Blinks in Animation

I've been getting some questions about blinks, so I thought I'd reprint this ancient article, first carved into a cave wall way back in November of 2004 in one of our first newsletters, in case some of you hadn't had a chance to see it! Hope it's helpful!
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I feel like writing about blinks today. Why? I just saw a commercial on TV (name of product withheld to protect the innocent) starring a character who had a severe blinking problem.

Now, I don't mean the character blinked too much. I don't mean he blinked too fast. I don't mean the character's blinks were too far offset, too slow, or too few.

No, this character was plagued by a disease that has been running rampant through animation (particularly student work, though not AnimationMentor students, of course. Everything they do is perfect and wonderful in every conceivable way... Well, okay, that's not exactly true, but I haven't actually seen it as a problem in the school. Probably because we harp on stuff like this ad nauseum).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the disease...

Let's call it "Randomblinkitis."

Many animated characters currently living out their lives on demo reels around the world suffer from this terrible disease, causing their blinks to feel random and meaningless. While some characters use their blinks to convey thought process and emotion, these poor Randomblinkitis victims are forced to slog through their daily existence unable to properly communicate their emotions and thoughts to each other, let alone to recruiters around the globe.

It's a tough life for them, folks, so let's do something about it!

See, the medicine for this heartbreaking disease is observation. It's easy to do, and it'll mean so much to your animated characters (and to the recruiters forced to have to try to communicate with your characters!) if you can just take a little time to observe the blinks of your friends, your family, your co-workers, your favorite movie star, and yourself before you start plowing ahead into acting scenes.

Listen, I know about the whole "I just discovered animation a month ago and must do an acting scene IMMEDIATELY!" thing. I know you all want to do acting scenes. I know you think they're the most fun. I know you think they're your ticket into Pixar. And I also know that for some of you, all the "honestly, spending six months practicing basic body mechanics and force will give you far stronger acting scenes than you'll ever be able to do without that foundation" advice in the world isn't going to keep you away from playing with some acting shots...

So, if you absolutely must do some acting shots (or, better yet, are advanced enough to do acting shots properly), then please, give some attention to the eyes of your character.

We've probably all heard people say "90% of acting is in the eyes" or something to that effect. Shoot, some of us have said that ourselves. And I actually think that's true, and is great advice (aside from the fact that if you don't sell the acting with the body first, all the facial stuff in the world isn't going to save your scene), but when you hear that "90% of the acting is in the eyes," I know most people immediately jump to "eye darts" and "eye direction," etc., completely skipping over one of the most essential acting tools you have - the blink.

When I was in school, I was told that "animated characters should always blink every two seconds."

Well, that's just about the worst advice I ever got, other than some advice I recently was given during a trip to Singapore, which was "giant fish eyeballs taste really GREAT," but animation-wise, I think the "blink every two seconds" is probably the worst. Actually, both of those pieces of advice are equally true (or rather, equally completely-and-utterly-untrue!).

Look around. Do you see anyone who is blinking every 2 seconds?! (If you do, please report them to your government, because chances are they are some kind of android spy from Mars or something.) People don't blink on any kind of set time schedule anymore than giant fish eyeballs taste "great" (and for all of you out there who maybe think fish eyeballs DO taste great, probably because you have some kind of steel-reinforced taste buds like the Singaporeans I was with at that restaurant -- which I do admire and am completely jealous of, by the way-- then that's fine to like your giant eyeballs, but just trust me on the blink thing anyway, okay?)

People blink for a reason.

- Blinks are so much more than any kind of physical dry-eye response.
- Blinks are the key to selling many emotions. Fire up some of your favorite films and study the eyes of good actors.
- When do they blink?
- Why?
- What does it feel like?
- How does it make you feel?

Right off the bat, the number of blinks can affect emotion in dramatic ways. Rapid blinks can make a character feel shy, nervous, uncomfortable, relieved, or like they are about to cry. Not blinking at all can feel angry, stoned, dead, or super intense.

