Unintended Sleep Deprivation

Well I was up until about 5am last night animating and watching stuff. It wasn't the most efficient work I've ever done, but I'm at least doing work. I have been falling back into old habits of forgetting meals and sleep while I'm working, which isn't so great, at least I'm keeping motivated.

Anyway, here's my progress.

New Lip Sync Practice: WIP from Ryan Neff on Vimeo.

Blocking is done, blocking plus done on the mouth. I'm gonna be doing blocking plus on everything else starting today. I'm trying to aim to be done by the end of the week, but that's a loose deadline. I'm more concerned about polish than speed right now.

So concerns that need to be addressed:

-Lip sync is a bit wonky in places, especially the very first line. I think that might be in part an artifact of the step-keyed blocking causing an unreadability, but I'll see when I start smoothing things out.

-Camera movements are at a very preliminary stage. They may not match up properly with some actions right now so keep that in mind.

-I'm both excited for and dreading the end part where Dan grabs Gabe. I haven't worked a whole lot with characters physically interacting with each other, especially to this extent. Hand tracking is probably gonna be rough.

-The long hold on Gabe while Dan's talking is going to be fairly still. I need practice on keeping holds alive, so hopefully this will help. Dan's long hold on the other hand is going to be fidgety, so it will be good to practice with a bunch of smaller holds.

-the only controls I haven't touched so far are Gabe's hair, Dan's hat, and either character's cheeks. I'm waiting for the polish stage for the hat and hair for obvious reasons, but cheeks, I want to be mostly final on lips and eyes before I touch them.

I'll probably have a blocking plus, polish, and final update on this little project to show.

And in response to John's comment on my last post, I did partially use the muppet-mouthing technique. I did a jaw only pass first, but forgot about doing a pass on just the corners of the mouth, and just did a full-mouth pass. If anyone notices and specific points where the lip sync seems to be suffering from this let me know.


EDIT: Noticed something wonky with Gabe's eyes at the end, ignore that. He's gonna be looking around but i think a key got moved.