Three Week Lip Synch

3 Week Lip Sync

This assignment will account for 20% of your final grade. Hand-in will be due at the start of class 4

3 Week Lip Sync. (LS1) Modules 1-4. This is a relatively simple assignment, a quick 3-5 sec lip sync piece with one character. The purpose of the assignment is to give you a chance get warmed up with your rig of choice, and to let me get an assessment of your current skill level. We're actually doing this backwards from normal animation workflow, attacking the lip sync first! Featured principles: Posing, Timing, and Staging. 3-5 sec. long (72-120 fr)

What I'll be grading on this assignment:

• Does the lip sync align well with the audio?
• Have you created a pantomime performance that matches the dialogue?
• Is the scene staged well, showing good composition?
• Do your poses show good silhouette, balance and line of action?
• Is the animation completed to a high level of polish?

---- PART 1

1. Pick your line - 3-5sec. The maximum limit is a hard limit so
nothing over 120 frames, please.

Some suggested criteria for selecting your audio:

Quality 

• Clear delivery: You can hear every word and levels are consistent.
• Clean audio: No static, hiss or pops. No background music. Avoid ambient or environment sound: such things are easy to add, but hard to remove

Content 

• HR appropriate: No "isms"; sexism, racism. No profanity. No "offensive" subject matter or context. Remember that "appropriate" is a matter of taste - so be sure to know your audience.
• Good Contrast: Change of tone, tempo, volume or emotion. 2 or 3 notes are better than one.

Interest 

• Interest for you: You've got to animate it, so pick something fun that you really want to try.
• Audience Reaction: Find something that will evoke an emotional response or connection. You want your piece to be memorable.(for good reasons)

2. Audit the rig and the tools. Get yourself the Morpheus Rig Here. Set your camera at a mid close shot (waist up). Get the maya shelves scripts and icons from Here. Note that for these tools to work with the Morpheus rig, you'll need to reference the rig into your scene with a namespace of "A".

3. Watch the tutorials below on rough lip sync and polishing lip sync. Give it a try yourself. I'd like to see a rough pass for next class on just the Visemes. (We'll get into posing in the next class)


Rough Lip Sync Demo from David Latour on Vimeo.


Polishing Lip Sync Demo from David Latour on Vimeo.


---- PART 2

We've turned this whole process upside down starting with the lip sync animation, but what the heck - it's all good fun. now we go back to the beginning and start the shot the way you would with any other assignment. PLANNING!

You have a few choices here:

Storyboard and thumbnail: Small simple drawing so show the intended pantomime acting for your characters performance. Think about showing keys and breakdowns and make sure you have enough drawings to fully describe the action - 2-3 sec is reasonable.

Find some video online: See if you can find some video that might match the physical movement you want for your character's acting within the short scene.

Shoot some reference: Grab  a video camera, get up and act it out yourself -- this is the best method. do several takes until you get the performance you like. Play the audio over and over and act along with it. You may find two or three clips that combine to make the perfect performance: edit them together into a final reference clip.

Whatever you decide, make sure you carefully analyze your reference with particular focus on timing where are your key poses and where are they going to occur on the timeline. You can use Photoshop CS5.1 (or later versions) to mark your keys and breakdowns.

Whatever you decide your preferred workflow is remember that reference and analysis is required to pass this assignment. Don't "wing it"


Once you've got your reference done and analyzed, dive into Maya and start laying in your keys and breakdowns. To help you, check out all these video tutorials by Keith Lango on making good key poses here:












Here's another short page talking about elements of good posing. The drawings in this article are not great, but the notion is relevant:
http://posetopose.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/strength-in-posing/


Have your keys and breakdowns, timed out for next class


---- PART 3

Polish your animation using the following workflow and strategies.

Polish each item in order, using the strategies listed for best results