Check out Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump when he's meeting his son for the first time. As soon as he realizes it's his son, he stops blinking completely. He's transfixed. Tom Hanks holds back his blinks to communicate the idea that his character is THAT intense about what he's realizing. Then a blink, and boom - he's on to his next emotion, which is guilt. He feels guilty. Shouldn't he have been there to raise his son? Did he do something wrong? The blinks are coming fast and furious now, to indicate his discomfort, his worry. Then a thought occurs to him: "is he slow, like me?" He doesn't say it right away, but you can feel the exact moment that crosses his mind, because suddenly his blinks stop again, and he's back to that intensity, and finally he works up the courage to ask Jenny his big question: "is he smart, or is he...?" Huge eyes, locked on, almost afraid to hear the answer. "He's the smartest in his class." And the blinks are fired back up again, which communicates his relief.

That whole scene is amazing for eye stuff. He even asks "can I go see him?" using only his eyes! Sure, his head moves barely as well, but it's 90% just his eyes, and you totally know exactly what he's saying. He delivers a line without ever opening his mouth. And it feels so real. To me, that's a great scene, and something we should all aspire to in our work.

So your first set of big blink questions is this: "what's my character's emotional state right now? What are they reacting to? How is that making them feel?" And your second set of questions, just as important (if not more so) is this: "well, how do I blink when I feel that way? How do my friends blink when they're in that situation? How did my favorite actor blink in that amazing scene I saw the other day?"

Figure out the emotional state of your character, go observe that emotional state in as true a form as you possible can, and then study the heck out of those eyelids. Better yet, act the scene out over and over and over until you aren't thinking at all about what the actual dialogue lines are anymore, and all you're thinking about is the emotion you are truly making yourself feel, and the context/subtext of the scene, and videotape it, and study it!

OK, so blink frequency (how many) have piles of meaning all on their own, but what about the spacing of when those blinks happen? That's probably kind of random, right?

No way!

A good general rule of thumb is to never animate anything without a reason. Never move ANYTHING on a character unless you know exactly why you're moving it. So if anyone ever tells you to animate something randomly, unless it's the tiniest subtle "add a little 'dirt' to this movement so it feels a little less smooth" type of thing, then you should probably say, "No way!" Unless he's your animation director. Then you probably shouldn't say, "No way." That might be a really bad idea. You should instead say "Right away, no problem!" while you silently think "man, I wish my animation director would take some Animation Mentor classes..."

Where was I? Oh yeah - nothing is random. Well, neither are blinks.

The most important use of a blink is to show thought process. We do blink sometimes just to wet our eyes, and we blink on a rapid head turn, we blink on a major change in eye direction, and all those other "blink rules," but in my opinion the most important time is when we have a change in our thought process. When we're having an idea, or when we're switching from one emotion to another, or when we're realizing something. Those are the gold-mines in terms of blinks - that's when a perfectly placed blink will take a scene from being merely "good" and make it "great."

There's a great book called "In the Blink of An Eye," by Walter Murch, who is an amazing film editor, and a part of that book is about his theory that we blink to edit the film of our lives. We blink throughout the day to cut from one scene to the next to the next to the next. And he uses that theory in his film editing. He looks for when the main character blinks, and often uses that as his cutting point, figuring that it's probably the most natural-feeling place to cut for the audience.

As animators, we can hijack his theory and apply it to our own work and our acting. We can study the same phenomenon that he noticed, and we will all find the same exact result - people blink when their brain shifts from one thing to another, whether it's an emotion or a thought.

Wow. That ended up about 5 times longer than I thought it would.
Sorry, I get all excited about this stuff and can talk about it forever! I'll try to be shorter in the future...
(I keep saying that, don't I?)

Let's see, to recap:

1. Blinks Have Meaning!
2. Skipping a strong foundation in the basics in order to get to acting scenes quicker shoots yourself in the foot.
3. Never animate anything without a reason.
4. Don't say "No way!" to an Animation Director.
5. We blink to cut the "film of our life."

That's five tips for the price of one. I better start being stingier or this'll be a short-lived column!

Hope you found it helpful. See you next time!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 14.42

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Animating Eyes and Eyebrows

I got a couple great questions regarding eyes from Christopher and Avner.

Christopher asks: Can you share more on the subject of eye darts and your technique to approaching them in relation to the social triangle and eye blinks? And Avner wrote in to ask: How do you animate eyes and eyebrows on giant characters like the ones in Transformers?

Those are both great questions and obviously related. As we all know, your eye animation is probably the most important single aspect of your acting performance outside of the general body language. People generally see the body first, then the eyes, then everything else, so you always want to first sell the emotion in the body, and then really hammer it home with the eyes.

