This week focused on two different animation exercises: a Breathing Animation workshop and the next stage of the Dialogue Shot assignment. Both tasks helped me think more about subtle performance, body movement and how small animation choices can make a character feel more believable.
On Thursday, we had a Breathing Animation workshop in Maya. We were given a rig and had to create a simple breathing animation. I worked with the provided reptilian character rig and focused on creating subtle movement rather than a big action or full performance. The aim was to make the character feel alive through small repeated body movements.
This exercise helped me understand that breathing animation needs careful rhythm and weight. If the movement is too strong, too fast or too even, it can look unnatural. I had to think about how the chest, body and posture could move slightly to suggest breathing without making the animation feel exaggerated. It showed me that small details can still add a lot of life to a character.
On Friday, I worked on the Dialogue Shot – Blocking assignment. At this stage, I focused mostly on the body movement and main poses rather than the full facial animation or lip sync. I wanted to make sure the main acting choices were clear first, because the body language gives the foundation for the performance.
While working on the shot, I had some technical problems with my JoshCamera, which disappeared during the process. I tried to use the original camera again and also tried to re-reference both cameras, but they still did not work properly. Because of this, I was advised that I could use a normal Maya default camera instead, especially because the shot did not need a complicated camera setup.
The feedback I received was that the body animation was working well. However, the facial expression was still missing, and I need to focus on adding emotion before worrying too much about lip sync. The main advice was to make the character’s feeling clear first, such as whether they are happy, sad, doubtful or trying to persuade someone. This helped me understand that facial expression is part of the acting, not just an extra detail added at the end.
I was also advised to adjust the camera angle slightly, around 30 to 45 degrees, because the front-facing camera made the poses look too symmetrical. Changing the camera angle should make the shot feel less flat and more natural. For the last part of the dialogue, I also need to push the acting more by making the character lean forward, so it feels like they are really trying to convince the person they are speaking to.
I also researched several lip sync reference videos to get a better understanding of how the mouth shapes and facial movements should work. This helped me observe how the lips, jaw, cheeks and facial expressions move together when a character is speaking. By looking at real speech references, I could better understand the timing of the dialogue and make the animation feel more natural and believable.