Category: Lip Sync

While going through the principles of animation again and analysing examples of how they are implemented in films, we were tasked to take a scene from line test drawings from the film The Prince of Egypt and analyse how the characters were animated. The scene I chose to analyse was of Rameses’s father Pharaoh Seti talking. During my analysis of his movements, I specifically focused on aspects such as how he transitions between different poses and the smaller bits of his body actions that changes with each pose.

In the first step of my progress, I began drawing my main key frames.

Between the first and second steps of my progress, a major change I included was the addition of more poses between the first and second flashback scenes where Kaya is initially talking to the camera. At first, I didn’t many poses aside from her having her hand out. However, I was told that she needed to have more acting and more time for her to have mouth movements. So I added an additional pose of her raising her hand to her head and I shortened the first flashback scene so that it would immediately switch to her talking after she says “no” during the flashback.

I also added more poses while she speaks at the end as I was given feedback that her poses were not exaggerated enough. So I redrew her pose to have her shoulders and hips slanted to be more expressive and I had her sticking her neck out as she holds her hands out to emphasise her annoyance with the situation.

In the third step of my progress, I was given feedback that she was still moving too stiffly so I added more poses to make her more expressive. I was advised to make her express more anger due to her being in the situation of having nearly had her phone stolen, so I decided to exaggerate her actions by having her leaning forward and gesturing to herself. I also added other movements such as her shrugging and shaking her head as she holds her hand to her head.

In the fourth step of my progress, I had finished with my key frames and began drawing my in between frames. To make the character movements smoother, I added arcs to the arm movements to help figure out what in between frames to add between key frames.

By the fifth step of my progress I had begun colouring the animation and I continued to improve my in between frames by adding a boil to the characters when they were standing still.

By the sixth step of my progress, I had finished drawing the in between frames and continued colouring the animation, moving on to the scenes where Kaya is talking in the present. For the scenes when she is talking at night, I created a separate colour palette at for her at night time where the colours are darker than her palette when she is in the day time in the flashbacks.

By the seventh step of my progress I had finished doing the base colours of the animation.

During the finalising of my animation, I refined the colours by adding a low opacity layer of blue lighting to make characters in the night scenes appear darker so that they look like they are in a night time setting. I also added further details to Kaya by adding her loose hair strand and the green eyeliner she has as part of her character design.

I further refined the colouring by adding blue lighting for the scene with the policeman and the robber so that the characters appear to be lit by the blue siren lights of the police car they are standing in front of.

Story Development

When interviewing people, the question I asked to people was “What is the funniest interaction you’ve had or what was the most funniest experience that you’ve had in London?” which I felt would prompt more interesting responses from people. The audio that I chose was from an interviewee whose story was that she stopped a pickpocket from stealing her phone by catching him during the act.

Storyboarding

During the initial planning of the animation, the main scenes that I visualised were of the robber pickpocketing her raising his arms as he is caught and of a scene where it is revealed that the main character is talking to a policeman who has caught the robber.

During the storyboarding process, I intended the story to be an interview of the main character speaking that would have flashbacks to the robber that she is talking about before the scene would transition to a reveal of the policeman and robber listening to her story. Initially, I planned the animation to open with a scene of the robber sneaking up behind the main character before zooming in to his hand trying to reach to her phone. However, I felt that this scene would be too much to animate and instead, I changed it to a single scene of the robber behind the main character standing still which would be easier to transition to the next scene of the main character turning around to catch the robber.

Background Designs

For the design of the backgrounds, I wanted the setting to be the average London street with corner shops and walls with graffiti. To design the backgrounds, I took inspiration from pictures that I took during walks in places such as Clapham.

For the art style of the backgrounds, I took inspiration from the background designs of the show Steven Universe, especially with the style of sketchy line art and lighting.

When drawing the backgrounds, I initially planned for every scene to be set during the day time so I drew every background as being set around the afternoon.

However, I received feedback that the scenes where the animation switches between when the main character is being interviewed in the present and when it is a flashback to when she stopped the robber were hard to differentiate and could be confusing. Because of that, I tried different methods to differentiate the scenes, such as potentially making the flashback scenes be in black and white or being coloured with a different lighting before I settled on making the flashbacks set during the daytime and the main character talking set during night time.

While colouring the backgrounds, I also did several tests with the character in the environments to see if they fit in well with the setting or if they contrasted enough or not, as well as to see how the lighting would be on the characters.

Other changes I made to the backgrounds following feedback were blurring parts of the background so that they don’t take away focus from the main character.

Character designs

Main character – Kaya

For the main character that is being interviewed, named Kaya, I wanted to go for the design of my character was that of a fashionable teenager or young adult with an expressive and sarcastic personality. 

As the person I interviewed for my audio was Southeast Asian, I wanted to design a character that was of Asian descent. Thus, I looked to taking inspiration from the designs of characters of Asian descent, particularly Jentry Chau from the series Jentry Chau vs The Underworld, and the character Rinna from the series Win or Lose. I also took further inspiration from actor Greta Lee as an initial reference for designing the character’s face.
While designing the main character’s clothes I sought to give her a streetwear inspired aesthetic, particularly with baggy jeans and wide shirts or sports jerseys go give her a casual look. 

For the initial design of the character, I originally had a more detailed design with elements such as a star and stripes on her shirt and details of pockets on her jeans. However, I was advised that these elements would make the character too detailed during animating her so I was advised to simplify the design further.

Robber

For the design of the robber, I had in mind from the beginning of depicting the robber in a stereotypical robber for comedic effect. 
When designing his character, I sought to find ways that incorporated elements of his design in interesting ways, such as having his mask and hat merge together and have the line of his cap function as his eyebrows. When designing his body, I wanted to depict him as a sneaky robber so I designed him with a lanky body. 
I feel that his design was quite successful in having an expressive character that communicates the robber’s personality to the audience. I also feel that his design is a good contrast to the police officer’s design as his lanky design contrasting with the police officer’s stockier proportions would help to depict the difference of power between the two.

Policeman

Designing the policeman, I focused on making his design accurate to the uniforms of what London policeman wear to make both the character and the setting recognisable as being London. 
While designing the character, I used actor Omar Epps as a reference when drawing his face and facial expressions. When designing his body, I looked at examples on how to exaggerate his body proportions to give an air of authority or power to him, using character designs from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem as reference due to their characters having exaggerated proportions. Thus, while designing the cop, I focused on having him have a wide and stocky torso to give him an imposing figure, and I gave his head angular features to make it more expressive and have a more interesting shape. 

X Sheets

X sheets done for the mouth movements in the animation