"Eye animation" could include general eye shapes (emotional shapes), eye darts, pupil animation, blinks, and sometimes you might lump eyebrow animation into this category as well. All of these things work together to communicate emotion, thought process, and even unspoken lines of dialogue!

The main thing to keep in mind with eye darts, particularly in regard to blinks, is that you should not think of them as random movements that you throw into your scenes willy-nilly. You can use your eye darts strategically to show a shift in thought process or even to help sell an emotion (such as one person's eyes darting back and forth between the eyes of the person they talking to, searching for the truth).

Other general eye-dart tips:

1. They're fast! The eyes can really move quickly. Study your friends eyes and you'll see a lot of micro-movements as well as larger re-focusing movements. All of these movements will happen very quickly. Generally you're talking about one to two frames, in most cases, unless you're slowing it down for a specific reason.

2. Generally, eye darts are very quick and somewhat linear in motion. You could ease out of the first pose a bit, but you should hit that second pose really hard, almost robotically.

3. Plan your eye darts and use them wisely! Too many eye darts will feel spastic, freaked out, or electrocuted. No eye darts can very quickly feel dead (like doll eyes), but can also be used for effect (drugged, etc).

4. You need to give the eyes time to focus as well. Don't just have the eyes darting all over the place if the idea is that they are really focused on something. If they are focused, then only use VERY subtle eye darts that will help the character feel alive.

5. The further away something is, the less the eyes will dart when they are studying it.

6. If a character is tracking a moving object (such as a car), it's usually good to break up the eye movement with some darting movements that focus for a couple frames before moving on. With a slow-moving object, you can get away with a smoother eye-tracking motion, but as soon as the object has some speed, this will feel robotic and weird.

In regards to tying eye darts in with blinks, obviously the goal should be one cohesive eye performance, so you should really study what your eyes did in your video reference and see how that feels - and more importantly - figure out WHY it feels that way. Smaller darts won't necessarily have any correlating lid movements, but larger darts might, and the largest might want to have a blink happen as the eye shifts focus so far. People will almost always blink on a fast head turn, and the same generally holds true for large eye-shifts, but not always. I'll talk more about blinks next time, this is getting crazy long! :)

As far as animating the eyes of a character that doesn't have flesh and skin (robots, etc), you really should strive to recreate as identifiable performance as possible, no matter what. The design of the character can never be an excuse for you. Sure, some designs will work better than others, but no matter what character you are given, try to find ways to use that character's design to create shapes, movements, and ideas that the audience will recognize and identify with.

For something like Transformers, a huge goal for us is to strategically animate pieces on the face that will best communicate and "read" to the audience, so if you are working with a robot, my advice would be to look for pieces that can work as brows, lids, pupils, iris, etc.

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 11.25

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What Are Some Good Tips for Animating Brows?

Eyebrows are an integral part of facial animation and should be treated as such. They heighten and enhance the eyes, telegraphing your character's emotions. Since the brows frame your eyes, it becomes easy to read the eyes from a distance. An animator should be aware of and take advantage of this. There are several important things to remember when working with eyebrows:

1)Have clear, defined shapes that flow from one brow to another. Brow shapes should ENHANCE the eyes and never distract from them. Use strong simple shapes. Treat the brows as a connected, rhythmic wave instead of breaking them up into two separate shapes.

2)Treating the brows as frames for the eyes really helps to sell a character's emotion. Similarly, using the angle of the brows can also help direct the viewer where to look.

3)Show a character's change of thought or precede a move by having the brows move first. This is advantageous because it helps with anticipation and shows that the character is thinking. The other advantage is that you won't lose the face change while the character is moving.

4)Think of the flexibility and malleability of the face! Your animation will have an organic quality if you involve the brows during a blink or an eye shift. You don't always have to have a big shape change on the brows but even a tiny amount of movement combined with the eyes can go a long way in adding that extra layer of subtlety in your shot.

5)Don't overanimate!! Make your character's thoughts and intentions clear and readable by using only the necessary amount of brow shapes. Overanimating the brows can lead to the audience being confused about your character's thought process which may, in turn, compromise the clarity of your shot. You can often get a lot of mileage by working within one brow shape.

6)Analyze great acting. Study your favorite actor's performance to learn how they incorporate their brows into their craft. You will often be surprised at how little you have to move the brows to sell a performance. Again, this goes back to finding and sticking to as few browshapes as needed. Make sure it feels natural and keep things simple!

Have fun!

