Digital Acting 2 - Lip Sync Comments

Good evening.

I would like to make a post talking about which principles of animation have I used on my own animation, as well as enumerate differences from my own animation to other students projects.

First of all the animation principles presented, is that my character has an objective in the scene. He is making a satirical comment to the economical situation in Portugal.

The second animation principle present is that he is playing an action until something happens to make him play a different action. He is acting as a reporter, he was going to tell the news he was supposed to, when he got to the local, but then something happened, something went by him and that made him change his action. In this particular animation he changed from his secondary objective to the primary objective in the scene.

Another one is that my character is reacting to an emotion, and he does something about that felt emotion. He expresses the emotion by being completely surprised with what went by him, and then he does something about it: what he saw was unknown so he tried to find out what surprised him.

All actions begin with movement. This principle is present all over the animation, and especially notorious when he notices that something is going by him, moves his eyes first towards it, then moves his whole head to follow the movement of the unknown object passing by.

Empathy. Maybe this particular scene has a unique humor not understood by everyone. But for those who understand the joke, the scene is empathic. The fact that he acts so surprised because he could not identify IMF at the first glance, and then when he does, he just smiles. He smiles because he, as well as many others, thinks IMF is a two sided solution and should not even be considered as one viable way out of an economical crisis. Bear in mind this is a personal opinion which I am not going to deepen any more.

Thinking leads to conclusions. This is present when my character glances at the object and interrupt the news report, is present when he tries to figure out what it is and when he makes his conclusion of what it is. He thinks about it, feels something about it, and reacts to it.

Regarding the differences between my work and the other students work...well I will not refer to any one in particular, because most of the workflows are similar. As well as the things everyone has in mind, with paying close attention to be able to have, if not all at least some, of the animation principles present.

The only real big difference is that I had myself to observe, to hear, to practice with. I was able to repeat my text in front of the mirror I have on my desk so many times, that I have to admit it was a much greater help to act the scene than to just write down on paper every single mouth movement.

I will be honest, when I have to do this again, I will use an exposure sheet of course, but I will definitely act out loud and observe myself expressing the emotions of the scenes.

That's all for now folks!