PROJECT 1: DIALOGUE AND LIP SYNCHING!

To review your animation skills and introduce some new ones, you will create a short 6-10 second animation where a character of your choosing acts out a sentence or phrase!  For this project, you will create all elements -- from the audio recording itself, all the way down to the animation and editing.  We will step through each portion of this project together, making sure we develop good animating habits that makes our production life much easier!

READING MATERIALS:
For this project: Refer to Chapter 1 of Framed Ink, and The following pages of The Animator's Survival Kit:  

• Facial Flexibility : pages 246-251
• Dialogue Chapter:  304-326.

Wednesday 1/16  -- Recorded Dialogue

Wednesday 1/23 -- Review animatics and cover Lip Syncing strategies. Begin animating your sequence over the weekend!

Monday 1/28 -- Review animation progress and improve acting. Talk color for animation.

Wednesday 1/30 -- 2.5.2018: Project checkpoint! Begin discussing next project and review current one!

I will grade based on the following:

• Character Performance: Your character needs to MOVE! Bring your character to life and make that character move with purpose!  Your character should embody the words spoken, and react in a believable way. (read: believable as in "the audience can attach the words spoken to the character acting."
• Draftsmanship and Craftsmanship: New class, new expectations of craftsmanship and quality! The final version of this film should have clean lineart, and clear animation! We will cover methods on producing this!
• Scheduling: Can you meet each milestone for this project? Can you accomplish each step of your production pipeline? Do you know how to create a manageable art project for yourself?
• Character Design:  Is your character easy to read? Can we clearly see the character? Are you using formal elements of art (discussed during the project) to build a visually striking design?
• Environment Design and Cinematography:  Are you using the rules of cinematography to properly position your character in front of the camera?  Are you utilizing the space of your scene in the best way possible? Do you know why the camera angles you choose and the environment you draw works well?

NOTES FOR PRODUCING BETTER ANIMATED CONTENT: (copy these to your notes for review)

• You should follow steps 1-7 that we have outlined for producing your animation:
• 1) Record Audio
• 2) Storyboard Core Actions (These are your Beats with double as core actions)
• Beats: Defined as the change in action.
• start with the minimum number of drawings needed to capture beats.
• add more where necessary.
• 3) Storyboard "Personality Drawings" that enhance core actions! (Breakdown Drawings)
• a good idea: 1 breakdown drawing for each key.
• 4) Begin mapping core mouth movements for lip-synching! You can do this in storyboard pro or toon boom harmony.
• refer to the pages in the Animator’s Survival Kit and the image below for notes on Lip-Synching
• Facial Flexibity: Pages 246-251 in A.S.K.
• Dialogue Chapter: Pages 304 - 326 in A.S.K.
• Draw “mouth flaps” for the core phrases! Remember that lip synching covers the main parts of the word, not every individual letter and syllable.
• 5) Add Lip-synching “Accents” for each phrase.
• In this step, you are drawing new panels, with only the head and mouth, and necessary parts of the body only, to accentuate your actions:  A good example of this can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA6JfNMbjlU#t=0m22s
• the idea is this: your breakdown and key drawings already have defined body poses. Take this time to focus on the head and mouth!
• Export a test of your animation.
• If it looks good, then start copying and pasting body poses from your keys and breakdown drawings.
• 6) Add In-between animation drawings!
• add drawings that flesh out the action! These will be flourishes and other movements that help push the action forward!
• 7) Clean up the animation!
• Go back over the animation on a new layer and clean up your lineart!

If you finish all of these steps, you should be able to come to class with a really professional, high-quality animatic that we can easily turn into a finished animation!

In your sketchbook: Make bullet points, or write a paragraph about animated sequences you find on http://livlily.blogspot.com or other sites.

• make note of the following:
• body language: what words are emphasized in action?
• acting: how does the artist create a convincing performance? What parts of the animation are key poses/actions?
• flourishes: are there certain parts of the animation that serve as accent