Guest Blogger Chris Chua

By: Unknown On 12.09

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How Do You Accentuate the Facial Performance to Enhance the Body Performance if You Have Already Animated the Body First?

Hi there!

Well, first off, I always animate the body first. Most animators get the body stuff blocked in, and then do a rough pass of limited facial and eye animation before really diving into the facial performance, so it's a very common and normal challenge to be doing the face as a secondary pass.

The main thing to consider here is timing, and planning your facial expressions to hit at moments that complement the body performance rather than distract from it.

For example, if it's important to your story that the character is sneakily stealing a pen from a desk, then it would be a really bad idea to have his eyes doing huge radical movements just as he steals the pen and puts it into his pocket. If the eyes are really going crazy, everyone is going to be looking at his face and totally miss the story point about the pen being stolen.

Beyond just basic complimentary timing, you also want to time the emotional beats of the face to work well with the body. I tend to try to let the face lead the body by a frame or two (or more, in a slow realization or protracted emotional change) with the idea that the face and eyes will betray emotions quicker and more immediately than the body language might.

An example of this might be a scene where the character is realizing that the love of his life doesn't actually love him in return. You've already created the body performance of him eagerly offering her a flower, and then the shoulders drooping as he hears her rejecting, letting his hand fall to his side, dropping the flower, hanging his head, etc. The most important facial stuff in this scene will probably be his eyes searching her eyes for the truth as he hears this devastating news, and then the whatever you choose to have his face do as the news really sinks in.

Does he stare at her, disbelieving? Does he start to cry? Do his eyes defocus and he just stares into the distance? Whatever you choose, you should consider letting that facial performance happen before his shoulders drop, before he drops his flower, etc.

The body performance SHOULD be telling the story in itself, so be sure to spend enough time making sure your body mechanics work and the emotions read in your poses. The face should be kind of the "cherry on top" that really seals the deal, it can't carry the whole performance itself or the character will just feel stiff and lifeless.

Good luck and have fun!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 11.59

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Can You Provide Some Tips on Showing Characters Thought Process?

Great question! Yeah, there really isn't anything more important than showing thought process (or rather, showing *changes* in though process) when it comes to having a character feel truly alive! It's the internal thoughts that drive everything we do, from the timing of our overall gait and movements to the glances of our eyes.

You could come up with a thousand ways to show thought process in a character, but my favorites are these:

1) Blinks.

I've talked about blinks a lot here and elsewhere, but one of the most important uses of a blink is specifically to show thought process. The timing and speed of blinks can radically change the way we perceive a character's inner turmoil (or lack thereof), and thus radically change the way they seem to be processing information. A ton of blinks will feel as though the character is going to cry, is nervous, uncomfortable, shy, or possibly relieved after a big buildup; while very little to no blinking will either feel dead, stoned, worried, angry, or just very intense.

So, blinks can certainly convey an overall emotion, but what about thought process? Well, if a character shifts from no-blinking to rapid blinking, then we are seeing one of the most obvious physical manifestation a radical change in their thought process. Perhaps they were extremely worried and then relieved at the result.

2) Eye darts.

Very similar to blinking, changes in eye direction (and the speed/timing of these changes) can also describe thought processes. As someone is presented with a challenge or decision, they will very often dart their eyes around a bit as they consider and weigh their options. It's almost as if they are reading an imaginary list of possible choices! You can observe this in any of your friends or family, and layering this stuff into your animation is one of THE best ways to bring your character to life.

Keep in mind, though, that eye darts (changes in eye direction) are NOT random, and should have meaning. Either they are looking for something, at something, or it's being driven by internal thought process. Our eyes don't just drift around for no reason at all unless there is something wrong with us...

3) Overall timing changes.

Any time the overall rhythm of a character's movement changes, we are going to feel a shift in their thought process. A decision has been made, an emotion felt, a memory reclaimed... All of these internal thoughts can heavily affect the way anyone moves, and again, seeing this happen in a scene can once again truly make a huge difference in how alive the characters feel!

Thanks for coming by the blog! Thanks for the great question!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 17.31

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What Steps Do You Go Through to Get into Your Characters Mind?

To really get into a characters head and really feel what they feel I ask myself a lot of questions. I’ve broken it down to my own personal steps.

