Acting for animation by Haoran Chen

Week1_Posing

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 12:08:17 UTC

In the first week, I need to find a photo of a real person posing as a reference, and use the character model downloaded from the Internet to pose in the corresponding pose. This is a screenshot from the film and television series Bankrupt Sisters. After uploading my work to Shotgun, the feedback I got was that when the character crosses his second leg, his hips will rotate upward with the upper leg. So I changed the angle of the character's hips.

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 12:26:35 UTC

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 12:29:03 UTC

Here I added lights and camera

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 12:32:06 UTC

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 12:34:38 UTC

Final Posing.
Reference：https://images.app.goo.gl/95mzH9uF7keWzFAh7

Week2_listening and reacting

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 13:05:19 UTC

This week's task was to have my character react to hearing a piece of dialogue. The audio material I chose is: "You look like a blueberry". In my first completed work, I got feedback that the character should react after hearing the dialogue, and my character acted like she knew what dialogue was coming next. It will cause the audience to misunderstand. So, I changed my Reference and animation.

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 13:17:17 UTC

For the second change, I changed the color of the character's shirt to blue. It’s more in line with the description of her in this audio. And let her make an exaggerated, surprised expression when she heard this rude description. The feedback I got this time was that the character reacted well, but the character's arms on his knees were a little too boring and stiff at the beginning.

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 13:35:35 UTC

For the third change, I changed the character's arm movements at the beginning to cross together, which will make the character's movement look more natural.

Week3_Props

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 13:52:04 UTC

The task for the third week is to create a character who picks up a prop and then puts it down. I recorded a reference of picking up the notebook and looking back and forth, and animated my character according to the reference. The feedback I got was that I could give the character more expression on her face and think about why the character picked up the book and then put it down. Maybe she was looking for something but couldn't find it.

a0001278 — 2023-10-20 14:07:24 UTC

For the second change, I adjusted the character's expression. The character frowned when he picked up the book, trying to find some information in the book, but couldn't find it, and then put the book down in disappointment.

Week4_Acting is doing

a0001278 — 2023-10-23 19:58:50 UTC

The task for week four was to create an animation of a character focusing on something. I recorded a reference of me holding a pen and writing and used it in my character animation. Here, I mainly hand key the animation of the character's wrist. Of course, when she writes, her head and chest will also move slightly. I also created some hand key animations in these two places.

Week5

a0001278 — 2023-11-08 01:21:16 UTC

My task this week was to make my character move to the beat of the music. When I was recording the reference, I put on my headphones and listened to the music and danced to it. My character figures are also based on my references.

Week6

a0001278 — 2023-11-08 01:21:28 UTC

In the next few weeks, I plan to create a high-quality animated shot of two people dialogue for about ten seconds.

The movie clip reference I was looking for was from Broke Sisters. Since I excerpted this clip directly from a website, I don’t know the context of this scene.

So the first time I tried to animate this dialogue, I just copied the reference exactly onto the character, creating the character an exact copy of the reference I looked for.

a0001278 — 2023-11-16 18:54:52 UTC

So, the feedback I got was that when animating, I shouldn't exactly copy the references I found. I should first consider the personality, characteristics, and backstory of the character in question. Then draw the storyboard appropriately based on the reference. Also, the way I created the animation was wrong. I shouldn't hand key the animation frame by frame, which would make the entire animation look too smooth. Instead, I should create the key poses in the animation first, and then create the breakdown part.

Character Analyse

a0001278 — 2023-11-22 17:26:45 UTC

I researched a reference from the episode "The Broke Sisters". The blond-haired girl in the reference is called Caroline. She was the daughter of a company boss, but when her father went bankrupt, she lost everything and went to work in a restaurant. Also because of Caroline's family background, Caroline bought a first-class plane ticket during this conversation. Her colleague Max was very surprised when he found out, and asked her in surprise with an exaggerated expression. Caroline explained that because she was used to buying first-class tickets when traveling before, she subconsciously bought first-class tickets when she bought them just now.

And Max is just an ordinary girl who works in a restaurant, so she will react with surprise.

Character Chose

a0001278 — 2023-11-22 19:48:39 UTC

These are two characters I downloaded from the Internet. I will use them to complete my dialogue animation.

Left:https://charrig.gumroad.com/l/EJcB

Right:https://callesantiago.gumroad.com/l/waitress

Storyboard

a0001278 — 2023-11-22 20:40:42 UTC

This is the storyboard I drew.

Blocking1

a0001278 — 2023-11-30 17:52:17 UTC

This is the animation blocking I created based on the new reference. In this video I did not add lights or cameras. I got feedback that there was a bag slumped over Caroline's left arm in the reference, but I didn't add this prop in Maya. However, for the character in the reference, the weight of the bag will affect the movement of the character's left arm, so this prop should be added. Also, Max has a wide-mouthed expression at the beginning of the action, which I copied based on the reference. However, when making the animation, I should leave a few seconds of blank time in advance to allow the audience's brain to properly receive the character action. Finally, I should keep up with the camera work at the same time, so that I can better and visually evaluate my final animation work.

Bag prop from

a0001278 — 2023-11-30 17:53:26 UTC

Blocking1_Fix

a0001278 — 2023-11-30 19:37:07 UTC

New blocking improved based on feedback.

Spline

a0001278 — 2023-12-07 17:14:19 UTC

This is my first video of turning animation into spline in Maya. It seems that there are basically no major problems. Next, I plan to add key frames of the fingers and make some improvements to the expressions.

Spline2

a0001278 — 2023-12-10 13:40:29 UTC

Here I added the movement of the character's hands and adjusted the expression.

Environment and lighting

a0001278 — 2023-12-10 13:52:10 UTC

Because the conversation between the two characters is relatively daily, I searched for a park background model from the Internet and imported it into Maya.

ref：https://anim-matt.gumroad.com/l/fGoHN

Then I added a large ambient light in Maya, and the background was an outdoor natural light. And I only added one light in Maya to light the character models to make them look natural.

Light ref:https://polyhaven.com/a/rotes_rathaus

Render

a0001278 — 2023-12-15 14:37:07 UTC

This is my final work after render.

I used Maya Hardware 2.0 to render.