Friday, November 27, 2009

Character Animation

Blocking Second Pass (part 1)

Here I have taken the first few shots of the piece through the second stage of my blocking process which adds breakdowns and inbetweens to further define the actions. Hopefully you can see that working in this way allows you to build up a nuanced and complicated performance from a very simple foundation.

At this stage I am generally not even touching the facial expressions or lip-sync. You want the performance to work without, so don't add it until you're happy with the physical acting. There are points in this where I want Karl to be thinking to himself and you can already see that coming across just because he stops looking at the other two and sort of retreats into himself physically. Ricky is quite manic and so his character is fast moving and dynamic but the other two are both quite dead pan deliveries. It should make a nice contrast and also it allows for some more subtle acting. It can be quite tempting in animation to over act but when a character is not moving, generally it means they are thinking. And that is when an audience starts to get drawn into a performance or character when they see a thought process stirring up inside.

Next installment: Blocking Second Pass (Part 2)

No comments: