chosen illustrated character.
Feedback (Week 12):
Feedback from Mr. Kamal - June 14th, 2022
When in consultation with Mr. Kamal during our animation fundamentals class, Mr. Kamal suggests a quarter-back view of the character turnaround, so when it is animated it is able to achieve a much smoother turnaround instead of it looking very choppy.
Additional quarter back view of Dustin the goat:
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| illustrating quarter back view to insert into character turnaround animation |
After completing this minor additional part to the character turnaround, I implemented the added illustration to adobe animate and worked my way from there to complete the animation of the character turnaround.
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| Dustin the Goat, Character Turnaround_quarter back |
Dustin the Goat, Character Turnaround_quarter back (PDF):
refining the animation of the turnaround was next, it was as simple as adding the illustration file to the adobe animate.
Animation character turnaround (Dustin the Goat) final outcome:
2. Dustin the goat's walk cycle (exercise)
The next part of the process is to animate Dustin into a walk cycle, I gathered a few references of walk cycles over on Pinterest and begin by sketching out the shape and the form of Dustin before cleaning up on the lines and coloring it.
I straight away worked on the sketch in adobe animate so that it would be a much faster process to clean up the lines. Moreover, I could always use the pen tool for better outcomes in cleaner lines.
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| walk cycle sketch progress |
-moreover, I started off with a bouncy walk with Dustin before drawing out a more normal walk. I wanted to experiment with the angles that come into the animation of these poses.
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| side and bouncy walk view progress |
-once I consulted Mr. Kamal, he suggested working on the side view walk instead of the bouncy walk since there was still quite a lot to understand in working out the form and volume that plays into a bouncy walk animation. Even then the experimentation I carried out during the bouncy walk looks a little too choppy, although it could be put into the final- portfolio as a tribute to experimenting with the kinds of walk cycles.
Anyway, I cleaned up the lines in the sketches using the pen tool, and later then coloring them.
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| lineart to Dustin's walk cycle progress |
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| coloring process |
the coloring process is as similar to drawing out the lines after sketching each pose for the walk cycle. It was quite a tedious process but all in all, it turned out the way I wanted it to.
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| completed coloring and lineart |
The image above shows a frame of Dustin in a walk cycle post all cleaned up on the lines and all colored in. Finally completing the walk cycle animation and soon moved into the final part of the 3rd project exercise which is lip-syncing an audio( any audio of our choice) with the use of the character that I have designed which is Dustin the goat.
Dustin the goat, walk cycle animation outcome:
Dustin the Goat (Walk Cycle)
3. Lip-syncing Excercise
Moving into the 3rd part of the third project, which is lip-syncing, I found audio on YouTube that I am planning to use for this part of the project, I think it was funny audio to piece into a scene I have in mind. The audio had its original sources but the one I have in mind is edited, below is the original audio I'll be using:
The first step in starting out my lipsyncing exercise was by drawing out mouth shapes for the character for each of the ideal pronunciation of words, letters, and vowels when a character starts speaking; lipsyncing.
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| lipsync chart |
My lipsyncing exercise has a sort of an act that plays out therefore I added two more characters to assist in lipsyncing the audio. there would be 3 characters in total that would carry out this scene along with the audio and the characters are:
- Dustin the goat
- Gus the Guinea Pig
- Fiona the Fennec Fox
Just like the other animated exercises I've carried out, I start off with a sketch and then the clean-up of the lines. I draw in each frame of the animation as well so that the progress would be much faster-paced.
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| Character sketch |
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| lineart clean-up in progress |
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| lineart clean up complete |
Once I was finished with all that, I moved into redrawing the mouth shapes to have a better presentation of the mouth drawing instead of a sketchy look to it.
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| lineart mouth shapes |
Moving on into actually working on the lipsyncing. I've actually experienced the auto lipsync that was provided in adobe animate where I had to turn each of these mouth shapes into symbols and went through the processes of labeling each frame of the mouth shapes to later then align the viseme to that the lipsyncing can be generated automatically with the audio uploaded.
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| aligning the viseme to adobe animate auto lipsync |
Since that didn't work, I had to manually align the mouth shapes to the audio, although it was as tedious since I could just copy and paste each of the mouth shapes to the audio in each frame in the two images below:
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| copy-pasting mouth shapes onto character lipsync #1 |
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| copy-pasting mouth shapes onto character lipsync #2 |
Once it was all completed the next step was to color it in, although before I did I prepared the exercise to consult with Mr. Kamal next week to discuss through any possible changes before its final outcome.
Feedback (Week 14):
Feedback from Mr. Kamal - June 28th, 2022
-clean up on the lines and finalize by coloring the characters in, but overall mouth shapes are up to the decency of matching the audio (that I've used).
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| coloring in the characters progress |
I started off by coloring in the body first and then worked on the mouth colors since they were on separate layers.
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| coloring in the characters mouth shapes progress |
When I completed the coloring and a few clean ups on the line art, I submitted it over into YouTube as the final out come of the final part of the exercise of the the project.
Lip-syncing animation exercise, final outcome:
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