Step 1: Draw from your own experiences

• When have you been in a similar situation?
• How did you feel?
• How did you carry yourself?
• How did you want others to perceive you?
• What were you doing?
• How were the people around you acting?
• What got you into that situation?
• What were you thinking vs. what you were saying?
• What environment were you in and how did that affect you? Example: A fight with a girlfriend in your living room will be different than at the library.

Step 2: Who is the Character Your Animating

• What is your characters personality?
• Where are they in their arc in the movie? Example: In the beginning they are weak but in the end they are powerful.
• How do they carry themselves
• If you could, can you equate them to an animal. Example: A shy person may try to hide themselves like turtle.
• Are they an animal? What are some physical or personality traits of that animal?
• Do you know anyone like that character?
• How does that character act differently to different people? For example, you may act differently around your friends than you would around your grandparents.
• Are they similar to any well-known movie icons? For example, if you had a confident character are they more like Indian Jones or Ace Venture. Both confident but completely different.
• Height and Weight. If your character is pregnant how may she walk differently through a crowd than say a non-pregnant woman of the same age and demeanor?

Step 3: What are the characters physical limitations

When if at all possible, do whatever you can that may physically force you to see the world through the characters perspective. If your character is blind, blindfold yourself, if they are short crawl around on your knees, if they walk with a limp put a tack in your shoe. Don’t do that for real that would hurt.

So many acting choices come from these limitations. For example, a man who is deaf in one ear will always lean toward you favoring his good ear.

Step 4: Act it out

This can also be the first thing you do. Nothing gets you in a characters frame of mind more than putting yourself in their shoes. Granted, nine times out of 10 you want to know and feel what they feel before you act it out, but act it out from a physical stand point. Recreating the situation/environment can tell you a lot. For example, if it’s a teacher in a classroom,they have desks and dropped pencils to maneuver around, so set up a few props and see how you move around that space. Then do it again later when you think you understand the character better.

Guest blogger Nick Bruno

By: Unknown On 10.03

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Eye Animation and Blinks

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give a big shout-out to all my friends (old and new!) up in Montreal. Carlos Baena and I were up there last week where we were honored to have been invited to speak at ADAPT conference. We had a blast!

Carlos and I gave a presentation about eye animation and blinks, and someone had a good question about whether or not the character design might affect the way the eyes are animated. It seemed like something worth posting on the blog, so I thought I'd throw it on here in case anyone is interested.

I would say that generally, a particular character design probably wouldn't affect the way I would animate the overall eye movements, as far as eye darts (saccades, if you want to get fancy), timing of the eye looks, etc. However, the audience member did have a really good point that the character design can sometimes affect the eye animation in larger, more global ways.

For example, a character may have an injured eye, or the design may simply call for one eye to be larger than the other. In these cases, the design will definitely dictate the way you shape the overall eyes, and will also affect how you relate them to the brows.

That said, though, I think I'd say that the main thing always needs to be that the eyes should communicate clearly to the audience, and in order to do that, the audience needs to be able to relate to the eye animation you've created. They need to recognize themselves in your work, and recognize the way we all use our eyes to communicate. Our eyes are our most communicative visual feature, and overdone or overly unique eye animation will jump out to us and just feel strange, at least on a subconscious level.

Don't get me wrong, it's always great to add a little special something into your work - something that makes that character unique, but there is a fine line between stylized caricature and overanimated confusion.

So, I guess I'd say that it's important to take the design into consideration, but as always, your primary focus needs to remain attempting to create a performance that is not only believable and entertaining, but is clear and communicative.

Thanks to everyone in Montreal for coming out to see us! We had a blast meeting all of you, and look forward to hopefully hanging out with you guys again next time!

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 09.52

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Reader's Question: Are Facial Expressions as Important as the Body on Acting Shots?

I feel like you can sort of break down the performance into four categories of exponentially decreasing importance: the body, then the eyes, then the face, then the lip-sync.

Most animators would agree that the body language and pantomime is by far the most important aspect of the overall acting performance in a medium shot or wider. (i.e. not a close up on the face). Unless we are face to face with someone, the body is the first place we unconsciously read in order to communicate with someone. Why? I'm not sure, but it might be because our body language often betrays our true feelings, our true mood or personality, our true intentions and desires, etc. When we consider that, it isn't surprising that we would pay at least some amount of attention to the body language of the person we are approaching.

In short, if you can get the emotions and ideas to read in the body, then the audience is going to understand what's going on and feel those emotions.

