Works In Progress

From my last post this is the block out of my 'Welcome to Hell' presenter piece, as it looked at that time:

After attending Thursday's feedback session, I spent the rest of that day working on and developing my presenter piece from various comments and suggestions made in the class. I chose a section to work on from my block (as the final has to be between 20-30 seconds) and then developed and improved the my block for the body and  added in some additional actions to improve it. I also began work on the lip sync and facial expressions which is still in progress. So far this is only part of the section I've chosen, it will be a few seconds longer. By the end of the weekend I hope to have my chosen section to a good 'developed' standard with the lip sync more or less done.

Here's how it's looking at present:

I'm liking where its going, though it is still a work in progress.

Yesterday I spent finishing off the first Lip Sync task. I redid all the eye/eyebrow animation and re-worked over my lip sync again making alterations and toughing sections up to make it work better. I also touched up the animation on the arm after looking at the trajectories.

From Thursday's lesson I learnt about IK constraints and IK-FK blending as a result of feedback about the arm on the table sliding around due to the Max's body movement, so I was able to constrain the right arm to the table to stop it from moving. I think this will be a handy bit of knowledge for future animations :-)

This is how it looks now:

This may or may not be the final, will await feedback.

It may possibly need a bit more refinement, one thing I am wondering is whether to add a blink at the end... It may not be necessary as he is intent and serious in what he is saying. From my reference footage of myself acting this out, I don't blink except for on the head movement on the emphasis of absolute... but as the motion as stopped by the end of the piece I feel a blink could work. I've acted it out since and have blinked at the end. I'll see what the feedback is... maybe I'll even add one in to test and see how it looks.