Chosen audio
Mood board
Storyboard
Rough
Final
X-Sheet
Character design
Rough design
Final design
Animation
Process
Final
Reflection
Living voice is an elective to learn about lipsync in animation. I have tried it in my previous works before but never animated it. The whole process of designing and animating is enjoyable and fun. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment when the lip-synch was right.
The project stated with choosing the audio clip and write down the transcript of it. I do not have an audio of my own that I am interested so I had chosen one audio being given that I can clearly recognize all the words being spoken to avoid problems later on.
Then it is character design. I have an image in my mind of a kid and a man communicating on a street. So I had researched some images and color as to make the mood board for them. I want the kid to seems like logy and idly. So I designed him as wearing a comfy sweater vest and a casual suit with wide cuff. Short pants and sport shoes to show the small age of the kid. The dominant tone of the kid is warm with brown and yellow. For the adult, I want him to be mature and gentle. So his clothing is regular suit with tie and glasses. The dominant tone being used is blue to give audience a sense of composure.
When I am making the storyboard, I am thinking to focus on their face to allow the audience to see the lipsync of them. So I was thinking to focus on one’s face while speaking. Then I realized that the time pausing on each scene will be too short and may cause confusion as changing the scene too frequently in twelve seconds. Also, there dialogue is very calm and peaceful, too much changes on scene will looks weird. So I decided to use a fix camera angle from their left top. As the man is more closer to the camera, he will looks larger in the picture. This shows that he dominates this conversation, as he is asking the kid. There is no big movement of the kid, just some small and cute movement to fit his setting and age. The man later on leans forward to express his interest of this conversation. I had also done mouth shapes for each character while they are talking as reference.
X-sheet is something that I done for the first time. It is a little bit confusing at the beginning but quite easy when you know how it works. I found it very useful to see when the movements and changes are when I was animating my work. Toom Boom Harmony helps a lot to let me know when the lipsyncs should go.
I usually done all my animated works in Procreate, it is the software that I am most comfortable and familiar with. Too much reliance on Procreate leaded me not willing to try other softwares. This is because I felt more comfortable drawing on iPad rather on computer and a drawing tablet. I found it hard to coordinate my hand and eye while drawing on tablet and looking on the computer. However, I find out that it is much easier to animate and Color the animation on Toom Boom Harmony than Procreate after trying it. Toom Boom Harmony allows me to extend each frame the amount of frames that I want and makes my life much easier. If I am animating this in Procreate this time, it will be hard to tell what frame I am working on now and I need to copy many layers if any changes is done in each frame. This always cause confusion and makes me stressed while animating. It is usable if I do not have a fix audio to work on but Toom Boom Harmony is clearly much easier to work on. I just need to create new layer for each part that have changes and draw them. If there is a frame that could be reused, I can find it in the library. This is helpful and convenient. My biggest gain in this project is that l have learnt how to use Toom Boom Harmony. I did not have many difficulties during the process of animating it with this new software that I have learnt, just need to get use to a new brush at first. I am very pleased with my final outcome and excited to use Toom Boom Harmony to animate again. The only improvement I think could be made is that my background dose not look very completed.