Author: Charlotte Juliens

This week focused on creature animation and continuing the Dialogue Shot assignment. On Thursday, we started the Group Assignment: Creature Study, where we had to choose an animal topic and research it from an animation point of view. The aim was not just to collect random facts, but to study details that would actually help with animation, such as how the creature moves, behaves, turns, speeds up, slows down, and how its anatomy affects the movement.

For my creature study, I chose fish. We focused mainly on locomotion, especially fins and gills movement, and how fish speed up, slow down and turn in water. We also looked at how timing can change depending on the species. This was useful because fish movement is not only about the tail moving side to side. The fins, body, gills and direction changes all work together to make the motion feel natural.

The creature animation lecture helped explain the process of studying animals before animating them. We were encouraged to collect a lot of video reference, build a reference library from different angles, and study the creature before trying to animate it. The lecture also explained that creature locomotion depends on understanding anatomy and movement patterns, even if we do not need to become anatomy experts.

Even though many examples in the lecture focused on quadrupeds, the same idea still applies to fish. Instead of studying legs and gaits, I had to think about the body curve, rhythm, fins, tail and how the motion travels through the body. For fish, the spine/body curve is especially important because the movement often flows from the front of the body towards the tail, with the fins helping with balance, steering and subtle adjustments.

On Friday, we continued with the Dialogue Shot – Blocking Plus assignment. At this stage, the shot had to move beyond rough blocking and become clearer in terms of timing, acting and facial performance. Since this is a dialogue shot, the main focus is not just body movement, but how the body, face and mouth shapes support the character’s intention.

We also had Lip Sync Demo & Tutorials available as support. These tutorials were useful because they reminded us to use reference, even if it is just a mirror, to check mouth shapes. This connected back to the lip sync lesson from the previous week, where we learned to animate the sounds rather than the written words.

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.

This week focused on two different areas of animation: lip sync for dialogue shots and overlap/follow-through in body animation. Both tasks were useful because they showed how small timing choices can make animation feel more believable and less mechanical.

On Thursday, we looked at Facial Animation III – Lip Sync. The lecture explained that a dialogue shot still follows the same animation process as before: blocking, blocking plus and polishing. In blocking, the focus is on the main key poses for the whole body, including the facial expression. In blocking plus, the body gets breakdown keys, while the face starts to include transitions between expressions, major mouth shapes and timing. In polishing, the body gets more in-betweens and the facial animation focuses on connecting the mouth shapes clearly.

The lip sync workflow was broken down into three steps: jaw opening, phonemes and polish. I found the jaw opening stage helpful because it simplifies the process. Instead of immediately trying to animate every single sound, we first need to find the accents in the sentence and understand when the jaw opens. The lecture also reminded us to animate on twos and to avoid making the mouth movement too linear.

We then looked at phonemes, which are the mouth shapes connected to sounds. A key point was to animate the sounds, not the written words. For example, “Oo” and “U” push the mouth corners in, while “Eh” and “Ee” pull the corners out. Shapes like “M,” “B” and “P” need the lips to close, and the shape should stay for at least two frames so the audience can read it. This made me realise that lip sync is not just about matching words, but about making the mouth shapes clear enough to support the performance.

The self-study also supported the lip sync topic by giving extra video resources to review outside class. This was useful because lip sync is quite technical, and it helps to watch examples again while working through the shot.

On Friday, we had the Overlap Workshop. For this, we used a provided sea monster file and had to animate the sea monster swimming with good follow-through and overlap on its body and fins. We could choose a section from the 500 frames of camera movement, with a minimum of 100 frames, and then upload a playblast by 6pm.

This workshop helped me understand that overlap is important for making movement feel natural. If every part of the sea monster moves at the same time, the animation feels stiff. Instead, the body, fins and tail need to move with slight delays, so the motion feels like it travels through the body. This is especially important for a swimming creature, because the movement should feel fluid and affected by the water.

My Maya file crashed and I had not saved my progress, which was a careless mistake on my part. Because of this, I lost the work I had already done and had to start the scene again from the beginning. This was frustrating, but it also reminded me how important it is to save my work regularly and create backup versions while working in Maya.