Just thought I'd post some step by step progress to let people know what I've been doing.
I decided to animate the mouth before animating the body, this because it's a bit easier to see what you're doing with the lip-sync when the character is standing still.
Iteration 1:
Basic mouth animations. Still needs some tweaks here and there. During this stage I was trying to imagine what he'd do with his body during the dialog.
I decided to animate the mouth before animating the body, this because it's a bit easier to see what you're doing with the lip-sync when the character is standing still.
Iteration 1:
Basic mouth animations. Still needs some tweaks here and there. During this stage I was trying to imagine what he'd do with his body during the dialog.
Iteration 2:
Basic mouth animation are pretty much done at this stage, just needs some details added to it. Slightly started on the body animation. The hands are constantly linking/unlinking to the notation board using a couple of link constraints. This was a somewhat tricky process but I eventually got it working just as I initially wanted.
For this project I'm animating with more a straight ahead method as opposed to the standard blocking animation. This is mainly due to the rather static nature of the character, standing at the same exact spot throughout the whole animation.
Basic mouth animation are pretty much done at this stage, just needs some details added to it. Slightly started on the body animation. The hands are constantly linking/unlinking to the notation board using a couple of link constraints. This was a somewhat tricky process but I eventually got it working just as I initially wanted.
For this project I'm animating with more a straight ahead method as opposed to the standard blocking animation. This is mainly due to the rather static nature of the character, standing at the same exact spot throughout the whole animation.
Iteration 3:
Fingers and some eye motion has been added to the mix. Also worked some more with the body animation implementing them animation principles.
Fingers and some eye motion has been added to the mix. Also worked some more with the body animation implementing them animation principles.
Iteration 4:
More body animation, time scaling, added in the shoulders and continued working with the eyes. By this stage I've switched the default eye direction controllers with a look-at constraint solution. It makes the character have a actual focal point.
More body animation, time scaling, added in the shoulders and continued working with the eyes. By this stage I've switched the default eye direction controllers with a look-at constraint solution. It makes the character have a actual focal point.
Seems like I've been able to avoid any annoying gimbal locks this time around. Come to think of it, It's probably because I'm using only inverse kinematic animations for the arms throughout the whole sequence.