Lip synch wookie test

[Brian_Rice]

Still in pre-production on my series, but I thought I'd post a quick fun little lip synch using one of the model's heads. (In this case, Tantrum).

The workflow I've developed essentially allows me to do 95% of all animating by simply typing in codes. It's been quite production heavy (working with 27 phonemes opposed to the traditional 7-9), but long term I wanted to have a workflow that would allow me to do 25 hours of animation with the same workflow as would be doing 25 minutes. Additionally, in the years that follow, outsourcing some animation duties (which I'm already doing on a anime cut scene that happens in the second episode) will be as simple as transferring files to an animator along with the massive list of codes for them to draw from.

Still perfecting it, but I was able to do this little 30 second lip synch bit in probably under 2 hours.

 

[Searcher]

Damn that's good.

I really like this effect of bright colourful visuals with a "real soundtrack" and its analogue-like flaws. (I hope that makes sense)

Sounds like you're a man with a plan. Look forward to seeing more.

 

[Brian_Rice]

Damn that's good.

I really like this effect of bright colourful visuals with a "real soundtrack" and its analogue-like flaws. (I hope that makes sense)

Sounds like you're a man with a plan. Look forward to seeing more.

Thanks!

It's a pain-staking process because my dumb ass decided that I needed 11 main characters for my series, but I've never been happier or more fulfilled creatively than I am working on this project, and eventually the heavier lifting will subside and it'll flip from 90/10 work to 10/90 fun.

 

[paulears]

That's pretty impressive. I'm not sure I'd have the patience.

 

[Terry_Lasater]

Looks great.

 

[dre83]

try to move the sound 1 frame to the right and see what that does.

 

[Brian_Rice]

That's pretty impressive. I'm not sure I'd have the patience.

Yeah, thankfully the patience is all in the pre-production. To put it into perspective, each of three heads for each of the 11 characters have approx 972 unique frames of facial animation. So 3 X 972 = 2,916 X 11 = 32, 076 unique frames, and that's just for characters' faces.

Normally a single animator would not be able to manage anywhere close to this kind of output in traditional 2D, but by using symbol animation and nesting the frames inside of unique symbols and then swapping between symbols and applying the varying instances in Flash, it makes true 24fps animation possible. I think it helped me to figure out my current workflow by not studying animation professionally as the biggest divide I've seen has been between the class of low phoneme animation and high phoneme with no one realizing that there's a very simple inbetween fix for it.

One of the places where the pre-production load is a bit lighter, though is, ironically, in the physicality of the characters. I'm taking a page from Archer and Family Guy and actually keeping the body movements to lots of move-and-hold movements, opposed to something like Tom and Jerry or Looney Toons which rely heavily on constant, hyper-active physical movements. This also required that the show be sitcom-based, instead of, say, action-adventure (though there is a tongue-and-cheek anime cut scene in the second episode that nods to the genre).

My goal with this specific aspect of my project is to prove that once pre-production is complete, a single animator can easily and effectively do an entire web series season (approx 60 minutes) of an animated show in a year while providing expressive, complex phoneme'd characters.

If I can accomplish it, I think it will open yet another door for indies similar to the way rotoscoping changed things via Waking Life.

Basically a single animator would be looking at 40, 5 hour working days for 60 minutes of animation.

 

[Brian_Rice]

Looks great.

Thanks!!