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I don't often blink character's lids slowly, but a big exhale is one of the times it fits. I blinked the eyes slowly so that the fully closed eye was right on the peak of the upward head motion for the sigh, making the tilt down seem even longer and more painful, drawn out. If I did it later, it would cut that time visually. Using my friend's technique of hitting percussive or closed mouth sounds with blinks, I hit the m in I'm with a blink. I also blinked again on the first grey, the nod seemed like a good place to throw in a blink (nods usually are, the two actions strengthen each other).
Other than that. I left the lids until the word stupid. On stupid, I brought up the lower lids, creating a slight squint, just for the one word, giving the character extra contempt for a moment, which seemed to be in the vocal performance anyway. Boring was the next sound I keyed on; I blinked, and on the blink return brought the lower lids up, too. The combined head nod, blink, and change now in pose is making boring really have some punch. I left the lids as-are except to move the lower lids out of the way as Box Head looks down, until oo flashy. As there's a real attitude shift from anger to mocking, I widened the eyes there, creating a sarcastic feeling. They stay there until he looks back down, where I blinked for the transition (it's always a good idea to blink on emotional transitions). After that, and for the rest of the scene, I pulled the lower lids up and upper lids down slightly, creating more of a narrow look for the eyes, clearly an angrier appearance.
For the first portion of the line all the way up to but not including stupid, I just put the brows in a sad pose and punctuated the head movements. On grey, I dropped the brows low, and removed the sad expression, so they were level. Happening over the tightening of the lower lids; this created a great emotional shift. You can see him going from unhappy about his colorless situation to angry about it, even though I didn't go as far as to actually turn the brows to the mad side. On you'll get yours, red, I actually made the brows angry, dropping in a hint of the pose I'll return to at the end, and adding some strength to the statement.
For the whole mocking section, I moved the brows up and sad, creating a decidedly weaker appearance, perfect for mocking. I accented various words and sounds, but nothing major. As he finishes up his little mocking moment, I pulled the brows back down and into an angry pose. I was tempted to bounce the brows along with the various interesting sounds, but it looked stronger to leave them held in that position.
This, I decided needed work, and that's a normal part of the process. I didn't feel the shifts in emotion as strongly as I wanted to, and I also didn't feel as if some of the emotions themselves were really as strong or as linked to the sound as they should have been. First off, the easiest thing was to begin with the head left-to-right motions. For those I started by copying the motions of the eyes. (I literally copied the FCurve and shrunk it down.) After that, there's something I like to do during disbelief, sadness, anything with which the character doesn't really agree; I shake the head. Just shaking your head like saying "no" is a great little subtlety. During I'm default grey I threw in some shaking. I also did the same at the end during the mumbling nonsense. The muttering paired with the shaking and the angry expression turned into feeling almost like disapproval more than anger, and I thought it fit really well.
Something else that jumped out at me was the sigh at the start. The brows seemed to hold tension by staying up, instead of releasing tension along with the sound and the head motion. I decided to leave the brows' upward climb, but then I dropped the brows. I made the drop happen after the head was down. By making the drop on the brows later, I really dragged out the defeated impression, and it also made it less a flex and more of a release. If it all happened at the same time, he'd be moving into a pose instead of falling into defeat. This also gave me an opportunity to use the brows to accentuate some of the sound in the long hold following that. By adding a brows Up motion on I'm default, it just accentuated all that was going on elsewhere in the face, on both the Up for that and the Down on grey. Dropping the brows at the same time as dropping the head, at the same time as the blink, and all of that in time with the sound works well for me.
After all that I just slid the emotion stuff up a few frames, so the thought happened before the sound, and I was done!
We'll continue this in Chapter 13, "A Shot in Production," where we take more shots through a facial animation process from start to finish. Now that you've got a feel for the type of expressions you can create using combinations of techniques, it's time for us to move into the process of building the other most important area of the face, the eyes and brows, and the keys that area needs. If this chapter has done anything, I hope it has shown you why I leave the more obvious things like brow poses for later, and things like smiles and frowns for even later. I really hope this has shown you how much emotion you can create with very little, even with the complete absence of a smile or frown!
To continue on with practice, there are more sound files available all over the CD, mostly in Chapter 13. Another thing I frequently do for practice purposes is record sound off movies and TV to sync to. Commercials are actually my favorite, as they usually self-contain most lines. Pulling from a movie, you can run into a minute-long line that doesn't mean too much out of context, whereas in a commercial, it's all wrapped up for you in a few seconds and makes some sense. Something I don't recommend, though, is to rotoscope your acting from the actors on-screen; it can actually block your creativity, because what the person is doing fills your head with those motions instead of you being able to make up all new ones that relate to the sound.
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Created: March 11, 2003
Revised: November 7, 2003
URL: http://webreference.com/3d/stopstaring/1
