Edit: I’ve updated this animation. Pushing the lip shapes and dialog accents.
Here’s a dialog animation I did to test out the facial setup of my character:
I know a medium close shot of a character just delivering a line of dialog isn’t the most interesting thing you can do in animation; however, I had a lot of fun being able to focus on it’s subtlety. I didn’t actually use any reference for this animation (not always a good thing to do), but I recently read a book on facial psychology written by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen called “Unmasking the Face” and tried to put a lot of what I learned from that book to use. I find it very interesting what triggers a facial expression, and tried hard to show it as my character is thinking through his dialog.
Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear any and all feedback!
This looks really really good.
To good to ask if this rig will be free. :)
Very nice animation and character design.
Wow pretty! That looks great! Let me know when you are going to start the animated version of “The Office”?
Ha ha, Thanks Michael. No better sign of flattery than “looks good, can i have it!” :) Particularly coming from a talented animator as yourself. (people, click on his name and go check out his site!)
Looks great, James! Nice work!
Thanks Dave! It was nice to see how well the rig worked with actually doing lip-sync :)
Well, the guys here keep saying “He’ll be back…” But, I’m not so sure… Inspiring as always! It’s looking pretty amazing, I’m waiting for Mr. Incredible to throw this guy through a few walls. Seriously, I’ll send you a monster… :)
Wow this is pretty incredible, and I thought you did really good with expression through the eyes. Not that I know any thing at all about any of it. Except that I’ve been working on drawing a claw for a month and its really hard. I can only imagine facial features. Even with computers. I think you are really talented. :)
Hey thanks Amanda! I like doing face stuff. It’s fun to think through the psychology of why we make expressions. One of those things that everyone knows how to perceive, only a few take the time to intellectualize :)