facial expressions, x-sheets/dope sheets, and mouth shapes

The first test with the facial morphs

I did this mouth shape sheet to plan how to make those shapes so I can use it alongside my dope sheet to make the lipsync accurate

Testing the limits of my rig – pushing it till they break

These tests were quite fun to do and taught me to push my posing more as I found on some of them I liked the exaggerated emotion in the second pose. In my final film, I will use these exaggerated poses to highlight key emotions. I was also surprised at how far I could push the morph face rig, this allows me lots of range of movement when animating.

First lipsync test with Liam saying “Natalie”. I mainly focussed on practicing matching the sound to lip shapes but I also added to upper body movements to get used to the character’s body language and to ‘sell’ the lipsync as real. I also changed my audio file to a wave file as I found it was more compatible with Maya.

From this test, I learned I need to make some reference videos based on the original one as some of the movements are hidden by the dark lighting.