This time I absolutely and resolutely started with thumbnails. I refused to allow myself to do anything else first. After receiving the exercise and working with Ying to create a reference video, I sat down and really plotted out the entire animation.
Starting with the body acting, I plotted out the key frames and facial expressions that would work separately from the lip-sync. I think, working directly with Ying, wrote out the script phonetically and planned out the mouth shapes for each sound.
I started out by creating the body movement with some simple break downs and in-betweens to create a rough version of the sequence. I used the sound file to create the timing of the movement, working with the thumbnails as a reference.
From this I then worked on the Lip Sync separately, creating a mouth shape separate from any body or movement. I used the original mouth shape design sheet I had worked on with Ying and used directly mouth shapes from the reference video.
I then used this as a reference guide to create my first pass at a full lip sync animation
This, absolutely did not work.
It was a bit of a hard lesson but it was clearly very early that this was not a good animation. The concept was there but the lip sync was too complicated and the movement was stuttering and unnatural. I decided, based on my previous experiences with the Body Acting to start the lip-sync again. I initially kept the body movement and first just worked on reworking the mouth shapes and position to create a simpler and more effective lip sync. Looking at the two side by side, it is clear to see the efficacy of the updated version in comparison to the first.
I initially kept the movement from the original animation, but reworked the timing and added further inbetweens and breakdowns in order to create more natural and readable movement.
However this ‘fix’ then highlighted the problems with the mouth itself, making the rest of the movement work only made the mouth positioning and shape seem incorrect. The inconsistency of the placement on the head was highlighted and the face appeared to ‘slip around’ during the movement. Working from helpful feedback I decided to redo the head of the animation, creating a guide drawing to help with head shape and mouth position. This small addition make a world of difference and made the piece far more successful.