Next on our list of descending importance is the eyes. If the body is 90% of the acting performance, the eyes are 90% of the facial performance. After considering what the body will be doing, the next most important thing is definitely your eye performance. As always, the most important (and sadly, the most often skipped) aspect of doing eye animation is to know WHY you are animating the eyes. I see a lot of demo reels with randomly floaty eyeballs, and it can really kill a performance. Know exactly when and how and (most importantly) why you are going to move the eyes before you dive into your animation. Blinks go along with this, and are just as important for communicating thought process and emotion, and in certain instances I'd include the brows in this category as well.

After the eyes, we've got the overall facial expressions, including mouth emotions (smiles, hanging jaw, frowns, etc).

Obviously the eyes are a part of a facial expression, and the whole face should be thought of as one cohesive unit, but for the sake of this talk, we can think about it as a separate entity -- only because the rest of the face, while very important to the overall communication of the character, is simply not quite as important as the eyes themselves. If you animate a great body performance with great eye animation, that performance is going to read perfectly, regardless of whether or not you have a full facial rig to work with. This shows the importance of the eyes over the rest of the face, but that's not to say that you shouldn't take great care in the creation and choice of your facial expressions.

Last, and certainly least, is the lip-sync. Great body acting paired up with expressive and alive eyes, combined with well-timed facial expressions -- that combination is going to look terrific, even without the lip-sync. This is why you'll hear a lot of people say that lip-sync is the icing on the cake of the overall animation. It's that last extra little bit of "wow" you can add to your scene, and by far the least important aspect of your acting performance.

None of this is to say that any of these four categories are unimportant, some are just more important than others. Really terrible lip sync will certainly ruin a shot on a demo reel, but my point is that mediocre lip sync combined with otherwise great animation will probably go unnoticed, and the recruiter will be left with a feeling that the overall shot was great, even though the lip-sync itself might not have been fantastic.

So, I guess as far as which is the icing on the cake, it sounds like the eyes are the icing on the body language cake, the facial expressions are the icing on the eyes, and the lip-sync is the icing on the face.

In vaguely related news, I love cake but really dislike frosting/icing, which my wife thinks is completely insane, but she doesn't mind as it leaves more icing for her...

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the great question Fernando!

Shawn :)

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By: Unknown On 09.25

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Workflow for Fully Rigged Character

In simpler models, I would key everything together at the same frame so I would not be confused when I tried to move things around. Now I'm working with a character with a mouth, eyes, and full facial rig. Do I key the face controls along with the rest of the body, or do you re-block them on their own pass? What is a normal workflow?

Working with a new character is always intimidating (but exciting, as well, as you get to explore how that new character works, puzzle out new solutions for movement, etc.!), and jumping into your first "fully rigged" character is even scarier than normal.

I work just like the above -- I block in the scene in a "pose-to-pose" way, using my reference and planning as a guide, and saving keys on every body controller as I go. HOWEVER, your question raises a great point that I don't think I've mentioned in the past, and that is the fact that I do NOT save any keys on the face at all during this first pass at blocking. I just ignore the face completely, and in my mind, I imagine what the face will eventually look like.

Even with eye darts or blinks -- all that stuff I save for a completely separate pass. I don't know if that's the "normal workflow" or not, as everyone works in whatever way works best for them, but in my experience, doing any facial work in the first pass of blocking has a decent chance of being a waste of time. The body performance/timing might not be really locked down yet, and the facial emotions and thought-process needs to be very integrated with the acting choices, gestures, and body mechanics. You might as well wait until the body is really nailed down and 90% finished before jumping into any facial stuff, because if you end up having to change the overall body stuff, the facial stuff might all have to be scrapped completely as well. It'll save you a lot of headache in the long run, in my opinion, to hold off on the facial stuff.

Remember, the facial animation is the "icing on the cake," and if the emotions, actions, and ideas aren't communicating through the body language and physical performance, that should be a huge red flag for you that the scene is in trouble. The greatest facial animation in the world is not going to save your scene from poor body mechanics or bad body language...

So yes, in answer to your question, I save the face for last, and by the time I'm keying the facial work, expressions, jaw, and lip-sync - at that point, I'm no longer at all concerned with what frames my initial body-blocking poses and breakdowns were on. This is completely separate, and while it's very important to make sure the face is very related to what's going on in the body, it's very normal for the facial keys to be on completely different frames than the body keys.


Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 09.49

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